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Rick Barton, a top State Department official, says sometimes the U.S. has to take risks in diplomacy. He's behind a program to pay 1,300 police officers in the hotly contested city of Aleppo, Syria.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California announced that she won't seek re-election. State Attorney General Kamala Harris has said she'll run for the seat, but a number of Democrats are considering a run, too.

GOP candidate Mitt Romney says his effective tax rate is 15 percent. Why so low? The answer lies in a theory that if you tax investment too high, economic growth and job creation are discouraged. But it's somewhat controversial, not least because most of the people who get to pay that lower rate are well-off.

The top U.S. military officer is visiting Israel and is expected to deliver the message that Washington currently favors sanctions, and not military action, in dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

The growing sectarian nature of the battle in Syria has turned out to be tailor made for followers of al-Qaida in Iraq. A top U.S. counterterrorism official says the group's possible move into Syria is no surprise as it gravitates toward chaos.

Mitt Romney flies to Israel this weekend on the second leg of his overseas tour. He'll meet with top Israeli officials as well as the Palestinian prime minister. The Republican presidential candidate is using the trip to court the Jewish vote, which went overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008.

The opposition in Syria delivered a powerful blow to President Bashar Assad's regime Wednesday. A bomb attack killed the country's top security officials. Renee Montagne talks to Liz Sly of The Washington Post about the ongoing clashes.

Mobile apps are aggressively placing unwanted ads on phones. Lookout, a mobile security firm in San Francisco, tested mobile apps and found some disturbing practices. Those include transmitting consumer phone numbers and email addresses and transmitting to third parties and placing ads on the mobile phone's desktop.

It's boom time for cybersecurity companies that specialize in going after Chinese hackers. The top competitors in the sector have been taking a nontraditional approach. Instead of focusing on protecting clients from malware, these firms are learning more about the attackers — and going after them.

Russia has one of the world's 10 biggest economies, but it isn't even among the top 30 U.S. trading partners. A new John Deere plant there shows the complications of that relationship. To avoid tariffs, tractors and combines are built in Iowa, then taken apart and shipped to Russia, where they're reassembled.