WorldNews

[attach=full]19765[/attach] Charges have been dropped against a British-Iranian woman controversially jailed last year in Tehran after trying to attend a men's volleyball match, her brother told Britain's Guardian newspaper on Thursday. Ghoncheh Ghavami, a 26-year-old University of London graduate, is still subject to a travel ban, however, and cannot leave Iran, the family was quoted as saying. "She is free," said her brother, Iman Ghavami. Ghavami's case attracted huge international attention and the "Free Ghoncheh Ghavami" campaign included a Facebook group and a Change.org online petition. Continue reading...

Pfizer has stopped selling its Prevnar 7 pneumonia vaccine in China after its import license expired, but the U.S. drugmaker still intends to launch the world's most widely used vaccine, Prevnar 13, in that market. Continue reading...

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Scottish club Rangers has been de-listed from the stock exchange after failing to secure a broker. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19756[/attach] US-led air support broke the deadlock in Iraq's operation to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State group, a senior military official in the coalition carrying out the strikes said Thursday. "Air support became the key factor in this," the official told AFP by telephone. "That's what enabled us to restart, with the (Iraqi) ground element, the momentum which has led to this success" against IS jihadists, who had held the city north of Baghdad for almost 10 months. Iraqi forces still would have been able to retake Tikrit without that air support, "but it would probably have taken a little longer," the official said. Continue reading...

BEIJING (AP) — China's Foreign Ministry says Myanmar has apologized for a cross-border bombing last month in which four Chinese farmers were killed, an incident that injected rare tensions into generally good relations between the neighbors. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19755[/attach] Weary negotiators hoped to see the light at the end of the tunnel Thursday after talking until dawn, but cautioned they were still haggling over the last details to clinch a ground-breaking Iran nuclear deal. US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif talked through the night, going line by line over their differences in a bid to seal the outlines of a framework accord to cut back Iran's nuclear ambitions, diplomats close to the talks said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19754[/attach] ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The wife of an imprisoned former Greek defense minister escaped from a psychiatric hospital where she was serving her sentence on the same corruption charges as her husband, police said Thursday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19753[/attach] LONDON (AP) — England flew out to the Caribbean on Thursday suppressing fevered talk about Kevin Pietersen's possible international return and insisting the upcoming test series against the West Indies isn't make or break for coach Peter Moores. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19752[/attach] One of K-pop's biggest boy bands, Big Bang, announced on Thursday their first world tour in three years, spanning Asia and the Americas to promote a much-anticipated new album. The upcoming tour kicks off with two concerts in Seoul on April 25 and 26 and then moves to at least 15 countries including China, Japan and the United States, the band's agency YG Entertainment said in a statement. Popular rapper and the band's leader G-Dragon earlier said Big Bang was planning to release a new album along with the global tour. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19751[/attach] MEXICO CITY (AP) — A huge blaze twisted and blackened an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, but the state-run Pemex oil company said it managed to avert any significant oil spill. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19750[/attach] World number four Andy Murray booked his semi-final berth at the Miami Masters, rallying for a 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 win over Austrian Dominic Thiem. The third-seeded former champion will face eighth seed Tomas Berdych after the Czech dispatched Juan Monaco 6-3, 6-4 to extend his perfect record against the Argentine to 7-0. Murray, who won title at Crandon Park in 2009 and 2013, was initially stunned by the clean and powerful one-handed backhand of the 21-year-old Thiem, who has looked strong in Miami after coming into the tournament with a 3-5 record in 2015. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19749[/attach] SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — A Dominican Republic resort long known as an exclusive Caribbean hideaway, where at least three former U.S. presidents have played golf, is one of the main settings in the corruption scandal enveloping Sen. Bob Menendez. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19748[/attach] Eight firefighting vessels with water cannon battled a blaze on a Mexican offshore oil platform for hours, an inferno that killed four workers and forced 300 to be evacuated. An explosion and fire erupted at 3:40 am the Abkatun A-Permanente platform operated by the Pemex state-run firm on the Gulf of Mexico's Campeche Sound, the ASEA energy safety agency said. Some 16 hours later, Pemex reported that the fire was finally extinguished off the coast of eastern Campeche state. Some 300 workers were taken to other platforms in the area, while the injured were transported to Pemex's general hospital in Ciudad de Carmen. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19742[/attach] RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. (AP) — When Judy Rankin won at Mission Hills in 1976, the tournament now called the ANA Inspiration was the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner's Circle. Continue reading...

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Heavily armed Jamaican soldiers and police took positions around the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday after a man hurled a "suspicious package" over the building's wall. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19741[/attach] Rebels backed by Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate seized control Wednesday of the last border crossing with Jordan that had been under regime control, dealing a major blow to President Bashar al-Assad. "Armed groups, joined today by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, took over the Nasib border point from regime soldiers" on the Syrian side of the frontier, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A coalition of rebel groups had launched the offensive Tuesday, and Al-Nusra joined them late Wednesday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19740[/attach] Iran's foreign minister Wednesday told world powers to "seize the moment" and drop "excessive demands" as marathon high-stakes nuclear talks headed into another long bruising night of hard bargaining. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius arrived back in Switzerland to rejoin the negotiations saying the talks were in the final stretch. Fabius was re-joining US Secretary of State John Kerry and their counterparts from Germany and Britain. "Iran has shown its readiness to engage with dignity and it's time for our negotiating partners to seize the moment," Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters late on a seventh day of talks in Lausanne. Continue reading...

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — Two Coast Guard Academy cadets from the Republic of Georgia who died in a car crash last month had lived the dream of many young people in their country by attending school in the United States, a fellow cadet said Wednesday at a memorial ceremony at the Connecticut school. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19733[/attach] Lisbon's Socialist mayor Antonio Costa, tipped to succeed centre-right Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, stepped down Wednesday to fight Portugal's parliamentary elections this autumn. "It is time to open a new chapter for the Lisbon town hall as for the country as a whole," said Costa, who has held the mayor's post since 2007. The Socialist Party, seen as favourites to win this year's elections, last year installed Costa, 53, as its prime ministerial candidate. The Socialist Party won the European elections last May, however the main opposition party has been shaken by a corruption scandal involving former prime minister Jose Socrates. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19732[/attach] RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rio de Janeiro's pledge to clean up the blighted waters where the 2016 Olympic sailing events are to be held has suffered another setback: A prominent Brazilian sailing and environmental organization declined a city contract to help clean up sewage- and trash-filled Guanabara Bay. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19731[/attach] Cynthia Lennon, the British first wife of The Beatles' songwriter John Lennon, has died aged 75, the couple's son Julian said Wednesday. "Her son Julian Lennon was at her bedside throughout. Julian Lennon wrote and sang a song of tribute to his mother that was posted on the site with a montage of family snapshots and footage. Cynthia met John Lennon at an art class in the British city of Liverpool when she was 18 and the couple married in 1962. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19730[/attach] MIAMI (AP) — One teenage son of a Miami-based Canadian diplomat was killed and a younger son is under arrest after they were involved in an alleged drug deal that turned into a gun battle, according to police records and the diplomat's ex-husband. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19729[/attach] LONDON (AP) — Cynthia Lennon, the first wife of former Beatles guitarist John Lennon, died of cancer Wednesday at her home in Spain. She was 75. Continue reading...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican immigration authorities have cancelled the immigration documents of 21 women found working as exotic dancers in a Cancun club. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19726[/attach] US House Speaker John Boehner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Wednesday the "strong" ties between their nations, amid tensions between Netanyahu and the Obama administration. "In this violent and unstable region, where states are imploding and fanaticism is exploding, one thing remains rock solid -– our friendship, our alliance, our partnership," he said. Continue reading...