Afghan officials say at least five civilians were killed when in a bomb exploded during a wedding ceremony in eastern Logar province.
Shah Poor Ahmadzai, the provincial police chief's spokesman, says seven others were wounded in the attack late Friday, which took place in Mohammad Agha district.
Mohammad Naser Ghairat, a provincial council member in Logar, confirmed the death toll.
He said the bomb was planted near the house where the wedding was taken place and targeted the participants of the wedding.
Ahmadzai said initial report show both the groom and bride were not hurt.
An investigation was begun to find out more and the death toll could rise, he added.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Bomb blast kills 5 in wedding party in eastern Afghanistan

PTI Automatic

Palestinian health officials say Israeli forces have shot dead six Palestinians, four of them in a single incident, in one of the deadliest days in months of mass protests along the security fence separating Gaza and Israel.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Friday that four were killed in one location, where the Israeli military said it opened fire on a crowed of Palestinians who breached the fence and approached an army post. No Israeli troops were harmed, the army added.
Two other Palestinians were killed in other protest locations, the ministry said, adding that at least 140 Palestinians were wounded by live bullets.
Since March, Hamas has orchestrated near-weekly protests along the fence.
The Israeli military said 14,000 Palestinians thronged the border fence areas Friday.

Israeli fire kills 6 Palestinians at Gaza protest

Authorities say the bodies of 11 babies have been found in a funeral home that was closed six months ago.
Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs spokesman Jason Moon says inspectors found the bodies Friday at the Cantrell Funeral Home on the city's east side.
Detroit police say eight or nine bodies were found in a cardboard box and the others in one or more caskets, all hidden in a ceiling. Police ordered a search of the building to ensure there are no additional bodies inside.
The regulatory agency suspended the license of the funeral home in April after inspectors found decomposing embalmed bodies and other violations. Violations also included two improperly stored bodies covered in what appeared to be mold and a third body with unknown fluids covering the facial area.

Agency: 11 baby bodies found in closed Detroit funeral home

Voting opened Saturday in a by-election that is expected to see charismatic Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim win a parliamentary seat and return to active politics as he prepare for his eventual takeover from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Anwar was designated the successor to Mahathir, his former foe turned ally, after they set aside a bitter political feud and joined hands to win a stunning victory in May's general elections. Anwar couldn't participate in the polls due to a 2015 conviction for sodomy  a charge he alleged was politically motivated  but he was freed after receiving a royal pardon days after the polls.
Thousands of voters flocked to polling stations in the southern coastal town of Port Dickson, where Anwar is vying for a seat along with six other candidates. He is expected to easily win.
Two weeks of campaigning has seen bigwigs rallying for Anwar, including Mahathir and several ministers.
The Election Commission said it expects a 70 percent turnout from more than .

Voting opens in Malaysia by-election for PM-in-waiting Anwar

The city of Chicago has sued the US Department of Justice again for withholding public safety grants for the "sanctuary city's" refusal to cooperate with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies.
The lawsuit filed Friday in federal court says the administration hasn't released the 2017 grants worth millions and that Chicago hasn't, unlike other cities, received a key 2018 grant letter.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement that Chicago "will not be bullied". A message seeking comment from the Justice Department wasn't immediately returned.
The lawsuit says new grant conditions this year include that Chicago not harbour immigrants without immigration papers.
Judges largely sided with Chicago in a similar 2017 lawsuit that also argues the grant conditions are unconstitutional. The Justice Department continues to appeal those rulings.

Chicago sues Trump administration again over grants

American pastor Andrew Brunson has left Turkey following a court ruling that convicted him on terror charges but also set him free, according to the Turkish media.
The evangelical pastor from North Carolina and his wife Norine arrived at a private terminal in Adnan Menderes Airport in the coastal Izmir province late Friday.
Turkish media later said Brunson's plane took off. His route back to the United States has not been confirmed.
The Turkish court lifted Brunson's house arrest and ban on travel Friday after sentencing him to three years, one month and 15 days in prison. But since he had already spent nearly two years in detention, Turkish law allowed him to go free with time served.

American pastor leaves Turkey after court ruling

Prince's surviving family members are asking President Donald Trump to stop using the late rock star's music at campaign rallies.
Prince's "Purple Rain" has frequently been on Trump's playlist at recent rallies, including last week in South Haven, Mississippi.
A statement retweeted on behalf of the estate by Prince's half-brother Omarr Baker said "The Prince Estate has never given permission to President Trump or the White House to use Prince's songs and have requested that they cease all use immediately."
Neither an attorney for the estate nor a White House spokeswoman immediately responded to messages from The Associated Press.
Prince died in 2016 from an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Prince estate to Trump: Stop using music at rallies

Nineteen student filmmakers got the opportunity to "thank the academy" at the actual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Thursday night.
The winners of the 45th Student Academy Awards are eligible to compete for a 2018 Academy Award in the animated short, live action short and documentary short categories.
They join an esteemed list of Student Academy Award alumni like Pete Docter, Cary Fukunaga, Spike Lee, Trey Parker, Patricia Riggen and Robert Zemeckis.
During the presentation in the storied Samuel L. Goldwyn theater, presenters like "The Big Sick" star and co-writer Kumail Nanjiani and "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke introduced a fascinating array of short films ranging in subject from an animated raccoon trying to handle a flashlight somewhat clumsily to a teenage girl who showcases a suicide confessional in her high school film class and a documentary about dust.
Seven hundred film academy members sifted through 1,582 entries from 400 schools (278 domestic and 

Film academy honors 19 student filmmakers

Two women have tied the knot in Austria's first same-sex marriage, months after the country's Constitutional Court ruled to legalise it.
Vienna's city government said the wedding took place Friday at a registry office in the capital. Austrian media reported that the women who married at a private ceremony were one of the couples whose case prompted the court ruling in December.
Same-sex couples in Austria, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation of some 8.7 million, have been allowed to enter civil partnerships since 2010. All will be able to marry starting January 1.
The five couples involved in the court case were allowed to marry earlier.  On Thursday, the parties in Austria's center-right governing coalition announced they were giving up their resistance to same-sex marriage and accepting the court ruling.

Women tie the knot in Austria's first same-sex marriage

The United Nations children's agency says a self-defense militia in Nigeria has freed more than 800 children from its ranks as it combats Boko Haram extremists.
The agency calls this the first formal release by the Civilian Joint Task Force, which had been listed in an annual U.N. report on children and armed conflict.
The statement on Friday says 1,469 boys and girls associated with the militia group have been identified in Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Borno state, alone.
Maiduguri is the birthplace of Boko Haram, which continues to carry out deadly attacks in the Lake Chad region. The Islamic extremist group has killed or kidnapped tens of thousands over nearly a decade and sent millions fleeing.
Boko Haram also has seized and indoctrinated children as suicide bombers.

Nigerian militia frees more than 800 children from its ranks

Amnesty International has urged Pakistan to release a Pashtun rights activist who was detained upon her arrival in the country.
The London-based rights group condemned the arrest of Gulalai Ismail, who was detained as soon as she arrived at an Islamabad airport from London.  In a statement, Amnesty International said she was being "detained solely for her peaceful human rights work".
Ismail is a critic of the Pakistani military's operations in the country's tribal regions in which many innocent civilians have been killed.
She has been a supporter of the Pashtun Protection Movement, a group which denounces perceived high-handedness by security forces and their operations in the country's northwestern regions.
It calls for judicial probes into those killed by the military in the name of its war on terror.

Rights group calls for release of Pakistani rights activist

Hundreds of supporters from an extremist Islamist party have rallied in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to pressure judges to uphold a death sentence for a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy.
Asia Bibi has been on death row since 2010 after she was convicted of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.
Chanting "Hang infidel Asia," activists from the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party also rallied in other cities Friday, threatening nationwide protests if authorities free the woman.
Pakistan's Supreme Court earlier this week postponed ruling on her final appeal and her lawyers are hopeful of an acquittal arguing she was falsely accused.
That has angered Islamists who want her to be publicly hanged.
Bibi's first appeal was dismissed by a Lahore High Court in 2014, but the Supreme Court stayed her execution in 2015.

Islamists rally in Pakistan for death sentence for Christian

Melania Trump says she loves President Donald Trump and has "much more important things to think about" than allegations he cheated on her with a porn star, a Playboy Playmate or anyone else.
Mrs. Trump, who was interviewed by ABC while touring Africa last week, said people are just spreading rumors about her marriage.
"I know people like to speculate and media like to speculate about our marriage and circulate the gossip," she said. "But I understand the gossip sells newspapers, magazines ... and, unfortunately, we live in this kind of world today."
She insisted allegations of her husband's infidelities are not a concern.
Trump, who during the 2016 presidential campaign was heard on an old "Access Hollywood" tape talking about groping and try to have sex with women, has been accused of having multiple affairs. Porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal have said they had sex with him years ago.
Trump has denied the trysts with Daniels and McDougal but has ...

Melania Trump says she ignores rumors of Trump's infidelity

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Vietnam's prime minister have discussed efforts by their countries to delineate their maritime boundaries in the disputed South China Sea, most of which is claimed by China.
Duterte said Friday, without elaborating, that he told Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in a meeting in Indonesia that such boundary talks may take longer because the Philippines is still establishing its continental shelf limit, or the country's outermost boundary.
"I told him that in due time, but we will take a longer period for we have to establish even our continental shelf limits," Duterte said he told Phuc in a meeting on the sidelines of a gathering of Southeast Asian leaders on Indonesia's Bali island.
Vietnam initiated the on-and-off talks years ago.
The Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia, which belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, along with China and Taiwan have been locked for decades in territorial disputes in the South China Sea. ...

Philippine, Vietnam leaders discuss disputed sea boundaries

The Saudi contributor to Washington Post who went missing more than a week ago and is feared dead had major plans, including a string of new projects to promote inclusiveness and accountability lacking around the Arab world, his friends say.
Jamal Khashoggi, a prolific writer and commentator, was working quietly with intellectuals, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democracy for the Arab World Now. He wanted to set up a media watch organization to keep track of press freedom.
He also planned to launch an economic-focused website to translate international reports into Arabic to bring sobering realities to a population often hungry for real news, not propaganda.
Part of Khashoggi's approach was to include political Islamists in what he saw as democracy building. That  along with his sharp criticisms of the kingdom's crackdowns on critics, its war in Yemen and its policy on Iran  put him at odds with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, which deeply opposes Islamists like the ...

Missing Saudi writer had big plans for his troubled region

A US astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut on Friday arrived in the Moscow region following a failed launch to the International Space Station that forced an emergency landing.
NASA's Nick Hague and Roscosmos' Alexei Ovchinin blasted off to the orbiting lab on Thursday but had to make an emergency landing in their capsule less than two minutes into the flight after their Soyuz rocket suffered an unspecified failure of its second stage.
Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin, who traveled to Kazakhstan to bring the crew back, posted a picture of himself and the two men Friday, saying they are safely back in the Moscow region.
"The guys will definitely fly again," he tweeted.
Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, chief of the Russian Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said on Russian state television that the two men are "in great health" and do not require medical treatment.
While the Russian program has been dogged by a string of problems with other kinds of launches in recent years, Thursday's .

US, Russian astronauts reach Russia after emergency landing

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl after he became entangled in two major sexual abuse and cover-up scandals and lost the support of many in his flock.
Wuerl, who turns 78 in November, becomes the most prominent head to roll in the scandal roiling the Catholic Church after his predecessor as Washington archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, was forced to resign as cardinal over allegations he sexually abused at least two minors and adult seminarians.
A Vatican statement Friday said Francis had accepted Wuerl's resignation, but named no replacement; Wuerl's office said he had been asked to stay on in a temporary capacity until a new archbishop is found.
The decision came after months in which Wuerl initially downplayed the scandal, insisted on his own good record, but then progressively came to the conclusion that he could no longer lead the archdiocese.
Wuerl had submitted his resignation to Francis nearly three years ago, when he turned 75, the ...

Pope OKs resignation of Cardinal Wuerl amid cover-up scandal

Turkey's state-run news agency says a delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Turkey as part of an investigation into missing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
Anadolu Agency said Friday that the delegation would hold talks with Turkish officials over the weekend. It did not provide further details.
On Thursday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey and Saudi Arabia would form a "joint working group" to look into Khashoggi's disappearance. The journalist vanished last week after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Turkish officials have said The Washington Post contributor may have been killed inside the consulate, but they haven't offered any evidence. Saudi Arabia has denied the allegation as "baseless.

Saudi delegation in Turkey for talks on missing writer

Hundreds of relatives, friends and colleagues of slain Bulgaria journalist Viktoria Marinova attended her funeral in her native town of Ruse on Friday, just after German police announced that a suspect has acknowledged attacking her.
People queued at the Holy Trinity Cathedral to pay tribute and lay flowers at the coffin of the 30-year old, whose body was found in a park near the Danube River on Saturday.
An Orthodox priest performed a liturgy with a procession passing the casket to pay last respects before the funeral.
Marinova is survived by a 7-year-old daughter.
Ruse mayor Plamen Stoilov told reporters that "the brutal slaying has cast a shadow over the peaceful city."
Bulgarian prosecutors have identified the suspect as 21-year-old Severin Krassimirov.
He has been charged in absentia for the rape and killing, and Bulgaria has sought his extradition from Germany, where he was arrested on an international warrant.
German prosecutors earlier said Krassimirov told them he had not ...

Funeral held for Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has visited an Indonesian city shattered by an earthquake and tsunami to assess the impact of the disasters.
Guterres paid a visit Friday to the city of Palu on Sulawesi island during a trip to Bali to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Guterres visited Balaroa, where the September 28 quake liquefied soft soil and tore apart neighbourhoods, and the coastal area of Talise, which was badly damaged by the tsunami that followed the magnitude 7.5 quake.
The official death toll had risen to 2,073 as of Thursday.
The IMF-World Bank meetings are being held until Sunday.

UN secretary general visits quake-hit Indonesian city

Animal-rights campaigners are hoping this year's festival season in Nepal will be a little less bloody.
During the 15-day Dasain festival that began this week in the Himalayan country, families fly kites, host feasts and visit temples, where tens of thousands of goats, buffaloes, chickens and ducks are sacrificed to please the gods and goddesses as part of a practice that dates back centuries.
Animal rights groups are hoping to stop  or at least reduce  the slaughter, using this year's campaign as a practice run to combat a much larger animal sacrifice set for next year at the quinquennial Gadhimai festival.
Such a campaign is novel in Nepal, where four out of five people are Hindu and animal sacrifice is a deeply rooted tradition.
Activists first organised after the Gadhimai festival in 2009, when an estimated 250,000 animals were killed at a single temple in southern Nepal.
Images of carcasses piled up on an open field were widely published and broadcast. Though there are no ...

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