Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday traded accusations over the shelling of each other's territory in violation of a days-old ceasefire aimed at halting a flareup of violence over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region. A Moscow-mediated truce went into effect on Tuesday after the worst outbreak of violence since the 1990s, but some clashes have continued, with two people reported killed on Friday. The Armenian defence ministry said Azerbaijan fired on the border area in northern Tavush region 16 times, including with "large calibre" weaponry, but said the intensity of shooting had "subsided".
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VolkswagenBy Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police carried out a controlled explosion of a bag left in Istanbul's popular Taksim square on Saturday, a Reuters witness at the scene said, hours after the U.S. embassy warned of "credible threats" to tourist areas. Police cordoned off Taksim, a square lined with hotels and restaurants frequented by tourists, while a member of the police bomb squad was seen opening what appeared to be a bag, the witness said. The bomb squad later detonated it in a controlled explosion, causing a loud boom to echo across the square, the witness said.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has locked up the support of 21 Colorado delegates and may scoop up even more Saturday. Slates loyal to Cruz won every assembly in the state's seven congressional districts, which began April 2 and culminated Friday with 12 delegates selected. The Texas senator is well-positioned to pad his total Saturday, when 13 more delegates were to be chosen at the party's state convention.
A group of castaways spent days on an isolated Pacific island before a ploy plucked straight from Gilligan's Island paid off. A Navy plane in search of the three men was alerted to their presence on the tiny, uninhabited Micronesian island of Fanadik when the word 'HELP' was seen written in what turned out to be palm fronds on the beach. Three men managed to get saved from a remote Pacific beach by spelling 'HELP' in palm fronds.
Hundreds of displaced Syrian residents of Palmyra returned home Saturday to inspect their houses for the first time since the Russian-backed army captured it from the Islamic State group two weeks ago. "The first thing I checked in the house was the roof," Khudr Hammoud, a 68-year-old retired civil servant, told AFP, adding that he was relieved that it was still there. "The walls, the windows and the door are also still there, and that's enough for me to get my family ready to return to Palmyra," he said.
Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million to a person the former House speaker sexually abused when the victim was a 14-year-old wrestler on a team coached by Hastert, prosecutors said in a court filing that details allegations by five former students. The filing Friday night is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse. It chronicles a chain of deception that began with Hastert exploiting his position of trust as a teacher and coach and carried on years later to include lying to bank officials and making false claims of extortion to the FBI to conceal his wrongdoing.
Our pick of the best images from the last seven days.
Iran's defence minister poured scorn Saturday on US Secretary of State John Kerry's accusations that Tehran is "destabilising" the Middle East, countering that America should get out of the region. The broadside illustrated new tension between Iran and the United States, despite last year's nuclear deal, with contrasting stances on the conflicts in Yemen and Syria underpinning the latest barbs. If the US seeks "stability" it should "leave the region and stop supporting terrorists," Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan said, quoted by the website of state television.
More than that, the Tesla Model S effectively reshaped the way we think about cars and what the driving experience should be. One of the more common complaints we've seen about the Model S is that its fit and finish is a bit lackluster compared to similarly priced luxury sedans. According to sources inside the company, Tesla will be making a series of updates to the Model S with the goals of both simplifying manufacturing and adding some more luxury-minded appointments.
The U.S. Air Force deployed B-52 bombers to Qatar on Saturday to join the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the first time they have been based in the Middle East since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. U.S. Air Forces Central Command said it last flew the long-range bombers operationally in the region in May 2006 as part of the war in Afghanistan, and during a U.S.-led military exercise in Jordan in May 2015. "The B-52 demonstrates our continued resolve to apply persistent pressure on Daesh and defend the region in any future contingency," said Air Force Lieutenant General Charles Brown, commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command.
After three years and many, many miles, an Illinois family was reunited with their dog earlier this week. The 3-year-old pup was found by a shelter in Nebraska.
Greece says it will take at least two weeks to fix the process of deporting migrants from the eastern Aegean islands to Turkey. The country's deputy foreign minister for European affairs, Nikos Xydakis, admitted as much at a press conference attended also by his colleagues from France, Italy, Malta and Portugal, as well as the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Slovakia. Deportations from Greece to Turkey have been temporarily halted as most of the 6,750 migrants in the Greek islands are applying for asylum and there is a lack of qualified officials such as translators to process the applications.
A passenger has died aboard a Qantas jet bound for Dubai, the airline said Saturday, with the man reportedly suffering from a heart attack mid-air. Qantas declined to give further information about the passenger and the circumstances around his death for privacy reasons, but the Sydney Morning Herald reported that he suffered a suspected heart attack.
The names Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee are connected through their Civil War bond and the historic surrender, 150 years ago today, at Appomattox Court House. Both were noted military commanders and graduates of West Point. Beyond that here is a look at two legendary figures and their different paths to that day in 1865 that started the end of the Civil War.
An ex-con pleaded guilty Friday to killing one person and wounding five others last year during a metro Phoenix rampage that included multiple shootings, a carjacking and a massive manhunt. Ryan Elliott Giroux changed his plea a little more than a year after his initial court hearing in Phoenix, in a move that likely means he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Giroux pleaded guilty to all 23 charges including first degree murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges stemming from a March 2015 shooting spree in a Phoenix suburb.
Trolling can take many forms, and on a recent airing of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly opted for the direct approach. On a mission to ostensibly figure out why, in his words, "college students these days are very sensitive individuals
Vietnam's rubber-stamp parliament approved 21 new minister positions Saturday, state media reported, finishing off a leadership reshuffle among Communist top brass ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama next month. The National Assembly approved three new deputy prime ministers and 18 other cabinet members, according to the legislature's official website, concluding a change in government that occurs once every five years. In the past, the assembly often took up to six months to approve the leadership nominations made during the party congress in January, but analysts say the process was sped up this year partly due to Obama's upcoming visit and friction with Beijing over the disputed South China Sea.
The two German journalists of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily behind the Panama Papers revelations say they are surprised by the global shockwaves the leak caused and promised more sensational disclosures. "I never imagined there would be such a reaction, that it would be on every television channel and that we would receive media requests from all around the world," one of the reporters, Bastian Obermayer, 38, told AFP. Germany's second-biggest daily in sales, the Sueddeutsche received from an anonymous source more than 11 million documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that cast a harsh spotlight on the shady financial dealings of many of the world's rich and powerful.
The Islamic State group has released most of the 300 cement workers it abducted near Damascus after questioning them to find out who were Muslims and killing four who were members of the minority Druze sect, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and a news agency linked to the extremists reported Saturday. The reports came two days after IS abducted the cement workers and contractors from al-Badia Cement Company in Dumeir, just northeast of the capital, after a surprise attack on government forces. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said all those abducted have been released except for 30 people who were guards at the cement factory.
The U.S. State Department on Friday handed over more than 1,100 pages of records to the committee investigating the deaths of U.S. citizens in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, the chairman of the House of Representatives panel said. The records included files from senior employees during the time Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, according to a statement by Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy. "It is deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee, and that our Democrat colleagues never lifted a finger to help us get them," Gowdy, a Republican, said in the statement.
Iran said Saturday that the United States has allowed Boeing to have direct talks with Iranian airliners following reports that a Boeing delegation will visit the country, the official IRNA news agency reported. Abedzadeh said Boeing has provided an Iranian airline with, "some technical issues to upgrade flight safety." He did not elaborate.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has confirmed that he is the illegitimate son of a one-time private secretary to Winston Churchill, after a newspaper reported the discovery late Friday. Welby, the most senior figure in the Anglican Communion consisting of some 85 million Christians globally, said the news, reported in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph, had come as a "complete surprise". "In the last month I have discovered that my biological father is not Gavin Welby but, in fact, the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne.
As The Voice reaches the 2016 final, let’s take a look back over the past series to find out what the winners and runners-up are up to now. It’s a mixed bag, to be honest. Image credits: Rex Features/Getty/WENN
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou called for peace in Asia's contested waters on Saturday as he visited a small island in the East China Sea, one of his last symbolic foreign policy moves before leaving office next month. Ma's visit to Pengjia, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Taiwan proper, was his administration's second propaganda trip to an island in three weeks. It came four years after Ma last visited Pengjia to propose a plan to address territorial disputes among China, Taiwan and Japan over the nearby chain known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyutai in Chinese.
A link between the Zika virus and neurological disorders deepens as scientists discover microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome may be the most obvious diseases caused by the virus.