A beauty queen has been jailed on charges she faked having leukemia to benefit from fundraisers, and will be stripped of her title.
	Online court records show 23-year-old Brandi Lee Weaver-Gates, of State College, was arraigned yesterday on charges of theft by deception and receiving stolen property. State police say an April bingo benefit raised USD 14,000 for the Miss Pennsylvania pageant winner.
	Police are asking the public to come forward if they have donated money to her.
	Butler's Beauties, the company that sponsors the pageant, says in a Facebook page statement that it was also "led to believe that she was dealing with this horrible disease" and are making her return her crown and sash.
	Records don't list an attorney for Weaver-Gates, who faces a preliminary hearing August 19.

US beauty queen jailed on fake cancer charges

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A woman who says she was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver in Dallas is suing the ride-hailing company and the suspect.
	The Dallas Morning News reports that she filed the lawsuit Tuesday seeking more than USD 1 million for medical expenses and damages.
	The woman alleges Talal Ali Chammout attacked her July 25. The Plano man has been charged with sexual assault and is free on bond.
	Uber has said it mistakenly granted driver status to Chammout. A message left for his attorney wasn't immediately returned Wednesday. An Uber spokeswoman also didn't return a message.
	The lawsuit also names Triple Class Limousines of Plano, whose phone number isn't in service today.
	The Associated Press generally doesn't identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted.

US woman sues Uber in alleged sexual assault case

A man has been charged with stalking and harassing an FBI agent who had investigated him by posting a fake sex ad online that included the agent's phone number and address.
	The charge against 47-year-old Frederick Banks, of Pittsburgh, was unsealed this week. A federal magistrate on Tuesday ordered Banks jailed until trial.
	The agent isn't named in the indictment and is identified only by his initials, TP.
	The ad identifies the poster as a "married white boy" who is seeking a male sexual partner for himself and his wife, described as a "blonde gorgeous girl next door type."
	The ad resulted in the agent getting two phone calls in response, prosecutors said.
	The agent worked in Pittsburgh and helped investigate Banks before he was sentenced to five years in prison for a 2003 case in which he sold bogus and pirated computer software online, authorities and court records said.
	Banks was later convicted in a 2004 case of trying to buy coins and other valuables online with bad checks .

US: Man charged for harassing FBI agent

North Korea is expanding its capacity to mine and mill uranium ore which could supply its nuclear weapons program or fuel nuclear reactors, according to new US research.
	The findings shed some light on how Pyongyang gets the raw material to fuel its nuclear ambitions that are raising international alarm.
	The analysis is by Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. It is being published today by the website 38 North, which specialises in North Korea.
	Lewis writes that recent commercial satellite imagery, the latest from this May, shows that over the past year, North Korea has been modernizing a key facility next to its main uranium mine at the southern site of Pyongsan, not far from the frontier with rival South Korea.
	That suggests North Korea is expecting to process significant amounts of uranium, although what it will do with the product remains unclear.
	A uranium mill is where uranium ore is turned into yellowcake, a key step ...

US research: Nuclear NKorea expanding uranium mining

An Afghan official says Taliban insurgents have shot dead at least 14 police officers in the southern Helmand province.
	Bashir Ahmad Shaker, a provincial council member in Helmand, said the attackers were dressed as police and driving in a police vehicle, allowing them to sneak past a checkpoint and carry out the attack early today.
	Taliban spokesman Qari Yusouf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack and said the insurgents had captured eight police.

Taliban kill 14 police in southern Afghanistan

Iraqi officials say Islamic State militants have ambushed a military convoy in the country's western Anbar province, killing at least 14 soldiers.
	The officials, a military officer and a police officer, say numerous roadside bombs targeted a military convoy Wednesday morning as it was traveling on a highway outside the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi.
	They say that the attack in Khabaz area, about 170 kilometers west of Ramadi, also wounded 10 soldiers.
	The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release information.
	Iraq's government and allied Sunni fighters and Shiite militias are in the midst of a massive operation to dislodge IS militants from Anbar's cities.

Iraq ambush kills 14 soldiers in restive Anbar province

A teenager has made an unexpected find while swimming in a lake in the German Alps: a 500-gram (17.6-ounce) bar of gold.
	Police said today that they are still trying to figure out where the bar comes from and how it got into the Koenigssee lake, a popular tourist destination near Berchtesgaden on the border with Austria.
	The 16-year-old girl, who was on vacation, found it around 2 meters under the surface on Friday and handed it in to police.
	Divers yesterday carried out a thorough search of the area around where the bar was found, but didn't find any more gold or other valuables.

Teen finds gold bar while swimming in German Alpine lake

Despite a track record of misjudgments about weapons of mass destruction, US intelligence officials say they are confident they can verify Iran's compliance with the recently completed nuclear deal.
	The main reason, according to a classified joint intelligence assessment presented to Congress, is that the deal requires Iran to provide an unprecedented volume of information about nearly every aspect of its existing nuclear program, which Iran insists is peaceful.
	That data will make checking on compliance easier, officials say, because it will shrink Iran's capacity to hide a covert weapons programme.
	"We will have far better insight (into) the industrial aspects of the Iranian nuclear program with this deal than what we have today," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told an audience last month at the Aspen Security Forum.
	Outside experts don't dispute that. But they question - considering past analytical blind spots in the Middle East - whether American spying .

US officials say they can tell if Iran is cheating on deal

Journalists from The Associated Press, The New York Times, GloboNews in Brazil and Bolivia's Pagina Siete won this year's Maria Moors Cabot Prize, which recognizes excellence in coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean.
	Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism today announced this year's winners of the award, the oldest prize in international journalism.
	The winners are Mark Stevenson of the AP; Simon Romero of The Times; Lucas Mendes of GloboNews, a 24-hour news channel; and Raul Penaranda of Pagina Siete. A special citation was awarded to Ernesto Londono, also of The Times.
	Stevenson, who has been reporting from Mexico for more than 20 years, was cited for his story of a mass killing of gang members by soldiers that had initially been described by the government as a confrontation but appeared to be more like an execution.
	Columbia said Stevenson "has ventured into some of the most remote and dangerous corners of the country, stepping surefootedly in areas where ...

5 journalists win Cabot Prize for coverage of Latin America

Maldives authorities say that they intercepted a boat with seven foreign tourists and local crew apparently heading to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, where the United States maintains a military base.
	Cabinet Minister Mohamed Shareef said today that those arrested on Monday are in police custody but refused to reveal the nationalities of the tourists.
	He said they had offered the boat crew USD 8,000 per day "regardless of how many days the tour would take."
	He said the motive was not clear and the relevant countries have been informed of the arrests.
	Diego Garcia lies south of the archipelago nation of the Maldives.

Maldives arrests 7, intercepts boat heading to Diego Garcia

Afghanistan's intelligence agency claims Pakistan was involved in last week's attacks on Kabul that killed more than 50 people and wounded hundreds.
	Hassib Sediqi, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, said today that Afghan authorities have confirmed "Pakistani military interference" in the attacks last Friday.
	Sediqi says "special circles of the Pakistani military were behind all those attacks." He claims the Pakistanis were working through the Haqqani network, one of the most brutal militant groups in Afghanistan.
	There was no immediate reaction from Islamabad, which has in the past denied such accusations from Afghanistan.
	Islamabad wields considerable influence over the Taliban, which have waged a 14-year war against Kabul.

Afghan intel claims Pakistan implicated in Kabul attacks

A police officer who killed an unarmed college football player during a suspected burglary at a Texas car dealership was fired for making mistakes that the city's police chief said caused a deadly confrontation that put him and other officers in danger.
	Arlington officer Brad Miller, 49, could also face criminal charges once police complete their investigation, Police Chief Will Johnson said.
	Christian Taylor's death came two days before the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed, black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
	Brown's death helped spur protests and a nationwide "Black Lives Matter" movement to demand reforms to how police treat minorities.
	Called to the scene of a suspected burglary early Friday morning, Miller pursued 19-year-old Christian Taylor through the broken glass doors of a car dealership showroom without telling his supervising officer, Johnson said.
	Instead of setting up a perimeter around the ...

Chief fires Texas officer who killed unarmed 19-year-old

China respects freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea but will not allow any foreign government to invoke that right so its military ships and planes can intrude in Beijing's territory, the Chinese ambassador said.
	Ambassador Zhao Jianhua said late yesterday that Chinese forces warned a US Navy P-8A not to intrude when the warplane approached a Chinese-occupied area in the South China Sea's disputed Spratly Islands in May. A CNN reporter who was on board the plane, which had taken off from the Philippines, reported the incident then.
	"We just gave them warnings, be careful, not to intrude," Zhao told reporters on the sidelines of a diplomatic event in Manila.
	Washington, however, does not recognize any territorial claim by any country in the South China Sea, a policy that collides with the position of China, which claims virtually the entire sea.
	When asked why China shooed away the US Navy plane when it has pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South ...

Chinese diplomat outlines limits to freedom of navigation

A US Army helicopter crashed during a training mission today while landing on a Navy ship off of Japan's southern island of Okinawa, injuring seven people and damaging the aircraft, officials said.
	The H-60 helicopter made a hard landing on the Navy cargo vessel USNS Red Cloud around 30 kilometers east of Okinawa, US Forces Japan said in a statement, adding that the cause of the incident was under investigation.
	Okinawa is home to most of the tens of thousands of US troops in Japan.
	The injured were transported to a Navy hospital, the statement said. Their conditions were not immediately clear. The other 10 people aboard the helicopter were not hurt, said Japanese coast guard spokesman Shinya Terada.
	Japanese national broadcaster NHK showed video of the helicopter sitting on the cargo ship, with its tail broken off and covered with an orange tarp.
	The presence of thousands of US troops on Okinawa, where more than half of about 50,000 American troops in Japan are concentrated, has 

US Army helicopter crashes in southern Japan; 7 injured

A suspected US drone strike in Yemen today killed five suspected al-Qaeda militants traveling in a vehicle near an extremist-held coastal city, military and security officials said.
	The attack happened east of the city of Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramawt, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.
	Al-Qaeda's Yemen branch, considered by Washington to be the most dangerous offshoot of the terror network, has made gains in the sprawling eastern Hadramawt province, and captured Mukalla in April.
	The al-Qaeda offshoot has gained ground lately in Yemen, profiting from the civil war now engulfing the country. That fighting pits Iranian-backed Shiite rebels known as Houthis and allied troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against an array of southern separatists, local and tribal militias, Sunni Islamic militants and loyalists of exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
	Washington, meanwhile, has 

Suspected US drone strike kills 5 al-Qaeda members in Yemen

A Malaysian opposition party today filed a civil lawsuit against Prime Minister Najib Razak for alleged election offenses involving $700 million in his bank accounts.
	The anti-graft agency recently announced the money, most of which was received ahead of March 2013 general elections, came from donations and not from state investment fund 1MDB.
	The People's Justice Party said the money was 26 times above the amount that Najib's ruling National Front coalition was allowed to spend in the elections. The National Front, which has ruled since independence from Britain in 1957, won the elections but lost the popular vote for the first time to an opposition alliance that includes the People's Justice Party.
	The party's vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar said the lawsuit will reveal "all kinds of bribes and corrupt tactics" allegedly used by the National Front to win the elections.
	With evidence of corrupt transactions, she said the results of the 2013 general elections should be nullified .

Opposition party sues Malaysian PM over USD 700M in donations

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said today that an international agreement to limit Iran's nuclear program could give impetus to efforts aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
	Hammond, who is in Beijing for talks on security cooperation and climate change, made the comments during a speech to students at elite Peking University. He is to meet with Chinese senior foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi tomorrow and visit an Airbus assembly plant in Tianjin.
	Calling the Iran agreement reached in Vienna a "major success for multilateral diplomacy," Hammond said there "may be lessons to be drawn around the world including on tackling nuclear proliferation" in North Korea.
	While offering no specifics, Hammond said Britain strongly supports the long-stalled six-nation negotiating process on North Korea hosted by China. Britain shares an interest "in ensuring that this particular multilateral initiative succeeds in bringing to an end North Korea's nuclear weapons ...

Britain's Hammond in China for security, climate talks

Spain's Interior Ministry says police have arrested a man suspected of advocating terrorism and selling clothes carrying propaganda for the Islamic State armed group.
	A ministry statement today said the Spanish national ran a shop and an online outlet through which he sold clothes, including baby onesies, with jihadi group emblems, and T-shirts with images of Islamic State group attacks.
	It said he also sold T-shirts bearing an image of British hostage Alan Henning kneeling beside his suspected jihadi executioner.
	The statement said the man, whose identity was not released, used Internet social networks to promote IS and other groups, belittle jihad victims and advocate violence.
	He was arrested in the northwestern town of Naron.
	Spain has arrested some 50 suspected jihadi militants and recruiters this year.

Spain: Police arrest man suspected of promoting jihad

The slump in China's auto market worsened in July as sales contracted by 6.6 per cent, industry figures showed today.
	Drivers in the world's biggest market by number of vehicles bought 1.3 million cars, minivans and other passenger vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
	Sales growth that peaked at 45 percent in 2009 has declined steadily as the world's second-largest economy cooled and cities imposed ownership limits to curb smog and congestion.
	The fall in recent months has been far sharper than expected, leading General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG and Chinese SUV brand Great Wall Motors to cut prices.
	Global auto brands have invested heavily in trying to appeal to Chinese tastes. GM announced a USD 5 billion initiative on July 22 to develop models with its main Chinese partner, Shanghai Automotive Industries Corp., to sell in China, India, Brazil and other developing markets.
	July's slide in sales followed June's 3.4 percent fall, which was only 

Downturn in China's auto market worsens as July sales shrink

An Afghan official said the corpses of four men kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan last week have been found. All had been shot dead.
	Asadullah Ensafi, the deputy chief police of Ghazni province, said today that the bodies were found in Nawur district, which borders Pakistan.
	He said three of the men were Hazara. The other was a Sunni Pashtun.
	The Hazara are a largely Shiite ethnic minority in predominantly Sunni Afghanistan. The group has been targeted by the Taliban and other Sunni extremists in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
	In February, 30 Hazara men were abducted in Zabul province, south of Ghazni. Last month, 11 Hazaras were kidnapped in northern Baghlan, which also has been plagued by militants since the Taliban stepped up their war against Kabul in April.

Afghan official says corpses of 4 kidnapped men found

Documents leaked online detailing two attempts by Palestinian officials to misuse public funds have triggered outrage, highlighting the corruption and mismanagement critics say remains rampant in the Palestinian government.
	The furore over the documents comes as the Palestinian economy is stagnating and Palestinians grow increasingly displeased with government services.
	Palestinian Authority officials have defended their record on stamping out corruption, saying they've recovered millions of dollars in misspent funds.
	A senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to discuss the leak, confirmed the documents authenticity to The Associated Press. They have offered a rare glimpse into the wheeling and dealing of the Palestinian government, long bogged down by rivalries.
	One document signed by Majdi al-Khaldi, a diplomatic adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who accompanies him on his trips to world capitals, asked Bahrain's foreign 

AP

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