Czechs remember ethnic Germans who died in postwar expulsion

BRNO, Czech Republic (AP) — In a rare gesture of reconciliation, hundreds of Czechs have participated in a 20-mile walk to remember some 1,700 ethnic Germans who died 70 years ago during their expulsion from the Czech city of Brno.
When the German World War II occupation ended in 1945, Brno city authorities escorted over 20,000 ethnic Germans on foot out of the country in what has become known as the Brno death march.
They belonged to some 3 million ethnic Germans who had lived in the country for centuries and were expelled from post-war Czechoslovakia as enemies.
Barbara Edith Breindl, a survivor says "It was only revenge."
Saturday's commemoration took place after Brno's government approved a declaration of reconciliation earlier in May in which the city representatives expressed regret about what happened.

Congo to allow some foreign adoptions despite ban

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Congo plans to allow 71 children whose adoptions were interrupted by a 2013 suspension to join families in the U.S. and four other countries next week, an official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
In December 2013, Congo announced a suspension on foreign adoptions, citing reports that children had been mistreated or abandoned by their adoptive families while others had been "sold to homosexuals."
The move prompted a pressure campaign from hundreds of frustrated American families who were in the process of arranging adoptions from Congo. As of last year, 148 Congolese children had been legally adopted by U.S. families and given U.S. visas but were waiting for exit permits to leave the country, according to a letter to President Barack Obama signed by 167 members of Congress. More than 900 U.S. families seeking to adopt from Congo were "stuck in limbo" because of the suspension, according to the letter, which was timed to coincide with Congo President Joseph Kabila's visit to the U.S. last August for a U.S.-Africa summit.
Officials in Congo are reviewing about 1,000 individual cases of children whose adoptions were already in progress when the suspension was announced, Albert Paka, a judicial adviser at the interior ministry, said on Saturday.
"The interior ministry is going to authorize as soon as Monday the departure of 71 children adopted in five different countries," Paka said.
He said the U.S. and Belgium were among the five countries but did not specify the others.
Paka said the suspension on new adoptions would remain in place.
When the suspension was announced, Italy's foreign ministry said that it had summoned Congo's ambassador to express dismay that some two dozen Italian families, who were due to return to Italy with their newly adopted children, were thwarted from leaving with them due to the unexpected suspension of foreign adoptions.
According to State Department figures, 311 children from Congo were adopted by Americans in the 2013 fiscal year — the fifth-highest number of adoptions from a foreign country.

Ex-Georgian president named governor of Ukraine region

MOSCOW (AP) — Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili on Saturday was appointed governor of Ukraine's troubled Odessa region.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko posted the appointment announcement on his website and presented Saakashvili to officials in Odessa city, the region's capital.
Odessa is Ukraine's largest seaport and has additional strategic importance as the major city between the Russia-annexed Crimean peninsula and the Moldovan separatist region of Transdniester, which is supported by Russian forces.
Although the city has not been hit by the fighting between government forces and separatists in the east, tensions between nationalists and pro-Russians have been strong. Last May, 48 people died in violence between supporters of both sides, most of them pro-Russians who took shelter in a building that caught fire after opponents threw firebombs into it.
Saakashvili's appointment could aggravate relations with Russia that have been severely damaged by the Crimea annexation and the fighting in the east.
Russian President Vladimir Putin disdains Saakashvili, who came to power in the 2003 Rose Revolution protests. The Kremlin points to those demonstrations as the beginning of the so-called "color revolutions" that it contends are engineered by the West to overthrow legitimate governments that pursue ties with Moscow.
Under Saakashvili, Georgia fought a short war with Russia in 2008, in which it lost control of two Russia-backed separatist territories. He faces accusation of abuse of power at home, and Ukraine last month rejected Georgia's request for his extradition.
There was no immediate Kremlin comment on his Odessa appointment, but Andre Purgin, a top eastern Ukraine separatist leader, called it "mockery and an absolutely unprecedented step."

Northern Ireland leader blames heart attack on bad lifestyle

NEWCASTLE, Northern Ireland (AP) — Northern Ireland's leader says he suffered a heart attack this week because he lives on junk food, gets too little sleep and no exercise.
In his first comments since being released from hospital, First Minister Peter Robinson said he blames "myself and nobody but myself" for Monday's brush with death.
The 66-year-old spoke Saturday at the Irish Open golf tournament.
Robinson said he had his heart attack after sending emails at 4 a.m. on what was a holiday. He said his exercise involves being driven from door to door.
"If you looked at my diet you would cringe. It's all around snacking and fast foods and all the things that you shouldn't do," he said.
Robinson said doctors placed stents in three major arteries to improve blood flow.

Suicide bomber, rocket grenades kill 30 in Nigerian city

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — A suicide bomb blast outside a mosque and rocket-propelled grenades that exploded into homes as people slept killed at least 30 people in the Nigerian city Maiduguri on Saturday, residents and officials said.
The explosion killed people who were prostrating themselves for afternoon prayers outside the mosque, including traders from the nearby crowded marketplace in the largest city in Nigeria's troubled northeast, survivors said.
Trader Ali Bakomi said the bomber was pushing a wheelbarrow and pretending to be an itinerant trader when he joined them.
Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima toured the scene where one wall was reduced to rubble and another was splattered with blood. Officials told him the bomber killed himself and 16 other people.
Earlier Saturday, rocket-propelled grenades killed at least 13 others in the city and injured more, according to resident Idrissa Mandara. Such grenades are a new tactic that has brought terror to the city that is the birthplace of Boko Haram.
Mari Madu, another resident, said he counted 40 thunderous blasts that began around 1 a.m. before he lost count.
"Each time they fired into the town, we saw bright sparkling flashes which moved with great speed ... One of the blasts shook my roof so badly that I thought it must have landed on my house," he said.
Several homes were destroyed in the suburb Dala-Lawanti, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of the city center, he said.
He counted 13 people killed in his compound: six men, five children and two women.
An intelligence officer said Boko Haram was firing the rocket-propelled grenades. Soldiers fired heavy assault rifles in response, said the officer, who insisted on anonymity because he is not supposed to give information to journalists.
Civilian self-defense fighters patrolled until dawn to ensure the Islamic extremists did not get through barriers of sandbags and trenches, said one of the fighters, Abbas Gava.
The nearly 6-year-old Islamic uprising in northeastern Nigeria has killed an estimated 13,000 people. Maiduguri's population of 2 million has swelled with hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been forced from their homes.
A multinational offensive this year forced the insurgents from towns where they had declared an Islamic caliphate but suicide bombings and hit-and-run attacks continue.
On Friday, twin explosions at a village wedding venue killed seven people.
Nigeria's military says Boko Haram's main fighting force is trapped in the northeastern Sambisa Forest. But the insurgents keep attacking Maiduguri, which is 200 kilometers (125 miles) away.
At his inauguration Friday, Nigeria's new President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to crush the extremists. Buhari said he will move the headquarters for the war against Boko Haram from Abuja, the capital in central Nigeria, to Maiduguri.
___
Associated Press writer Michelle Faul contributed to this report from Abuja,

Solo flight in solar plane sets off on longest leg to Hawaii

BEIJING (AP) — A Swiss pilot of a solar plane on Sunday embarked on the longest leg of the first attempt to fly around the world without a drop of fuel.
André Borschberg took off from Nanjing, China, at 2:39 a.m. Sunday (1839 GMT Saturday) in the Solar Impulse 2 for a flight across the Pacific Ocean expected to last six days and five nights, or at least 130 hours.
The journey started in March in Abu Dhabi, and the solar plane has stopped in Oman, India, Myanmar and China. The 8,175-kilometer (5,079-mile) flight from Nanjing to Hawaii is the seventh of 12 flights and the longest and most dangerous.
Borschberg and another Swiss pilot, Bertrand Piccard, have been taking turns flying the single-seater Swiss plane during a five-month journey to promote renewable energy use.
"This is the moment of truth," Borschberg, 62, said before takeoff.
He said that if successful, the flight to Hawaii will demonstrate the credibility of the vision he and Piccard embraced 16 years ago "to change our mindset regarding the enormous potential of clean technologies and renewable energies."
After Hawaii, the plan is for Piccard to pilot the aircraft on to Phoenix, Arizona.

Myanmar rejects 'unbalanced' Rohingya remarks in Oslo

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar rejected as unbalanced comments made by several Nobel Peace Prize winners calling for an end to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims.
The Nobel laureates including South Africa's Desmond Tutu, Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and former East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta made the appeal following two conferences in the Norwegian capital last week. They called the situation of Rohingya in Myanmar "nothing less than genocide."
Myanmar's foreign ministry said in a statement published in Sunday's newspapers that such comments turned a blind eye to Myanmar's efforts on rebuilding trust between Buddhists and Muslims in western Rakhine state as well as "granting citizenship through national verification process to those Bengalis living in Myanmar for many years."
Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic community and refers to the more than 1 million members in Rakhine state as Bengalis — immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and basic rights. More than 100,000 are confined to internal camps.
In recent weeks, the plight of Rohingya has turned into a regional crisis when thousands landed on the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with others still believed stranded at sea.
The foreign ministry said Myanmar categorically rejects the "unbalanced and negative comments."
Others who criticized Myanmar's policies in Oslo included philanthropist George Soros, who escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary and said that there were "alarming" parallels between the plight of the Rohingya and the Nazi genocide.