Danish vote lifts anti-immigration party
COPENHAGEN -- Danish voters ousted the government of Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and backed an opposition in which the anti-immigration Danish People's Party emerged as the biggest force.
"What's key for us is that we get the most influence," Kristian Thulesen Dahl, leader of the People's Party, said in an interview in Copenhagen.
The group won one-fifth of the votes, almost doubling its backing since 2011, after promising Danes tougher immigration and asylum laws. The party is also skeptical toward Denmark's European Union membership and has argued in favor of border controls to defy the single market's free movement of labor.
Lars Loekke Rasmussen, head of the opposition group and the man now set to become prime minister, got 90 seats in the parliament, versus 85 for the government. The margin was wide enough to ensure that four seats reserved for Denmark's former Atlantic colonies of Greenland and the Faeroe Islands weren't able to tip the balance.
Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's first female prime minister, also said she would resign as leader of the Social Democrats.
Free 84 kids, Amnesty urges Cameroon
DAKAR, Senegal -- Cameroonian authorities have been holding 84 children -- some as young as 5 years old -- for months without charge after officials accused their teachers at Koranic schools of running terrorist training camps, Amnesty International said Friday.
The international human-rights organization called on Cameroon to release the children to their parents immediately, saying nearly all of them are too young to face criminal charges. The raids in the country's far north are part of the fight against Islamic militants from the Nigeria-based group Boko Haram.
A government spokesman did not immediately respond to the report and said a news conference would be held Monday.
Boko Haram has waged a six-year insurgency seeking to implement an Islamic caliphate. In recent months, militants have stepped up attacks inside neighboring countries.
Cameroonian forces arrested the 84 children in December along with 43 men in the northern town of Guirvidig, accusing the teachers of using the schools "as fronts for Boko Haram training camps," Amnesty said.
Earlier this week, Cameroon assembled all its Muslim leaders in the capital, Yaounde, to teach them how to identify and denounce promoters of Islamic State ideology.
Serbia premier ready to visit Srebrenica
BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia's prime minister, a former extreme nationalist, said Friday that he is ready to attend memorial ceremonies next month marking the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs killed nearly 8,000 Muslims during the 1992-95 war.
In what he described as a sincere offer of reconciliation to the former wartime foes, Aleksandar Vucic said, "I am ready to lower and bow my head."
"If the Bosniaks want that and if it is not a problem for them, I am ready to honor the innocent victims of Srebrenica," Vucic added during a news conference broadcast live on several local television stations.
But Vucic stopped short of calling the Srebrenica massacre a genocide, as it was ruled by a United Nations court. He said instead that a "big and horrific crime" took place in the eastern Bosnian city in July 1995.
Bosnian Serbs rounded up Srebrenica men and boys after taking control of the city in an offensive. They killed most of them in just a few days, later burying their bodies in mass graves around the town.
N. Korea: Drug cures, prevents MERS
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea announced Friday it has a drug that can prevent and cure MERS, Ebola, SARS and AIDS.
The secretive state did not provide proof.
The official Korean Central News Agency said scientists developed Kumdang-2 from ginseng grown from fertilizer mixed with rare-earth elements. According to the pro-North Korea website Minjok Tongshin, the drug was originally produced in 1996.
"Malicious virus infections like SARS, Ebola and MERS are diseases that are related to immune systems, so they can be easily treated by Kumdang-2 injection drug, which is a strong immune reviver," the news agency said.
North Korea shut out foreign tourists for half a year with some of the world's strictest Ebola controls, even though no cases of the disease were reported near the country, before lifting the restrictions earlier this year.
North Korea trumpeted the same drug during deadly bird flu outbreaks in 2006 and 2013.
The North's claim comes as rival South Korea fights an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, that has killed two dozen people and sickened more than 160 since last month. There is no proven vaccine for the disease.
A Section on 06/20/2015