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| U.S. Attorney General Lynch seeks funds for expanded gun checks | |  By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A battle over gun ownership between President Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress kicked off on Wednesday as lawmakers began weighing whether to fund the administration's unilateral moves to tighten background checks on buyers. This month, Obama stirred conservative ire with executive action clarifying that all dealers selling guns, including at shows, flea markets, on the Internet or in stores, are required to get licenses and run background checks on buyers. A Senate appropriations panel that funds Justice Department activities used its first hearing of the year to zero in on the new federal guidance that pits gun rights advocates against gun control organizations energized by a series of high-profile mass shootings.
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| Ecuador says Assange will answer Sweden's questions in days | |  Ecuador, whose U.K. embassy provides refuge to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, will have him answer questions from Swedish authorities about allegations of assault and rape against two women, President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday. Correa told reporters at a briefing that he expects Assange to be questioned by Ecuadorean authorities in the next few days. Assange, an Australian citizen, sought protection in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is alleged to have committed the crimes while on a visit.
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| Moldovan parliament appoints third PM in less than a year | |  By Alexander Tanas CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldovan lawmakers appointed the country's third prime minister in less than a year on Wednesday, backing a man chosen by the president as a compromise candidate in the hopes of ending months of political deadlock. The appointment of Pavel Filip, a member of the main pro-European coalition and a former IT and communications minister in the last government, followed the rejection of two previous candidates. The small ex-Soviet state, Europe's poorest country, has been without a proper government since a no-confidence vote toppled the previous administration in October, after the fraudulent disappearance of $1 billion from the banking system.
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| Amnesty says Kurds waging campaign to uproot Arabs in north Iraq | | | Kurdish forces have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of Arab homes across northern Iraq in what may constitute a war crime, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. Amnesty said it found evidence of a "concerted campaign" by the Kurds to uproot Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support of Islamic State, which seized control of about one third of Iraq in the summer of 2014. Kurdish peshmerga forces have since driven the insurgents back in the north of Iraq with the help of air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, expanding their control to include ethnically mixed territories they claim as their own. |
| Unlikely outsider Juppé is threat to Sarkozy, Hollande's 2017 election bids | |  At the age of 70, former prime minister Alain Juppé has shrugged off a decades-old image of a gray technocrat and a criminal conviction for misuse of public funds to become a serious contender for France's 2017 presidential election. Juppé, prime minister from 1995 to 1997, is in the throes of a comeback campaign to convince the conservative Les Republicains party to nominate him rather than ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy for 2017 in primaries to be held in November. Forty percent of Les Republicains supporters want Juppé to win the November primary, ahead of Sarkozy's 35 percent and far better than all other candidates, a Harris Interactive poll showed.
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| Ten wounded, including opposition politicians, in southeast Turkey shooting | | | Ten people were wounded in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast on Wednesday when their group, which included two opposition politicians, came under fire while rescuing people hurt in earlier clashes, officials said. Others among the wounded were sheltering in a house in the town of Cizre, where security forces are enforcing a 24-hour curfew, security sources said. It was not clear who fired on the group of 15 people, which included family members of those hurt earlier, lawmaker Faysal Sariyildiz from the opposition Democratic Peoples' Party (HDP), and the mayor of Cizre. |
| German-Turkish police operation busts Syrian smugglers ring | | | German and Turkish police arrested 15 people suspected of people smuggling in a joint operation to break up a ring believed to have trafficked more than 1,700 Syrian refugees to Europe. The suspects were almost all Syrians, and at least two of the five people arrested in Germany were Syrian asylum seekers, senior police officers told reporters in Potsdam, near Berlin, on Wednesday. "This joint operation to dismantle an international traffickers' ring is the biggest one to date," the president of Germany's Federal Police, Dieter Romann, said. |
| Deutsche CEO predicts cash will be gone in a decade | |  Cash won't be around in a decade, the chief executive of one of Europe's biggest banks predicted on Wednesday. There is no need for it, it is terribly inefficient and expensive," John Cryan, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, said during a discussion on financial technology, known as "fintech". Other predictions made during the panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos included James Gorman, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who warned against "hysteria" surrounding fintech.
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| Israel arrests two Jewish teens for Jerusalem monastery vandalism | |  Israel has arrested two Jewish youths for anti-Christian graffiti scrawled on a Jerusalem monastery, police said on Wednesday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an investigation into the latest in a wave of hate crimes. The 16- and 15-year-old males were suspected of involvement in Hebrew curses like "Christians go to hell" that were written in felt-tip pen on the doors and walls of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem's Old City over the weekend, police said. The Benedictine monastery bills itself as a bastion of inter-faith understanding.
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| Kazakh leader calls snap parliamentary poll amid growing economic woes | |  By Olzhas Auyezov ALMATY (Reuters) - Veteran Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev called a snap parliamentary election on Wednesday in an attempt to strengthen his grip on power amid mounting economic hardships caused by the crash in global oil prices. Nazarbayev, who has led the large, energy-rich Central Asian state since 1989, brooks little dissent and has no opponents in the 107-seat lower house of parliament, but the president sees risks of greater public discontent as the economy slows sharply. "The most important thing in this complicated situation is for all of us to realise that we must live within our means, preserve resources and save jobs," he said, adding that Kazakhs had to learn to live with lower commodity prices.
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| Turkish teacher to serve year in prison for insulting President Erdogan | |  A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced a female teacher to almost a year in prison for making a rude gesture at President Tayyip Erdogan at a political rally in 2014, local media reports said on Wednesday. Insulting public officials is a crime in Turkey, and Erdogan, the country's most popular but most divisive politician, is seen by his critics as intolerant of dissent and quick to take legal action over perceived slurs. After a rally in the Aegean city of Izmir in 2014 when he was prime minister, Erdogan lashed out at the female teacher and said she made a gesture at him that typified the rudeness of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).
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| In Norway, asylum seekers take workshops on sexual violence | | | By Gwladys Fouche NAERBOE, Norway (Reuters) - A workshop that seeks to educate asylum-seekers in Norway about Western attitudes to sex and sexual assault will appeal to European neighbours struggling to cope with a wave of refugees, but not everyone who attends the course is a fan. Sitting with his arms crossed in a classroom with 21 other male Syrian asylum seekers, Issam Alhlabi is wondering why he has been compelled to attend. "Syria is like Norway ... In every country you have backward people with low education." The ultimate aim of the course is to discuss - and discourage - rape in the context of a Scandinavian society that is more sexually liberal than back home. |
| N.Y. foundation CEO to plead guilty in U.N. bribery case: source | | | By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - The head of a New York-based foundation accused of participating in a scheme to bribe a former United Nations General Assembly president is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter said. Sheri Yan, who was Global Sustainability Foundation's chief executive, would become the second defendant to plead guilty in connection with an alleged conspiracy to bribe John Ashe, the former General Assembly president, the person said. The expected plea by Yan, 57, comes less than a week after the former finance director at the foundation, Heidi Hong Piao, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities in their continuing investigation. |
| Al Qaeda attack dents Burkina Faso's hopes of recovery | |  By Matthew Mpoke Bigg OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - When Burkina Faso swore in its first new president in decades last month, many people hoped the democratic transition would pave the way to an era of progress. Now a deadly raid by al Qaeda militants has shaken that optimism. Thirty people were killed when gunmen struck a restaurant and hotel in the capital Ouagadougou on Friday, exposing a days-old government to a critical security challenge that risks derailing its pledge to transform the economy of one of the poorest nations on earth.
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| Egypt: who's afraid of January 25? | |  By Ahmed Aboulenein CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian activists Ali al-Khouly and Mohamed Ali had just sat down at a Cairo coffeeshop when plainclothes officers grabbed them and hauled them off to a police station. As the fifth anniversary of Jan. 25 protests that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule approaches, the toughest security crackdown in Egypt's history is a clear sign that authorities are worried. "I honestly have no idea why I was taken or why I was released but there is no justification for this horror." With thousands of government opponents behind bars, the likelihood of massive protests is slim.
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| Mexican actress who met 'El Chapo' to testify in L.A. - father | |  Actress Kate del Castillo, at the center of a Mexican probe into money laundering after she helped Hollywood star Sean Penn conduct an interview with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, will give evidence in Los Angeles, according to her father. Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said in an interview in the newspaper El Universal on Tuesday that there were "indications" the Mexican actress may have used money from Guzman to help finance her tequila business. "She wants to cooperate because she has nothing to hide," local newspaper Reforma quoted her father, Eric del Castillo, as saying in its Wednesday edition.
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| Militant who claimed responsibility for Pathankot attack warns Pakistan against crackdown | |  By Abu Arqam Naqash MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistan-based chief of a militant alliance fighting for an end to Indian rule in divided Kashmir openly condemned on Wednesday a crackdown by the Pakistan government against another group India blames for an attack on an air base. Syed Salahuddin, the chairman of the United Jihad Council (UJC), an alliance of pro-Pakistan militant groups based in the Pakistani-administered part of the divided Kashmir region, had claimed responsibility for the assault in Pathankot on Jan. 2. The claim of responsibility was met with a sceptical response among India's security establishment, which blames another group called Jaish-e-Mohammed.
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| Limiting German refugee intake not unethical, president says | |  Germany cannot take in all the asylum seekers who want to begin a new life there and it is not unethical of Berlin to limit the influx, President Joachim Gauck said on Wednesday, pressing other European countries to share the burden. Germany has borne the brunt of Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War Two, with more than one million asylum seekers arriving in the country last year, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many German local authorities say they are struggling to cope with the influx and pressure is mounting on Chancellor Angela Merkel to reverse her open-door policy and even close the country's borders to new arrivals.
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| Militants storm Pakistan university, kill at least 20 | |  By Jibran Ahmad and Mehreen Zahra-Malik CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic". The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.
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| Insight: Smuggling soars as Venezuela's economy sinks | | | By Girish Gupta BOCA DEL GRITA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Clutching egg cartons on his shoulder, a young man wades precariously through a muddy river on Venezuela's western jungle border where a Colombian shopkeeper will happily buy them up. On a peninsula jutting into the Caribbean, a fisherman sails under the cover of darkness to the nearby island of Aruba carrying everything from fish to flour. Driven by a deepening economic crisis, smuggling across Venezuela's land and maritime borders - as well as illicit domestic trading - has accelerated to unprecedented levels and is transforming society. |
| Lionel Messi tax fraud trial to begin May 31 | |  Lionel Messi's tax fraud case will be heard by a Barcelona court from May 31 through to June 3, according to statement on Wednesday. World Player of the Year Messi and his father Jorge are accused of defrauding the Spanish state of 4.2 million euros ($4.6 million) in tax between 2007 and 2009 and a Spanish court ordered that they stand trial last October. Barcelona forward Messi and his father have already paid five million euros to the tax authorities as a "corrective" measure after they were formally charged in June 2013.
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| Three Mali gendarmes killed in armed raid in central Mali | | | By Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra BAMAKO (Reuters) - Gunmen killed three gendarmes in an overnight ambush near a town in central Mali, the defence ministry said on Wednesday, confirming the latest in a growing wave of attacks that risk spilling over into Mali's West African neighbours. The identities of the assailants in the central Mali attack were not immediately known. Mali's army and a 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force (MINUSMA) are frequently targeted in attack by militants. |
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