ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — The Taliban say they don’t want to monopolize power, but they insist there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, who is also a member of the group’s negotiating team, laid out the insurgents’ stance on what should come next in a country on the precipice.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant acknowledged Wednesday that leaked data from the company — files now apparently being used in a cyber-extortion attempt involving a $50 million ransom demand — likely came from one of its contractors.
The Saudi Arabian Oil Co., better known as Saudi Aramco, told The Associated Press that it “recently became aware of the indirect release of a limited amount of company data which was held by third-party contractors.”
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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch Queen Maxima teamed up with a small robot Thursday to unveil a steel 3D-printed pedestrian bridge over a canal in the heart of Amsterdam’s red light district.
Maxima pushed a green button that set the robot’s arm in motion to cut a ribbon across the bridge with a pair of scissors.
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DALLAS, United States (AP) — An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 has sold at auction for $1.56 million.
Heritage Auctions in Dallas said that the 1996 game sold Sunday, breaking its previous record price for the sale of a single video game.
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BEIJING, China (AP) — One member of a group of elephants that left a nature reserve and wandered close to cities in China’s southwest has been tranquilized and returned to the reserve after leaving the herd.
The elephants attracted nationwide attention after they left the reserve in Yunnan province last year and walked more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) north. They reached the outskirts of Kunming, a major city, before turning south again, but still are far from the reserve.
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WISCONSIN, United States (AP) — In cheese-obsessed Wisconsin, which proudly touts itself as America’s Dairyland, the dairy cow is the official domestic animal, milk is the official state beverage and cheese is the official dairy product.
But believe it or not, in a state that produces more cheese than any other at 3.4 billion pounds (1.5 billion kilograms) each year, there is no official state cheese.
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MOSCOW, Russia (AP) — Ukraine’s defense minister is under pressure from members of the government over the decision to have female military cadets wear pumps with heels in an important parade.
“The purpose of any military parade is to demonstrate the military ability of the army. There should be no room for stereotypes and sexism,” said a joint statement from three Cabinet members, including Minister of Veterans Affairs Yulia Laputina.
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OHIO, United States (AP) — In a 1970 Beetle Bailey comic strip, the character known as Sarge berates his uniform-wearing dog, Otto, for a paperwork mistake.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israeli’s foreign minister acknowledged Wednesday during his first state visit to the United Arab Emirates that when tensions flare in Jerusalem, it reverberates across the region.
“Nobody is denying the fact that tensions in Jerusalem endanger the entire area,” Yair Lapid told reporters in Dubai.
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WASHINGTON, United States (AP) — A long-awaited U.S. government report on UFOs released Friday makes at least one thing clear: The truth is still out there.
Investigators did not find extraterrestrial links in reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories. But they drew few other conclusions and instead highlighted the need for better data collection about what’s increasingly seen by Democrats and Republicans as a national security concern. In all but one of the sightings investigated, there was too little information for investigators to even broadly characterize the nature of the incident.
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