ROME, Italy — After deliberating for 14 hours, a jury found American exchange student Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty in connection with the gruesome murder of Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — For months, European allies have said they wanted to hear U.S. President Barack Obama’s plans for Afghanistan before they made any new commitments of troops to the eight-year-old war, now led by NATO. "I think most countries are waiting for the American decisions," Dutch Defense Minister Eimert Van Middelkoop said in October at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Bratislava.

ROME, Italy — Every sundown come fall, Rome residents witness an astounding spectacle, or, depending on how you see it, a scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. For a few hours after dusk, the sky above the city’s riverbank, piazzas and wealthy neighborhoods becomes plagued by thousands of European starlings zooming back and forth in fantastic tornado-like formations. Cacophonous calls echo throughout the city, as the dark-winged creatures soar through the air in sync.