Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are set to protect their rights under a trade union — the first such syndicate in the Arab world where more than 2.4 million foreign domestic workers labor under often harsh conditions.

The Labor Ministry said Monday they received a proposal from the National Federation of Labor Unions to form the syndicate in Lebanon. Migrant workers in Lebanon — mostly from Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines — have fallen victim to unpaid wages, forced labor and even physical and sexual abuse.

U.S.-led coalition warplanes carried out more than a dozen airstrikes overnight in and around the Islamic State group's de facto capital in northeastern Syria, three activist groups said Friday.

The air raids on the outskirts of Raqqa were the heaviest coalition strikes on the city along the Euphrates River since Islamic State group militants captured a Jordanian pilot after his F-16 jet went down near the city on Dec. 24.

Gunmen killed three Sunni clerics near the mostly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq, a government spokesman said Friday, an apparent sectarian attack that drew immediate calls for calm.

Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan told The Associated Press that the assailants ambushed a car Thursday night carrying the clerics in the mostly Sunni district of Bab al-Zubeir near Basra, shooting dead the three and seriously wounding two other clerics traveling with them.

It was an embarrassing Christmas for Nivea Cabrera after she was accused by her fiance's mother of letting her 5-year-old granddaughter play with a sex toy. A mortified Carbrera asked the child where she got the penis-shaped plastic cylinder.

"It's from my Play-Doh," the girl replied.

Fifty-one years ago, Arthur Lampitt of Granite City, Illinois, smashed his 1963 Thunderbird into a truck. This week during surgery in suburban St. Louis, a 7-inch turn signal lever from that T-Bird was removed from his left arm.

Dr. Timothy Lang removed the lever Wednesday during a 45-minute operation. Lampitt, now 75, is recovering at home.

A wall at a Morton Salt storage facility has collapsed, burying several cars at a next-door auto dealership in road salt.

Company spokeswoman Denise Lauer says a side wall broke Tuesday afternoon, spilling road salt outside of the facility on Chicago's northwest side and onto the neighboring property. Morton Salt Inc. is a more than 100-year-old company based in Chicago best known for its pourable table salt.

A woman has been jailed on charges she broke into a stranger's central Pennsylvania home after a night of drinking and was found by police in bed.

The Centre Daily Times (http://bit.ly/14axdj1 ) reports state police responded to an alarm about 4:15 a.m. Sunday in Liberty Township, Centre County.

Alaska drivers will have the choice of a retro look when they obtain new license plates next spring.

The state is bringing back plates that feature red lettering on white plates and a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs.

Fireworks coordinator Phil Grucci has a request of Mother Nature in this city of glitzy shows: If you're going to let it snow on New Year's Eve, let it snow at just the right moment, like right before midnight when his show launches from the Las Vegas Strip.

Grucci, president and creative director of Fireworks by Grucci, talked about the weather as he stood atop the Treasure Island casino-hotel on the Strip on Tuesday, one of seven hotel rooftops where 70 workers have been readying the displays since the day after Christmas.

Jennifer Lopez decided to hit the road after her split from singer Marc Anthony two years ago.

She went on her first world tour, visiting 65 cities on five continents and reaching 1 million fans.