World

BEIRUT (AP) – A powerful Syrian Kurdish political party announced plans Wednesday to declare a federal region in northern Syria, a model it hopes can be applied to the entire country. The idea was promptly dismissed by Turkey and also the Syrian government team at U.N.-brokered peace talks underway in …

BRUSSELS (AP) – The Latest on the influx of migrants in Europe (all times local): 2:40 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the current migrant crisis can only be solved if all European leaders heading to the EU summit in Brussels are interested in finding a common solution. Merkel, in …

GENEVA (AP) – While acknowledging for the first time that votes were bought in past World Cup hosting contests, FIFA is seeking to claim “tens of millions of dollars” in bribe money seized by U.S. federal prosecutors. FIFA submitted a 22-page claim to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York …

IDOMENI, Greece (AP) – As other children play among the tents of a rain-soaked refugee camp in northern Greece, 8-year-old Shaharzad Hassan sits quietly with her spiral notepad and a set of cheap marker pens. The events in her life over the past 18 months have left her in little …

ISTANBUL (AP) – Business begins in earnest at sundown at “smugglers square” in Istanbul’s Aksaray neighborhood. Families trickle in, clutching their belongings and lifejackets in plastic bags while smugglers weave their way around the park, cutting deals and finalizing the logistics of the journey to Greece on their cellphones. Ali, …

BAGHDAD (AP) – Top Islamic State commander and feared ethnic Chechen jihadi fighter Omar al-Shishani has died of wounds suffered in a U.S. airstrike in Syria, a senior Iraqi intelligence official and the head of a Syrian activist group said Tuesday. Al-Shishani, who was wounded in a U.S. airstrike earlier …

MOSCOW (AP) – Russian warplanes and troops stationed at Russia’s air base in Syria started leaving for home on Tuesday after a partial pullout order from President Vladimir Putin the previous day, a step that raises hopes for progress at the newly reconvened U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. The U.N. …

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar’s parliament elected Htin Kyaw as the country’s new president Tuesday in a watershed moment that ushers the longtime opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi into government after 54 years of direct or indirect military rule. The joint session of the two houses of parliament …

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) – Myanmar’s parliament elects a new president on Tuesday to head the country’s first democratically elected government, but it won’t be Aung San Suu Kyi, the face of the nation’s decades-long struggle against military rule. Here’s why: WHAT PREVENTED SUU KYI? The military has been in power …

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) – Macedonia sent back hundreds of refugees to Greece on Tuesday, a day after they bypassed a border fence in a mass push to continue their journey north to Europe’s prosperous heartland – a move Greece blamed on “criminal misinformation” possibly spread by volunteers working with them. …