WorldNews

[attach=full]17921[/attach] BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema scored to give Real Madrid a 2-0 win at Elche on Sunday, as the Spanish league leaders capitalized on Barcelona's stumble to increase their advantage to four points. Continue reading...

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt said Sunday it will raise the sales tax on both local and imported cigarettes as it confronts a major budget deficit. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17913[/attach] Britain's Chris Froome won the Ruta del Sol on Sunday as Spaniard Juan Jose Lobato claimed his second stage victory of the week. Froome held a two-second advantage over major rival Alberto Contador and ensured he was in no danger by edging towards the front of the peloton on the sprint finish to end the 169.8km ride from Montilla to Alhaurin de la Torre. The 2013 Tour de France winner finished sixth on the day with Contador just behind in ninth. Continue reading...

PRESCOTT, Arizona (AP) — The father of Kayla Mueller, the American woman killed after spending months in captivity under Islamic State militants, says the U.S. government "put policy in front of" American lives. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17912[/attach] Britain debated Sunday how to stop teenage girls joining the Islamic State group in Syria after three high-achieving youngsters became the latest to run away from home. School friends Kadiza Sultana, 17, and 15-year-olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase left their east London homes on Tuesday and flew to Istanbul, raising concerns they would travel on to Syria to join IS jihadists. All three were spoken to in December by police investigating the disappearance of a friend who went to Syria but Scotland Yard insists nothing indicated they would follow suit. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17911[/attach] President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi promised Sunday to release young people who may have been wrongly jailed during Egypt's crackdown on the opposition since he overthrew his Islamist predecessor in 2013. In an almost 40-minute televised address, Sisi also said the jihadist targets that his country's air force struck in neighbouring Libya last week had been carefully chosen to avoid civilian casualties. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17905[/attach] A young girl suicide bomber blew herself up and killed five others Sunday in an attack on a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Potiskum, witnesses and a hospital source said. A hospital source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the toll of the dead and the wounded. Witnesses said she appeared to be as young as seven-years-old and was the latest in a string of child suicide bombers in Nigeria. Previous such attacks have been blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17904[/attach] LONDON (AP) — Harry Kane rescued a Premier League point for Tottenham on Sunday by scoring with the last kick of the game for a 2-2 draw against fierce London rival West Ham. Continue reading...

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A river ferry carrying up to 140 passengers capsized in central Bangladesh on Sunday after being hit by a cargo vessel, killing at least 48 people, officials said. A rescue operation was underway, but it was not clear how many people were missing. Continue reading...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.S. Geological Survey says a strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake has been registered off Mexico's Pacific coast state of Jalisco. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17903[/attach] A top Palestinian official on Sunday accused Israel of trying to topple the Palestinian Authority by continuing its freeze on millions of dollars in crucial tax monies. Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat demanded world action to pressure Israel into releasing monies owed to the Palestinian Authority which were frozen as a punitive measure nearly two months ago. "Israel is aiming to collapse the Palestinian Authority with all its institutions, so the international community should do much more than stating what the results of such move might be," Erakat said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17896[/attach] A Kuwaiti appeals court on Sunday sentenced an opposition politician to two years in jail for insulting the country's ruler, local media reported. Defense lawyers said they intend to appeal the ruling against Musallam al-Barrak, an outspoken former member of parliament, to the highest court, news website alaan.cc said. A lower court in 2013 found Barrak guilty of insulting Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, in a 2012 speech in which he appealed to him to avoid "autocratic rule". Alaan.cc said security forces were deployed outside the Palace of Justice court in Kuwait City but there was no repeat of the demonstrations that accompanied the sentence in 2013. Continue reading...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's premier says the coming month will be "critical" for preventing a nuclear deal with Iran. Continue reading...

Five people, including a Red Cross volunteer, were wounded in an attack on a car near the Chinese border where battles have raged between government soldiers and ethnic insurgents, the second such attack within a week, the Red Cross said on Sunday. Myanmar President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law this month in the region after more than 70 people were killed in fighting between the army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), from the Chinese-speaking Kokang region. The conflict is a setback for Myanmar's semi-civilian government, which took power in 2011 after 49 years of military rule and is seeking to end hostilities with the many groups that have taken up arms since independence in 1948. The Myanmar Red Cross Society (MRCS) said the Red Cross-flagged car was attacked by the MNDAA on its way from the border town of Laukkai to Kunlong on Saturday. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17895[/attach] Ukraine's army and separatist rebels appeared Sunday to be complying at least partially with their truce accord, saying they will start pulling back heavy weapons from the frontline after carrying out a prisoner exchange. An AFP journalist in the eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk heard intense shelling for an hour early Sunday to the north of the city, near the regional airport that fell to the rebels a month ago after fierce battles. Continued shelling has been reported there and Kiev alleges that 20 Russian tanks have been deployed towards it. Despite those hostilities, Ukrainian officials and the separatists said they have jointly agreed to finally start the pullback of heavy weapons -- a step meant to have begun on Tuesday and completed by March 3 under the truce. Continue reading...

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Officials fear a landslide in an open-pit coal mine in Bosnia has killed at least four people. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17894[/attach] Ukrainian forces and rebel separatists traded dozens of prisoners in a frontline eastern town, the first clear sign of progress for an otherwise shaky truce signed a week ago. The rare glint of optimism came on the heels of a pro-Russian rebel offensive in the east, capturing a major town from loyalists and drawing threats of new sanctions against Moscow from US Secretary of State John Kerry. Under the truce, both sides were to withdraw their heavy weapons from the frontline by March 3, carry out a prisoner exchange, conduct negotiations on greater autonomy in rebel-held areas, and eventually restore Ukraine's control over all of its border with Russia. The rebels have claimed to have pulled back weapons in some areas, although there was no confirmation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the truce. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17893[/attach] SINGAPORE (AP) — Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father, has been hospitalized for severe pneumonia, the Prime Minister's Office said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17892[/attach] US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Geneva Sunday for renewed talks with his Iranian counterpart on Tehran's nuclear programme, after warning "significant gaps" remain as a key deadline approaches. World powers are trying to strike a deal with Iran that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb in return for an easing of punishing international economic sanctions. Kerry is set to sit down for two days of talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, whose country denies its nuclear programme has military objectives. Continue reading...

PASCO, Washington (AP) — A group, protesting the deadly police shooting of a Mexican immigrant, temporarily took over a bridge crossing the Columbia River. Continue reading...

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — Having suffered humiliating defeats in its opening two World Cup games, England's tournament survival will be on the line when it takes on Scotland on Monday, with the Scots relishing an opportunity to inflict further misery on their southern neighbor. Continue reading...

Families of two of the three London teenage girls believed to be on their way to Syria to join the Islamic State are asking their daughters to return home, the BBC first reported. "We miss you terribly and are extremely worried about you,” the family of Shamima Begum, 15, said in a statement. "We understand that you have strong feelings and want to help those you believe are suffering in Syria,” they added. "We would like to emphasize that we are not angry with you and you have not done anything wrong,” the family said. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17888[/attach] By Alexandra Ulmer CARACAS (Reuters) - The mayor of Venezuela's capital Caracas will fight charges of plotting violence against the socialist government, his lawyer said on Saturday, denouncing the accusations as baseless. Intelligence agents seized 59-year-old Antonio Ledezma, a trained lawyer, at his office on Thursday night. He was indicted the next day on conspiracy charges against President Nicolas Maduro and is held at the Ramo Verde military prison, where fellow hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has been jailed for a year. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17887[/attach] LONDON (AP) — London Fashion Week entered Day 2 on Saturday, featuring dozens of new designs — from dramatic, conceptual creations by Gareth Pugh, to more wearable pieces by Julien Macdonald and Emilia Wickstead. Continue reading...

[attach=full]17886[/attach] A fresh band of winter weather was churning up the East Coast on Saturday after pummeling parts of the South and Midwest, threatening to pile up more snow in storm-weary Boston and send the region back into a deep freeze. The system cut a curving, 2,000-mile path from southern Missouri to Maine, with a winter storm warning in effect until Sunday for parts of southern Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. In Kentucky and Tennessee, forecasters warned of possible flooding as rain fell on frozen ground. Continue reading...