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Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for bombings outside two heavily fortified five-star hotels in the Iraqi capital that killed 10 people. In a statement, Islamic State said a suicide bomber called Abu Qutaiba had parked a car outside the Ishtar hotel in central Baghdad late on Thursday before driving another vehicle laden with 230 kg of explosives to the nearby Babylon hotel. Iraqi authorities lifted a decade-old night-time curfew
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Kanupriya Kapoor BANGKOK (Reuters) – Southeast Asian nations agreed on Friday to intensify search and rescue efforts to help vulnerable “boat people” stranded in the region’s seas, as Myanmar said its navy had seized a vessel off its coast with more than 700 migrants aboard. More than 4,000 migrants have landed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh since Thailand launched a crackdown on people-smuggling
By Clement Manirabarusha BUJUMBURA (Reuters) – An explosion shook the center of the Burundi capital on Friday but no one was injured, a police source said, as deadly unrest against President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term in office rumbled on. “We don’t know the cause of the explosion yet,” said one police officer who had visited the scene of the blast. The demonstrations, which began a day after
Secretary of State John Kerry has signed an order as part of the process of normalizing relations between the Cold War foes.
The election of a woman president would mean that for the first time, the first lady would be … a man.
By Lisa Maria Garza and Jim Forsyth DALLAS (Reuters) – Storms bringing as much as 7 inches (17.8 cm) of rain drenched North Texas overnight into Friday, prompting hundreds of calls for emergency assistance and adding to the woes of the state where at least 20 people have been killed in severe weather this week. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for an area from Central Texas
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to rapidly implement measures agreed under the Feb. 12 Minsk ceasefire, Hollande’s office said in a statement. Hollande said he and Merkel had spoken on the phone with Putin early on Friday afternoon and told him they want to see concrete results from four working groups that were set up on May 6 to
Live anthrax has been found in a 2008 sample sent to Australia from the same U.S. Army facility identified this week for more recent, mistaken shipments to nine U.S. states and an air base in South Korea, a U.S. defense official said on Friday. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not know what kind of facility in Australia received the sample, which, like the others, was
By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – More than 3 million refugees and displaced Iraqis could be denied life-saving healthcare as the World Health Organization (WHO) scrambles to secure $60 million to fund their operations in the country to the end of the year. Without the money, healthcare providers in Iraq funded by the WHO and its partners could be forced to stop services — including primary healthcare, disease
