A grand jury has charged a white former Atlanta police officer with felony murder and other crimes in the death of an unarmed black man.
	The Fulton County grand jury also indicted James Burns on charges of aggravated assault yesterday, making a false statement and two counts of violation of oath of office in the June 22 killing of 22-year-old Deravis Caine Rogers, according to defense attorney Drew Findling. Burns has been out on bond since his arrest.
	Prosecutors said Burns fired into Rogers' vehicle while responding to a call about a suspicious person, even though Burns wasn't in danger and had no way to identify Rogers as the reported suspicious person.
	Atlanta police Chief George Turner fired Burns July 1 after an internal investigation determined Burns used unnecessary and excessive force.
	Burns responded after an off-duty officer working as a security officer at an Atlanta apartment complex called police dispatch to report a suspicious person, prosecutors have said. When ...

Ex-Atlanta police officer indicted in death of unarmed man

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Standing alongside the president of Mexico, a measured Donald Trump defended the right of the United States to build a massive border wall along its southern flank, but he declined to repeat his frequent promise to force Mexico to pay for it.
	Trump, the US presidential candidate who is widely despised across Mexico, also sidestepped his repeated criticism of Mexican immigrants following a closed-door meeting yesterday at the official residence of the country's president, Enrique Pena Nieto.
	Trump and Pena Nieto, who has compared the New York billionaire to Adolf Hitler, addressed reporters from adjacent podiums flanked by a Mexican flag.
	"We did discus the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall," Trump said yesterday.
	In his announcement of his presidential candidacy last year, Trump derided Mexico as a source of rapists and criminals coming to the US, and his presence yesterday sparked anger and protests across the capital city.
	A former Mexican president bluntly told the ..

Trump says he and Mexican leader discussed wall, not payment

As summer temperatures soared outside, the world's largest indoor theme park, featuring popular Marvel and Cartoon Network-branded rides, opened its doors to the public on Wednesday in the Middle East's tourist hub of Dubai - the latest in a myriad of new attractions here.
	The first visitors at the 1.5 million square foot (140,000 square meters) -park reflected the diverse crowds that visit and live in Dubai, home to the world's tallest skyscraper, the Middle East's largest mall and a man-made island in the shape of a palm tree that is dotted with luxury hotels.
	Saudi women dressed in abayas, the traditional loose black robes, and the full face-veil, rode alongside tank-top wearing British tourists and Indian families on the park's roller coasters and attractions.
	Several families with young children complained that some of the rides stalled several times. Others said they were thrilled by the adventure park's indoor boulevard that leads visitors through Marvel and Cartoon Network .

Dubai opens massive Marvel-branded indoor theme park

With its sights firmly fixed on Earth, Europe's eye in the sky never saw it coming.
	A tiny piece of debris has punched a gaping hole in the solar panel of one of its Earth observation satellites, causing visible damage but not enough to affect its routine operations, the European Space Agency said today.
	The unknown particle just a few millimeters big slammed into the back of a solar panel on Copernicus Sentinel-1A on Aug 23.
	Using on-board cameras, engineers have determined that the hole is about 40 centimeters in diameter.
	The European Space Agency said the loss of power caused by the strike is "relatively small" - less than 5 percent of the wing's usual output.
	The incident highlights the danger that both natural and man-made debris poses to satellites and other spacecraft orbiting Earth.
	The likelihood of such a strike is calculated at between 1.35 and 1.130 during the satellite's five-year lifetime, said Holger Krag, who heads the agency's space debris office.
	Smaller, ...

Tiny particle blows hole in European satellite's solar panel

The Southern California city of Norco markets itself as "Horsetown USA," and it's not unusual for cowboy hat-wearing residents to head out for lunch or run errands on horseback in its Old West-styled downtown.
	Local leaders celebrate that rural, equestrian lifestyle and are protective of it. Those who build must ensure their property includes Western architectural features such as a metal roof or overhang.
	But some Indian-Americans are questioning the sincerity of that standard after the City Council rejected a proposal for a hilltop Hindu cultural center on a hilltop partly on grounds that the large, domed building wouldn't fit in.
	They think the decision - which came after residents urged the city to keep its culture and questioned why proponents chose the site - is discriminatory.
	Dr Krupali Tejura, a radiation oncologist who grew up in nearby Corona and works at an area hospital, got involved in the debate because she was offended by those who argued the center didn't ...

Indian-Americans clash with cowboy town over proposed center

President Enrique Pena Nieto awoke to a storm of criticism from Mexicans over his decision to meet with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is widely reviled in Mexico for referring to its migrants as rapists and criminals.
	Blogger Diego Garcia stood with a handful of protesters at Mexico City's Independence Monument, wearing a green professional wrestler's mask and holding aloft a sign reading "Stop Trump's Insults!"
	"This man has called Mexicans a burden on society, so for the president to invite him here in a friendly way, and what's worse, to meet with him in private, well I consider that an insult," said Garcia.
	Artist Arturo Meade stood nearby with his two-and-a-half-year old son Mariano and shook his head in disgust.
	"This is an insult and a betrayal," Meade said. "What can this meeting bring us, except surrealism in all its splendor?" Former President Vicente Fox told local media that Trump was trying to boost his sagging campaign. "He fooled him (Pena ...

Mexico wonders why its president is meeting with Trump

Brazil's Senate today voted to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office, the culmination of a yearlong fight that paralysed Latin America's largest nation and exposed deep rifts among its people on everything from race relations to social spending.
	While Rousseff's ouster was widely expected, the decision was a key chapter in a colossal political struggle that is far from over.
	Rousseff was Brazil's first female president, with a storied career that includes a stint as a Marxist guerrilla jailed and tortured in the 1970s during the country's dictatorship. She was accused of breaking fiscal laws in her management of the federal budget.
	"The Senate has found that the president of the federal republic of Brazil, Dilma Vana Rousseff, committed crimes in breaking fiscal laws," said Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski, who presided over the trial.
	Opposition lawmakers, who made clear early on the only solution was getting her out of office, argued that the maneuvers masked yawning ...

Brazil's President Rousseff ousted from office by Senate

The number of savanna elephants in Africa is rapidly declining and the animals are in danger of being wiped out as international and domestic ivory trades drive poaching across the continent, according to a study released today.
	Africa's savanna elephant population plummeted by about 30 per cent from 2007 to 2014 and is declining at about 8 per cent a year, said a survey funded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen.
	"If we can't save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa's wildlife?" elephant ecologist Mike Chase, the lead researcher, said in a statement. "I am hopeful that, with the right tools, research, conservation efforts and political will, we can help conserve elephants for decades to come."
	The aerial survey covered 18 countries using dozens of airplanes to fly the equivalent of going to the moon and partway back.
	The study, known as the Great Elephant Census and involving 90 scientists, estimated a population of 352,271 ...

Africa's elephants rapidly declining as poaching thrives

There's a new giant panda in Madrid, and it's the first female of the endangered species born at the Spanish capital's zoo.
	The zoo said Hua Zui Ba gave birth just before dawn today to a cub weighing 180 grams. The zoo says the cub is "well formed, very active and has excellent vital signs."
	It is already suckling, and zoo experts say they are confident of its progress in the crucial first week of life.
	The specialists at the Madrid zoo were assisted by experts from China's Chengdu Giant Panda Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding.
	They knew the birth was approaching when Hua Zui Ba became increasingly lethargic, stopped eating and began to lick her paws.
	The Madrid zoo now has four giant pandas.

It's a girl! Giant panda gives Madrid Zoo 1st female birth

Two Eritrean baby boys were recovering well at a hospital in Palermo today, a week after they were born prematurely in Libya and then - at only 5 days old - put on a cramped boat headed to Europe's shores.
	The twin boys were lucky survivors of a dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean that has claimed more than 3,000 lives to date this year, a journey that many continue to take in a desperate effort for a better life.
	The tiny infants, bundled in towels and with a white bonnet covering the head of one, were rescued off the Libyan coast by non-governmental groups on Monday.
	They were among thousands of migrants, mostly Eritreans and Somalis, who piled into boats in Libya before dawn and traveled for several hours before being picked up.
	The babies were in an open wooden boat carrying about 650 people who were exposed to the sun and wind and who had no food or water, said Nicholas Papachrysostomou, the field coordinator of rescue operators on Dignity I, a Doctors Without Borders ..

Premature twins in hospital after rescue from boat off Libya

Eight years later, more athletes continue to be stripped of medals from the Beijing Olympics because of positive doping tests.
     Four athletes, including three Russians, had their medals taken away today after their doping samples from 2008 were retested and came back positive for banned drugs.
     A total of six athletes -- one runner and five weightlifters -- were sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee based on reanalysis of their samples with improved techniques. They were among the 98 positive cases recorded in the retesting of more than 1,000 samples from Beijing and the 2012 London Olympics.
     Russian runner Tatyana Firova was stripped of her silver medal in the women's 4x400-meter relay after testing positive for turinabol and a cocktail of other steroids, the IOC said. She also had her ninth-place finish in the individual 400 meters annulled.
     Russia had already been stripped of the relay medal earlier this month when another runner, Anastasia ...

4 athletes stripped of medals from 2008 Beijing Games

Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit a house in the northern city of Saada in the early hours today, killing at least 16 civilians, Yemen's rebel-controlled state news agency reported.
	The airstrikes were part of an ongoing air campaign led by Saudi Arabia that aims at dislodging Shiite rebels, known as the Houthis, from the Yemeni capital and northern regions of the country.
	They came as security and medical officials in southern Yemen said that the death toll from Monday's suicide bombing by the Islamic State group in Aden had risen to 72, marking the deadliest attack on the southern city this year.
	The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.
	IS claimed responsibility for the Monday attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated his pick-up truck among a crowd of pro-government military recruits.
	The recruits were signing up to join a new unit that Saudi Arabia hopes will ultimately be made up of 5,000 fighters.
	SABA ...

Yemeni rebels: 16 civilians killed in Saudi-led airstrikes

Poland has denied entry to a group of Chechens because the country is sealing its border to protect the nation and Europe against the threat of terrorism, its interior minister said today.
	Mariusz Blaszczak was commenting on Poland's refusal this week to admit some 200 Chechen migrants who were trying to cross the European Union's external border from Brest, Belarus.
	On Monday night, a group of Chechens camped in Brest protesting the denial to enter Poland and demanded to speak to Polish authorities, according to Poland-based Belsat TV.
	A spokesman for Poland's local Border Guard, Dariusz Sienicki, told The Associated Press that the group had returned to Belarus.
	Human rights groups say torture, abductions and extrajudicial executions have been widespread during the rule of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the Chechens say they aim to enter the EU through Poland to seek asylum.
	Most travel on to Germany or other western European countries.
	Speaking on Polish ..

Polish minister: We will not expose Poland to terrorism

The first commercial flight between the US and Cuba in more than a half century landed today in the central city of Santa Clara, re-establishing regular air service severed at the height of the Cold War.
	Cheers broke out in the cabin of JetBlue flight 387 as the plane touched down.
	Passengers - mostly airline executives, US government officials and journalists, with a sprinkling of Cuban-American families and US travelers - were given gift bags with Cuban cookbooks, commemorative luggage tags and Cuban flags, which they were encouraged to wave for the TV cameras at the tarmac.
	The arrival opens a new era of US-Cuba travel with about 300 flights a week connecting the US with an island cut off from most Americans by the 55-year-old trade embargo on Cuba and formal ban on US citizens engaging in tourism on the island.
	"Seeing the American airlines landing routinely around the island will drive a sense of openness, integration and normality. That has a huge psychological impact," said 

Historic commercial flight from US lands in Cuba

While the global economy will dominate at this weekend's summit of the Group of 20 industrialised and emerging-market nations, politics and security issues form the backdrop to the gathering of world leaders in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
	Terror attacks in Europe, the looming US presidential election and bloody ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq are among the issues making the world an uncertain and unsettling place.
	World leaders including President Barack Obama, his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are expected to take up such topics, either when gathering as a group on Sunday and Monday or during bilateral meetings held on the summit's fringes.
	Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country has grown closer to China following the imposition of Western economic sanctions, will be in attendance, along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French Prime Minister Francois Hollande and new British Prime Minister Theresa May.
	May will .

Political issues weigh on upcoming G-20 summit in China

A United Airlines flight bound for London made an emergency landing at Shannon Airport in Ireland today after severe turbulence that left 12 passengers needing hospital treatment, officials said.
	All but one of the injured had been discharged from University Hospital Limerick after receiving treatment for minor injuries, officials said. One patient was still being assessed.
	United Airlines Flight 880 originated in Houston and was supposed to land at London's Heathrow Airport.
	United said that "severe and unexpected turbulence" caused the diversion of the Boeing 767-300 plane, which was carrying 207 passengers, three cockpit crew members and 10 flight attendants.
	Shannon Airport officials initially said 16 people needed hospital care, but later indicated only 12 had been treated after the incident. Others received treatment for lesser injuries at the airport.
	The patients were treated for soft tissue injuries, cuts and minor head injuries, according to a hospital ...

Turbulence forces emergency landing in Ireland; 12 injured

Authorities say Frankfurt airport is fully reopened after a portion of Terminal 1 was evacuated when a person entered a secure area without undergoing required searches.
	Airport operator Fraport said in a Twitter message today that the airport was returning to normal operations after a disruption that lasted about two hours.
	All passengers were evacuated as a precaution and had to go through security controls again.
	Fraport said there were some delays caused by the incident and advised passengers to check with their airlines on the status of their flights.
	The dpa news agency reports police found no threats to security during their search of the terminal and have taken a woman into custody.

Frankfurt airport terminal reopens after security scare

When Pope Francis canonizes Mother Teresa on Sunday, he'll be honoring a nun who won admirers around the world and a Nobel Peace Prize for her joy-filled dedication to the "poorest of the poor."
	He'll also be recognising holiness in a woman who felt so abandoned by God that she was unable to pray and was convinced, despite her ever-present smile, that she was experiencing the "tortures of hell."
	For nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa endured what the church calls a "dark night of the soul" a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced, her namesake St. Therese of Lisieux included. In Mother Teresa's case, the dark night lasted most of her adult life, an almost unheard of trial.
	No one but Mother Teresa's spiritual directors and bishop knew of her spiritual agony until her correspondence came to light during her beatification cause. The letters were then made available to the general public in a 2007 book, "Come Be My Light."
	For the ...

Mother Teresa: A saint despite spiritual 'darkness'

North Korea has executed a vice premier and banished two other top officials to rural areas for re-education, South Korean officials said today.
	If confirmed, they would be the latest in a series of killings, purges and dismissals carried out since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011.
	North Korea is a closed, authoritarian country with a state-controlled press that often makes it difficult for outsiders, and even North Korean citizens, to know what's happening in the government.
	Rival South Korea, which runs several intelligence organizations mainly tasked with spying on North Korea, has a mixed record on reporting developments across the border. In May, a former North Korean military chief, who Seoul said had been executed, was found to be alive and holding several new senior-level posts.
	Jeong Joon Hee, a spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, told reporters Wednesday that Kim Yong Jin, a vice premier on education affairs in North Korea's cabinet, had ...

South Korea says top North Korean official executed

At least 11 people, including nine elderly people at a nursing home, were found dead today in Japan as heavy overnight rain from Typhoon Lionrock left towns flooded across the country's north.
	Police discovered the bodies in the town of Iwaizumi while checking another facility in the flooded neighborhood, said Takehiro Hayashijiri, an official at the Iwate prefecture disaster management division.
	The identity of the victims and other details, including the whereabouts of their caretakers, were not known, Hayashijiri said. Japanese public broadcaster NHK said the home was for people with dementia.
	NHK also reported that authorities have found two more bodies in another town in Iwate prefecture.
	Its footage showed the nursing home partially buried in mud, surrounded by debris apparently washed down from the mountains. A car by the home was turned upside down.
	"We're making a government-wide effort to assess the extent of damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told ...

At least 11 dead as Typhoon Lionrock floods northern Japan

For all of his victories during two decades on the tennis tour, including eight Grand Slam titles, Andre Agassi looks back most fondly these days on the aftermath of a loss.
     During an interview in the city where he played his last professional match 10 years ago, Agassi called the way he walked away from the sport as good a moment as he had on court during his lengthy, successful always-in-the-spotlight career on Sept. 3, 2006, Agassi lost a third-round match at the U.S. Open against Benjamin Becker, then delivered an on-court speech in Arthur Ashe Stadium to an adoring crowd that gave him a lengthy standing ovation as he headed into retirement.
     "It really brought together what it's all been about from the beginning, which is people and connection. And it put everything into perspective: the ups, the downs, the successes, the failures, the triumphs, the comebacks. I not only grew up in New York, but New York helped me grow up," the 46-year-old Agassi said.
     "So when all .

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