International Glance
Amid the chaos of a two-and-a-half year war, civil marriage has arrived in Syria, activists and officials in the northeastern town of Qamishli say. Syrian Kurds Hmaren Sharif and her groom, Rashou Suleiman, signed the country's first civil marriage contract over the weekend, under new laws administered by the ruling Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD.
The ceremony in Syria's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region was presided over by the co-mayors of Qamishli, a city of nearly 200,000 where Kurds are the majority but Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians have long co-existed.
Syrian Kurds celebrate war-torn country's first civil marriage
Syria: 12 Nuns Abducted by Islamist Rebels in Christian Town of Maaloula
Islamist rebels have abducted 12 nuns from a convent in the predominantly Christian town Maaloula in southwestern Syria.
Rebel fighters forcibly evacuated the nuns from the Saint Tecla Orthodox convent in the historic town north of Damascus and took them to the nearby rebel-held city of Yabroud, according to reports.
The Apostolic Nuncio to Damascus, Monsignor Mario Zenari told Vatican Radio that the convent was stormed by jihadist rebels and the sisters living there, including the mother superior Pelagia Sayyaf, were taken away.
EU Commission fines banks $2.3 billion for benchmark rigging
EU antitrust regulators vowed to keep investigating rate- rigging on Wednesday as they slapped a record 1.7 billion euro ($2.3 billion) penalty on six financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, RBS and JPMorgan.
The fines by the Commission, which along with authorities around the globe has been examining the manipulation of London interbank offered rate (Libor) and its euro equivalent Euribor, takes the tally of penalties related to the scandal to almost $6 billion.
Hezbollah commander killed outside home in Lebanon
A senior commander for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was gunned down Wednesday outside his home in southern Beirut, security officials said. The Iranian-backed group blamed its arch-enemy Israel for the killing, something officials there quickly denied.
Hezbollah immediately announced the death of Hassan al-Laqis and described him as one of the founding members of the group, suggesting he was a high-level commander close to the Shiite party's leadership.
'Extremely dangerous' radioactive material stolen in Mexico: IAEA
Thieves in Mexico have stolen a truck carrying "extremely dangerous" radioactive material used in medical treatment, the UN atomic watchdog said Wednesday.
The vehicle was transporting a "teletherapy source" containing cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center when it was stolen in Tepojaco near Mexico City on Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Former Mexico border state official indicted in US
The former governor of Mexico’s Tamaulipas state invested millions of dollars in drug sale proceeds in real estate across southern and central Texas, the U.S. government charged in an indictment unsealed Monday.
The allegations against Tomas Yarrington, who governed Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2004, marked the latest attempt by U.S. prosecutors to prove that organized crime has penetrated deeply into Mexican politics at the state level. Tamaulipas borders Texas.
Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance
The UN's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers of American and British intelligence agencies following Edward Snowden's revelations that they are using secret programmes to store and analyse billions of emails, phone calls and text messages.
The UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC said his inquiry would also seek to establish whether the British parliament had been misled about the capabilities of Britain's eavesdropping headquarters, GCHQ, and whether the current system of oversight and scrutiny was strong enough to meet United Nations standards.
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