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WASHINGTON – The United States has taken control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington and the country’s consulates in New York and Beverly Hills, California, the State Department said Tuesday. The State Department said that it had assumed “sole responsibility” for the security and maintenance of the diplomatic missions effective on Monday and would bar anyone from entering them without its permission until further notice. The U.S. does not recognize the new Taliban government in Afghanistan, which took power last year.

FORT WORTH, Texas – Prosecutors in Texas said Monday that they will seek the death penalty for Jason Thornburg, 41, who authorities have said confessed to killing five people, including three whose dismembered bodies were found in a burning dumpster last year. Thornburg was arrested in September on a charge of capital murder in the deaths of David Lueras, 42, Lauren Phillips, 34, and Maricruz Mathis, 33. He confessed to killing those three as well as his roommate and girlfriend, according to his arrest warrant.

ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigeria arrested the country’s accountant-general, accusing him of diverting millions of dollars from government coffers. Ahmed Idris was arrested “in connection with diversion of funds and money laundering activities to the tune of N80 billion ($192.4 million),” the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said in a statement Monday. Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy but its development has been hampered by endemic corruption, say experts. Many public officials are being prosecuted for alleged corruption.

BERLIN – German prosecutors on Tuesday sought a five-year prison sentence for a 101-year-old man who is on trial for his alleged role as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp during World War II. The defendant is charged with 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murder at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he allegedly worked between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing. He has been identified only as Josef S. in keeping with German privacy rules.

WASHINGTON – House Democrats unveiled a $28 million emergency spending bill Tuesday to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States. Rep.