Tuesday, Dec 16th
Last update09:33:48 AM GMT
International Glance
European warships and coast guard vessels have rescued more than 2,000 migrants off the coast of Libya.
The Malta-based, Migrant Offshore Aid Station, said it coordinated the operation along with Italian, Irish and German ships. Italy's coastguard could not confirm the numbers, but said it was trying to help around a dozen other vessels.
At least 42 members of Iraq's security forces have been killed in a suicide attack targeting an army base north of Fallujah, in Iraq's Anbar province.
The bombing was carried out with an armored Humvee vehicle laden with explosives, military sources told Al Jazeera. Witnesses said ammunition stored in the base's depot continued to explode several hours after the initial attack, which occurred at 3 a.m. local time Monday.
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, slain in 1980 by a paramilitary death squad while celebrating mass in San Salvador, died as a martyr and thus deserves beatification, Pope Francis decreed on Tuesday.
Francis approved a decree that Romero had been killed “in hatred of the faith,” supporting recommendations by theological experts and a commission of cardinals. Francis unblocked Romero’s sainthood process shortly after his election in March 2013. Romero’s beatification will take place in El Salvador, but the Vatican did not provide a date.
Irish voters have resoundingly backed amending the constitution to legalize gay marriage, leaders on both sides of the Irish referendum declared Saturday after the world’s first national vote on the issue.
As the official ballot counting continued, the only question appeared to be how large the “yes” margin of victory from Friday’s vote would be. Analysts said the “yes” support was likely to exceed 60 percent nationally when official results are announced later Saturday.
Nigeria has freed another 234 women and children from the Sambisa forest, considered a bastion of armed group Boko Haram, the military has said.
The defence headquarters said in a statement on social media website Twitter on Friday that the hostages were rescued on Thursday in the Kawuri and Konduga end of the forest located in the country's north east neighbouring Chad.
The army released the first photos of what it said were some of the hundreds of women and children that troops freed earlier this week in the Sambisa Forest amid heavy combat with Boko Haram.
Vietnam's prime minister has spoken of "countless barbarous crimes" committed by the US during the Vietnam War. Nguyen Tan Dung was speaking at an event in Ho Chi Minh City to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the war.
On 30 April 1975 the city - which was then called Saigon and was the capital of South Vietnam - was captured by communist troops from the North.
Three million Vietnamese, and 58,000 US soldiers died in the war. But the US and Vietnam now have diplomatic ties.
Nepalese officials scrambled on Monday to get aid from the main airport to people left homeless and hungry by a devastating earthquake two days earlier, while thousands tired of waiting fled the capital Kathmandu for the surrounding plains.
By afternoon, the death toll from Saturday's 7.9 magnitude earthquake had climbed to more than 3,700, and reports trickling in from remote areas suggested it would rise significantly.
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