WorldNews

[attach=full]19575[/attach] SINGAPORE (AP) — Singaporeans turned out in the tens of thousands Sunday to pay final respects to longtime leader Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore's prime minister for more than three decades until 1990, Lee died last Monday at age 91. His cortege took a 15-kilometer (9-mile) route through the city-state before a three-hour state funeral. Singaporeans credit Lee's leadership with laying the foundation of the Southeast Asian country's current prosperity, and his death triggered a wave of emotion rarely seen in Singapore. Continue reading...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — New Zealand got off to the worst possible start to the Cricket World Cup final after captain Brendan McCullum was bowled for a duck by Mitchell Starc in the first over. Continue reading...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum won the toss and elected to bat first against Australia in a Cricket World Cup final featuring the co-hosts at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19573[/attach] Polling stations opened Sunday in the ex-Soviet state of Uzbekistan for a ballot that is almost certain to re-elect 77-year-old strongman incumbent President Islam Karimov. Voting at more than 9,000 polling stations across the country began at 0100 GMT and will continue until 1500 GMT, according to the country's central election commission. Karimov, who has ruled the country since before the collapse of the Soviet Union, faces three other opponents put forward by parties in the Uzbek parliament that are openly supportive of his presidency. Akmal Saidov, put forward by the Democratic National Renaissance Party, faced Karimov in the country's last presidential poll in 2007, but claimed less than three percent of the vote as Karimov took close to 90 percent. Continue reading...

BEIJING (AP) — A flood in a shale mine in central China has left six miners dead, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19572[/attach] KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) — Serena Williams punctuated points Saturday with theatrics worthy of a Grand Slam final. There were squeals, knee kicks, pirouettes and fist pumps, sometimes all at once. Continue reading...

[attach=full]19569[/attach] SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Jimmy Walker opened a four-stroke lead over fellow Texan Jordan Spieth, shooting a 3-under 69 on Saturday in his hometown Texas Open. Continue reading...

[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...