Guardian: Leftist opposition wins big in Slovakia election
A leftist opposition led by one of the few leading politicians in Slovakia to escape voter anger over a major corruption scandal has been propelled back to power in an early parliamentary election, according to almost complete results on Sunday.
Smer-Social Democracy of former Prime Minister Robert Fico is a clear winner with 44.8 percent of the vote, or 84 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, with the votes from 5,842 of the 5,956 polling stations counted by the Statistics Office early Sunday.
The result allows Fico to govern alone, which has not happened to anyone since the country was created as an independent state following the split of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
Fico, who is considered a populist leader, is pledging to maintain a welfare state, increase corporate tax and hike income tax for the highest earners.
BBC: Obama condolences over Afghanistan massacre in Kandahar
US President Barack Obama has phoned his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to express condolences over the massacre of 16 villagers in Kandahar.
Nine children were killed along with adults in their homes when a US soldier based locally allegedly went on a gun rampage during the night.
Mr Obama vowed to hold accountable anyone responsible for the "tragic and shocking" incident.
President Karzai has condemned the attack and demanded an explanation.
CBS: Santorum calls Romney "very desperate"
Following a neck-and-neck delegate haul in two states and three U.S. territories in Saturday's caucuses, Rick Santorum called the Mitt Romney campaign's attempt to paint the day as a victory for itself "very desperate for a man who supposedly has it in the bag."
While greeting supporters at an airport hangar here just moments before taking off for Mississippi, Santorum was responding to a reporter who cited a recent email from Romney's campaign that claimed Santorum "fell short of making a dent in Mitt Romney's already large delegate lead." Of the day's primaries, Santorum won Kansas; Romney won Wyoming, Guam, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Earlier in the evening, keynoting a Cape Girardeau Lincoln Day Dinner here, Santorum thanked Missouri, whose nonbinding primary last month helped thrust Santorum well into the top tier. The state's official caucus is March 17.
BBC: Egypt unrest: Court clears 'virginity test' doctor
A military court in Egypt has acquitted an army doctor accused of carrying out forced "virginity tests" on women protesters, state media reports.
Ahmed Adel was cleared because the judge found contradictions in witness statements, Mena news agency said.
The case was brought by one of the women, Samira Ibrahim, who said the "tests" took place after they had been detained during protests last year.
Demonstrators are gathering to protest the ruling, the BBC's Jon Leyne says.
The Australian: Thousands stage Japan anti-nuclear protest
TENS of thousands of people have rallied near Japan's crippled Fukushima plant demanding an end to nuclear power as the nation marked the first anniversary of a disastrous earthquake and tsunami.
Memorial ceremonies and anti-nuclear demonstrations were held across the northeast region where an estimated 160,000 people were forced to evacuate after the monster waves triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Around 16,000 people gathered at a baseball stadium in Koriyama some 60 kilometres away from the plant.
Participants called for an end to nuclear energy in Japan and compensation for victims from operator Tokyo Electric Power, a year after the March 11 quake-tsunami sparked the world's worst atomic disaster in a generation.
AP: 3 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes
Israeli airstrikes killed a schoolboy and two other Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, while Gaza rocket squads fired salvos into southern Israel, deepening the worst round of violence between the sides in more than a year.
A Gaza health official said a 12-year-old boy, a 60-year-old farm guard and a militant were killed as the exchanges of fire entered their third day. Egyptian efforts to achieve a cease-fire faltered, spurned by the two factions in Gaza responsible for the rocket fire. The Israeli military said its aircraft targeted rocket launchers.
The violence has shattered a monthslong lull. It was touched off Friday by an Israeli air strike that killed the commander of the Popular Resistance Committees militant group, an ally of Gaza's Hamas rulers. Since then, Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 Gaza militants and two civilians, and Palestinian militants there have fired more than 120 rockets at Israel, seriously wounding two civilians.
Gaza health official Adham Abu Salmia said the militant killed Sunday was at a rocket launching site in Gaza City. The boy was hit while walking with a friend to school in the northern town of Jebaliya and the guard died in Gaza City while walking with his dog, who was also killed, he said.
Guardian: Kofi Annan leaves Syria after talks with Assad
The international envoy Kofi Annan has left Syria without a deal to end the year-old conflict in the country, as regime forces mounted a new assault on rebel strongholds in the north.
The former UN secretary general said he had presented the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, with concrete proposals "which will have a real impact on the ground".
"Once it's agreed, it will help launch the process and help end the crisis on the ground," he said at the end of a two-day visit.
Annan, who also met Syrian opposition leaders and business leaders in Damascus, said he was optimistic following two sets of talks with Assad, but acknowledged that resolving the crisis would be tough. "It's going to be difficult but we have to have hope," he said.
Guardian: Chavez to return to Venezuela from Cuba this week
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he plans to return home this week from Cuba and has been recovering smoothly after undergoing cancer surgery.
Chavez spoke on television Sunday from Havana, accompanied by many of his Cabinet ministers in a prerecorded appearance that resembled his regular Sunday television and radio program.
"I should return in the coming days," Chavez said, appearing upbeat and wearing a track suit emblazoned with the yellow, blue and red of Venezuela's flag. He added that he would undergo radiation therapy in the coming weeks.
He noted that two weeks have passed since his operation, saying he now has "completely normal vital parameters, a good general state of health, without any complication of any kind."
CBS: "Emo" and gay kids targeted, killed in Iraq
Young people who identify themselves as so-called Emos are being brutally killed at an alarming rate in Iraq, where militias have distributed hit lists of victims and security forces say they are unable to stop crimes against the subculture that is widely perceived in Iraq as being gay.
Officials and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are either gay or believed to be gay have been killed in the last six weeks alone — forecasting what experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their skulls with heavy cement blocks.
A recent list distributed by militants in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City neighborhood gives the names or nicknames of 33 people and their home addresses. At the top of the paper are a drawing of two handguns flanking a Quranic greeting that extolls God as merciful and compassionate.
Guardian: Japan marks 1 year since quake, tsunami disaster
For 70-year-old Toshiko Murakami, memories of the terrifying earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of her seaside town and swept away her sister brought fresh tears Sunday, exactly a year after the disaster.
"My sister is still missing so I can't find peace within myself," she said before attending a ceremony in a tent in Rikuzentaka marking the anniversary of the March 11, 2011, disaster that killed just over 19,000 people and unleashed the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.
Across Japan, people paused at 2:46 p.m. — the moment the magnitude-9.0 quake struck a year ago — for moments of silence, prayer and reflection about the enormous losses suffered and monumental tasks ahead.
CNN: 'Massacre' in Homs leaves 45 women, children dead, Syrian activists say
At least 45 women and children were killed in the Syrian city of Homs late Sunday, opposition activists said, hours after the U.N. special envoy to Syria met with the country's president in an effort to reach a diplomatic solution to end the violence.
The killings occurred in the Homs neighborhood of Karm al Zaytoun, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition activist network.
Hadi Abdallah, a spokesman for the Syrian Revolution General Council, told CNN there were 47 victims -- all stabbed to death and burned after "Syrian forces and thugs" stormed their homes.
Guardian: Over 100 buried in Congo mass funeral
Women wearing masks against the odor of death threw themselves over the graves of their dead children, while men had to be restrained to stop them from hurting themselves as more than 100 victims of last week's arms depot explosion were laid to rest in a mass funeral Sunday.
Republic of Congo's government scrambled to organize Sunday's mass burial, which took place exactly one week after an arms depot inside a military barracks caught fire, setting off a lethal rain of grenades, mortar rounds, shells and rockets.
Extra carpenters had to be hired to build the coffins. The municipal morgue stayed open all night so that families could finish the ritual washing of the bodies.
At least 246 people were killed, but only 159 of the bodies could be identified in time for Sunday's funeral. The scene at the morgue in the hours before the burial, and at the cemetery after the coffins were lowered, was one of chaos, punctuated by pain.
CNN: Six dead in car bomb attack at Nigeria church
Tensions ran high in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Sunday in the aftermath of an explosion outside a Catholic church that left six people dead, according to hospital and government officials.
The apparent car bomb attack happened outside of St. Finbar's Catholic Church, according to Plateau Gov. Jonah David Jang.
A spokesman for the Plateau state government, Machias Abraham Yiljab, said three bodies were at the scene of the explosion.
Ishaya Pam, chief medical director of the Jos University Teaching Hospital, said in a statement that the hospital had three bodies and was treating 14 people for wounds suffered in the explosion.