Suspected Taliban militants led a string of attacks on police and civilians across northern and eastern Afghanistan today, killing at least 14 people, security officials said.
	The violence reflects the militants' persistent campaign against Afghanistan's Western-backed government, which last month signed separate security agreements with the United States and NATO allowing over 10,000 foreign troops to train and advise Afghan forces after the international combat mission ends at the end of the year.
	In Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of the northern Balkh province, two gunmen dressed in police uniforms stormed into the province's police headquarters and opened fire, killing two officers, said Sher Jan Durani, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.
	Police intercepted the attackers at a second security gate inside the compound, and shot them dead, he said. Nine other policemen were wounded during the gun battle.
	Separately, Taliban attacked a police checkpoint in Monogai district of ..

Multiple attacks kill at least 14 in Afghanistan

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Tropical Storm Fay lashed Bermuda with heavy rain and fierce winds today morning, churning up rough surf as it brushed past the British island territory off the US coast.
	Fay was centered about 85 miles (140 kilometers) north-northeast of Bermuda today and moving north-northeast at 20 mph (31 kph). The storm had maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (110 kph) and gusts of up to 82 mph (132 kph).
	A tropical storm warning was in effect on Bermuda. The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said Fay was not expected to gain any more strength, but warned that hurricane conditions were still a possibility and islanders should stay alert.
	Fay was likely to pick up speed as the storm turned toward the northeast and moved away from Bermuda.
	The island was expected to receive up to 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain in some areas. Bermuda's government weather service warned that the storm would cause hazardous surf throughout today.
	Forecasters said a cold front was likely to absorb Fay ...

Tropical storm lashes Bermuda with rain, winds

The entire Ferrari team has sent a message of encouragement to Formula One driver Jules Bianchi, who is fighting for his life following an accident at the Japanese Grand Prix one week ago.
     The two drivers, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, flanked team chief Alberto Mattiacci, behind a sign reading "Forza Jules" (Go Jules).
     The gesture came on Sunday, shortly before the inaugural Russian Grand Prix.
     Bianchi suffered a severe head injury when his Marussia car skidded off the wet course at Suzuka and ploughed into a tractor recovering another car that crashed out at the same spot one lap earlier. His condition is critical.
     Bianchi, a Frenchman, drives for Marussia but is a member of Ferrari's young drivers academy.

Ferrari honors injured driver Bianchi

A weekend of peaceful daytime protests and nightly police standoffs is expected to continue today as organisers prepare for a wave of resistance they anticipate will lead to widespread, intentional arrests.
	Organisers of the four-day Ferguson October summit to protest the August police shooting death of Michael Brown are scheduled to train participants in nonviolent civil disobedience tactics Sunday morning.
	On Monday, a "direct action" led by local and visiting clergy members is planned for Ferguson and other places in and around St Louis. Protest leaders don't plan to release details until shortly ahead of time to avoid tipping off law enforcement.
	"We still are knee deep in this situation," said Kareem Jackson, a St Louis rap artist and community organiser. "We have not packed up our bags, we have not gone home. This is not a fly-by-night moment. This is not a made-for-TV revolution. This is real people standing up to a real problem and saying, 'We ain't taking it no ...

Police shooting protests continue in St Louis

An Iranian police airplane flying to the country's southeast has crashed, killing all seven people aboard, including a top police officer, the country's official news agency reported.
	The propeller Turbo Commander airplane crashed late yesterday in the mountains outside of the provincial capital of Zahedan and searchers later found the wreckage, IRNA reported. The agency said the flight carried four passengers and three crew members.
	Among those killed was Gen Mahmoud Sadeqi, a senior police officer in charge of investigations, IRNA reported.
	Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency says the plane took off from Tehran to head to southeastern Iran to investigate an incident involving an attack on police there, without elaborating.
	Authorities offered no immediate explanation for the crash, though Iranian airlines, including those run by the state, are chronically strapped for cash, rely on aging planes and have a spotty maintenance record.
	While some operate Boeing and Airbus models, .

Report: Iran police airplane crash kills 7

Iran's official news agency says a police airplane has crashed in the country's southeast and the fate of the seven people onboard remains unclear.
	The report late yesterday from IRNA said authorities found the wreckage of the propeller airplane outside the provincial capital of Zahedan in southeast Iran. IRNA reported that four passengers and three crew members were on the flight, without identifying them.
	IRNA identified the plane as a Turbo Commander.
	Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency says the plane took off from Tehran to head to southeastern Iran to investigate an incident involving an attack on police there.
	Iran has suffered a series of airplane crashes, blamed on its aging aircraft and poor maintenance. An airplane crash in August killed 39 people.

Report: Iran police airplane crashes in southeast

The "Queen of Jaffna," a once-popular train linking the ethnic Tamil's northern heartland to the rest of Sri Lanka before a bloody civil war cut the link 24 years ago, chugs back into service next week, reinforcing the government's authority in a region once controlled by Tamil rebels.
	For the old, it is a nostalgic piece of the Indian Ocean island's past. For the young, the train represents something novel and opens opportunities to explore the north. For the central government, the resumption of the "Yarl Devi," as it is known in Tamil, marks a step toward restoring national unity five years after the Tamil separatists were defeated.
	President Mahinda Rajapaksa will inaugurate service along the 400-kilometer (250-mile) route between Jaffna and Colombo, the capital, in a ceremony Monday. Rebuilding the railroad, stretches of which disappeared as rebels and residents used the rails and sleepers to build bunkers and houses, is one of the government's big infrastructure projects to ...

'Queen of Jaffna' to link Sri Lanka's north again

The Finnish Environment Institute says that Russian military ships have twice recently intercepted one of its research vessels in international waters in the Baltic Sea.
	The agency says that a Russian warship ordered the Aranda to change course east off the Swedish island of Gotland on August 2 through radio contact. A month later it was approached by a Russian helicopter and a military vessel.
	The institute said in a statement Saturday that in neither case did the Aranda change its course or speed and continued its research into marine samples in the area.
	It said that Swedish meteorological researchers were on the vessel during the incidents with a Finnish crew that felt intimidated by the Russian interference.
	No further information was immediately available.

Finland: Russia warships intercept research vessel

A woman who spent 17 years in prison for the death of a homeless man hugged her grandchild for the first time and did a dance of happiness after she was judged innocent of murder and freed.
	"I always knew that one day God would bring the truth to the light," Susan Marie Mellen, 59, told reporters yesterday, after she was released from a Torrance courthouse shortly before 6 PM.
	About eight hours earlier, a Los Angeles County judge overturned her conviction, saying that her attorney failed to properly represent her and that a woman who claimed she heard Mellen confess was a "habitual liar."
	"I believe she is innocent," Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold said. "For that reason I believe in this case the justice system failed."
	The courtroom burst into applause after his ruling.
	Based solely on witness testimony, Mellen was convicted of orchestrating the beating death of Richard Daly at a Lawndale home where Mellen and others lived.
	The mother of three was sentenced to life in prison .

Woman exonerated, freed after 17 years in prison

A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq's capital today killed 38 people in Shiite areas, authorities said, after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province.
	The attacks come as Iraq faces its greatest challenge since the 2011 withdraw of US troops, as militants from the Islamic State group now hold vast swaths of the country and neighboring Syria.
	Police officials said the first bombing happened tonight when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad's northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28.
	The second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in Shula district in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18, police said. The blast damaged several shops and cars.
	Also in Shula, police said a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed 18 people and wounded dozens others.
	Hospital officials confirmed ..

Car bombs kill 38 in Iraq's capital, Baghdad

Finance ministers from the world's largest economies today conveyed their determination to pursue policies that will prevent a slide into another global recession but at the same time expressed frustration that not all nations were pursuing the correct approaches.
	Speaking to the policy-setting panel of the 188-nation International Monetary Fund, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne took note of the recent downgrades to global growth forecasts and said there was a need "for further progress by policymakers to deliver a strong and sustainable global recovery."
	Brazil's Finance Minister, Guido Mantega, told the IMF group that the global recovery "continues to create a sense of disillusionment," and he said the IMF had demonstrated "an entrenched propensity to overstate prospects" for growth in the world's largest economies.
	In his remarks, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew pointedly complained that governments in Europe, Japan and China were failing to deliver needed ...

Finance ministers determined to sustain recovery

A suspected US drone strike in Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan killed two people, Pakistani intelligence said today, as a Taliban suicide bomber killed a police officer in the country's south.
	The drone strike struck near Margha, across the border from Pakistan's Datta Khel, a town in the North Waziristan tribal area where the US has carried out previous drone attacks targeting militants, the officials said.
	The Pakistani officials did not elaborate and Afghan officials did not immediately comment on the strike.
	The CIA typically carries out such strikes in Pakistan's tribal region and does not comment on the attacks, which have stirred anger in Pakistan over civilian casualties.
	The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to publicly brief journalists.
	Meanwhile, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform killed an officer and wounded three at the police headquarters in Lashkhar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, local police ...

Suspected US drone strike kills 2 in Afghanistan

A senior Iranian official has confirmed that his country and the US exchanged messages over the fight against the militant Islamic State group.
	Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian also was quoted today by Iranian media as saying Iran warned Washington that Israel's security will be at risk should the US and its allies seek to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad in the name of fighting the extremist group.
	Iran has backed Assad during Syria's three-year civil war.
	The US has called for Assad to resign and rules out cooperating with his government in the fight against the Islamic State group.
	Abdollahian's comments were the first time a senior Iranian official confirmed that Iran and the US had discussed fighting the Islamic State group.

Iran: Messages exchanged with US over militants

Two car bombs in Iraq's capital today killed 20 people in Shiite areas, authorities said, after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province.
	The attacks come as Iraq faces its greatest challenge since the 2011 withdraw of US troops, as militants from the Islamic State group now hold vast swaths of the country and neighboring Syria.
	Police officials said the first bombing happened tonight when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad's northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28.
	The second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18, police said.
	The blast damaged several shops and cars. Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures for the attacks.
	All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.
	Nobody claimed ..

Car bombs kill 20 in Iraq's capital, Baghdad

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today traveled to Libya's capital to back a UN-launched reconciliation process urging rival groups to resolve the bloody rift that has left their oil-rich North African nation deeply split with two separate parliaments and governments.
	Ban's visit is his second to Libya since the 2011 fall of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It comes after the UN launched a dialogue late last month to mediate between the warring Libyan groups.
	Libya witnessed a spasm of violence this summer when militias mainly from the western city of Misrata and groups allied to Islamists swept through the capital, backing a government appointed by the country's previous parliament.
	Meanwhile, Libya's newly elected parliament and government backed by non-Islamists, driven out of the capital, have been meeting in the country's east.
	In a televised session attended by Ban, as well rival politicians and European diplomats, the UN Special Representative for Libya Bernardino Leon ...

UN's Ban arrives in Libya amid militia violence

More than 20,000 Kurdish immigrants have protested in Germany against the Islamic State group.
	Police said the demonstration today in the western German city of Duesseldorf was peaceful with people marching through the city's downtown area and waving large Kurdish flags.
	The protesters are seeking to draw attention to the Islamic State group's onslaught against the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria.
	Similar protests last week turned violent in some German cities when Kurds clashed with supporters of a hard-line Islamic movement.
	Around 1 million Kurds live in Germany. Most of them immigrated in the 1960s when Germany was recruiting guest workers from Turkey.

20,000 Kurds protest against IS in Germany

Chinese authorities have arrested a leading scientist in transgene biology on the charge of swindling state scientific research funds, the government said.
	Li Ning, a professor at China Agricultural University and a member of the elite Chinese Academy of Engineering, was suspected of swindling state funds in his research project on the cultivation of new transgene biological species, the Ministry of Science and Technology said yesterday.
	His arrest came after national audits found seven professors from five universities obtained research funds of more than 25 million yuan (USD 4.08 million) through false means.
	The ministry said two of them have been convicted and sentenced to prison. It said another two professors and a doctoral student also have been arrested.
	Academic corruption is prevalent in China's universities and research institutes, where plagiarism, bribery for promotion and misuse of government funds are common.
	After visiting Fudan University in Shanghai earlier this 

China arrests scientist for alleged fund-swindling

The governor of Iraq's Salahuddin province says a journalist from a local television network has been killed by the Islamic State group.
	Governor Raed Ibrahim says Raad al-Azzawi, who was a cameraman for Iraq's Salahuddin Television, was killed by militants on Friday in the city of Tikrit. Ibrahim said he wasn't able to provide any further details.
	The Islamic State group, which holds large swaths of land stretching across the Iraq-Syria border, has beheaded a number of journalists in Syria, saying the killings are in retaliation to US-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
	Reporters Without Borders said last month that the militants had threatened to execute al-Azzawi, a father of three, for refusing to join the Sunni militant group.
	The media watchdog said al-Azzawi was abducted on September 7.

Islamic State group kills Iraqi TV journalist

Liberia's United Nations peacekeeping mission says 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, are under "close medical observation" after an international member of its medical team contracted Ebola.
	The mission said in a statement late last night that the measures were precautionary and that none of the staff members had shown signs of Ebola.
	The staffers were identified via contact tracing and will be observed for 21 days, which the World Health Organisation says is the maximum incubation period.
	The member of the medical team, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed, was diagnosed on Monday and arrived in Germany on Thursday for treatment, the third Ebola patient to be flown there.
	It is the second case of a UN staffer contracting Ebola in Liberia. The first died on September 26.

Liberia: 41 UN staffers under Ebola observation

The White House made a public push to defend President Bill Clinton during a series of investigations related to his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and other matters, according to thousands of pages of documents released by the National Archives.
	The papers did not appear to reveal any new information that might affect a potential Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign in 2016.
	The documents, part of 10,000 pages of records from the Clinton administration released yesterday, focused on a number of painful chapters in the former first lady's time in the White House and described how the president's aides sought to defend her husband against impeachment.
	The possibility of a presidential campaign has heightened interest in the documents by media organisations, political opposition researchers and historians.
	Many records involving Lewinsky are redacted. Behind the scenes, Clinton officials were adamant that they were not trying to discredit her.
	"There is no evidence ...

Documents show how White House defended Clinton

Hundreds of demonstrators stood within touching distance from officers in riot gear late yesterday before dissipating at the start of protests over the 2-month-old death of Michael Brown that activists say was racially motivated.
	Organisers of the four-day Ferguson October events expected 6,000 participants. The initial protest yesterday outside a St. Louis County prosecutor's office didn't draw nearly that amount.
	Later, tensions increased, with protesters outside the Ferguson Police Department chanting anti-police remarks such as, "How many kids did you kill today?"
	A wall of about 100 officers in riot gear stood near them. The St. Louis County Police Department announced that it would arrest anyone who touched an officer.
	Most of the crowd soon left, with organisers urging people to avoid arrest so that they could come back for more protests throughout the weekend.
	Protesters renewed their call for prosecutor Bob McCulloch to charge Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson officer, in .

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