BRUSSELS ( AP) — The SWIFT global financial transaction service said Thursday that it was cutting ties with Iranian banks that are subject to European Union sanctions aimed at discouraging the country from developing nuclear weapons. The action effectively enforces EU sanctions because the world’s financial transactions are impossible without using SWIFT, and it will […]

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The World Wildlife Fund says soldiers in Cameroon are losing the battle to save the last elephants in that nation’s remote Bouba N’Djida National Park from marauding horsemen believed to be invading from Sudan. The director of the organization’s Central Africa program, Natasha Kofoworola Quist, says the military arrived too late and […]

ISLAMABAD ( AP) — A Swiss couple held captive for nearly a year by the Taliban in Pakistan turned up at an army post close to the Afghan border on Thursday, claiming to have escaped from their captors, the Pakistani army said. They were swiftly flown to safety by the military. Taliban commanders said a […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A cargo plane loaded with bread crashed in a lagoon near Puerto Rico’s international airport on Thursday, killing both crew members, authorities said. The plane identified as a Convair 440 had just taken off when the pilot told air traffic control that the plane was having engine trouble, said […]

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s already chaotic government was thrown into more disarray Thursday after the rail minister was reprimanded by his own party after announcing a small fare hike. The fighting exposes rifts inside the Trinamool Congress party, a powerful regional group that controls the rail ministry and heads the government in the state […]

LONDON (AP) — Archaeologists excavating near Cambridge have stumbled upon a rare and mysterious find: The skeleton of a 7th- century teenager buried in an ornamental bed along with a goldand garnet cross, an iron knife and a purse of glass beads. Experts say the grave is an example of an unusual Anglo- Saxon funerary […]

NAIROBI, Kenya ( AP) — In the second YouTube video in a week to highlight an African conflict, George Clooney makes an illegal and dangerous trip to the southern reaches of Sudan, where the actor witnesses what an American activist said Thursday was likely a Chinese-made missile sail overhead. Clooney’s four- minute video highlights attacks […]

PARIS ( AP) — France’s defense minister says an unidentified attacker fatally shot three soldiers on a street in southern France. It was the second such incident over the past week in which French soldiers were shot in public places. In Thursday’s attack, a police official said the three uniformed soldiers had been standing at […]

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Shell Oil Co. has chosen a site near Pittsburgh for a major new petrochemical refinery that could provide a huge economic boost to the region. Dan Carlson, Shell’s general manager of New Business Development, said Thursday that the company signed a land option agreement with Horsehead Corp. to evaluate a site near […]

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The House has passed New Hampshire’s 10-year transportation improvement plan which includes widening Interstate 93 from Salem to Windham. The House passed the plan Thursday on a voice vote. The Senate considers it next. The latest update to the program takes the I-93 widening project off the deferred list and places […]