| Exclusive: Radioactive material stolen in Iraq raises security concerns Posted: 17 Feb 2016 01:53 PM PST  By Ahmed Rasheed, Aref Mohammed and Stephen Kalin BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is searching for "highly dangerous" radioactive material whose theft last year has raised fears among Iraqi officials that it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State. The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford , an environment ministry document seen by Reuters showed and security, environmental and provincial officials confirmed. A spokesman for Iraq's environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns.
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| Car bomb attack on military in Turkish capital kills 28 Posted: 17 Feb 2016 12:50 PM PST  By Gulsen Solaker and Umit Bektas ANKARA (Reuters) - Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Turkey's capital Ankara on Wednesday when a car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses near the armed forces' headquarters, parliament and other government buildings. The Turkish military condemned what it described as a terrorist attack on the buses as they waited at traffic lights in the administrative heart of the NATO member's capital. The attack, the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State, comes as Turkey gets dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and tries to contain some of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.
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| Aid reaches residents of besieged Syrian towns: U.N. Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:50 PM PST  Trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered five besieged areas of Syria scheduled for deliveries on Wednesday in a U.N.-backed deal to deliver help to thousands of trapped residents, the United Nations said. The Syrian government approved access to seven besieged areas after crisis talks in Damascus on Tuesday, a week ahead of a planned resumption of peace negotiations between Syria's warring parties. The U.N. estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million people in hard-to-reach areas.
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| Pentagon calls for parties to halt militarization of South China Sea Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:48 PM PST  The U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday said commercial imagery indicated that China had deployed a surface-to-air missile system on a disputed outpost in the South China Sea, and said the action was increasing tensions in the region. The Pentagon urged all countries that have staked claims to disputed areas in the region to address their territorial and maritime claims in accordance with international law, and to commit to peacefully manage or resolve their disputes. "We call on South China Sea claimants to publicly commit to a reciprocal halt to further land reclamation, construction of new facilities, and new militarization of disputed features," said Navy Commander Bill Urban, a spokesman for the Pentagon.
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| Cameron heads for 'now or never' talks to keep Britain in EU Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:20 PM PST  By Gabriela Baczynska and Elizabeth Piper BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain Prime Minister David Cameron will hold 'now or never' talks on Thursday to keep Britain in the European Union, with the bloc's 28 leaders suggesting there are only a few obstacles left to a new membership deal. With all sides underlining that there is still work to be done to reach agreement at an EU summit in Brussels, there is also broad consensus that if the bloc fails to agree, they may never come up with a deal to help keep Britain from leaving. Cameron is keen to end the week in Brussels with a deal that he can hail as a victory and then start campaigning to keep Britain inside the bloc before a referendum most officials expect will be held in late June.
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| In Mexican border city, Pope criticizes business 'slave drivers' Posted: 17 Feb 2016 02:25 PM PST  By Philip Pullella and Gabriel Stargardter CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Wednesday issued a scathing critique of capitalism on a trip to Mexico's border with the United States, saying that God will hold accountable "slave drivers" who exploit workers. "The flow of capital cannot decide the flow of people," he said in Ciudad Juarez, a gritty industrial city next to El Paso, Texas where many international companies have factories that export goods to the United States. In a speech to business leaders and labor representatives, Latin America's first pope assailed the "prevailing mentality (that) advocates for the greatest possible profits, immediately and at any cost." On the last day of a six-day visit to Mexico, the Argentine pontiff decried "the exploitation of employees as if they were objects to be used and discarded," saying the best investment business can make to help society is in people and families.
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| The Latest: UN: Task force to meet on aid to besieged areas Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:39 PM PST  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The Latest on the civil war in Syria (all times local):
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| Ex-soldiers demand release of 4 detained in El Salvador Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:33 PM PST SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — About 200 former soldiers and officers demonstrated in uniform outside El Salvador's Supreme Court to demand the release of four former soldiers wanted in Spain for the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests. |
| Panic and horror strike again in Turkey's jittery capital Ankara Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:28 PM PST  It started with a rumble that sounded like thunder or an earthquake, sending startled residents rushing to their balconies, who watched in horror as plumes of smoke rose over central Ankara. It wasn't long before their worst fears were confirmed: Turkey's capital, still reeling from twin blasts that killed over 100 last year, had been hit again. The government said at least 28 people were killed and dozens more wounded in the car bomb attack that targeted buses carrying military personnel.
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| U.S. and EU warn China on need to respect South China Sea ruling Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:26 PM PST By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union warned China on Wednesday that it should respect an international court ruling expected before May on its dispute with the Philippines over territory in the South China Sea. China claims virtually all the South China Sea and rejects the authority of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague hearing the dispute, even though Beijing has ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea on which the case is based. Amy Searight, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, said the United States, the European Union, and allies like Australia, Japan and South Korea must be ready to make clear that the court's ruling must be binding and that there would be costs to China for not respecting it if it lost the case. |
| Thiem reaches quarterfinals in Rio; Tsonga out on rainy day Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:24 PM PST RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Rising Austrian star Dominic Thiem reached the quarterfinals of the Rio Open on Wednesday with a 7-5, 7-5 victory over Argentina's Diego Schwartzman. |
| Venezuela imposes gasoline hike, currency devaluation Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:23 PM PST  Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday he would raise the price of gasoline and devalue the bolivar currency, as he faced growing pressure to ease an economic crisis. The socialist leader said he would raise the pump price of premium gasoline from its current super-low level of $0.01 per liter to the equivalent of $0.95 at the fixed official exchange rate. "This is a necessary action, for which I take responsibility," Maduro said in a televised address.
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| UN envoy says 'deep divisions' blocking Yemen talks Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:14 PM PST  Yemen's warring parties are unable to agree on terms for a new round of peace talks, two months after holding their first face-to-face meeting, the UN envoy said Wednesday. Yemen's Saudi-backed government sat down with Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies in December to begin talks on ending a war that has brought the impoverished Arab country to its knees. More than 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen since a Saudi-led coalition began an air war in March last year to push back an offensive by the Huthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa.
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| UN envoy: Divisions in Yemen are blocking new peace talks Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:11 PM PST UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. envoy for Yemen said Wednesday that deep divisions between the warring parties in Yemen are preventing him from calling for a new round of peace talks. |
| Pope Francis urges governments to 'open hearts' to migrants Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:10 PM PST  CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — In a moment filled with powerful political symbolism, Pope Francis prayed Wednesday at Mexico's dusty northern border for the thousands of migrants who have died trying to reach the United States and appealed for governments to open their hearts, if not their borders, to the "human tragedy that is forced migration."
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| Police raid Madrid office of China's biggest bank Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:10 PM PST  Spanish police raided the Madrid offices of China's biggest bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), on Wednesday as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering, the Interior Ministry said. The investigation by police, the Spanish tax agency and Europol involves funds handled by a criminal group acting in Spain which the Ministry says passed through the bank and were transferred to China.
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| The Latest: Pope salutes worshippers in El Paso stadium Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:09 PM PST  MEXICO CITY (AP) — The latest on Pope Francis' visit to Mexico (all times local):
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| Pope decries global 'human tragedy' of forced migration Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:09 PM PST  Pope Francis on Wednesday decried the "human tragedy" of what he described as "forced migration" worldwide during a huge mass at Mexico's border with the United States. Francis made a point of holding the service in Ciudad Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, Texas, to pray for migrants who risk their lives crossing the border between the two nations.
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| 500 rebels cross Turkish border towards Syrian town of Azaz: Observatory Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:03 PM PST  At least 500 rebels on Wednesday crossed the Turkish border heading for the Syrian town of Azaz in northern Aleppo province, a monitor said, where opposition forces have suffered setbacks at the hands of Kurdish forces. "At least 500 rebels have crossed the Bab al-Salam border crossing on their way to the town of Azaz, from which they want to help the insurgents in the face of gains made by Kurdish forces in the north of the province," the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel, told AFP. Opposition forces have lost ground to government troops in northern Aleppo province since they began a major offensive in the former rebel bastion backed by Russian air strikes.
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| Foreign students get jail in beating, burning of classmates Posted: 17 Feb 2016 04:02 PM PST ROWLAND HEIGHTS, Calif. (AP) — Three students from China were sentenced Wednesday to years in prison after prosecutors said they stripped, beat and burned two classmates. |
| Venezuela hikes gas prices for first time in nearly 17 years Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:57 PM PST  CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's government is raising gasoline prices sixtyfold — the first increase of any kind in more than 17 years as the country struggles with an economic collapse. Yet drivers will still be able to fill their tanks for pennies.
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| Australia coach Lehmann sees 2019 as swansong Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:56 PM PST  Australia coach Darren Lehmann said Thursday he cannot see himself continuing in the demanding role beyond 2019 with a recent bout of deep vein thrombosis proving a "reality check". Lehmann was forced to miss Australia's Twenty20 series against India and the one-day international tour of New Zealand before being given the all-clear to join the ongoing Test series against the Black Caps. Lehmann, who took over from Mickey Arthur in 2013, has been reluctant in the past to set an end date to his tenure but now says he cannot see himself doing the job beyond the 2019 Ashes, with the constant travelling taking a toll.
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| New livery, same struggles? Red Bull F1 expects 'tough year' Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:53 PM PST LONDON (AP) — Even as Red Bull revealed new livery and talked of a new era for the Formula One season, a reminder of last season's struggles wasn't far away. |
| Venezuela raises fuel price, devalues bolivar amid crisis Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:51 PM PST  By Brian Ellsworth and Girish Gupta CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday devalued the currency and raised heavily subsidized fuel prices in an effort to stem a widening economic crisis, though critics of the socialist leader quickly dismissed the moves as insufficient. The measures are meant to help shore up OPEC nation's finances as plummeting oil prices and a collapsing state-led economic model have left the country with a severe recession, triple-digit inflation and chronic product shortages. "This is a necessary measure, a necessary action to balance things, I take responsibility for it," Maduro said, in reference to the fuel hike during a combative four-hour speech in which he insulted opposition leaders and occasionally used foul language.
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| Dissidents fearful as Thailand, once a haven, favors China Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:43 PM PST  By Andrew R.C. Marshall BANGKOK (Reuters) - One night last month, Liu Xuehong stood weeping outside the gates of the United Nations headquarters in Bangkok, begging the guards to let her in. The Chinese dissident had received a threatening call from an anonymous Chinese official, and feared that she, like other asylum seekers in Thailand, would be snatched away by agents of China or deported by a Thai junta increasingly allied to it. "We still live in fear here." Liu is one of hundreds of Chinese who have fled for Thailand, say human rights groups.
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| 6 dead of asphyxiation in Bolivia protest Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:41 PM PST  LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Six city workers died of asphyxiation and 28 people were injured Wednesday when protesters set fire to part of a municipal building in the opposition-governed highlands city of El Alto near Bolivia's capital.
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| Blast hits Turkish cultural center in Sweden Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:37 PM PST An explosion severely damaged part of a building that housed a Turkish cultural association in a Stockholm suburb late on Wednesday but no one was injured, police said. It had been locked since earlier in the evening," a police spokesman said. |
| Poland's threat to strip scholar of state honor sparks anger Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:33 PM PST  WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A threat by Poland's president to strip an esteemed Polish-American scholar of a state honor in punishment for work that exposes uncomfortable historical episodes of Polish anti-Semitism has infuriated many people in Poland and abroad.
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| Neanderthal DNA redraws human out-of-Africa timeline Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:28 PM PST  A group of modern humans that arrived in Eurasia far earlier than previously thought also had sex with Neanderthals, according to a study that redraws the migratory timeline for our species. The new research, published in Nature, provides the first genetic evidence that some Homo sapiens left the African continent at least 100,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than widely assumed. The smoking-gun proof came not from human fossils but a single Neanderthal whose remains were found in a cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, near the Russian-Mongolian border.
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| Murders in Honduras drop 12 percent in 2015 as drug bosses extradited: group Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:24 PM PST  Homicides in Honduras fell 12 percent in 2015 thanks in part to the capture and extradition to the United States of drug cartel bosses, a United Nations-backed organization said on Wednesday. In the last two years, Honduras says it has extradited eight gang leaders to the United States. Since taking office in 2014, President Juan Hernandez' ramped-up military offense against drug traffickers and gangs has dramatically driven down the homicide rate.
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| McIlroy begins his road to the Masters Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:15 PM PST  LOS ANGELES (AP) — The road to the Masters starts on the other side of the country for Rory McIlroy.
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| Wyoming says its coal mine cleanup policy is flawed Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:10 PM PST  A program that has allowed U.S. coal companies to forego cleanup insurance on massive western mines is flawed and needs to be fixed, Wyoming officials have told federal regulators. Coal companies must restore the land around spent mines, but roughly $3.6 billion in liabilities could fall to taxpayers under a subsidy called 'self bonding' that allows large coal companies to go without some cleanup insurance, federal officials have warned. Coal operator Alpha Natural Resources Inc left behind more than $670 million in self-bond liabilities in Wyoming and West Virginia when it filed for bankruptcy in August, and federal officials have asked states to explain how they will brace for such a hit.
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| Throngs flock to pope's mass at Mexico-US border Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:10 PM PST  The 79-year-old pontiff chose Ciudad Juarez as the last stop of a five-day trip to Mexico to address immigration and to visit a notorious prison, where he urged inmates to help break the country's cycle of violence. A huge stage was set near the border fence for the open-air mass with more than 200,000 Catholic faithful waiting for the pope's arrival. Francis was expected to salute people watching on the other side of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas.
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| Authorities investigate 2 legs left in Australian trash dump Posted: 17 Feb 2016 03:07 PM PST SYDNEY (AP) — Authorities were investigating on Thursday how two severed human legs came to be left at an Australian city rubbish dump. |
| S&P cuts Brazil deeper into junk territory in blow to Rousseff Posted: 17 Feb 2016 02:54 PM PST By Alonso Soto BRASILIA (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's downgraded Brazil's credit rating deeper into junk territory on Wednesday, citing its failure to curb its fiscal deficit, in a surprise blow to President Dilma Rousseff`s bid to haul the economy out of its worst recession in decades. S&P cut Brazil's sovereign credit rating to BB from BB+ with a negative outlook, just five months after becoming the first agency to strip the country of its coveted investment grade. Fitch ratings followed suit in December. |
| Former priest in Puerto Rico faces new abuse charges Posted: 17 Feb 2016 02:53 PM PST SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Police in Puerto Rico say a former Roman Catholic priest faces new abuse charges. |
| 28 killed in Ankara bomb attack on Turkish military Posted: 17 Feb 2016 02:50 PM PST  At least 28 people were killed and 61 wounded Wednesday by a car bomb targeting the Turkish military in the heart of the capital Ankara, the latest in a string of attacks to shake the country. The blast struck a convoy of military service vehicles but it was still not clear who carried it out, said Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, confirming the latest toll. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed retaliation against the perpetrators of the attack, which came on the heels of a spate of deadly strikes in Turkey blamed on jihadists but also on Kurdish rebels.
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