JERUSALEM -- With general elections two weeks away, current polls continue to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling party the lead. But complacency among his supporters and a series of campaign blunders appear to have eaten away at his support and strengthened his right-wing rival, Naftali Bennett.

While Netanyahu's main rivals on both sides of the political map have published a clear platform on domestic and foreign policy, the ruling party has avoided doing so. Despite a common argument that official party platforms are an anachronism and that most key developments have typically come as a surprise, observers were keen to see how a platform would deal with Netanyahu's landmark Bar-Ilan speech.

Delivered by Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University shortly after taking office in 2009, the speech was a pivotal moment for the prime minister, the Likud party and perhaps Israeli politics. In it, Netanyahu first said that under certain conditions, he would agree to a Palestinian state.

Th...

The attack happened about 11 a.m. at a government compound in the district of Spin Boldak, during a meeting of local leaders to discuss issues raised by residents, said Ahmad Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor. A district council member and four local residents were among those killed, he said.

The district, which borders Pakistan, is considered an important smuggling route for drugs, weapons and militants.

There were conflicting accounts of how the attack unfolded.

Sayed Hashim Agha, the Spin Boldak district governor, said the bombers drove up to the compound and fired on police officers guarding the entrance, killing one of them. They then exited the vehicle on foot and detonated suicide vests in the hall where the meeting was taking place, he said.

Faisal said the...

BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad in a rare public appearance presented a plan for ending the country’s deadly civil war, but called his opponents “terrorists” and made clear he had no intention of leaving office, presenting himself as his people’s protector. 

His dismissive attitude toward critics, and his dangling of limited concessions, offered little hope for a diplomatic breakthrough to end the 21-month civil war.

Assad cast himself as a leader saddened by his country’s strife and ready to find a way to end the conflict, but only on his terms. In his roughly hourlong speech at the national opera house in central Damascus, Assad sketched out a plan for peace. 

In phase one, Assad called for a freeze to the fighting and an end to foreign aid to anti-government forces. If those conditions were met, Assad said he would order his forces to halt military operations and convene a national dialogue conference. Then, under a transitional government, the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani army accused Indian troops of launching a cross-border raid early Sunday in the disputed Kashmir region that killed a Pakistani soldier, while India countered that it retaliated with small arms fire only after Pakistan fired first with shelling and automatic weapons.

What impact the incident will have on the recent warming in relations between the two nuclear archrivals remains to be seen. Cross-border firing between soldiers on both sides of the “line of control” that separates Pakistan- and India-administered Kashmir has happened on numerous occasions in the past, but raids over the border that involve soldier deaths have been rare.

Pakistan’s military claimed Indian troops crossed the line of control and raided a Pakistani army checkpost, killing one soldier and critically injuring another. “Pakistani army troops effectively responded and repulsed the attack successfully,” the Pakistani military said in a...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Diosdado Cabello, a confidant and former army comrade of President Hugo Chavez, was reelected as National Assembly president Saturday, a key position that would make him the leader in any process to begin a new election to replace Chavez should the fiery socialist die or be deemed “permanently incapacitated."

Chavez has not been seen or heard from since he left Venezuela in early December for Cuba, where he underwent his fourth surgery to treat pelvic cancer.  In sporadic and thinly detailed medical updates, officials have said he has encountered postoperative complications including “respiratory insufficiency”  that have dimmed the chances of his being present for a Jan. 10 inauguration.

After being returned to his position in the assembly by fellow lawmakers, Cabello said Chavez does not need to be sworn in Jan. 10 to retain his presidential powers because he has permission from the National Assembly  to be absent from the country.

"If Chavez...

LONDON -- Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head by Taliban gunmen last October, has walked out of a hospital to rejoin her family.

Wearing a white patterned headscarf and long gray dress, Malala walked slowly out of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on Thursday, helped by a nurse, and waved shyly as she went through the door.

The 15-year-old schoolgirl who campaigned for education for girls in Pakistan and wrote a blog for the BBC Urdu service about daily life under the Taliban was attacked on her way to school on Oct. 9.

She was shot in the head and neck by men who blocked the school bus in which she was riding near her home in Mingora in Pakistan's Swat Valley and asked for her by name. She was rushed to a local hospital, then flown to the Birmingham hospital, which specializes in military casualties, a week later for specialist neurosurgery.

A hospital statement said Friday that she would return there "in late January or early February to undergo cranial...

The man who was beaten alongside the New Delhi gang rape victim said the two lay naked and bleeding while people idly passed by and police debated which police station was responsible, with more than two hours elapsing before they arrived at a hospital.

The man described the attack and its aftermath for the first time in an interview broadcast Friday on Zee News, an Indian television channel. His account gives a troubling picture of an indifferent reaction to a violent crime that has since galvanized public outrage.

After the two were thrown off the bus where the young woman was raped and beaten with an iron rod, then nearly run over by their attackers, they tried in vain to stop passersby, he said. Rickshaws, bikes and cars slowed -- but it was nearly a half-hour before someone stopped.

Three police vans arrived after an additional 45 minutes, he told the television station, only to waste time debating which police station had jurisdiction over the case. Someone offered them a bed...

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

LONDON --The Church of England said Friday that it will allow gay men to become bishops, putting it closer to its sister Episcopal Church in the United States but at odds with many conservatives in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The House of Bishops put out a statement confirming that gay clergy in civil partnerships will be eligible for appointment as bishops, if they remain celibate.  The announcement followed a working group's review of Church of England rules governing civil partnerships.

In July 2011, the House of Bishops announced a review of a statement published six years earlier, which allowed for clergy to be in civil partnerships but effectively put a moratorium on gay bishops. After the review, the group of bishops decided that “clergy in civil partnerships and in accordance with the teaching of the Church on human sexuality, can be considered as candidates for the episcopate,” the Rev....

Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across Iraq on Friday, charging that Sunni Muslims had been disenfranchised under the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and pressing for detainees to be freed.

Protests have raged for weeks and continued even after the Iraqi justice ministry freed nearly a dozen female prisoners and said it would transfer others to jails closer to their homes. The unrest has spread from Anbar province, where infuriated protesters have blocked a key highway, to other Sunni strongholds across northern and western Iraq.

"How much longer will our children stay in prisons for no other reason than being Sunni," a man who gave his name as Abu Abdullah told Agence France-Presse at one demonstration in Baghdad, where protesters hoisted banners calling for anti-terror laws to be repealed.

In the wake of elections that put hawkish leaders in power, Japan has reached out to South Korea in a bid to dial down tensions. Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister of Japan, sent an envoy to South Korea to meet Friday with Park Geun-hye, who was recently elected president.

"I'd like to act as a bridge to make this year a good one for both of our countries,” Japanese envoy Fukushiro Nukaga said, as quoted by the Kyodo news agency.

Park said she too wanted to rebuild ties, but urged Japan to “squarely face” its history. The closely watched meeting comes as the two countries spar over disputed islands and the sensitive history of South Koreans serving as “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Ties between the countries have been badly frayed after the last South Korean president visited the contested islands, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan. President-elect Park is expected to strike a similarly nationalist note in her...

President Evo Morales heralded the opening of the pilot plant in Llipi, on the edge of the Uyuni salt flats, calling it “a historic day” for Bolivia, the state news service reported Thursday.

“These are important steps – and of course, they must be expanded,” he said.

State mining officials say the $19 million plant is expected to produce 40 metric tons of lithium carbonate annually, a paltry amount compared with what Bolivians eventually hope to reap from the salt flats. The country is believed to have some of the biggest untapped reserves of lithium in the world.

Morales has sought to nationalize the country's energy sector and has pressed for Bolivia to not only profit off its lithium but to industrialize it, someday producing its own batteries and...