Authorities in southern Switzerland say a woman and her 3-year-old daughter were killed when a landslide swept over their house.
	Zurich daily 20 Minuten reported on its website that crews found the body of the 31-year-old woman and her child buried in the rubble of their home in a remote area near Lugano early today.
	Police, firefighters and other rescue crews using search dogs had searched overnight in the hope of finding the two alive after the landslide yesterday evening.

Woman, child killed in Swiss landslide

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Opposition leaders and members of civil society met today in Burkina Faso to establish ground rules for a transitional government and what they expect from its leader.
	The desperately poor West African country's president of 27 years, Blaise Compaore, resigned last week amid mounting opposition to his bid to seek yet another term in office. Compaore never identified a potential successor and his departure created a power vacuum that the military has filled, at least temporarily.
	International envoys are pressing Burkina Faso to quickly designate a civilian leader for a transitional period until new elections can be held, and the African Union has threatened sanctions if that doesn't happen soon.
	Talks yesterday failed to designate a leader, but diplomats said some progress had been made: All sides have agreed that the transition should last one year and elections should be held in November 2015.
	"I believe that in days, rather than in weeks, we will be able to reach an agreement ..

Burkina Faso leaders meet to discuss transition

Pro-democracy protesters clashed with police in Hong Kong early today for the first time in more than two weeks as pressure grows on demonstrators to abandon more than a month and a half of street occupations.
	The skirmishes lasted for about four hours in the bustling Mong Kok neighborhood, the most turbulent of three protest sites that have snarled swaths of the city.
	Police said they attempted to arrest a man who was shining his cellphone light into officers' eyes, and demonstrators responded by surging at police lines.
	The two sides ended up in a tense standoff, with several protesters taunting police.
	At about 2:30 AM local time, protesters charged again at police lines and flooded into a street. Officers responded with pepper spray and pushed the crowd back into their camp.
	Police said they arrested three people in the confrontations, which left at least one protester bleeding from the head.
	Several demonstrators arrived in Mong Kok wearing masks with the grinning likeness .

Democracy protesters clash with Hong Kong police

Facebook is stepping up its efforts to fight Ebola by adding a button designed to make it easier for its users to donate to charities battling the disease.
	The social media company is also deploying 100 satellite communication terminals to boost Internet and phone services to affected areas in West Africa, where the disease has killed nearly 5,000.
	The programmes come on the heels of a USD 25 million donation last month by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toward the Ebola response.
	Facebook Inc says that, over the coming week, its users will see an option to donate to three nonprofits fighting Ebola.
	The groups are the International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Save the Children. Facebook says it chose charities that work directly on the ground and are able to accept money globally.
	In addition, the Menlo Park, California, is donating terminals that ...

Facebook launches Ebola charity donation button

Israel's prime minister has emphasized there will be no change in the status of a contentious Jerusalem holy site amid spiking tensions in the area.
	The statement by Benjamin Netanyahu came a day after a Hamas militant slammed a minivan into a crowd waiting for a train in Jerusalem, killing one person and wounding 13 before being shot dead by police, and a Palestinian motorist drove into a group of soldiers in the West Bank, wounding three.
	The second motorist turned himself into Israeli security forces today, the army said.
	The attacks came after Palestinians clashed with police at the holy compound -- known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims -- over a push by Israeli activists to widen access to Jews visiting the site.
	The clashes, which erupted as Palestinians threw stones and firecrackers in response to a demonstration by Israeli activists, prompted Jordan -- which has custodial rights to the site as part of its 1994 peace agreement with Israel -- ..

Israel: No change at Jerusalem holy site

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is in Kabul on an unannounced trip to visit troops and meet with the country's new leaders.
	Stoltenberg, who took over as the head of the Western alliance on Oct 1, visited a training center for Afghan special forces today, where he told Afghan troops that NATO will continue its support once its combat forces withdraw at the end of the year.
	NATO and the United States are withdrawing combat forces from Afghanistan at the end of the year, after 13 years of fighting the Taliban insurgency.
	A residual force of up to 12,000 US and NATO forces will remain to provide training and backup for Afghan forces.
	Afghanistan has a total of 350,000 security forces.

NATO leader visits Afghanistan

A former Navy SEAL who wrote a book describing the raid that killed Osama bin Laden sued his former lawyers for malpractice, saying they gave him bad advice that tarnished his reputation, cost him his US security clearance and caused him to surrender much of the book's income to the government.
	Using the pseudonym "Mark Owen" that he published the book under, Matt Bissonnette filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan. His 2012 book, "No Easy Day," prompted a Pentagon inquiry that evolved into a criminal probe by the Justice Department.
	Bissonnette seeks unspecified compensatory damages, saying his losses will amount to at least USD 8 million after he agreed to surrender most of the book's proceeds. He said he also will lose consulting jobs, speaking engagements and future employment.
	Named as defendants were attorney Kevin Podlaski and the Carson Boxberger LLC firm in Indiana. Messages seeking comment were not immediately returned.
	Bissonnette said he acted on the advice of .

Author of bin Laden book sues ex-attorneys

Pope Francis today denounced the hardships Catholics can face when seeking marriage annulments, revealing he once fired an official who tried to charge thousands of dollars for one.
	Francis told participants at a Vatican course for officials dealing with annulments that as bishop of Buenos Aires, he was dismayed to learn that some faithful needed to travel hundreds of kilometers and lose days of work to reach church tribunals.
	He also recalled sacking an unidentified church tribunal official, possibly a lawyer, who told someone: "Give me USD 10,000 and I'll take care" of the annulment process.
	"One must be careful that the procedures don't become a business," Francis said.
	The Vatican teaches that matrimony is a sacrament and forbids divorce. Many Catholics wanting to end their marriages seek annulments, a church ruling their union was invalid and thus, essentially, never existed.
	Possible reasons include a spouse who never intended to be faithful or who was psychologically too ..

Pope mulls removing marriage annulment charges

A health care millionaire who fatally drugged her developmentally disabled son in a luxury New York hotel has been convicted of manslaughter.
	Gigi Jordan was charged with murder, but jurors today convicted her of the lesser charge.
	Jordan's lawyers argue she was overcome by emotion when she killed the 8-year-old boy, Jude Mirra, and tried to kill herself in February 2010.
	The medical entrepreneur left her career to seek treatment for her son. He was initially considered autistic, though she has said other diagnoses followed.
	Prosecutors say Jordan deliberately killed her son because she couldn't handle his disabilities.
	Jordan's lawyers say she acted out of fear that her life was in danger and that her son would be left susceptible to abuse.

NY mom guilty of manslaughter in son's death

The Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth some believe covered Jesus, will go back on public display next year.
	Pope Francis said today he will go to that northern Italian city on June 21 to view that 4.3-meter-long cloth, which is kept in a climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral.
	As during the last display in 2010, reservations are required for the April 19-June 24 viewing but there is no charge.
	Papal predecessor Benedict XVI has described the cloth as an icon "written with the blood" of a crucified man, but did not dive into scientific questions.
	Skeptics say the linen bearing the figure of a crucified man is medieval forgery.
	Turin Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia has called the shroud both "reality and deep mystery" to which science hasn't given "concrete answers.

Pope to go to Turin to view burial shroud icon

Five years after Britain ended its combat mission in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence says it is sending more troops to train Iraqi and Kurdish fighters battling IS militants.
	Last month a small British military team went to Irbil in northern Iraq to train Kurdish peshmerga forces.
	Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said today that Britain would be "putting in more training people to help at the training centres across the country, not just in the Kurdish areas."
	He didn't reveal the number of troops involved.
	The new deployment advances Britain's role in Iraq, which also includes airstrikes against the Islamic State group.
	The government says it will not send British combat troops. Some 179 British personnel died in Iraq between the US-led 2003 invasion and the British withdrawal in 2009.

Britain sending more troops to train Iraqis

Authorities in Haiti say 12 people have died so far as a result of heavy rains unleashed by a cluster of storms in the northern Caribbean.
	The mayor of the northern city of Cap-Haitien said today that four additional bodies have been found, adding to eight known earlier.
	Yvon Alteon said some 5,000 people are in shelters and that flooding at the airport forced the cancellation of several flights.
	Heavy flooding also was reported in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, where dozens of families were evacuated. A high surf advisory was in effect for the region.
	The National Hurricane Center in Miami said a surface low pressure system could form later today or tomorrow as it moves northwestward. It is not expected to strengthen.

Heavy rains kill 12 in Haiti, cause flooding

An official says a damaged water pipe has forced the closure of two of the four nuclear reactors at a Czech power plant.
	Petr Spilka, a spokesman for the Dukovany plant, says the decision poses no safety threat.
	He said the problem arose Monday on one of the three pipes used for cooling the plant's technical and security systems.
	He said today that authorities decided to shut down two nuclear reactors because it was not able to fix the problem in three days, a requirement of safety regulations.
	The two remaining reactors at the plant have not been affected.
	It is not immediately clear how much time it will take to fix the problem.

Malfunction closes 2 Czech nuclear reactors

Ukraine will freeze budget subsidies for the eastern territories controlled by pro-Russian separatists, the prime minister today announced a move that could worsen the already grievous economic conditions there.
	Aging industrial operations in Ukraine's economically depressed but coal-rich east have for many years relied heavily on state subsidies.
	Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a government meeting that USD 2.6 billion in state support will be held back from rebel-held areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
	He did not say what time period that subsidy figure represented.
	Yatsenyuk said the payment of pensions and government benefits to residents in conflict-stricken parts of the east will resume after separatist forces have surrendered there.
	The government has not been paying pensions in those areas for several months, but has said back payments will be paid to recipients when the rebels move out.
	Ukraine's government has blamed Russia for fomenting the last six ...

Ukraine to halt subsidies to rebel-held areas

Marijuana activists who have longed for decades to end America's drug war celebrated more major victories with Oregon and the US capital approving recreational pot use.
	The advocates believed they also have another win, too, in Alaska, as a legal pot measure held a steady lead.
	The only major loss for drug-law reformers came in Florida and even there, a medical marijuana proposal earned 58 per cent just shy of the 60 per cent required to pass.
	As Republicans swept to power in the Senate, the results emboldened marijuana activists as they prepare legalisation efforts in California, Massachusetts, Maine and other states in the next presidential election year.
	"We're starting work right now for 2016," said Joe Brezny, who's leading a campaign to legalise marijuana in Nevada. "The other side is in trouble if we're doing this well in a Republican midterm year."
	Legalisation opponent Kevin Sabet called the votes "a bit of a wake-up call before 2016," noting that drug policy groups had .

US state of Oregon votes to legalise marijuana

Mortar shells struck a school east of Damascus today, killing at least 11 children, said activists, and the death toll was likely to rise.
	It was the most serious violence against Syrian minors since a twin suicide bombing killed at least 25 children near a school in October.
	The children of the Haya School in the town of Qaboun were struck by three mortars, said a local activist who uses the name Abu Akram al-Shami.
	Another local activist, Amar al-Hassan, based near Damascus, also confirmed the incident, as did Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights.
	Abdurrahman said 11 children were confirmed killed, but the number was likely to rise because of the seriousness of many of the children's wounds.
	One woman screamed as she beat her chest in grief and shock. "My son, my son!" she wept, in a video uploaded of the incident.
	Another showed at least five boys bloodied and lying lifeless on the ground of what appeared to a medical faculty.
	The videos .

Mortar fire on Syria school kills 11 children

The United States and other countries today slammed the human rights situation in Egypt at a United Nations meeting reviewing the country's record for the first time since the 2011 ouster of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
	The blistering criticism came as human rights groups said that conditions in Egypt have worsened in recent years, rather than improved, and warned that their work to highlight abuses is becoming increasingly difficult.
	"We are deeply concerned with steps taken by Egypt that have resulted in violations of freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association, deprived thousands of Egyptians of fair trial guarantees, and undermined civil society's role in the country," US Ambassador Keith Harper told the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.
	Harper called for the release of political prisoners and urged Egypt to "investigate excessive use of force by security forces, publicly release findings, and prosecute those identified as being responsible."
	Hundreds of .

US slams Egypt's human rights record at UN meeting

Nearly everyone agrees that texting and driving is dangerous. Most people do it anyway.
	In a new survey, 98 per cent of motorists who own cellphones and text regularly said they were aware of the dangers, yet three-quarters of them admitted to texting while driving, despite laws against it in some states.
	Two-thirds said they have read text messages while stopped at a red light or stop sign, while more than a quarter said they have sent texts while driving.
	More than a quarter of the texting drivers believed they "can easily do several things at once, even while driving."
	The telephone survey of 1,004 US adults was released today by AT&T Inc as part of an anti-texting-and-driving campaign. AT&T designed the survey with David Greenfield, founder of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and a professor at the University of Connecticut's School of Medicine.
	The survey came as AT&T expanded availability of a free app that silences text message alerts and ...

Survey finds people text and drive knowing dangers

A South Korean court convicted three relatives of the sunken ferry's owner and other associates for corruption today, about four months after the tycoon was found dead on the run.
	The body of fugitive billionaire Yoo Byung-eun was discovered in rural South Korea in July after a weekslong manhunt.
	Authorities allege his corruption likely contributed to the ferry sinking in April that killed more than 300 people.
	They say Yoo controlled the ferry operator through a complex web of holding companies in which his children and close associates are large shareholders.
	Today, Yoo's eldest son, Yoo Dae-gyun, was sentenced to three years in prison over embezzlement and breach of trust, according to Incheon District Court spokesman Jang Joon Ah.
	Two brothers of Yoo Byung-eun were convicted of similar corruption charges. One brother got a two-year prison term and the other was sentenced to one year in prison but his sentence was suspended for two years, Jang said.
	Ten of the late tycoon's ..

Son, brothers of S Korean ferry owner convicted

Six years after the onset of the financial crisis, ING Group NV says it is ready to repay the Dutch state the last of a 10 billion-euro ( USD 13 billion) bailout.
	European Union authorities ordered the bank and insurer split to compensate for the competitive advantage of having a taxpayer-funded backstop in 2008. ING Group now comprises ING Bank NV, and its former insurance arm NN Group, which is held as a discontinued operation.
	ING reported "underlying" third-quarter profits of 1.12 billion euros today, up from 820 million euros in the same period a year ago. The figure strips out one-time charges and NN Group results. NN operating profit was up 16 per cent to 274 million euros.
	ING Group CEO Ralph Hamers thanked its customers and the state for their support.

6 years later, ING to pay back Dutch state

Mexican football got a boost in September when former Brazil and Barcelona star Ronaldinho, a two-time FIFA player of the year, joined modest local club Queretaro.
     The upbeat mood didn't last long. Even before he had played his first match, he was the subject of a racist attack, the kind that has become common for black soccer players across Europe.
     Mexico has a history of racism on the pitch. But it was largely overlooked until the arrival of Ronaldinho. Racism in Europe often involves white against black.
     But in Mexico and other parts of Latin America that have mixed-race societies, it can involve dark-skinned people shouting insults at other dark-skinned people.
     Carlos Trevino, a former official of the Queretaro state government, launched an attack on Ronaldinho on his Facebook page before the Brazilian had played a single game. He had only just arrived in town, causing minor pandemonium, when Trevino exploded.
     "Seriously, I try to be tolerant, but I hate ..

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