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• BEIRUT (AP) -- Activists say government forces have stormed a rebel-held town outside the Syrian capital Damascus after days of fierce fighting, killing at least 23 fighters.
• The Local Coordination Committees activist group and a rebel spokesman said regime troops entered Moadamiyeh Tuesday at dawn and troops were searching homes looking for rebels. The rebel spokesman asked to be identified by his first name only, Ahmed. The report could not be independently verified.
• On Monday, a Japanese TV reporter was killed in the northern city of Aleppo, the first foreign journalist to die in weeks of fighting between rebels and regime forces in the northern city.
• ___

• RASON, North Korea (AP) -- Fleets of shiny minivans, Chinese-made bulldozers and dump trucks festooned with red ribbons fill the plaza while toys, clothes and even probiotics digestive capsules are on display inside an exhibition hall.
• Walking past the booths and examining the goods are Chinese, North Koreans and even some Europeans, who are exchanging business cards and sharing lively

conversations -- North Korea is once again hosting an international trade fair, which opened Monday in Rason in the far northeast, a city seeking to sell itself as friendly to foreigners and a potential hub for international transportation, trade and tourism.
• It's a scene not common in the rest of North Korea, where most business is state-run and interaction between foreigners and locals is strictly monitored.
• The trade fair is an indication of how keen the insular nation is to attract foreign investment needed to reform its listless economy. Pyongyang has not publicly released detailed economic data for decades, but has made building the economy a focus of government policy since 2009. Rason, however, is one of North Korea's newly revamped special economic zones, governed by a separate set of laws and rules giving local officials more autonomy, and easier to access from the Chinese city of Yanji than from the North Korea capital of Pyongyang.
• With its economy languishing in sharp contrast to the booming market economies of its neighbors in Northeast Asia, Pyongyang has turned in recent years to

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