Agence France Presse
Latest stories
Pakistan Bomb Attack Kills Three, Injures 38

Three people were killed and 38 injured on Saturday when a bomb exploded in a bustling food market in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore, officials said.

The blast hit the street of food shops and stalls in the downtown area, days before the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

W140 Full Story
Qaradawi Issues Fatwa Urging Egyptians to Support Morsi

Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Saturday issued a religious decree, or fatwa, urging Egyptians to support overthrown Islamist president Mohammed Morsi who was toppled by the army on Wednesday.

"Their every action is invalid," Qaradawi said of "those who have overthrown the president, suspended the constitution and imposed another president and constitution" on Egypt.

W140 Full Story
Airliner Crashes on Landing in San Francisco

An Asiana Airlines flight from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, forcing passengers to jump down the emergency inflatable slides to safety. It was not immediately known whether there were any injuries.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said Flight 214 crashed while landing on runway 28 left at 11:26 PDT.

W140 Full Story
Colombia Deports Drug Supremo back to Italy

A drug trafficker believed by Italian investigators to be the biggest cocaine smuggler in the world was deported back to Italy from Colombia on Saturday after being arrested in a Bogota shopping mall with fake Venezuelan papers.

Media reports said Roberto Pannunzi, who fled from an Italian prison in 2010, smiled as he arrived at Rome's Fiumicino airport on a scheduled Alitalia flight escorted by Italian and Colombian police and dressed in a white polo shirt with dark trousers.

W140 Full Story
Budapest Gay Pride Parade Draws Record Crowd

Eight thousand people joined the annual Gay Pride parade in Budapest on Saturday, organizers said, marking the biggest participation in the event's 16-year history.

The parade, which in recent years has been disrupted by far-right protesters, took place without any violent incidents, although about 200 far-right nationalists shouted insults at participants.

W140 Full Story
McCain Calls for Suspension of U.S. Military Aid to Egypt

Republican Senator John McCain called for a suspension of U.S. military aid to Egypt after the army ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, breaking with the official position in Washington.

"I've thought long and hard about this, but I believe that we have to suspend the aid to the Egyptian military, because the Egyptian military has overturned the vote of the people of Egypt," McCain said Friday evening at a press conference in his home state of Arizona.

W140 Full Story
Iran Devalues Official Rial Rate by More than Half

Iran's central bank on Saturday drastically devalued the national currency's fixed subsidized rate against the dollar, as the Islamic republic struggles to shore up its faltering economy.

The rial has lost more than two thirds of its value on the open market since early 2012, when the United States and the European Union imposed harsh economic sanctions curbing Iran's ability to export oil and conduct financial transactions.

W140 Full Story
Hungary Signs New Holocaust Survivor Restitution Deal

The Hungarian government announced a deal Saturday with a U.S.-based Holocaust restitution organization on reparations for Hungarian survivors living abroad, ending a year-long row over transparency and a freeze of payments to survivors.

"The government has concluded an agreement with the Conference of Material Claims Against Germany," Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, said in a statement to the Hungarian news agency MTI.

W140 Full Story
Mohammed ElBaradei Named PM to Lead Egypt out of Bloody Crisis

Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed ElBaradei was chosen Saturday as premier to help lead Egypt out of a deepening crisis, sources said, after bloodshed followed the ouster of the country's first freely elected president.

The Tamarod movement, which engineered mass protests culminating in the overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday, made the announcement after talks with Egypt's new interim leader.

W140 Full Story
Syria Army Presses Homs Assault

Troops loyal to President Bashar Assad seized several buildings on the edges of rebel-held districts of Homs as they pressed an eight-day assault on the central Syrian city, activists said on Saturday.

The army launched its all-out assault last Saturday, subjecting rebel-held areas to continuous bombardment.

W140 Full Story