LAMITAN, Philippines: Army troops have safely defused a powerful bomb outside a school in Basilan province in the southern Philippines. A blast destroyed a lodging house and another explosive was found near a hotel earlier in the same province.
KABUL, Afghanistan: An Afghan government official says a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan has killed three tribal elders who were on their way to a meeting with other tribal representatives.
LIMA, Peru: A leftist former military officer who promises to favor the poor by redistributing Peru’s mineral wealth was expected to win the most votes in Sunday’s presidential elections but fall far short of the outright majority needed to avoid a runoff.
TEGUCIGALPA: Honduras’ defense minister said Friday that the country’s armed forces will join the police for the first time in the fight against drug trafficking.
STOCKHOLM: Swedish fighter jets are roaring into action over Libya under NATO command. Ireland is offering itself as a transit hub for US military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even famously independent Switzerland has peacekeepers in Kosovo.
ROME: Italy told France on Saturday that most of the 20,000 Tunisian migrants who have fled to Italy in recent weeks will eventually reach France, so it should agree to take them in now.
ISLAMABAD: Joint US-Pakistan intelligence operations have been halted since late January, a senior Pakistani intelligence officer said, reflecting strain in a relationship seen as crucial to combating militants and the war in Afghanistan.
MANILA: Scientists say a picturesque volcano in the middle of a Philippine lake just three hours ride away from the national capital could erupt, and authorities are stopping tourists from visiting it.
MADRID: Tens of thousands of people marched in Madrid on Saturday to protest the Basque separatist group ETA and urge the government to bar anyone linked to it from running in regional and local elections.
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines: A powerful explosion destroyed a small lodging house Saturday in a southern Philippine province where Al-Qaeda-linked militants are active, and troops later found a separate bomb near another hotel, the military said.
TOKYO: A Japanese power company executive apologized for spreading radiation into the air and sea as regulators said the pumping of radioactive water into waters off Japan from a crippled nuclear plant would end on Sunday, one day later than planned.
PHOENIX: The crown prince of Thailand has one. So do the presidents of Peru and Chile. The Chinese Air Force relies on it, as do airlines in Russia, Indonesia, Australia and Romania.
KABUL: A suicide bomber attacked an Afghan army bus on the outskirts of Kabul on Saturday, wounding up to 10 soldiers and civilians, less than a week after a suicide attack on a foreign military base in the city, a police spokesman said.
EL PASO, Texas: In a trial that took 11 weeks and featured 24 witnesses, federal prosecutors meticulously presented their case against an elderly ex-CIA agent from Cuba accused of lying during immigration hearings.
DUBLIN: A 225-kilogram van bomb defused Saturday near the Irish border probably was destined to strike a Northern Ireland town in a bid to undermine Northern Ireland’s election campaign, police and political leaders said.
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian police say they’ve arrested two men in connection to a school shooting in Rio that left at least 12 students dead.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A Pakistani boy who took part in a suicide mission that killed more than 40 people at a Sufi shrine sought forgiveness Friday in a television interview from his hospital bed.
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration warned Friday that governments around the world are extending their repression to the Internet, seeking to cut off their citizens’ access to websites and other means of communication to stave off the types of revolutions that have wracked the Middle East.
ISLAMABAD: A teenager arrested as an accomplice to Pakistan’s deadliest suicide bombing of the year has said that up to 400 suicide bombers are being groomed to wage carnage in the nuclear-armed nation.
WASHINGTON: A US government shutdown was just hours away, but Republicans and Democrats in Congress were unable to compromise and continued to trade charges Friday over who was holding up a deal to prevent a major disruption in Americans' lives.
MANILA: A son of the former Philippine president has been charged with tax evasion in a move he has criticized as political harassment.
LAWRENCE, Massachusetts: A US woman charged with attempted murder for withholding cancer treatment from her autistic son testified Friday that she did not give him at least five months of chemotherapy medications because the side effects made him so sick she was afraid the treatments would kill him.
BANGKOK: Thai police have arrested 20 foreigners working for an alleged “boiler room” said to have bilked more than $3 million from would-be investors.
SRINAGAR: A prominent imam was killed in a bomb blast outside a mosque in the heart of Srinagar on Friday.
MANILA: Philippine communist rebels have agreed to create a plan to eliminate child soldiers, a United Nations official said Friday.
MANILA, Philippines: Philippine police and soldiers trying to serve an arrest warrant have killed nine suspected members of a criminal gang who allegedly resisted and opened fire, officials said Friday.
SRINAGAR: The government of Jammu and Kashmir by issuing an order to grant an ethnic certificate to the people of Jammu province has sparked yet another controversy that has the potential of assuming as big a dimension as the 2008 allotment of land to a Hindu Shrine Board.
BOKSBURG, South Africa: One of South Africa’s highest-ranking police officers on Thursday faced charges of plotting with other cops to murder a rival in a love triangle, and then covering up the crime for more than a decade.
LONDON: A judge has sentenced a British man to three years in prison for triggering a bomb scare aboard a flight from Abu Dhabi to London.
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration expelled the Ecuadorian ambassador on Thursday in retaliation for the expulsion of the US envoy to Ecuador over her comments in leaked State Department cables.
BERLIN: Some 180,000 Germans left the Catholic Church in 2010, a 40 percent jump over the previous year, as allegations that priests sexually abused children for decades shook the faith, a study said on Thursday.
ALPHEN AAN DEN RIJN, Netherlands: A gunman opened fire with a machinegun at a crowded shopping mall outside Amsterdam on Saturday, leaving at least seven people dead and wounding 15 others, officials and witnesses said.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Forces supporting Ivory Coast’s entrenched strongman broke through the security perimeter imposed around the presidential compound Saturday, firing on French helicopters in an advance that appeared to breathe new life into Laurent Gbagbo’s camp, which had been teetering on the brink of defeat.
ABUJA: Nigerians counted the votes on Saturday from delayed parliamentary elections, held with fewer hitches than past ballots despite a chaotic and violent run-up.
SRINAGAR, India: Shops and schools in Indian-controlled Kashmir were closed Saturday to protest the assassination of a moderate Muslim religious leader in the disputed Himalayan region.
NEW DELHI: India’s government ordered up strong anti-corruption legislation on Saturday after a 73-year-old activist went on a four-day hunger strike and inspired a nationwide protest movement against graft. Anna Hazare — whose hunger strike drew wide attention and support from politicians and Bollywood stars — ended his fast Saturday by accepting lime water from a child, but warned he’d resume it if anti-corruption laws are not improved by Aug. 15.
NEW DELHI: At the outset, Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare has nothing in common with India’s vaunted middle class. He: An austere Gandhian social activist. They: A supposedly inward-looking, cynical and self-centered mass.
TOKYO: Fears of radiation spread to rice as the planting season began in Japan, prompting the government to ban its cultivation in contaminated soil as fallout leaking from a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant dealt another blow to the national diet.
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached a historic, last-minute agreement just before a midnight deadline to slash about $38 billion in federal spending and avert the first federal government shutdown in 15 years.
IBADAN, Nigeria: Nigeria’s voters put their inked fingers to ballots Saturday for the first round in the nation’s crucial April election, coming out to vote despite bomb attacks and communal violence.
NEW DELHI: Students in T-shirts and Sikhs in turbans and carrying swords rallied alongside peasants and executives on Friday in support of an Indian activist’s hunger strike against corruption, as the government and protest leaders neared a deal on an anti-graft bill.
UNITED NATIONS: Forces loyal to beleaguered Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo have regained ground in Abidjan and fully control the upscale Plateau and Cocody areas, UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said on Friday.
WASHINGTON: A last-minute budget deal forged with tough bargaining averted an embarrassing US government shutdown, cut billions in spending and provided the first major test of the divided government that voters ushered in five months ago.
