BEIRUT �" Turkey said on Sunday that it would step up its efforts to persuade the international community to do more to end the war in Syria, after investigators said they had found evidence that the regime in Damascus was behind the car bombing in a Turkish border town that killed 46 people.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan �"Nawaz Sharif, who twice served as Pakistan’s prime minister in the 1990s, has decisively garnered enough seats in Parliament to give him an unprecedented third term in the post, analysts said Sunday, as election results continued to pile up in favor of the industrialist’s center-right party.

At the entrance to this fabled city, Malian soldiers clutching Kalashnikov rifles didn’t dare approach the truck. Instead, they shouted from a distance of 15 feet for the passengers to step out, lift up their shirts and turn around.

They sit on a rough bench in the late-afternoon sun, three women looking as ancient as the city itself, residents of a place similar to so many others in Russia, where the forces that rule their lives are distant and poorly understood.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan �" Nawaz Sharif, a wealthy businessman who twice served as Pakistan’s prime minister in the 1990s and brought the country into the world’s nuclear club, appeared Saturday night to be headed to an unprecedented third term in the post.

BEIRUT �" Turkish officials accused Syria of carrying out a double car bombing on Saturday that killed at least 40 people in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, just days before a visit to Washington by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that is expected to focus on the crisis in Syria.

TEHRAN �" Two of Iran’s most controversial figures announced Saturday that they are seeking to be candidates to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president.

The emergence of two-term former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad’s top aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, dramatically changed the landscape of an election that until recently most observers thought would be fought between conservative candidates loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

JERUSALEM -- At dusk on Saturday, the Washington, D.C.-based Newseum will project, on the 74-foot wall outside its building that bears the text of the First Amendment, the names and photos of brave journalists killed over the past year while covering news.

On Saturday in Tehran, with only 10 minutes left for candidates to register for the upcoming Iranian president election, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made his way through the crowd to add his name, potentially reshaping the race.

Egypt’s prosecutor general ordered a prominent youth leader to be detained Friday for four days pending an investigation into accusations he incited anti-government violence, a security official said, in the latest case of a pro-democracy activist being held over such allegations.

Growing concerns over protests roiling Libya prompted the State Department to begin evacuating some diplomats from Tripoli, as the Pentagon put troops stationed at nearby European bases on high alert.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan �" They call themselves “Aware Girls,” and they consider themselves foot soldiers who will help safeguard a historic vote that could change Pakistan.

Based in this militancy-hit provincial capital in the northwest, the group is carrying out a risky mission as the first citizen election observer team consisting of young women. They deploy Saturday for an election that will mark the first time an elected government transfers power to another in Pakistan, a country ruled by the military for much of its 65-year history.

CARACAS, Venezuela �" Venezuela’s embattled new president, Nicolás Maduro, worked hard this week to strengthen diplomatic ties with neighbors, winning much-needed support from some of the continent’s biggest democracies as he faced accusations at home that his government stole April’s presidential election.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan �" The government on Friday urged Pakistan’s 80 million registered voters to defy extremist threats of suicide-bomb attacks on polling stations and trust that stepped-up security forces �" 670,000 police, paramilitary troops and army soldiers �" would safeguard the public in Saturday’s historic cliffhanger election.

When a TMZ reporter confronted former basketball star Dennis Rodman on the street to ask whether he still communicates with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he met in a February trip to the hermit kingdom, Rodman responded, "Oh, absolutely." He also said that he would be returning to the country Aug. 1.

MOSCOW �" Even as the chill in relations between the United States and Russia continues, the two countries are at least talking to each other more these days.

With Secretary of State John F. Kerry and FBI director Robert Mueller both having come here this week for substantive discussions, Russian officials seem to have borrowed a talking point from the Obama administration: Although no one is actually using the word “reset,” the Kremlin is nonetheless promoting the idea that Russia and the United States can pursue productive cooperation where their interests coincide and agree to disagree on other matters.

MOSCOW �" Russia’s foreign minister denied Friday that Moscow intends to sign any new contracts to sell surface-to-air missiles to Syria, although he said old contracts are being honored.

“Russia does not plan to sell,” Sergei Lavrov told a press conference in Warsaw, according to the Interfax news agency. “Russia has sold long ago and delivered hardware, which are air defense systems, under earlier contracts.”

Its about three months into an ongoing Guantanamo Bay hunger strike, which began with a few detainees protesting guards alleged mishandling of Korans and has escalated to a larger and nearly camp-wide demonstration against the Obama administrations failure to close the facility as promised or to free detainees it has cleared for release.

Reshma Begum, trapped for 17 days inside the rubble of a building that collapsed in Bangladesh, said she never thought she would see daylight again.

On Friday, rescue workers found her alive in the basement of the eight-story building. Begums rescue brought a sense of happiness and hope as workers continue to pull out dozens of bodies every day. The latest estimate puts the death toll above 1,000.

TEHRAN �" Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most enduring political figures, has reentered the spotlight just over a month before Iranians vote in a presidential election.

At 78, Rafsanjani, who was the Islamic Republic’s president from 1989 until 1997, hinted this week that he is considering one more run for the country’s top elected post, a prospect that has at once energized and unsettled Iran’s political class.

Irans journalists in chains from Committee to Protect Journalists on Vimeo.

Journalism can be a tough gig for Iranians, who face secrecy and the risk of retribution, and it seems to be getting tougher. A video by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows a rising trend in reporters being imprisoned for such charges as "insulting the supreme leader" or "spreading propaganda against the state;" in other words, for doing journalism. Some have faced solitary confinement, forced confessions, even death.

The press spokesman for South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been fired amid an investigation into the alleged groping of woman in a Washington hotel during the leader’s summit visit to the White House this week, according to a government statement reported by several U.S. and foreign news agencies.

Early on in Beijing’s winter of pollution-wracked discontent, one of China’s biggest power companies, Huadian, turned off the coal scrubbers at its Datong plants and let emissions of sulfur dioxide, a leading cause of acid rain and respiratory illness, soar to more than four times government standards.

Eritrea’s government has jailed about 10,000 dissidents without charge or trial over the years, a rights group said Thursday, describing the Horn of Africa nation as one of the world’s most repressive and secretive states.