Syrian President Bashar Assad has appealed to the leaders of a five-nation economic forum to intervene to stop the violence in Syria and encourage dialogue in his country's two-year conflict.

Assad said Syria is being subjected to "acts of terrorism backed by Arab, regional and Western nations" — a reference to the Western-backed opposition fighting his regime.

The New York Knicks extended their winning streak to five games as J.R. Smith scored 32 points and Carmelo Anthony added 29 in a 100-85 victory over the Boston Celtics on Tuesday.

The win moved the Knicks into second place in the Eastern Conference, percentage points ahead of the Indiana Pacers. The Celtics, who could face the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs, lost their fifth game in a row and remained in seventh.

Asafa Powell will find the crowd smaller and the surface a whole lot different when he competes this weekend in the Stawell Gift, a century-old handicap race held in a small town in western Victoria state.

Powell, who announced he's fully recovered from the left hamstring injury which caused him to pull up in the 100-meter race at last year's London Olympics won by his countryman Usain Bolt, will start from scratch.

The harsh spending cuts introduced by European governments to tackle their crippling debt problems have not only pitched the region into recession — they are also being partly blamed for outbreaks of diseases not normally seen in Europe and a spike in suicides, according to new research.

Since the crisis first struck in 2008, state-run welfare and health services across Europe have seen their budgets cut, medical treatments rationed and unpopular measures such as hospital user fees introduced.

Google has picked 8,000 people in the U.S. who will have a chance to wear the company's new Internet-connected glasses, which are being described as the next breakthrough in mobile computing.

Google Inc. began notifying contest winners Tuesday.

The Jeep Cherokee is back, with a surprising design that could win some new buyers but lose some old fans.

The 2014 Cherokee midsize SUV makes its debut Wednesday at the New York International Auto Show. The remake is so radical that observers might not realize it's a Jeep.

Brett Holman's 85th-minute equalizer helped Australia save a 2-2 draw against Oman on Tuesday, and narrowly avoid a shocking upset in an Asian qualifier for the 2014 World Cup.

Holman's 25-yard strike capped a remarkable rally, after Australia had fallen 2-0 behind to Omani forward Abdul Mubarak's early strike and an own goal by Mile Jedinak just after half time.

T-Mobile USA on Tuesday said it will start offering the iPhone 5 on April 12, filling what its CEO said was "a huge void" in its phone lineup.

T-Mobile, the fourth-largest of the national U.S. phone companies, has been losing customers to the bigger companies, which all sell the iPhone.

Sweden's language watchdog has accused Google of trying to control the Swedish language in a dispute over the definition of the colloquial term "ungoogleable."

The Swedish version of the word — "ogooglebar" — made the Language Council of Sweden's 2012 list of words that aren't in the Swedish dictionary but have entered common parlance. The council defined it as something "that cannot be found on the Web with a search engine."

Justin Bieber's neighbor in Southern California has accused the pop singer of battery and making threats during an argument.

Los Angeles County Sherriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore says authorities were called to the scene in Calabasas just after 9 a.m. Tuesday.