WorldNews

[attach=full]20220[/attach] By Mark Hosenball, Phil Stewart and Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is expanding its intelligence-sharing with Saudi Arabia to provide more information about potential targets in the kingdom's air campaign against Houthi militias in Yemen, U.S. officials told Reuters. The U.S. officials said the expanded assistance includes sensitive intelligence data that will allow the Saudis to better review the kingdom's targets in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands since March. "We have opened up the aperture a bit wider with what we are sharing with our Saudi partners," said one U.S. official. U.S. ally Saudi Arabia is concerned that the violence could spill over the border it shares with Yemen, and is also worried about the influence of Shi'ite Iran, which has denied Saudi allegations it has provided direct military support to the Houthis. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20219[/attach] UN chief Ban Ki-moon called Friday for a new push to resolve the conflict over Western Sahara and stressed that cooperation to address human rights could help find a settlement. In a report to the Security Council, Ban said Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front must "seriously engage" with his envoy and "intensify their efforts" to end the conflict over the north African territory. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20218[/attach] OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The Golden State Warriors bet on Andrew Bogut staying healthy when they signed him to a three-year, $36 million extension before last season, and Bogut bet on himself by taking an incentive-rich deal. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20217[/attach] CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Madison Keys and Lucie Hradecka are finding their games on clay and are both surprise semifinalists at the Family Circle Cup. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20208[/attach] SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — The daughter-in-law of Michelle Bachelet said on Friday that she's sorry if her involvement in a bank loan scandal has damaged the Chilean president. Continue reading...

BERLIN (AP) — German police say a man has been arrested in the Czech Republic on suspicion of killing an Israeli whose body was found in a ruined Berlin church last weekend. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20207[/attach] Once considered a far-right fringe party, Hungary's Jobbik is seeking to clean up its racist image and move towards the centre in an effort to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz. Already the second largest party in Hungary, Jobbik wants to prove at a by-election on Sunday that with a weak and divided left wing, it represents the only viable alternative to Orban's rule. Jobbik's leader Gabor Vona, 36, who once founded a paramilitary group that preyed on the Roma minority, is toning down the party's rhetoric which stigmatised Roma as criminals. "It is a campaign tactic in style aimed at voters who would like to see Jobbik leaning towards the centre with a more conciliatory tone," Attila Juhasz, analyst with Political Capital Institute, told AFP. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20206[/attach] Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro prepared to hold historic talks Saturday, a US official said, setting up the first substantive meeting between an American and Cuban leader since the 1950s. Obama and Castro were in Panama on Friday for the two-day Summit of the Americas, Cuba's first, marking a landmark follow-up to their historic announcement on December 17 that their countries would restore ties severed since 1961. "We certainly do anticipate that they will have the opportunity to see each other at the summit tomorrow, to have a discussion," senior Obama advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters Friday. The meeting will be the first since Obama and Castro briefly shook hands at Nelson Mandela's funeral in December 2013. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20205[/attach] India's prime minister announced Friday that New Delhi had ordered 36 Rafale fighter jets from France in a multi-billion-euro agreement that has been years in the making. Standing alongside his counterpart Francois Hollande on a visit to France -- the first leg of his maiden trip to Europe -- Narendra Modi finally relieved the frantic speculation over whether tortuous, years-long negotiations on buying the jets would ever bear fruit. "I asked the president (Hollande) to supply us with 36 Rafale jet fighter planes, the ready-to-fly models," Modi said at a joint news conference at the Elysee Palace. Negotiations to buy the planes kicked off in 2012 but had been bogged down over cost and New Delhi's insistence on assembling a portion of the high-tech planes in India. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20200[/attach] Six months ago, France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen stormed out of her father Jean-Marie's house after his Doberman dog savaged her Bengal cat to death. A foretaste perhaps of the recent dogfight that has torn apart the National Front party Jean-Marie founded but also the Le Pen family that has already had more than its fair share of scraps. From the vengeful naked appearance of an ex-wife in Playboy to the treachery and "ex-communication" of an eldest daughter, the patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, 86, has a family history almost as colourful as his controversial Holocaust comments. Once upon a time, they were the model of a united French family, the proud father Jean-Marie posing with his wife Pierrette and his three impossibly blonde daughters outside the family estate near Paris. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20199[/attach] QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Church officials say Pope Francis' trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay is set for July 6-12. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20198[/attach] SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Pakistani lawmakers on Friday unanimously voted to stay out of the Saudi-led air coalition targeting Shiite rebels in Yemen in a blow to the alliance, while planes loaded with badly needed medical aid landed in Yemen's embattled capital, Sanaa, in the first such deliveries since the airstrikes started more than two weeks ago. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20197[/attach] A group of Syrian opposition figures is seeking to form an alternative to the National Coalition body and open negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad to end their country's conflict. The "National Syrian Democratic Conference" is expected to take place in Cairo in early May and bring together some 150 opposition figures living in Syria and abroad, organisers say. They want to adopt a "Syrian National Charter" and a roadmap to a resolution of the conflict, which is now in its fifth year, said organiser and veteran dissident Haytham Manna. "The (National) Coalition has never been able to represent the whole of the Syrian opposition because it declared itself as representing all of the opposition and Syrian society even though it excludes key constituents," Manna told AFP. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20196[/attach] Talks in Moscow between the Syrian government and members of the domestic opposition tolerated by President Bashar al-Assad broke up on Friday with no progress made towards ending the war. There was little hope for the talks in Moscow -- which kicked off Monday -- given the absence of the main Western-backed exiled Syrian opposition, the National Coalition, from the talks. The meeting in Moscow -- which followed a similar round of fruitless talks here in January -- was seen by analysts as a way for Russia, a key backer of Assad, to bolster its influence in the region. Continue reading...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Organizers of the 2018 Winter Olympics have appointed a group of international experts as consultants on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Pyeongchang Games. Continue reading...

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Slovenian Defense Minister Janko Veber has been sacked for using military intelligence to monitor the state telecoms company ahead of its potential sale. Continue reading...

Sudan's Foreign Ministry said on Friday it had summoned the European Union's representative in Khartoum over critical EU remarks about the country's political environment ahead of elections next week. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir looks set to extend his 25 years in power after presidential and parliamentary elections on April 13-15, which leading opposition parties are boycotting. European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Thursday there was no "conducive environment" for the polls. "The people of Sudan deserve better. Continue reading...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Prosecutors have charged four Bosnians with recruiting and attempting to join the Islamic State group in Syria. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20186[/attach] SHANGHAI (AP) — For Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua, the new season has brought new optimism. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20185[/attach] US Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuba's foreign minister made progress as they held historic talks to restore diplomatic ties, a US official said before their presidents attend a landmark summit. Kerry and Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez met in Panama City on the eve of the Summit of the Americas, the first meeting of this level since 1958, one year before Fidel Castro's revolution. The two agreed they made progress and that we would continue to work to resolve outstanding issues," a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity. The US State Department's Twitter account published a picture of Kerry and Rodriguez looking at the camera with straight faces as they shake hands in a room with two chairs and a glass coffee table. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20184[/attach] Dístomo (Greece) (AFP) - Loukas Sehremelis was just 12 years old when Nazi troops burst into his house in the Greek village of Distomo, shooting and killing indiscriminately. A small town in central Greece still inhabited today, Distomo has become the symbol of atrocities committed by Nazi troops as they pulled back to Germany in the wake of the Allied Normandy landings in the summer of 1944. A quarter of Distomo's population died -- 218 people including infants and pregnant women who were disemboweled, says the town's deputy mayor Loukas Zissis, who lost his grandfather and uncle in the massacre. Germany's occupying forces used the pretext that they had come under attack by Greek guerrillas. Continue reading...

[attach=full]20183[/attach] Malaysia's parliament early Friday approved tougher penalties for sedition in a move criticised by the United Nations and described by the opposition as "a black day" for democracy and free expression. For the second time this week, the ruling coalition pushed through legislation that has been denounced by rights and legal advocates, after it on Tuesday passed an anti-terrorism law that allows authorities to detain people without charge. The amendments to the Sedition Act extend the maximum jail term to 20 years from the current three years and establish a minimum three-year jail term for certain cases. Courting votes ahead of 2013 elections, Prime Minister Najib Razak had promised to scrap the British colonial-era Sedition Act, long viewed as a tool to gag free speech. Continue reading...

SYDNEY (AP) — Perth Glory will not be allowed to compete in this year's A-League playoffs after Football Federation Australia announced Friday that the club was guilty of breaking rules related to the salary cap. Continue reading...

Japan's weather bureau said in its monthly outlook on Friday that the possibility of an El Nino weather pattern forming by summer remains high, but gave no probability forecast. The previous El Nino, which emerged last summer, ended over winter and conditions appear to be normal now, the bureau said. Last month, it raised its projections for an El Nino pattern emerging by summer to more than 50 percent. U.S. and Australian weather bureaus have also put the probability for the phenomenon emerging this year at 50-70 percent. Continue reading...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The key hole in the first round of the Masters. Continue reading...