Sarah Kemp Brady, who became an activist for gun control after her husband was shot in the head in the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, has died.
	Brady, 73, died yesterday in a retirement community in Alexandria, Virginia, after battling pneumonia, family members said in an email.
	Brady's husband, former White House Press Secretary James Brady, died Aug 4, also at the age of 73.
	The 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan by John Hinckley Jr left James Brady partially paralysed.
	Four years later, Sarah Brady became involved in gun control. She chaired Handgun Control Inc, which was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as a tribute to the Bradys. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was signed into law in 1993 by President Bill Clinton.
	"Sarah courageously stepped up after Jim was shot to prevent others from enduring what our family has gone through, and her work has saved countless lives," the family's statement said.
	"Sarah was a voice of ...

Gun-control activist and widow of James Brady dies at 73

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Pope Francis, presiding at the traditional Good Friday Colosseum procession, decried what he called the "complicit silence" about the killing of Christians.
	The evening, torch-lit ceremony at the ancient arena recalls the suffering and death of Jesus by crucifixion.
	After listening silently, often with head bowed and eyes tightly shut, to reflections read aloud about Jesus' suffering, Francis pressed what lately has been an urgent concern of his papacy -- the present-day martyrdom of Christians in parts of the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.
	"We see, even today, our brothers persecuted, beheaded and crucified, for their faith in you, in front of our eyes or often with our complicit silence," he said, as he prayed.
	A few hours earlier, Francis had condemned the deadly attack by Islamic militants targeting Christians at a Kenyan university. Earlier this year he denounced the murder in Libya of 21 Coptic Christians by Islamic State-affiliated militants, saying they were slain ...

Pope presides over Good Friday procession at Colosseum

A woman has been arrested on charges she tried to join and martyr herself for the Islamic State group, a day after two women in New York were charged with plotting to wage jihad by building a bomb and using it for a Boston Marathon-type attack.
	Keonna Thomas, 30, was preparing to fly to Spain with hopes of reaching Syria to fight with the terror group, authorities said.
	Instead, she was arrested yesterday at her family's town house in a public housing development, which has three small US flags adorning the porch.
	Authorities said she communicated with an Islamic State group fighter in Syria who asked if she wanted to be part of a martyrdom operation. She told the fighter that the opportunity "would be amazing, ... A girl can only wish," according to the documents.
	A federal magistrate ordered Thomas held pending a detention hearing Wednesday. Prosecutors will oppose bail. Last month, Thomas bought a ticket to fly to Barcelona on March 29. She likely planned to take a bus to ...

US woman accused of trying to join, martyr self for IS group

A California appeals court says yoga taught in San Diego County schools doesn't violate religious freedom.
	The 4th District Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a trial court ruling that rejected a lawsuit by parents who tried to block Encinitas schools from teaching yoga.
	The court says that while yoga may be religious in some contexts, there's no evidence the programme at Encinitas Union School District has religious, mystical or spiritual trappings.
	The lawsuit was brought by parents of two students who claimed the practice promoted Hinduism and inhibited Christianity.
	The school district says the practice is taught in a secular way to promote strength, flexibility and balance.
	Yoga is now taught at schools across the country, though it is often part of an after-school programme.

Appeals court: Yoga doesn't bend rules on religious freedom

Romania's intelligence agency says a Bucharest court has ruled that six foreigners have been banned from the country due to their links with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
	The Romanian Intelligence Service said late yesterday that a court has declared the six "undesirable" and banned them from Romania for three to six years. It said the six were working for companies with foreign capital and had been under surveillance since 2013.
	It said the six "maintained and developed links with terrorist elements outside the country," promoting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and recruiting people for ideological and military purposes.
	It did not specify whether they had already been expelled. One was a Tunisian national. There was no information about the others.

Romanian court bans 6 foreigners due to al-Qaeda links

Two suburban Chicago men have been indicted on charges accusing them of plotting a terrorist attack on an Illinois military facility.
	Hasan Edmonds is a 22-year-old member of the Illinois Army National Guard. He and his 29-year-old cousin, Jonas Edmonds, were arrested last month for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq.
	The indictment was filed Thursday in US District Court and announced yesterday. Prosecutors say the two men will be arraigned April 8. The men are US citizens and residents of Aurora.
	Prosecutors allege Hasan Edmonds sent Internet messages vowing to "cause as much...Mayhem as possible." The alleged plan was for him to travel abroad to join Islamic State fighters while his older cousin attacked a military installation in Illinois.

Chicago-area cousins indicted in alleged terrorist plot

As Islamic State group militants advanced toward this monastery perched on a mountain in northern Iraq, the monks rushed to protect a cherished piece of their heritage: Their library of centuries-old Christian manuscripts.
	Dozens of the handwritten tomes were spirited to safety in nearby Kurdish-ruled areas.
	There they remain, hidden in a non-descript apartment in the Kurdish city of Dohuk where Christians who have fled the extremists' onslaught are living and watching over them.
	The Associated Press was allowed rare access to the library, a collection of copies of Bibles and biblical commentaries, mostly written in Syriac a form of the ancient Semitic Aramaic language and mostly dating back 400-500 years.
	The oldest is a copy of the letters of Saint Paul, some 1,100 years old. The bound tomes, some with tattered pages written in black and red ink, lay on shelves.
	Their rescue is a bright spot in the devastating onslaught by the Sunni extremists against Iraq's people - ...

In Iraq, a historic Christian library saved from militants

The Islamic extremists who slaughtered 148 people at a college in northeast Kenya as they shouted "God is great" appeared to have planned extensively, even targeting a site where Christians had gone to pray, survivors said today.
	In the capital of Nairobi, relatives of the victims went to a morgue where some bodies had been airlifted from the campus of Garissa University College in eastern Kenya.
	Screaming and crying family members were assisted by Red Cross staffers, who tried to console them.
	The attack was the worst in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy by al-Qaida that killed more than 200 people.
	Yesterday's assault in Garissa was carried out by militants of the Somalia-based extremist group al-Shabab. The organization has struck the country several times in recent years, but this attack was the deadliest.
	Some Kenyans were angry that the government didn't take sufficient security precautions. The attack came six days after Britain advised "against all but ...

Kenya attack survivor says gunmen had scouted the campus

Six paintings by French impressionist painter Claude Monet are among the stars heading for New York City's spring art auctions.
	Sotheby's says together they could bring USD 78 million to USD 110 million at its May 5 sale of impressionist and modern art.
	A 1905 example from Monet's "Water Lilies" series that's been in private hands since 1955 is estimated to bring USD 30 million to USD 45 million.
	A 1908 painting of Venice has a pre-sale estimate of USD 15 million to USD 20 million. The Nazis had confiscated the painting but the son of noted collector Jakob Goldschmidt got it back in 1960. It is now being sold from the collection of his late grandson.
	Last year, Sotheby's sold 18 Monets for USD 190.5 million. Five others sold in London in February for USD 83.8 million.

6 Monet paintings to be auctioned, could fetch up to USD 110M

Iran and six world powers have reached a preliminary nuclear agreement outlining commitments by both sides as they work for a comprehensive deal aiming at curbing nuclear activities Tehran could use to make weapons and providing sanctions relief for Iran.
	A look at the main points of the yesterday's agreement released by the US State Department on behalf of the six powers negotiating with Iran at the talks Iran, the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany to be implemented by June 30 as part of a comprehensive agreement:
	Centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium to levels ranging from uses in energy, medicine and science to weapons-grade used in nuclear warheads.
	Iran says it is enriching only for peaceful purposes and now has nearly 20,000 of the machines set up at Natanz, its main site, with almost 10,000 enriching.
	The June deal aims at restricting the number of centrifuges standing to 6,104, and those running to 5,060. All will be mainstay IR-1- models, Iran's ...

A glance at commitments under preliminary Iran nuke deal

An Afghan official says a roadside bombing has killed seven people in a province east of Kabul.
	Din Mohammad Darwish, spokesman for the Logar provincial governor, says the attack happened today morning in Baraki Barak district when a vehicle that two families were riding in struck a roadside bomb.
	Darwish blamed the Taliban for planting the bomb. He says four women, two children and a man were among the dead.
	No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but roadside bombs have been a weapon of choice for Taliban insurgents for many years.
	They are often used to target officials and members of the security forces but also kill many civilians.

Roadside bomb kills 7 Afghans east of Kabul

A burglar in a small town in Siberia has broken into a house and left his photograph with a note of apology.
	The burglar in Prokopyevsk, about 3,100 kilometres east of Moscow, picked the lock on the front door and stole a chain saw as well as several blocks of cigarette packs, the Interior Ministry's department in the Kemerovo region said today.
	The owner of the house found a photo of the burglar lying on the desk with a handwritten note on the back which said: "I'm going to give myself up today. Please forgive me. I hate myself for this."
	Police eventually found the man who turned out to be a 26-year-old local resident with multiple convictions for burglaries.
	The police did not say when the burglary happened.

A burglar in Siberia leaves his photo, note of apology

Palestinian officials and activists say Islamic State militants are battling against armed groups inside a refugee camp in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and have made new advances inside the camp.
	The militants stormed the Yarmouk camp on Wednesday, marking the extremist group's deepest foray yet into Damascus.
	They were expelled yesterday but officials said they re-entered the camp today.
	One Palestinian official, Khaled Abdul-Majid, said the group is in control of half of the camp. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported new advances by the group in the camp.
	Abdul-Majid and another official, Anwar Raja, said the militants are fighting a Palestinian faction called Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis.

IS militants battle armed groups in Syria refugee camp

The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings flight repeatedly sped up the plane as he used the automatic pilot to descend the A320 into the Alps, the French air accident investigation agency said today.
	The chilling new detail from the BEA agency is based on an initial reading of the plane's "black box" data recorder, found blackened and buried at the crash site yesterday.
	It strengthens investigators' initial suspicions that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally destroyed the plane -- though prosecutors are still trying to figure out why.
	All 150 people aboard Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf were killed in the March 24 crash.
	The BEA said the preliminary reading of the data recorder shows that the pilot used the automatic pilot to put the plane into a descent and then repeatedly during the descent adjusted the automatic pilot to speed up the plane.
	The agency says it will continue studying the black box for more complete details of what happened. The Flight Data Recorder ...

French investigators: Co-pilot accelerated plane on descent

Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi says the military will begin arresting and prosecuting anyone who loots abandoned properties in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit.
	Saddam Hussein's hometown was recaptured by Iraqi forces Wednesday, ending a nearly 10-month occupation by the Islamic State militant group.
	Most of the city's homes remain abandoned and cases of looting from homes and businesses were reported within hours of the military victory.
	In a statement today, al-Abadi said security forces must ensure that normalcy is restored quickly so that the city's residents can return to their homes.

Iraqi premier orders prosecution for looters in Tikrit

Hundreds of fishermen raced to be rescued today from the isolated Indonesian island where an Associated Press investigation found that many were enslaved to catch seafood that could end up in the US and elsewhere.
	Indonesian officials probing labor abuses told the migrant workers they were allowing them to leave for another island by boat out of concern for their safety.
	More than 300 fishermen emerged from nearby trawlers, villages and even the jungle to make the trip.
	"I will go see my parents," said Win Win Ko, 42, smiling to reveal a mouth full of missing teeth. "They haven't heard from me, and I haven't heard from them since I left."
	He left impoverished Myanmar four years ago on the promise of getting a good job in neighbouring Thailand, but like many others stranded in the island village of Benjina, he was instead duped into getting on a fishing boat that took him thousands of miles from home with no return.
	He said his four teeth were kicked out by a Thai boat captain's ..

Hundreds of fishermen rescued amid Indonesian slavery probe

Families of the hostages of a radical gunman who killed four in a kosher supermarket are suing a French broadcaster over its live coverage of the attack, saying it put the hostages' lives in danger.
	Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said today that a preliminary investigation has been opened into the coverage by BFM television.
	France's broadcast watchdog reprimanded BFM and several other television and radio stations for their coverage of the market hostage-taking and attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January.
	BFM and other broadcasters notably revealed in live reports that hostages were hiding in the kosher market. The watchdog and the families' lawyers say that could have endangered the hostages if the gunman found.
	BFM would not immediately comment today.

Hostages' families sue TV over Paris terror attack coverage

Iran's hard-liners are criticizing a tentative nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, saying the deal was a bargain for the West and a disaster for Iran.
	Hossein Shariatmadari, an advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and editor of the hard-line Kayhan daily told the semi-official Fars news agency today that Iran exchanged its "ready-to-race horse with a broken bridle."
	Another conservative analyst, Mahdi Mohammad, referred to the Fordo underground uranium enrichment facility and told the news outlet that under the deal, "A disaster happened in Fordo."
	Iran agreed to stop enrichment at Fordo, changing the facility to a nuclear research center. The proposed deal limits Iran's nuclear program in return for an end to crippling economic sanctions.

Iranian hardliners criticize nuclear deal

A passenger boat overloaded with 55 people and heavy cargo has capsized in the southern Philippines, leaving at least five dead and one missing.
	Coast guard spokesman William Arquero said today it was unclear if more are missing because the unregistered vessel left Jolo island for nearby Tapul island without inspection and clearance from authorities. Also on board were 100 bags of cement and assorted cargo.
	Arquero says 14 survivors rescued by three passing boats were brought to a hospital while an unknown number of survivors were taken to Tapul.
	He says that according to survivors, the boat left Jolo at 9 a.M. (local time) yesterday and capsized some two hours later. The coast guard learned of the incident last evening.

Boat capsizes in Philippines; at least 5 dead, 1 missing

An Indonesian court has sentenced a Canadian teacher and an Indonesian teaching assistant to 10 years in jail on charges of sexually abusing three young children at a prestigious international school.
	The South Jakarta District Court convicted Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong yesterday of violating Indonesia's Child Protection Law and Criminal Code.
	Bantleman, who was arrested last July, pleaded innocent to the charges that he sexually abused three kindergartners at the Jakarta Intercultural School. He said he would appeal the verdict.
	"Today is completely a miscarriage of justice," Bantleman said. "I'll keep fighting."
	The three-judge panel also ordered Bantleman, 45, to pay a fine of approximately USD 7,700 or serve six more months in jail.
	"The defendant has deliberately committed violence and obscene acts," the judges said in their verdict.
	The parents of one of the children have sued the school for alleged negligence and are seeking USD 125 million in compensation.
	The .

Indonesia sentences 2 teachers to 10 years for child rape

A mother charged in the slayings of two of her children whose bodies were found in the deep freezer at their Detroit home will undergo psychiatric exams, a judge said at a probable cause hearing today.
	Mitchelle Blair, 35, was also arraigned on two counts each of felony murder, premeditated murder and torture.
	Court officers conducting a March 24 eviction at Blair's eastside apartment discovered the frozen corpses of 13-year-old Stoni Ann Blair and 9-year-old Stephen Gage Berry beneath plastic in the freezer.
	State officials will conduct forensic tests to establish whether Blair is competent to stand trial. Her attorney also requested an independent psychiatric evaluation to discover if she is competent to stand trial and if she was competent to waive her Miranda rights before investigators say she confessed.
	Judge Kenneth King granted the independent evaluation which Wayne County would fund but said that it seemed "wasteful" because "there is a good chance a forensic examination .

AP

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