Attacks killed 13 people and wounded more than 35 on Thursday, officials said, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed violence plaguing Iraq on "sectarian hatred." In the deadliest attack, a car bomb in the Shiite Sadr City area of Baghdad killed six people and wounded 17. Another in the city's Chikouk area killed one person and wounded four, and a third in Kamaliyah killed three and wounded nine, security and medical officials said. Gunmen also shot dead the brother of a Sunni MP in the Bayaa area of Baghdad, officials said.

A manhunt for the gunmen who opened fire at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans where 20 people were shot has ended with the arrest of the main suspect, police said Thursday. Sunday's shooting at a crowded parade filled with families shocked the Big Easy, which is struggling to overcome what mayor Mitch Landrieu described as "the relentless drumbeat of violence" on its streets. Most of the victims escaped with non-life threatening injuries after they were grazed by the bullets sprayed into the crowd, but two 10-year-old children were among those shot.

Christie's in New York fetched nearly half a billion dollars (385 million euros) on Wednesday at an auction of contemporary art, in what was a record haul. The amount raised passed the February 2009 auction of the 700-item art collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent and his longtime partner Pierre Berge which netted 342 million euros. Sales of works by Jackson Pollock, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Roy Lichtenstein contributed to the New York haul.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Water with traces of a radioactive hydrogen isotope leaked at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, but the level of tritium in the water is well below limits that would make it dangerous to drink, federal regulators said. The leak was reported Tuesday night at the Catawba Nuclear Station in York County in a fiberglass pipe that takes water from a turbine pump to a holding pond, where it is tested before it is released back into Lake Wylie, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.