• Feds seek death penalty against bombing suspect

BOSTON - Federal prosecutors Thursday announced they will seek the death penalty against 20-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing, accusing him of betraying his adopted country by ruthlessly carrying out a terrorist attack calculated to cause maximum carnage.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to press for Tsarnaev's execution was widely expected. The twin blasts last April killed three people and wounded more than 260, and over half the 30 federal charges against Tsarnaev - including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill - carry a possible death sentence.

"The nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this decision," Holder said in a statement of just two terse and dispassionate sentences that instantly raised the stakes in one of the most wrenching criminal cases Boston has ever seen.

Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.

• Italian court reinstates Knox murder conviction

FLORENCE, Italy - More than two years after Amanda Knox returned to the U.S. apparently home free, an Italian court Thursday reinstated her murder conviction in the stabbing of her roommate and increased her sentence to 28? years in prison, raising the specter of a long extradition fight.

Knox, 26, received word in her hometown of Seattle. The former American exchange student said she was "frightened and saddened by the unjust verdict" and blamed "overzealous and intransigent prosecution," ''narrow-minded investigation" and coercive interrogation techniques.

"This has gotten out of hand," Knox said in a statement. "Having been found innocent before, I expected better from the Italian justice system."

Lawyers for Knox and her 29-year-old ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was also found guilty, vowed to appeal to Italy's highest court, a process that will take at least a year and drag out a seesaw legal battle that has fascinated court-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic and led to lurid tabloid headlines about "Foxy Knoxy" and her sex life.

It was the third trial for Knox and Sollecito, whose first two trials in the 2007 slaying of British exchange student Meredith Kercher produced flip-flop verdicts of guilty, then innocent.

• Republicans feud over overhaul of immigration

CAMBRIDGE, Md. - House Republicans wrestled inconclusively with the outlines of immigration legislation Thursday night, sharply divided over the contentious issue itself and the political wisdom of acting on it in an election year.

At a three-day retreat on the frozen banks of the Choptank River on Maryland's Eastern Shore, GOP leaders circulated an outline that would guide the drafting of any House Republican legislation on the subject - a document that Speaker John Boehner told the rank and file was as far as the party was willing to go.

It includes a proposed pathway to legal status for millions of adults who live in the U.S. unlawfully - after they pay back taxes and fines - but not the special route to citizenship that President Barack Obama and many Democrats favor.

Many younger Americans brought to the country illegally by their parents would be eligible for citizenship.

"For those who meet certain eligibility standards, and serve honorably in our military or attain a college degrees, we will do just that," the statement said.

• U.S. concerned over delays in dumping weapons

BEIRUT - The United States accused the Syrian government Thursday of using stalling tactics to delay efforts to remove and destroy chemical agents, an indication that the international community's patience is wearing thin over the slow pace of the operation.

The comments, delivered by the U.S. representative to the international chemical weapons watchdog, marked some of the strongest public criticism of Syria's commitment to relinquish its chemical stockpile.

Syria agreed to surrender its arsenal after a deadly chemical attack in August on a rebel-held suburb of Damascus raised the threat of punitive U.S. missile strikes. President Barack Obama has touted the agreement as a victory and a major policy achievement for his administration on Syria's intractable civil war.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is leading the mission to eliminate Syria's 1,300-metric ton stockpile by a June 30 deadline.

Under the OPCW's tight timeline, the most toxic chemicals in Syria's arsenal were to have been removed from the country by Dec. 31, but that deadline was missed.

- The Associated Press