Adviser to France’s Hollande resigns after fraud accusations
PARIS (Reuters) – An adviser to French President Francois Hollande resigned on Wednesday after being summoned to answer charges of fraud by a Paris criminal court, the second Hollande ally to step down in the last month.
Psychiatric patients struggle to get through Ukraine conflict
SLOVYANOSERBSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Anna Tsvirinko takes her hand out of the jacket she is wearing over her nurse’s uniform to keep warm and points at a dirty mattress in the unheated ward of the Ukrainian psychiatric hospital where she works.
South African court halts sale of Biko autopsy report: family
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The family of renowned South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko said it won a court battle on Wednesday to stop an auction house selling a post-mortem report into his 1977 death.
Aid workers in Afghanistan fear for their lives as troops pull out: survey
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Half the aid workers in Afghanistan received death treats or intimidation during the past year as foreign troops phased out their operations and funding began to dwindle, a survey released ahead of the London confe…
Faced with Boko Haram, Cameroon weighs death penalty for terrorism
YAOUNDE (Reuters) – Lawmakers in Cameroon, which is battling to stop the advance of Nigerian Boko Haram militants on its territory, will vote in the coming days on whether to impose the death penalty on those found guilty of involvement in acts of terr…
ICC judges give prosecutors a week to strengthen or drop Kenyatta case
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Judges at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday rejected prosecutors’ attempts to have the trial against Kenya’s president adjourned until they had enough evidence and set a week deadline to proceed or withdraw the charges…
Kenyan unions urge non-Muslim workers to leave north after attacks
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenyan trade unions have urged non-Muslim public sector workers including teachers and doctors to leave the country’s lawless northern region, site of two deadly attacks by militants in the past two weeks, because of the security ri…
Iraq says woman detained in Lebanon is not Baghdadi wife
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a woman detained by Lebanese authorities was not the wife of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the sister of a man convicted of bombings in southern Iraq.
Jewish-Arab school attack scars Jerusalem’s troubled co-existence
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Hand in Hand school in Jerusalem presents an almost too-perfect scene in a tense and divided city, where Jews and Arabs do daily business but rarely befriend one other.
Israel’s Netanyahu asks for ‘clear mandate’ in early election
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed on Wednesday for a “clear mandate” from voters in the early election he called, with opinion polls showing the right-wing leader on track for a fourth term.
