Bombs

BEIRUT - Syria on Sunday rejected Turkish charges that Damascus was behind a pair of devastating car bomb attacks in southern Turkey that killed 46 people and left scores injured. The bombings provided a worrisome indication of how the civil war in Syria is increasingly spilling into neighboring countries. In another development, a Syrian rebel group on Sunday reportedly released four United Nations peacekeepers seized along the Golan Heights border with Israel. The abduction left Israeli officials concerned that such incidents could cause peacekeepers to pull out, leaving no buffer zone between the two countries.

HOUSTON - A paramedic who responded to the devastating fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, last month was arrested Friday after federal investigators said they discovered he had the makings of a pipe bomb. It was not clear whether the arrest was connected to the April 17 explosion, which killed 14 people and injured more than 160 others in the small McLennan County town about 70 miles south of Dallas. The explosion had been investigated as an industrial accident, but officials said Friday they had started a criminal investigation.

BEIRUT - At least 42 people were reported dead Saturday in a pair of car bombings in the southern Turkish town of Reyhanli, the latest apparent example of spillover violence from the conflict in nearby Syria. More than 140 people were injured, with at least 20 in critical condition, according to Turkish officials and news reports. The blasts reportedly caused panic in the town, where tension has arisen between Syrian refugees and Turkish residents. Reyhanli, in Hatay province, is just a few miles from the Syrian border and has been a magnet for Syrian refugees and rebels.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - After a bloody campaign season marred by waves of bombings and candidate assassinations, Pakistanis turned out in large numbers Saturday to elect a new parliament in what is slated to be the first democratic transition of civilian governments  in a country with a history of military coups and forced political ousters. The new national assembly that comes out of Saturday's elections has the responsibility of choosing a new prime minister and charting a course that would lead Pakistan out of economic stagnancy and militancy that has resulted in thousands of deaths in recent years.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Two bomb blasts killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 on Tuesday at campaign rallies in northwest Pakistan, authorities said, the latest in a wave of attacks in recent weeks aimed at derailing parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. [Updated 9:09 a.m. May 7: Also on Tuesday, former cricketer Imran Khan suffered minor head injuries after falling from a forklift platform that was lifting him up to a stage at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For the second day in a row, a bomb blast killed and maimed participants at a campaign rally being held by one of Pakistan's Islamist religious parties, indicating a broadening of targets in the violence that has primarily taken aim at secular parties competing in parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. Two bombings Tuesday killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 at campaign rallies in northwestern Pakistan, including one being held by a religious party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, authorities said.

A federal magistrate released a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from jail Monday on strict pretrial conditions that include 24-hour home confinement and $100,000 bail. The friend, Robel Phillipos, a 19-year-old Boston native, is charged with making false statements to the FBI related to the April 15 explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. After a hearing before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler, Phillipos quickly left the courthouse in street clothes and a baseball cap, surrounded by family and friends.

The federal government will tighten oversight to help ensure that foreign students seeking to enter the United States have valid student visas - the latest step to increase security after the Boston Marathon bombings. The heightened scrutiny by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is effective immediately, sources with knowledge of the issue said Friday. Officials would not discuss what they called operational details. But the move is designed to give border agents better and faster access to computerized databases that track the status of student visas.

SHABQADAR, Pakistan - When Masoom Shah hits the campaign trail these days, he brings a 9-millimeter Glock pistol and a team of up to 50 bodyguards. Instead of appearing before large crowds, he meets small clusters of voters at guesthouses where everyone is frisked before they enter. He limits his speeches to 30 minutes and then quickly slips out of the room. And at the end of the day, he returns home and prays. "I say to God, 'Thank you, another peaceful day has passed,'" said Shah, 45, a member of Pakistan's secular, anti-Taliban Awami National Party, or ANP, and a provincial assembly candidate in the country's volatile northwest.

WASHINGTON - Shortly after the FBI released photos of two Boston bombing suspects on April 18, several college friends texted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on their cellphones. One said Tsarnaev looked like suspect No. 2, who wore a white cap backward over tufts of brown curls. "LOL," Tsarnaev texted back. Later, he wrote again: "Come to my room and take whatever you want. " That night, according to an FBI complaint filed Wednesday in Boston, three young men entered Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where they all had met as students, and removed a laptop and a backpack full of fireworks that had been emptied of gunpowder.