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| U.S. offers to help Nigeria in hunt for abducted girls | |  The United States said on Thursday it had offered Nigeria help in its search for around 200 girls abducted by Islamist militants from a school in the northeast of the country. "We have been engaged with the Nigerian government in discussions on what we might do to help support their efforts to find and free these young women," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a daily briefing. "We will continue to have those discussions and help in any way we can." Suspected Boko Haram gunmen on April 14 stormed an all-girls secondary school in the village of Chibok, in Borno state, packing the teenagers onto trucks and disappearing into a remote area along the border with Cameroon. Harf did not elaborate on the kind of assistance Washington is offering, but said: "We know Boko Haram is active in the area and we have worked very closely with the Nigerian government to build their capacity to fight this threat." In fiscal year 2012, the United States provided over $20 million in security assistance to Nigeria, part of that to build the country's military, boost its capacity to investigate terrorist attacks and enhance the government's forensic capabilities, she said.
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| Suspected bomb on edge of Nigerian capital kills at least 9 | | | By Isaac Abrak and Afolabi Sotunde ABUJA (Reuters) - A suspected bomb exploded on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital Abuja on Thursday, killing at least nine people, a week before the city was to host a summit of leaders and business executives focused on Africa's growth prospects, emergency services said. The explosion hit the suburb of Nyanya, close to the site of a morning rush hour bomb attack at a bus station last month that killed at least 75 people. The April 14 attack was claimed by the radical Islamist movement Boko Haram which is waging an insurgency against President Goodluck Jonathan's government. "There was a loud blast then a ball of fire," witness Lateef Adebayo told Reuters by telephone from Nyanya. |
| Two inmates killed in Florida jail explosion | | | A powerful explosion, possibly from a gas leak, demolished part of a northwest Florida jail, killing two inmates and injuring some 150 others, officials said on Thursday. The blast late on Wednesday partially leveled the four-story Escambia County Jail's central booking facility in Pensacola, which held roughly 600 inmates, county spokeswoman Kathleen Castro said. "The building is still standing, it's just unstable and partially collapsed," Castro said, describing the incident as an "apparent gas explosion." "We have reports people heard an explosion and smelled gas. The three were under authorities' control the entire time, she said, but could not be immediately located as officials grappled with transporting hundreds of other inmates to area hospitals or nearby jails. |
| Toronto Mayor Ford takes leave to deal with alcohol problem | |  By Allison Martell and Cameron French TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford flew to the United States in a private plane on Thursday, a TV network said, a day after he said he would take a leave of absence from his job and his re-election campaign to seek treatment for an alcohol problem. Global News reported that it had confirmed Chicago as Ford's destination but did not cite any sources. Ford's decision to take a leave of absence followed months of denials that he has a substance abuse problem and nearly a year after media reports surfaced that he appeared in a video smoking crack cocaine. His departure followed a Globe and Mail report on Wednesday that it had seen a video shot last week that showed Ford using what appeared to be drugs.
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| U.S. military sexual assault reports jumped 50 percent last year | | | By David Alexander and Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reported sexual assaults in the U.S. military jumped 50 percent last year, the Pentagon said on Thursday, and officials welcomed the spike as a sign that a high-level crackdown has made victims more confident their attackers will be prosecuted. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the jump in reported sexual assaults to 5,061 in the 2013 fiscal year from 3,374 the previous year, was "unprecedented." He announced six new directives to expand the fight, including an alcohol policy review and an effort to encourage reporting by male victims. Men are thought to represent about half of the victims of military sexual assault but made up only 14 percent of the reports that were investigated. "Because these crimes are underreported, we took steps to increase reporting and that's what we're seeing." Despite increased focus on the issue over the past year, the military has continued to face embarrassing incidents in which officers have been accused of tolerating sexual misconduct and even encouraging it, rather than fighting the problem. |
| China blames religious extremists for station bombing | |  By Michael Martina URUMQI China (Reuters) - An attack at a train station in China's western city of Urumqi was carried out by two religious extremists who both died in the blast, the government said on Thursday. Three people were killed, including the assailants, and 79 wounded in a bomb and knife attack at the station on Wednesday, according to the government and state media, as President Xi Jinping was wrapping up a visit to the area. The Xinjiang regional government said on its official news website (www.ts.cn) that the two attackers who were killed had "long been influenced by extremist religious thought and participated in extremist religious activities".
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| Tunisian assembly approves new electoral law | | | By Tarek Amara TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's national assembly on Thursday approved a new electoral law, to take one of the last steps in the country's move to full democracy after the 2011 uprising that inspired the "Arab Spring" revolts. Members of the 217-seat assembly voted 132 in favour and 11 against the new electoral law. "This is an important step," said Mehrzia Labidi, vice president of the assembly. With its new constitution and a caretaker administration governing until elections later this year, Tunisia's relatively smooth progress contrasts with the turmoil in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, which also ousted long-standing leaders three years ago. |
| Bin Laden associate's lawyer admits U.S. tax charges, stays on case | |  By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - A convicted associate of Osama bin Laden refused to jettison his lawyer on Thursday just minutes after the lawyer pleaded guilty in federal court to tax avoidance crimes. Lawyer Stanley Cohen admitted to a judge in Manhattan that he did not file income tax returns in 2006 and 2007. He had already pleaded guilty in Syracuse, New York to impeding the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and is expected to receive a sentence of 18 months in prison in October for his offences. Cohen could also lose his law license, but that did not deter his client, Kuwaiti-born Muslim preacher Suleiman Abu Ghaith, from keeping him as his attorney as he prepares for sentencing on terrorism-related charges.
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| Kerry raises detained Ethiopian bloggers with PM | |  By Aaron Maasho ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he had raised concerns about Ethiopia's detention of six bloggers and three journalists during a meeting with the country's prime minister on Thursday. The bloggers - part of a group called Zone 9 that has published articles and appeals criticising government policies - and the local journalists were arrested last week and accused of attempting to incite violence. Rights groups have taken to Twitter and other websites calling for their release and accused the government of trying to silence critics. Addis Ababa has said the charges relate to "serious criminal activities" and have nothing to do with muzzling the media.
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| Riot police clash with May Day protesters in Istanbul | |  By Ayla Jean Yackley and Evrim Ergin ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber pellets on Thursday to stop May Day protesters, some armed with fire bombs, from defying Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and reaching Istanbul's central Taksim square. Citing security fears, authorities shut parts of the city's public transport system, erected steel barricades and deployed thousands of riot police to block access to Taksim, a traditional union rallying point and the focus of weeks of anti-government protests last summer. Erdogan, who warned last week he would not let labour unions march on Taksim, has cast both last year's street protests and a corruption scandal dogging his government since December as part of a plot to undermine him. While it was the unions who called for demonstrations to press workers' rights and express broad opposition to Erdogan's government, some of those who clashed more violently with police were from marginal leftist groups.
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| EBay settles with U.S. over pact to not poach employees | |  By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The online commerce company eBay Inc has agreed to refrain from making deals with other technology companies to not poach each others' employees and by doing so limit workers' access to better jobs, U.S. authorities said on Thursday. EBay had been accused by the Justice Department of reaching an agreement with Intuit Inc , a software company best known for its tax preparation programs, to not recruit from each other. "EBay's agreement with Intuit served no purpose but to limit competition between the two firms for employees, distorting the labor market and causing employees to lose opportunities for better jobs and higher pay," said Bill Baer, assistant attorney general for antitrust at the U.S. Department of Justice.
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| Former U.S. president Bush hopes brother Jeb runs for White House - CNN | |  Former President George W. Bush said he wants his brother Jeb to run for president in 2016, in an interview with CNN released on Thursday. "I hope Jeb runs," Bush told CNN. I noticed he's moving around the country quite a bit." Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida, has said he will make a decision on whether to run after November's congressional elections. His older brother served as president from 2001 to 2009, and his father, George H.W. Bush, served in the White House from 1989 to 1993.
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| White House calls for new standard to alert consumers to data breaches | |  The White House on Thursday called on Congress to pass legislation to create a national standard for telling consumers when their data has been hacked, one of six policy recommendations from a 90-day review of data and privacy. "As organizations store more information about individuals, Americans have a right to know if that information has been stolen or otherwise improperly exposed," said the report, led by John Podesta, a top advisor to President Barack Obama. Obama asked for the review as part of his response to the revelations of ex-spy contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the National Security Agency's data collection programs. The Podesta review sought to examine consumer privacy given the reams of data collected and stored on the internet, from phones, and from sensors and cameras.
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| West urges N. Korea to close political prison camps, end caste system | | | By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Western powers called on North Korea on Thursday to dismantle its political prison camps and a caste system that ranks citizens based on family loyalty to the ruling dynasty. North Korea defended its human rights record in a debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, continuing to deny the existence of such camps, believed to hold up to 120,000 inmates. The Rights Council examined the record of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as part of its scrutiny of each U.N. member state every four years. |
| Pro-Russian protesters storm prosecutor's office in Ukraine's Donetsk | |  By Thomas Grove DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Russian protesters stormed the prosecutor's office in the separatist-held city of Donetsk on Thursday, hurling rocks, firecrackers and teargas at riot police defending officials the rebels accused of working for Kiev's Western-backed leaders. To shouts of "Fascists", a refrain Moscow uses to describe Ukraine's new government, hundreds of people pelted the police with paving stones and then cornered some, dragging them to the ground and beating them. Donetsk, a city of about 1 million people in Ukraine's industrial east, is at the centre of an armed uprising across the steel and coal belt by mainly Russian-speakers threatening to secede from Ukraine. The violence, in a city already largely under the control of separatists, underscored the shifting security situation across swathes of eastern Ukraine where suspicion of Kiev runs deep.
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| Microsoft rescues XP users with emergency browser fix | |  By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft is helping the estimated hundreds of millions of customers still running Windows XP, which it stopped supporting earlier this month, by providing an emergency update to fix a critical bug in its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft Corp rushed to create the fix after learning of the bug in the operating system over the weekend when cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc warned that a sophisticated group of hackers had exploited the bug to launch attacks in a campaign dubbed "Operation Clandestine Fox." It was the first high-profile threat to emerge after Microsoft stopped providing support to its 13-year-old XP operating software on April 8. Microsoft on Wednesday initially said it would not provide the remedy to Windows XP users because it had stopped supporting the product. But on Thursday, as Microsoft started releasing the fix for the bug through its automated Windows Update system, a company spokeswoman said the remedy also would be pushed out to XP customers.
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