San Francisco Chronicle: World

GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — The Pyeongchang Olympics have begun with a curling competition featuring a showdown between a pair of U.S. siblings and a Russian husband-and-wife team competing in neutral uniforms with no national insignia.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — The leader of Boko Haram says he's still in control of an important territory that the Nigerian military says it has seized back from the extremist group.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

RIO DE JANEIRO — Ana Lobo, who is six months pregnant, was at a pre-Carnival street party last weekend when a man started yelling and calling her names.

“Whore!” she remembered him saying, apparently because she was wearing a revealing top.

LONDON (AP) — A British man who fought with Kurdish militia against the Islamic State group is facing a terrorism charge.
London's Metropolitan Police force said Wednesday that 43-year-old James Matthews is accused of "attending a place or places in Iraq and Syria where instruction or training was provided" for terrorist purposes.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

MALE, Maldives (AP) — Two supreme court justices who have been arrested amid a deep political crisis in the Maldives took millions of dollars in bribes in return for issuing a ruling ordering the release of imprisoned politicians that sparked the crisis, the country's acting police chief said Wednesday.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

MANBIJ, Syria (AP) — The top U.S. general in the coalition fighting the Islamic State group has pledged American troops would remain in the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Manbij despite Ankara's demands for a U.S.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon's top security body has instructed the country's military to confront any Israeli "aggression" on its land or maritime borders.
The statement by the Higher Defense Council on Wednesday did not elaborate but it comes amid escalating tensions between the two neighbors, who are technically at war.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Retired Pope Benedict XVI has commemorated the fifth anniversary of his historic decision to retire by assuring that while his physical strength is waning, he is "on a pilgrimage home."
Benedict wrote a brief letter to Italian daily Corriere della Sera after readers inquired how he was doing.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

LONDON (AP) — The British government must quickly come up with a plan for post-Brexit trade relations with the European Union or risk a hit to investment and jobs, a leading business group said Wednesday.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

BEIRUT (AP) — New airstrikes launched by Russian and Syrian government forces on a besieged rebel-held region east of Damascus killed at least eight people on Wednesday, opposition activists said, part of an ongoing aerial campaign that has killed dozens of civilians in the past few days.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share