Evangelists held in Laos freed, deported
BANGKOK -- A U.S.-based Christian evangelical organization says three of its American volunteers who were detained in Laos more than a week ago for proselytizing have been freed and deported.
The operations manager for Vision Beyond Borders, Eric Blievernicht, said in an email that the three crossed into Thailand on Thursday night.
"Our prayers for their release and that they might be home for Easter are being answered," Blievernicht wrote.
The missionaries, identified by the Casper, Wyo., group only as Wayne, Autumn and Joseph, were detained by Laotian police on April 8 while visiting villages in the northwestern province of Luang Namtha to distribute gospel tracts and other Christian material.
The website of U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia, citing an unidentified district policeman, reported Tuesday that the three were detained for handing out religious materials without receiving official permission.
Christians in Laos, especially those carrying out proselytizing work, face pressure from two quarters. The country's rigid old-style communist government is suspicious of outsiders and seeks to regulate all religions. The mostly Buddhist country's animist community, usually found in rural areas, also is often hostile.
Deaths put at 205 in Libya militia battles
BENGHAZI, Libya -- The fighting between Libya's rival factions for control of the country's capital this month killed 205 people so far, the World Health Organization said, announcing that it would deploy medical specialists, including surgeons, to treat the wounded.
The clashes, which broke out earlier in April, have threatened to ignite a civil war on the scale of the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
The fighting also has forced the U.N. to indefinitely postpone reconciliation talks planned for mid-April that were meant to try to find a way to pull Libya out of the chaos that followed Gadhafi's ouster.
The U.N. health organization said Wednesday that it would send medical personnel to treat the wounded, whose number has reached 913. It wasn't clear how many among the dead are civilians.
Fighting over Tripoli is pitting the self-styled Libyan National Army, which is led by commander Khalifa Hifter and aligned with a rival government based in the country's east, against militias affiliated with Tripoli's U.N.-supported government.
Ex-SS guard, now 92, faces 5,230 counts
BERLIN -- A former Nazi guard has been charged with 5,230 counts of accessory to murder at the Stutthof concentration camp during the final months of World War II, German prosecutors said Thursday.
Prosecutors in the northern city of Hamburg said Thursday that the 92-year-old suspect, whose name they didn't release, is accused of assisting in the "malicious and cruel" killing of mainly Jewish inmates through his work as an SS guard at the camp between August 1944 and April 1945.
Prosecutors said the man, who was aged 17-18 at the time and would therefore be tried as a minor, was "a little wheel in the machinery of murder" in which thousands of people were shot dead, poisoned or starved toward the end of the war.
German daily Die Welt reported that the suspect, who it identified as Bruno Dey, acknowledged to investigators he was aware of the camp's gas chambers and saw bodies taken to the crematoriums, but denied being a supporter of Nazi ideology and expressed regret for the fate of Jews.
Teacher-pay talks fail again in Poland
WARSAW, Poland -- Unions representing Poland's public-school teachers vowed to continue a nationwide strike after their latest round of pay negotiations with the government failed Thursday.
Government ministers and union leaders blamed one another for the lack of progress during more than two hours of talks. Teachers have been on strike since last week, closing most schools.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appealed for teachers to end the strike, and invited teachers, parents and experts for negotiations April 26 on overhauling the country's education system.
Striking teachers saw little chance for an agreement after the government insisted it doesn't have money to meet their demand for a 30 percent pay increase. The government is offering 15 percent raises starting in September and a smaller pay raise next year for an increase in the number of teaching hours.
The head of the prime minister's office, Michal Dworczyk, said it was crucial to have the strike suspended for matriculation exams starting May 6. The exams are the basis for university entry.
Many teachers in Poland earn less than supermarket cashiers. Their monthly earnings range from $470 to $780, depending on experience.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 04/19/2019