Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the United States would have an enduring presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when there will be a major troop drawdown . He also pushed back against reports that the Taliban is gaining strength in that country. Read full article > >

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Panetta says U.S. will have ‘enduring presence’ in Afghanistan after drawdown

Tim Duncan walked out of the visitor’s locker room at Staples Center and stopped to chat with Chris Paul after the San Antonio Spurs completed their four-game annihilation of the Los Angeles Clippers last week. But the conversation kept getting interrupted so that Duncan could joke around with Paul’s 2-year-old son, Chris. Read full article > >

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Tim Duncan’s renewed focus keeps San Antonio Spurs in the chase for their fifth NBA championship

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The Maryland men’s lacrosse team is one win from its first national title since 1975. Maryland advanced to the title game with a 16-10 victory over No. 3 Duke before 31,774 at Gillette Stadium. The unseeded Terrapins (12-5) will face No. 1 Loyola (Md.) in the national title game on Monday at 1 p.m. Read full article > >

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2012 NCAA lacrosse tournament: Unseeded Maryland beats Duke to reach title game

ATLANTA —The Washington Nationals embarked Monday on a nine-game, 10-day trip they would use to measure themselves against the National League East . Five games in, even after Stephen Strasburg blew a four-run lead Saturday afternoon, the construct has flipped. It is the division, perhaps, that needs to measure itself against the Nationals, their surging offense and their 19-year-old force of nature that does not come equipped with an off switch. Read full article > >

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Nationals vs. Braves: Bryce Harper homers as Washington wins, 8-4

When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost the presidential election by a sliver of a percent in July 2006, he cried fraud. His supporters took to the streets, and the most fervent blocked the capital city’s major boulevard for weeks. Read full article > >

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Lopez Obrador tries again in Mexico

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll highlighted just how much the coalitions of the two political parties have changed over time and continue to shift during Barack Obama’s presidency. What advisers to the president and Mitt Romney are trying to calculate is how that may affect the electoral college. Read full article > >

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Parsing demographics and the 2012 presidential race

BEIRUT — Opposition groups on Saturday accused Syrian government forces of killing at least 90 people during an intense bombardment of the central village of Houla, amid what appeared to be an escalation in violence in several parts of the country. Read full article > >

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Bombardment of Syrian village leaves more than 90 dead, activists say

With a near-flawless docking on Friday, start-up rocket company SpaceX achieved what only big governments have to date: It launched a mission to the international space station . The moment marked a pivot point in U.S. space ambitions, away from total NASA control and toward creative private enterprise. While NASA furnished seed money and technical advice, SpaceX engineers designed, built, launched and drove the white gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule until the final moments. Read full article > >

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SpaceX’s Dragon capsule docks with international space station

IN RECENT weeks the Obama administration has radiated optimism about the possibility of a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. The latest round of talks in Baghdad this week should lower those expectations. Tehran’s negotiators rejected a package offered by the United States and its five partners covering proposed confidence-building measures, and it demanded recognition of an Iranian “right” to enrich uranium, a concession U.S. officials say they are unprepared to make. The only substantive agreement was on holding another meeting next month in Moscow. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: Iran’s hard bargain

China has turned to the World Trade Organization to help block U.S. tariffs on 22 types of Chinese products, including solar panels, pipes for oil wells, coated paper and steel wheel hubs. The Chinese appeal to the WTO takes aim at the U.S. Commerce Department, which has recently imposed stiff duties on Chinese products. The department has cited Chinese subsidies, especially those funneled through state-owned enterprises, that it says give Chinese firms an edge over American competitors. Read full article > >

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China asks WTO to block U.S. tariffs

LOMA LA LATA, Argentina — In a desert-like stretch of scrub grass and red buttes, oil companies are punching holes in the ground in search of what might be one of the biggest recent discoveries in the Americas: enough gas and oil to make a country known for beef and the tango an important energy player. Read full article > >

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Center of gravity in oil world shifts to Americas

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, he chided Murphy Brown — the fictional 40-something, divorced news anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom — for her decision to have a child outside of marriage.  Read full article > >

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20 years later, it turns out Dan Quayle was right about Murphy Brown and unmarried moms

TIANJIN, China — Few temples to conspicuous consumption are as quirky as the Florentia Village, a sprawling “authentic Italian luxury outlet center” on the outskirts of China’s northern city of Tianjin that boasts its own ersatz Colosseum. Read full article > >

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Chinese urged to spend more, save less

We’ve been hiking a narrow canyon for nearly half an hour, hemmed in by huge sunset-colored cliffs, and the suspense is killing me. Where’s Petra?  “It’s becoming clear why it was lost for so long,” quips one of my fellow travelers to the ancient Middle Eastern city. Read full article > >

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Petra, Jordan’s famous city of stone, faces a preservation struggle

We’ve been hiking a narrow canyon for nearly half an hour, hemmed in by huge sunset-colored cliffs, and the suspense is killing me. Where’s Petra?  “It’s becoming clear why it was lost for so long,” quips one of my fellow travelers to the ancient Middle Eastern city. Read full article > >

See the article here:
Petra, Jordan’s famous city of stone, faces a preservation struggle