JOHANNESBURG — At least 38 girls and young women were killed in a crash while traveling to Swaziland’s most popular traditional festival, a rights group said Saturday. An additional 20 others were injured when the truck they were in collided with another vehicle Friday.
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VATICAN CITY
Envoy died of heart attack, Vatican says
The former papal envoy to the Dominican Republic, who went on trial at the Holy See this summer charged with sexual abuse of minors, died of a heart attack, according to initial autopsy results, the Vatican said Saturday. A Vatican statement indicated that laboratory results, expected in coming days, could elaborate on the cause of the death of Jozef Wesolowski, a 67-year-old Pole, Thursday evening at the Vatican.
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TURKEY
Airstrikes launched against militants
ISTANBUL — Turkey has launched its first wave of airstrikes as part of the US-led coalition to fight the Islamic State, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday. Turkish fighter jets carried out joint operations late Friday against Islamic State targets in Syria, which posed a threat to Turkey’s national security, the statement said. Islamic State militants gained control of five villages in northern Syria on Thursday and advanced toward the Turkish border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.
NEW YORK TIMES
HUNGARY
Four are arrested in migrants’ deaths
KECSKEMET — Four men suspected of being involved in the deaths of 71 migrants found in a truck in Austria were placed under preliminary arrest Saturday by a Hungarian court. Three Bulgarian suspects are aged 29, 30, and 50, officials said, while the fourth suspect — an Afghan — is 28. The refrigerated truck with the dead migrants was found Thursday.
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CHINA
Legislature OK’s prisoner amnesty
BEIJING — China’s legislature Saturday approved a prisoner amnesty as part of commemorations of World War II’s end that could see thousands of inmates, such as war veterans or juveniles, released. The official Xinhua News Agency said the measure approved could free several thousand prisoners by the end of this year. Those eligible include veterans of World War II, the Chinese civil war that ended with the Communist victory in 1949, and subsequent conflicts such as the 1950-1953 Korean War.
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