A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle in the Syrian city of Daraa on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 20, including security force personnel, the official SANA news agency reported.

The "suicide terrorist" struck near the al-Masri roundabout in the center of the city, south of Damascus, which was the cradle of the uprising that erupted against President Bahar Assad's regime in March last year, SANA said.

Top-ranked Novak Djokovic lost for the first time this season, falling to Andy Murray 6-2, 7-5 in the semifinals of the Dubai Championships on Friday.

The surprisingly one-sided victory ended Djokovic's 10-match winning streak that included the Australian Open title and his bid for a fourth successive Dubai title.

Syrian troops shelled Saturday several districts in the rebellious central city of Homs where a standoff continued between a Red Cross convoy and the government that has blocked the delivery of food, medical supplies and blankets to the thousands still stranded in the area.

Abu Hassan al-Homsi, a doctor at a makeshift clinic in Khaldiyeh district of Homs, said he treated a dozen wounded.

Eight people connected to a tribally-owned construction company were indicted by a federal grand jury in an elaborate kickback and money laundering scheme involving Iraqi construction projects, U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales announced Friday.

The 91-count indictment filed this week said former officers of Laguna Construction Co. and four foreign nationals from Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon face charges including conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering after a four-year, international investigation involving U.S. defense contracts for wartime rebuilding projects in Iraq.

Residents and rescue workers went house to house Saturday in a desperate search for survivors after tornados ripped open the U.S. heartland, killing 31 people and wiping out entire communities.

Even as stunned Americans grappled with the magnitude of the massive swath of destruction brought by Friday's twisters, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued new tornado warnings Saturday for parts of Georgia and Florida, in the country's southeast.

The ratings agency Moody's downgraded Greece to the lowest rating on its bond scale late Friday, following a deal with private investors that would see them ultimately lose an estimated 70 percent of their holdings in Greek debt.

Moody's lowered Greece's sovereign rating to C from Ca, arguing that the risk of default remains high even a bond-swap deal with banks and other private investors, due to be completed this month, is successful.

Police say it wasn't too hard to nab one would-be Belfast burglar — he managed to get his arm stuck while trying to reach through a front door letterbox.

Northern Ireland police say a passing patrol spotted the 17-year-old wrestling to free himself from a house's front door before sunrise Thursday.

New York City's Police Department is facing mounting criticism of its secret surveillance of Muslims across the Northeast, with civil liberties groups demanding an investigation and New Jersey's governor accusing the NYPD of arrogantly acting as if "their jurisdiction is the world."

The intelligence-gathering was detailed recently in a series of stories by The Associated Press, which reported that police monitored mosques and Muslims around the metropolitan area and kept tabs on Muslim student groups at universities in upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The department also sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip with college students.

The owner of the New Jersey funeral home that handled services for Whitney Houston says the home had nothing to do with a photograph that surfaced showing the singer's body in an open casket.

But Carolyn Whigham of Whigham Funeral Home and two pastors say they do know who took the photo that ran in the National Enquirer. They just aren't identifying the person and say that's up to the Houston family.

FIFA has launched an investigation into the "unusual outcome" of Bahrain's 10-0 victory over a weakened Indonesia team in a World Cup qualifying match.

Bahrain's win on Wednesday has raised suspicion because it needed to make up a nine-goal deficit on Qatar in the group standings to have a chance of advancing to the next round.