COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Swedish artist Lars Vilks, the main speaker at a seminar in Copenhagen targeted by a gunman a month ago, has received a freedom of speech prize. Denmark’s Free Press Society said Vilks received its annual award on Saturday for his “staunch fearlessness.” The 68-year-old has received numerous …
Read More »APNewsBreak: British woman detained in Turkey on suspicion of trying to get to Syria
ISTANBUL – A Turkish government official says that authorities are holding a 21-year-old British woman who was suspected of trying to travel to conflict zones in Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of government rules against speaking without prior authorization. The woman was detained at a bus …
Read More »Top cop in Jamaica to send more officers onto streets to fight worrying uptick in homicides
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica’s top cop says he will send more officers into island hot spots to combat a worrying uptick in homicides. Police Commissioner Carl Williams said Thursday that “there are persons among us who have become killing machines.” Last year, Jamaica saw double-digit decreases in every crime category, …
Read More »Moldovan region elects pro-Russian leader, who then stresses good relations with Chisinau
CHISINAU, Moldova – A pro-Russian politician who favors closer ties with Moscow has been elected governor of a semi-autonomous region in Moldova. Election officials said that Irina Vlah won more than 51 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election to be elected governor of Gagauzia for a four-year term. After …
Read More »Bomb hits police bus in southern Pakistan, wounding 10 people
KARACHI, Pakistan – Police and hospital officials say a roadside bomb has struck a bus carrying police officers in southern Pakistan, wounding at least 10 people. Police officer Mohammad Ali says the attack took place Friday morning in Karachi, the capital of Pakistan’s southern Sindh province. He says the bus …
Read More »Turkish military officers acquitted of charges of plotting a coup in retrial
ISTANBUL – An Istanbul court has acquitted 236 military officers of charges of plotting a coup to overthrow the government of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The court ruled Tuesday in favor of the officers in their retrial, launched months after the Turkey’s highest court ruled that the original trial …
Read More »Turkmenistan's president fires head of central bank and state natural gas company
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan – Turkmenistan’s president has fired the heads of the country’s central bank and its natural gas company in the wake of economic troubles that brought the country’s currency down 18.5 percent this year. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s orders at a Cabinet session Saturday were reported by the tightly controlled …
Read More »102 bodies found floating in Ganges River in India
LUCKNOW, India – Authorities were investigating Wednesday how more than 100 bodies, many of them children, ended up floating in an offshoot of the Ganges River in northern India. Officials do not suspect a crime, and instead believe the dead were given water burials. It is Indian custom not to …
Read More »US unveils first plan of its kind to fight drug trafficking in Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Obama administration has unveiled a new plan to fight drug trafficking in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands amid concerns that the flow of cocaine from the Caribbean to the U.S. has more than doubled in the past three years. It is the …
Read More »New Yorker writer says he didn't write op-ed in Chinese state media run under his name
BEIJING – A New Yorker journalist famed for his reporting from China wrote that the state-run newspaper China Daily faked an editorial under his byline after interviewing him. Peter Hessler said on Facebook on Tuesday that he didn’t write the piece posted on China Daily’s website a day earlier titled …
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