WorldNews

[attach=full]19568[/attach] The Netherlands and Italy needed late equalizers to rescue draws in European Championship qualifying on Saturday. And a pair of goals plus an assist by Gareth Bale put Wales atop its group. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19567[/attach] MALMO, Sweden (AP) — Jocelyne Lamoureux, Kacey Bellamy and Kendall Coyne scored power-play goals in the first period and the United States opened the women's world hockey championships with a 4-2 victory over Canada on Saturday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19566[/attach] New Zealand Prime Minister John Key decided not to attend Lee Kuan Yew's funeral and left behind a bruising byelection defeat to be in Melbourne Sunday as he led his nation's obsession with the World Cup final. After failing six times in the semi-finals, New Zealand have finally made the ultimate showdown of ODI cricket's glamour tournament. A huge outpouring of accolades for the New Zealand team -- and personable captain Brendon McCullum with his "living the dream" approach -- has dominated the news. Airlines laid on extra flights from New Zealand to Melbourne after the Black Caps' sensational semi-final victory over South Africa and all of them sold out. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19565[/attach] KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) — Serena and Venus Williams say they plan to play for the U.S. Fed Cup team next month against Italy. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19555[/attach] Khartoum (AFP) - Sudanese rebels said they captured a garrison in conflict-hit South Kordofan and killed 54 troops Saturday, with the army denying the claim. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19554[/attach] Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday pledged to stop oligarchs from sowing "chaos" after the governor of a key industrial region quit following a row over a state oil firm. Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky reluctantly offered to step down this week as governor of the key industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk after a dispute over control of the country's largest oil producer ended up with armed men storming the offices of two state-controlled oil firms. Kolomoisky, a banking tycoon, was appointed to the post after the ouster of Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych last year. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19553[/attach] The bloody insurgency -- which has claimed more than 13,000 lives over the past six years -- has seen some 18,000 Nigerians escaping to Chad, 74,000 to Cameroon and 125,000 to Niger. At a makeshift camp near N'Djamena, around 100 refugees -- taxi drivers, farmers, merchants -- voiced strong opinions on the contest for power between incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and his main challenger Muhammadu Buhari. Continue reading...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An attempt to take gasoline from a crashed tanker truck led to four deaths and 26 injuries when the vehicle exploded, Mexican officials said Saturday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19552[/attach] CAIRO (AP) — Arab League member states have agreed in principle to form a joint inter-Arab military peacekeeping force. While details of how such a force would actually operate remain thin, the agreement is a telling sign of a new determination among Saudi Arabia, Egypt and their allies to intervene aggressively in regional hotspots, whether against Islamic militants or spreading Iranian power. Here's a look at some of the questions surrounding the plan: Continue reading...

[attach=full]19543[/attach] Digne-les-Bains (France) (AFP) - Before the altar of a French Alps cathedral, 150 candles on Saturday burned brightly for all those who perished in this week's Germanwings crash and their families. Hundreds of parishioners came from around the region to attend a special mass at the Notre-Dame-de-Bourg cathedral in Digne-les-Bains, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) away from the remote mountain crash site. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19542[/attach] FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Guinea has deployed security forces to the country's southwest in response to reports that Sierra Leoneans are crossing the border to flee an Ebola lockdown intended to stamp out the deadly disease, an official said Saturday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19541[/attach] The head of the United Nations cultural body vowed in Baghdad Saturday to step up measures aimed at protecting Iraq's heritage, which has been systematically targeted by jihadist militants. UNESCO chief Irina Bokova launched a Japanese-funded initiative to preserve Iraq's museum collections and threatened heritage, as well as a social media campaign under the hashtag #Unite4Heritage. "Today our pledge is we will never relent in safeguarding the great cultural heritage and diversity of Iraq," she said, speaking from the recently reopened national museum in Baghdad. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19540[/attach] ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria's presidential election is a very tight race that many analysts say is too close to call. Here's a look at the two front-runners in the race. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19539[/attach] A bomb wounded four civilians and four policemen outside Cairo University Saturday, Egyptian police and health officials said, in an attack by a militant group that has previously targeted the campus. There have been several explosions outside the university since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19538[/attach] SHANGHAI (AP) — It wouldn't be figure skating without Andrew Lloyd Webber. Continue reading...

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — U.S. scientists are launching an expedition to study the underwater habitat around the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a 12-year effort to map and help conserve Caribbean coral reefs. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19537[/attach] LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday that Britain's election campaign is on a knife edge, as he rallied the Conservative party with a personal attack on his main rival. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19536[/attach] Retaking the city of Tikrit, where jihadists have rigged streets and buildings with explosives, will require "major sacrifices" on the part of Iraqi forces, a senior intelligence officer said Saturday. Iraqi forces and allied paramilitaries have been fighting to retake the city since March 2, but halted ground operations for more than a week in what officials described as a bid to curb human and material losses before pushing forward again. "The task of liberating Tikrit requires major sacrifices and street fighting, and our forces are ready for these sacrifices," the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity, indicating that the pause in operations only deferred the inevitable cost. IS spearheaded a sweeping offensive last June that overran much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland, and the operation to retake Tikrit is Baghdad's largest to date against the militants. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19535[/attach] SISTERON, France (AP) — The German co-pilot accused of crashing a passenger plane in the French Alps frequented a gliding club near the crash site as a child with his parents, according to a member of the club. Continue reading...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — Saudi King Salman vows that military intervention will not stop until Yemen is stable and safe. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19530[/attach] SHANGHAI (AP) — Last season, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva finished a lowly 10th at the Russian national championships and had to sit at home while fellow Russian Adelina Sotnikova won the gold medal at the Sochi Olympics. Then she broke her foot and was off the ice altogether for three months. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19529[/attach] SIRACUSA, Sicily (AP) — As Italy copes with record number of migrants making the risky trip across the Mediterranean to reach European shores, it is also registering a record number of political asylum requests, filling migrant holding centers with would-be refugees hoping that their cases are accepted. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19528[/attach] Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate seized control of most of Idlib on Saturday after government forces pulled back to bases in the heart of the main northwestern city, a monitoring group said. Al-Nusra Front and its Islamist allies "control the majority of neighbourhoods in Idlib, apart from government and security buildings," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. Idlib province, which borders Turkey, is a bastion of Al-Nusra, which has driven out several rival rebel groups. Government control is restricted to Idlib city, the towns of Jisr al-Shughur and Ariha, the Abu Duhur air base and five army garrisons. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19527[/attach] Vandals Saturday destroyed an improvised memorial created by supporters of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on the bridge where he was shot a month ago, the Echo of Moscow radio station reported Saturday. Supporters had regularly refreshed flowers and candles on the bridge next to the Kremlin where the 55-year-old former deputy prime minister and prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin was gunned down on February 27. Later on Saturday morning Nemtsov's supporters came to place fresh flowers, photographs and Russian flags at the spot, the chief editor of Echo of Moscow, Alexei Venediktov, wrote on Instagram. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19524[/attach] BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — Two Russians and an American floated into the International Space Station on Saturday, beginning what is to be a year away from Earth for two of them. Continue reading...