International Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

RICHMOND , Democrat Tim Kaine said Wednesday he hopes to add his voice to the "common-ground caucus" in a U.S. Senate rife with partisan gridlock and that he wants to serve with Sen. Mark R. Warner, who plans to decide by Thanksgiving whether he will run for Virginia governor once again in 2013.

Stacks of pizza sat untouched, the salad bowls kept their plastic lids and roughly a dozen red-shirted volunteers sat in a circle Tuesday night, gazing at a lone television in search of pleasant news inside their small campaign office on Florida Avenue Northwest.

President Obama will enter his second term a lame duck from Day One. In fact, he has been limping along for some time already. Tuesday's result was no political mandate. In his victory speech, Mr. Obama told supporters, "You made your voice heard," but the voice was more like a whisper.

The day after a presidential election is a time for soul-searching for the losing party. Republicans need to look in the mirror and seriously analyze the troublesome reality that they have forgotten how to win important elections.

ZAATARI, Jordan , Western efforts to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad shifted dramatically Wednesday, with Britain announcing it will deal directly with rebel military leaders and Turkey saying NATO members have discussed using Patriot missiles to protect a safe zone inside Syria.

KOGELO, Kenya , Waving her walking cane and smiling broadly, President Obama's stepgrandmother celebrated Wednesday as this tiny western Kenyan village danced and rejoiced after he won four more years in the White House. Kogelo, a dirt-road town where children play soccer in bare feet, was the home of Mr. Obama's father, and it claims several relatives of the president among its population.

Berlin , It wasn't tinged with the euphoric hope of 2008, but the reaction from Europe and the rest of the world to President Obama's re-election ranged from genuine warmth for the U.S. leader to a welcomed continuity in American foreign policy.

DENVER , Three Western states were poised Tuesday to become the first to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults, but early results were too close to call. With 19 percent of the vote counted, Colorado's Amendment 64 was ahead by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. Results for the other two measures , Oregon's Measure 80 and Washington's Initiative 502 , were not yet available.

Maryland's ballot initiative to allow in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants was enjoying favorable support Tuesday night as voting tallies trickled in from across the state. The Dream Act, which...

Outside many D.C.-area polling centers on Tuesday, the scene could have been mistaken for 2008, long lines of voters shivering in the crisp autumn air, multicolored campaign leaflets fluttering in the breeze, but behind the lawns full of campaign signs and "I Voted" stickers, there was a change in energy that even President Obama's supporters could feel.

RICHMOND , Former Virginia governors George Allen and Tim Kaine were locked in a tight battle late Tuesday, with the most expensive U.S. Senate race in the country effectively going into overtime as the State Board of Elections paused the release of its results and held polling locations open for voters stuck in long lines.

Republicans were falling short in early returns Tuesday night of their goal of winning control of the Senate, after a campaign beset with weak candidate recruitment and self-inflicted gaffes in some of the GOP's most promising races.

A 19-year-old arrested Friday in connection with the violent sexual assault of two women within the same week and another youth due to be sentenced this month in a similar crime are both wards of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), according to multiple sources at the agency.

It's been through a rough four years, and it no longer rules the global marketplace as it once did, but the U.S. economy proved once again that it knows how to dominate a presidential campaign. After...

In the days leading up to the presidential election, expectation games were in full swing on both sides of the political spectrum. Each group of partisan supporters pointed to favorable polls, brandished winning electoral models and predicted either narrow victory or landslide. It was as though they were describing two different elections in two different countries. In some respects, they were.