WorldNews

[attach=full]19718[/attach] LONDON (AP) — A couple from northern England has defied the odds — again — by winning a million pounds ($1.5 million) in the lottery for a second time. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19717[/attach] CAIRO (AP) — The extremist Islamic State group, which controls a third of both Iraq and Syria in its self-declared caliphate, found itself driven out of the city of Tikrit on Wednesday by an allied Iraqi force backed by U.S.-led airstrikes. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19716[/attach] Jordan on Wednesday closed its main border crossing with Syria amid fierce clashes between rebels and pro-regime forces for control of the post. "The 'Jaber' border post has been temporarily closed to travellers and goods," Interior Minister Hussein Majali told AFP. A monitoring group said earlier that heavy fighting had erupted Wednesday when Syrian rebels including Islamists launched an attack on the border crossing, known as the Nasib post on the Syrian side. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels had besieged the post and were facing air raids and rocket fire from regime forces. Continue reading...

ROME (AP) — Italy and the Holy See signed an accord Wednesday to cooperate on fiscal matters, as the Vatican works to improve transparency after a string of financial scandals. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19711[/attach] Sanaa (AFP) - At least 37 people were killed when a dairy in western Yemen was bombed overnight, an official said Wednesday after a seventh night of Saudi-led air strikes against Shiite rebels. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19710[/attach] ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari said Wednesday it was time "to heal wounds," a day after Nigeria's president conceded defeat in a bitterly fought election. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19709[/attach] The head of Libya's rival government has rejected his sacking by the Tripoli-based parliament, suggesting he retains the support of powerful militia allies. Libya has had two governments and parliaments since Tripoli was seized in August by the Islamist-backed Fajr Libya militia coalition and the internationally recognised government fled to the country's far east. On Tuesday lawmakers in the Tripoli-based General National Congress (GNC) voted to sack prime minister Omar al-Hassi, accusing him of failing to tackle corruption. "I will accept this decision only if my main partners in this government, the brave revolutionaries, accept it too, and we will preserve our constitutional right to object," he said. Continue reading...

BERLIN (AP) — The U.N.'s human rights chief said Wednesday his office has received reports that Boko Haram fighters retreating from advancing military forces in Nigeria murdered women and girls they had taken as "wives," along with other captives. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19708[/attach] Nigeria's president-elect Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday called elections that will lead to the country's first democratic change of power "historic" in a victory speech. "Our country has now joined the community of nations that have used the ballot box to peacefully change an incumbent president in a free and fair election," he said at the headquarters of his All Progressives Congress party in Nigeria's capital Abuja. He also praised the "statesmanship" of the country's outgoing leader Goodluck Jonathan for conceding defeat in a vote that saw an incumbent lose for the time in the nation's history. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19706[/attach] NEW YORK (AP) — Toyota is turning to a sporty hatchback and a low-cost sedan to restore some hipness — and sales — to its youth-oriented Scion brand. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19705[/attach] TOKYO (AP) — Japanese businesses remain wary over the outlook for the world's No. 3 economy and generally plan to reduce capital investment, according to a central bank survey released Wednesday. Continue reading...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand fast bowler Kyle Mills has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket, ending a 14-year international career. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19704[/attach] Lausanne (AFP) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that he hopes to finalise on Wednesday a framework nuclear agreement with world powers. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19703[/attach] A parliamentary candidate for Britain's UK Independence Party was replaced on Tuesday after writing that Israel should "kidnap" US President Barack Obama in a Facebook post. The post by Jeremy Zeid was a response to the declassifying of documents on Israel's secret nuclear programme, and was written last week as he prepared to run for a seat in Britain's general election on May 7. "Once Obama is out of office, the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or 'do an Eichmann' on him, and lock him up for leaking state secrets," Zeid wrote in the Facebook post, according to a screenshot. "Just kidnap the bugger, like they did to Eichmann," he added in a comment, referring to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Argentina in 1960 and put on trial in Israel. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19698[/attach] Egypt's president on Tuesday urged Shiite rebels in Yemen to "back off" for the sake of their country, saying Cairo is participating in a military campaign there for Gulf Arab security. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's remarks come two days after an Arab summit in Egypt that decided the Saudi-led air strikes against the Huthi rebels should continue until they surrender. "The stability of Yemen and the safety of its people hangs from your necks," Sisi said in a televised speech to military and police officers. Egypt had said it is taking part in the campaign with its air force and navy, and has pledged to commit ground troops if they are needed. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19697[/attach] Borno state in northeast Nigeria, worst-hit by six years of Boko Haram violence, voted overwhelmingly in favour of opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, results showed on Tuesday. The former military ruler, who has accused President Goodluck Jonathan of failing to provide leadership in the insurgency, won 473,543 ballots in the state, or 94 percent of the valid votes cast. Polling stations were eventually set up in and around camps for the displaced, notably in the state capital, Maiduguri. In Yobe, Jonathan polled 446,265 votes -- 94.2 percent of the total valid votes -- and in Adamawa 374,701 or the 58.9 percent of the ballots. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19696[/attach] TURIN, Italy (AP) — Andros Townsend scored a late equalizer as England held Italy to a 1-1 draw in an international friendly at the Juventus Stadium on Tuesday. Continue reading...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Authorities say a police officer has been seriously injured in clashes with football fans in Argentina. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19695[/attach] Incoming England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman Colin Graves confirmed on Tuesday that he is considering tabling proposals to shorten Test matches from five days to four. "Personally, I think we should look at four-day Test cricket and play 105 overs a day starting at 10.30am in the morning, and finish when you finish as all the grounds now have lights," Graves, who takes up his role in May, told the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) website. The ECB could not itself introduce four-day Test matches, but it could push for changes to the Test format in international negotiations. Expanding on the idea, Graves added: "Every Test match would start on a Thursday, with Thursday and Friday being corporate days and then Saturday and Sunday the family days. Continue reading...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A clash between two vigilante "self-defense" groups in the troubled Mexican state of Guerrero killed at least four people and dozens more were taken prisoner by each side, a leader of one of the groups said Tuesday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19691[/attach] British director Ken Loach launched his leftist party's manifesto in a squat in Soho on Tuesday, warning of "huge anger and alienation" among voters ahead of the general election on May 7. Loach said the venue -- in a once-seedy and increasingly expensive part of central London -- was chosen to draw attention to the difficulties faced by many Britons in finding affordable housing. The award-winning filmmaker said that "the other parties base themselves on the idea of the market", while his Left Unity party stood against it. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19690[/attach] Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran traded accusations Tuesday over the escalating conflict in Yemen, which the UN rights chief warned was on the brink of "total collapse". In the heaviest raids yet of the six-day Saudi-led air war against Shiite Huthi rebels, explosions lit up the skies over Sanaa on Monday night and rocked other parts of the country on Tuesday. Amnesty International accused the Saudi-led coalition of "turning a blind eye to civilian deaths" as it reported four children were among six burned to death in strikes on Ibb, in central Yemen. The UN children's fund said that at least 62 children had been killed and 30 injured during the fighting in Yemen over the past week. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19689[/attach] France's most famous Nazi hunters, Serge Klarsfeld and his German wife Beate, this week launched their "Memoirs" about their decades spent tracking down Hitler's henchmen and dragging them out of hiding into the public glare. The book, published in France to a flurry of media attention, recounts how Klarsfeld, a Jew born in 1935 in Bucharest, escaped the Holocaust after his family moved to France but saw his father taken away to die in the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1960, while studying at the prestigious Science-Po university in Paris, Klarsfled met Beate Kuenzel, the daughter of a former German soldier, on a metro platform. Together, Serge Klarsfeld added, the couple decided to help "bring down the chancellor" of Germany at the time, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former Nazi party member who had been a top official responsible for radio propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19688[/attach] A senior Turkish prosecutor and his two hostage-takers were killed on Tuesday when security forces launched an operation to free the official in a bloody end to a six-hour standoff in Istanbul. Two radical leftist militants had earlier taken the Istanbul prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage in his office, putting a gun to his head and threatening to kill him if their demands were not met. Their demands related to the investigation Kiraz was leading into the killing of teenager Berkin Elvan, who died in March last year after spending 269 days in a coma from injuries inflicted by police in anti-government protests in the summer of 2013. The authorities initially tried negotiating with the captors on a hugely tense day in Turkey's largest city which also suffered a major power cut. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19684[/attach] KUWAIT CITY (AP) — International donors committed $3.8 billion in aid for Syrians affected by the grinding civil war at a donors' conference in Kuwait on Tuesday, less than half of what the U.N. requested for this year to cope with the growing humanitarian crisis. Continue reading...