4 Turkish opposition parties team up
ISTANBUL -- Four opposition parties in Turkey announced a political alliance Saturday ahead of the country's June 24 national election, aiming to mount a meaningful challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party.
Lawmaker Bulent Tezcan of the main opposition Republican People's Party announced the "nation alliance." His secular party is joining forces with the newly-founded nationalist Good Party, the Islamic-leaning Felicity Party and the center-right Democrat Party in a bid to weaken the ruling party's 16-year dominance in parliament.
The parties have nominated their own presidential candidates to run against Erdogan but will run as an alliance for the parliamentary election, which is scheduled for the same day.
The presidential and parliamentary elections were scheduled for November 2019 but were moved up by more than a year. The vote will usher in a new system of governance, which was narrowly approved in a referendum last year.
Eyeglasses requested for world's poor
PANIPAT, India -- More than 1 billion people around the world need eyeglasses but don't have them, researchers say, an affliction long overlooked on lists of public health priorities. Some estimates put that figure closer to 2.5 billion people. They include thousands of nearsighted Nigerian truck drivers who strain to see pedestrians darting across the road.
Then there are the tens of millions of children across the world whose families cannot afford an eye exam or the prescription eyeglasses that would help them excel in school.
In 2015, only $37 million was spent on delivering eyeglasses to people in the developing world, less than 1 percent of resources devoted to global health issues, according to EYElliance, a nonprofit group trying to raise money and bring attention to the problem of uncorrected vision.
So far, the group's own fundraising has yielded only a few million dollars, according to its organizers. It has enlisted Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former Liberian president, among others, in an attempt to catapult the issue onto global development wish lists.
Honduras laments end to status in U.S.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- President Juan Orlando Hernandez's government expressed regret over a U.S. move Friday to end temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Hondurans who have resided in the United States for nearly two decades.
The foreign relations ministry said in a statement that it is a sovereign matter for Washington to decide, but added that "we deeply lament it."
It said returnees "are and always will be welcome in their homeland, where they will be received with open arms," and "their reintegration into our society will be facilitated."
President Donald Trump's administration announced earlier Friday that it was ending temporary protected status for the 57,000 Hondurans covered under the program. They now have until Jan. 5, 2020, to sort out their affairs before returning home -- or try to normalize their migratory status in other ways, such as through marriage or sponsorship.
U.K. office supports man's right to data
LONDON -- Britain's Information Commissioner's Office is backing an American academic's effort to obtain his personal data from SCL Group, which includes Cambridge Analytica.
The commissioner's office said in a ruling posted Saturday that SCL must provide the data within 30 days, warning that failure to do so would be a criminal offense.
The Enforcement Notice found in favor of professor David Carroll, saying his right to the personal information is protected by the Data Protection Act of 1998. The ruling says Carroll sought his information from Cambridge Analytica in 2017 and was unhappy with the responses, prompting his complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said the company "has consistently refused to cooperate with our investigation."
A Section on 05/06/2018