World

Now that Boston is out of the picture, the U.S. Olympic Committee wants to explore other opportunities to host the 2024 Games. In a statement Monday announcing the end of the bid in Boston, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun said the federation was still interested in mounting a bid for the …

BEIRUT – Activists say insurgents have captured strategic hills and a power station in northwestern Syria, bringing them closer to strongholds of President Bashar Assad. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said militants were advancing Tuesday in the Sahl al-Ghab region north of the …

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s government has declared a first-ever “gender alert” for a central state due to a high incidence of killings and disappearances of women. The alert for the State of Mexico, outside the capital, was decreed by the Interior Department. It cites “systematic violence against women” and “an …

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the dramatic collapse of two cranes onto a row of houses in a central Dutch city that briefly buried one man under rubble. The probe was announced Tuesday, a day after two towering cranes parked on a floating pontoon …

WARSAW, Poland – Poland’s president-elect, who takes office on Thursday, says he wants to see NATO bases in Poland and will talk to European Union partners about including Poland in Ukraine peace talks. Andrzej Duda, previously a member of a conservative opposition party, says the ruling Civic Platform hasn’t done …

CANBERRA, Australia – Australian government lawmakers on Monday elected a new speaker of the House of Representatives after the previous speaker resigned over an expense scandal that has damaged Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conservative government. The new speaker Tony Smith defeated his nearest challenger Andrew Southcott in a ballot of …

YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Cameroon’s president says his country will contribute 2,450 troops to a five-nation army to fight the Nigeria-based Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, nearly tripling his initial pledge. President Paul Biya announced the new troop total in a statement Friday night. At a meeting in Cameroon in February, …

ACCRA, Ghana – Ghana’s health minister says the government is going to bring in about 170 Cuban doctors to work in health facilities amid a doctors’ strike. Health Minister Alex Segbefia said Wednesday that several people have died without proper emergency attention. The doctors, who are members of the Ghana …

Newly declassified British intelligence files have revealed the identity of a spy who passed military secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II. The files, which were released on Friday by the British internal security service MI5, reveal that author and journalist Cedric Belfrage passed highly sensitive information to …

BERLIN – At least one person died when two small planes collided in the air and crashed at an airshow in northern Switzerland on Sunday, police said. The two planes were part of a formation of three and they crashed just before 11:30 local time after they touched each other …