WorldNews

MONTREAL (AP) — Seven members of an Asia-based organized crime syndicate have been arrested for exploiting more than 500 women mostly from China and Korea in a prostitution ring that spanned Canada, authorities said Thursday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19782[/attach] WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama heralded a framework nuclear understanding with Iran as a "historic" agreement and warned Congress Thursday against taking action that could upend work toward a final deal. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19781[/attach] The World Bank's private-sector finance unit supported development projects in numerous countries that involved grave violations of human rights, anti-poverty group Oxfam alleged in a new report Thursday. Oxfam said the World Bank's International Finance Corporation has increasingly channelled its funds through other financial institutions, like local banks and private-equity funds, sacrificing close oversight of projects that have a harmful impact on impoverished populations. The IFC "has little accountability for billions of dollars' worth of investments into banks, hedge funds and other financial intermediaries, resulting in projects that are causing human rights abuses around the world," Oxfam said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19780[/attach] Hundreds of Iranians took to the streets in Tehran early Friday to celebrate a breakthrough in talks with the West that may end the country's 12-year-long nuclear crisis. The capital's longest street, Val-e-Asr Avenue, was lined with cars as drivers sounded their horns in approval of a framework deal intended to lead to a comprehensive agreement with world powers in June. "Whatever the final result of the negotiations, we are winners," 30-year-old Behrang Alavi said on Val-e-Asr at around 1:00 am as the noise reverberated around him. The scenes came after Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said key parameters of the framework for a deal had been agreed with the West, paving the way for a final deal by June 30. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19775[/attach] Record numbers of foreign fighters from more than half of the world's countries are joining Islamist and al-Qaeda groups, mostly in Syria, Iraq and increasingly in Libya, according to a UN report. More than 25,000 foreign fighters are involved in armed conflicts from over 100 countries, the report by a UN panel of experts said. "The rate of flow is higher than it has ever been historically, and is mainly focused on movement into the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq, with a growing problem also evident in Libya", said the report obtained by AFP on Thursday. The report cited a 71 percent increase in the number of foreign fighters worldwide between the middle of 2014 to March 2015, with European and Asian countries reporting sharp increases. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19774[/attach] The co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing an airliner in the French Alps searched online for information about suicide and cockpit doors, prosecutors said Thursday, as it emerged the plane's second black box had been found in "usable" condition. The first voice recorder, found almost immediately after the March 24 crash, suggested that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 27, locked the pilot out of the cabin and sent the plane into a descent into the mountains. All 150 people on board Flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were killed when it crashed into the Alps last week in the bloodiest such disaster on French soil in decades. The breakthrough discovery came as German prosecutors revealed details of the browser history of the tablet computer found in Lubitz's Duesseldorf flat. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19773[/attach] The Cypriot parliament unanimously approved Thursday a law that makes it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 amounted to genocide. The law also establishes April 24, the date the killings began, as a national day of remembrance in Cyprus, much of whose Armenian community descends from survivors of the killings. Cyprus itself was Ottoman until coming under British rule in the 19th century and has been at odds with Turkey, the empire's successor, since being invaded by it in 1974 after a coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19772[/attach] LONDON (AP) — Britain's political leaders went head to head — to head to head to head to head to head — in a seven-way debate Thursday before a May 7 national election. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19771[/attach] The Islamic State group regained control of sectors of the Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus Thursday hours after Palestinian fighters and Syrian rebels pushed out the jihadists, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS jihadists were still battling Palestinian fighters and Syrian rebels inside the camp in southern Damascus. "Syrian rebel groups entered the camp and helped the Palestinians push back IS in fierce clashes," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said at the time. Anwar Abdel Hadi, director of political affairs for the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Damascus, said IS had been pushed "to the periphery" of the camp. Continue reading...

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani military courts have sentenced six Islamic militants to death on charges including terrorism, murder, suicide bombing and kidnapping for ransom. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19766[/attach] TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albanian police on Thursday arrested a Christian Democrat lawmaker suspected of involvement in a murder case in Belgium. Continue reading...

[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...