By Dominic Evans BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition and the government of President Bashar al-Assad seem to be preparing to take part in an international peace conference against a background of some of the worst fighting this year. On Tuesday, Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and Syrian soldiers, backed by air strikes and artillery, renewed an offensive aimed at driving Syrian rebels from the town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, opposition activists said. ...

By Marcus George DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian authorities on Tuesday barred former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a relative moderate, from running in the June 14 election, along with a protégé of the current president, leaving mainly hardliners left to contest the vote. Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, a close aide to current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, failed to make it onto a list of candidates approved by the Guardian Council, state news agencies and television reported. ...

By Arshad Mohammed MUSCAT (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Oman on Tuesday for Raytheon Co's signing of an estimated $2.1 billion arms deal and to consult on Syria and Iran, U.S. officials said. Oman is expected to sign a letter of intent to purchase a ground-based air defence system that would help protect against cruise missile, drone or fighter aircraft attacks, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters aboard Kerry's plane. Part of the sale has been previously disclosed. In October 2011, the U.S. Defense Department notified Congress of a proposed $1. ...

By Patrick Temple-West WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Apple Inc's chief executive officer defended the company's tax record at a Tuesday Senate hearing where lawmakers said the maker of iPads, iPods and Mac computers kept billions of dollars in profits in Irish subsidiaries to avoid U.S. taxes. The hearing marked another foray by the Senate's most powerful investigative committee into corporate offshore tax avoidance, which is increasingly a target of many governments from the United States to Western Europe. ...

By Leah Schnurr NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks gained on Tuesday after Home Depot raised its profit outlook, while JPMorgan rose after its chief executive won a vote of confidence from shareholders. Shares of the two companies helped lift the blue-chip Dow as the broader market picked up steam in the early afternoon, sending indexes to fresh intraday records. Comments from a top Federal Reserve official also boosted the market as they eased some concerns that the central bank could start to reduce its stimulus program, known as quantitative easing, or QE. ...

By Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin CORK/DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland said on Tuesday it was not to blame for Apple Inc's low global tax payments and had no special rate deal with the company after the U.S. Senate said it paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits stashed in Irish subsidiaries. The Irish government, which has seen the luring of U.S. multinationals with low taxes as a key part of its economic policy since the 1960s, said its system was transparent and other countries were responsible if the tax rate paid by Apple was too low. ...

NEW YORK (AP) — ESPN is cutting its workforce, the latest Disney division to reduce staff.

DUNWOODY, Ga. (AP) — Police in suburban Atlanta say rapper Chief Keef, whose name is Keith Cozart, has been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Carole King isn't done with music — not yet anyway.

BOSTON (AP) — The 50th Super Bowl will be held in the San Francisco Bay Area and the NFL championship will go to Houston the following year.

VIRGINIA WATER, England (AP) — Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia don't like each other, and they're making no effort to disguise their feelings.

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees are going into the soccer business.

When John Kennedy Jr., son of the former president, died with his wife and sister-in-law in a plane crash in 1999, I heard a well-known televangelist assured us that “this is all part of God’s plan.”

Former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that he was "not personally responsible" for the agency's practice of placing elevated scrutiny on conservative groups that applied for nonprofit status, but that he regrets it occurred during his tenure. "I certainly am not personally responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it. [...]

Two top Internal Revenue Service officials knew that the agency was using a list to scrutinize applications for tax-exempt status that included the phrase "tea party" as early as the spring of 2012, but did not tell lawmakers until this year. Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and outgoing Commissioner Steven Miller told the Senate Finance [...]