World

YEREVAN, Armenia – Police in the Armenian capital have cleared away barricades to unblock a central avenue that demonstrators had occupied for two weeks to protest hikes in electricity prices in the impoverished former Soviet nation. Police on Monday also peacefully detained about 20 demonstrators who refused to disperse, but …

YANGON, Myanmar – An international human rights group has accused Myanmar’s parliament of playing with fire by passing a bill regulating the right of women from the country’s Buddhist majority to marry men from outside their religion. Phil Robertson of New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday the bill was …

UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations has announced an “unconditional humanitarian pause” in the Yemen conflict starting at midnight local time Friday and is seeking commitments from all parties to stop all violence. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has received assurances from Yemen’s President Abed …

JERUSALEM – Israel’s leader says Western powers are “caving” into Iran even as the Islamic Republic keeps railing against them. Responding to the Iranian supreme leader’s call to continue the struggle against the United States regardless of the outcome of nuclear talks, Benjamin Netanyahu says Sunday his country will not …

BERLIN – Swiss media reports say a large fire has broken out in the northern city of Olten, with witnesses describing several explosions. The Oltener Tagblatt newspaper reported that the fire started on a construction site on Tuesday afternoon. Solothurn cantonal (state) police were unable to immediately provide information about …

LONDON – Bank of England of Gov. Mark Carney is suggesting that interest rates could rise from their record low of 0.5 percent as soon as the end of the year as Britain’s economic recovery continues to gather strength. In a speech Thursday to mark the 800th anniversary of the …

BERLIN – A court in Germany has sentenced a man to four years and three months in prison for posing as a plastic surgeon and performing procedures on dozens of patients. The regional court in Regensburg, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Munich, found the defendant guilty Monday of …

AMMAN, Jordan – An official says Jordan’s state security court handed down prison terms for eight defendants in an alleged plot by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia to attack U.S. troops and Israel’s embassy in Jordan. Jordanian media have reported that seven Jordanian defendants were arrested before being able to move ahead …

RIO DE JANEIRO – Rio de Janeiro’s police force operates with “total impunity,” targeting mostly young, mostly black and mostly poor people in the Olympic city’s violent slums for extrajudicial executions, Amnesty International alleged in a report Monday. The group accuses Rio’s police of wielding an “unnecessary and disproportional use …

HAT YAI, Thailand – Security officials in insurgency-wracked southern Thailand plan to ban the use of metal cooking gas tanks because they are often used to make homemade bombs. Police Capt. Kritapas Kruenet said Wednesday that they will be replaced with polymer and fiberglass cylinders that can also be used …