Activists said Tuesday that at least 15 opposition fighters have been killed in a battle with Syrian government troops for a military helicopter base in the country's north.

The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's troops is raging around the Mannagh base in the northern province of Aleppo.

Michael Jackson's mother accused the promoter of his doomed final tour of sacrificing the troubled star in a "ruthless" pursuit of profit in the months before his 2009 death.

At the opening of a trial pitting Katherine Jackson against AEG Live, her lawyer Brian Panish alleged the promoter was negligent in hiring doctor Conrad Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of causing Jackson's death.

The China Institute Gallery has been transformed into an ancient cave, taking visitors back more than a millennium to a dazzling world where Buddhist worshipers adorned the walls with colorful frescoes, silk prayer banners and lavishly painted life-size clay sculptures.

"Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road" features a replica of an 8th century cave carved into the limestone cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang from 366 to about 1300.

The European Union plans to restrict the use of three pesticides to better protect dwindling bee populations.

The announcement Monday was cheered by environmentalists, disappointed chemical companies and came after the bloc's 27 nations failed to agree on a common stand.

A former Israeli defense minister has said that Syria's chemical weapons are "trickling" to Hizbullah. But Israeli officials said they did not have any evidence about the alleged transfer.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general who is now a lawmaker from the opposition Labor party, told The Associated Press on Monday: "The process of weapon transferal to Hizbullah has begun."

Google is trying to upstage Siri, the sometimes droll assistant that answers questions and helps people manage their lives on Apple's iPhone and iPad.

The duel began Monday with the release of a free iPhone and iPad app that features Google Now, a technology that performs many of the same functions as Siri.

Chinese health officials say the 4-year-old son of a man infected with a new strain of bird flu has also caught the virus.

Shandong province's health department says there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and that the boy is in stable condition at a hospital.

They sweep. They swab. They sterilize. And still the germs persist.

In U.S. hospitals, an estimated 1 in 20 patients pick up infections they didn't have when they arrived, some caused by dangerous 'superbugs' that are hard to treat.

Still to win any trophies with Tottenham, Gareth Bale collected the top two awards in English football on Sunday to cement his status as one of the sport's most talented players.

The Wales forward was voted player of the year and the young player of the year by his fellow professionals in English football.

The San Antonio Spurs completed a first-round sweep of the injury-plagued Los Angeles Lakers with a 103-82 victory in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series Sunday, while the Miami Heat advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals with a 115-101 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Tony Parker scored 23 points and Tim Duncan had 11 points and six rebounds for the second-seeded Spurs, who will face the winner of Denver's series with Golden State in the second round. They'll get plenty of rest after flattening the Lakers, who finished without three regular starters in their first opening-round exit since 2007.