Syrian forces battle

Syrian forces battle

beirut

Syrian forces threatened Sunday to mount a “decisive battle” for Aleppo even as rebels clawed toward the city’s ancient center under intense bombardment and strafing from warplanes.

In the capital Damascus, militiamen appeared to step up guerrillalike forays in central districts that were once firmly in the regime’s hands. The twin fronts reflected the rising stakes for both sides and a possible significant evolution in rebel strategies.

Opposition forces appear to be shifting toward more hit-and-run strikes in Damascus and elsewhere to tie up Bashar Assad’s forces and blur the lines between rebel and government-held territory.

NASA counts down to Mars plunge

pasadena, calif.

With Mars looming large, NASA’s most high-tech rover ever built was on track to plunge into the red planet’s atmosphere Sunday night and attempt a series of difficult acrobatics to land safely on the surface.

The Curiosity rover was poised to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. If all goes according to script, it will be slowly lowered by cables inside a massive crater in the final few seconds.

If all went well, mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory should have heard a signal at 1:31 p.m. Eastern. The space agency warned that confirmation could take longer if an orbiting spacecraft that’s supposed to listen for Curiosity during the descent is not in the right place.

Officials: 15 Egyptian border guards killed

el-arish, egypt

Masked gunmen killed 15 Egyptian guards Sunday at a security checkpoint along the border with Gaza and Israel, attacking with automatic rifles and weapons mounted on their vehicles, security and health officials said.

Egypt blamed Islamist militants from Gaza and Egypt’s troubled Sinai desert. The Israeli military said the attack was part of a plot to abduct an Israeli soldier, and two vehicles commandeered by the attackers crashed into Israel, where one blew up.

A year later, S&P downgrade a dud?

washington

The rating agency Standard & Poor’s stunned the world a year ago by stripping the U.S. government of its prized AAA bond rating.

The downgrade of long-term U.S. Treasurys threatened to sow chaos in financial markets, driving up U.S. interest rates, pushing the dollar down, scaring investors away from stocks and into that traditional refuge for the fearful: gold. The Dow Jones industrials dropped 635 points in panicked selling the first day of trading after the S&P announcement.

A year later, S&P’s historic move looks like a non-event. Long-term interest rates are sharply lower, the Dow industrials reversed course and is up more than 1,600 points.

Report: Feds probe money transfers

washington

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Las Vegas Sands Corp., owned by high-profile Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, broke federal law by failing to report millions of dollars of potentially laundered money transferred to its casinos by two high-rolling Las Vegas gamblers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is probing deposits made in the mid-2000s by a Mexican pharmaceutical businessman, later indicted for drug trafficking in 2007, and a California executive with Fry’s Electronics, who later pled guilty to taking illegal kickbacks, the paper said.

Associated Press