Rohingya Muslims pleaded with the international community at the first United Nations high-level meeting on the plight of the ethnic minority to prevent the mass killings taking place in Myanmar and to help those in the persecuted group lead normal lives. “This is a historic occasion for Myanmar, but this is long overdue,” Wai Wai Nu, the Rohingya founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network-Myanmar, told ministers and ambassadors from many of the U.N.’s 193-member nations in the General Assembly Hall. The Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar have suffered decades of displacement, oppression and violence, while seeing no...

 The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday set execution dates for four people, including the only woman in the state on death row. Christa Pike received the death sentence at age 18 for the 1995 torture slaying of Colleen Slemmer, who was a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student. Slemmer, 18, was stabbed and beaten by Pike and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend at the time, on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus. They carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, and investigators claimed Pike took a piece of the victim’s skull for a souvenir. Shipp, of Memphis, was sentenced to life in prison...

The scaffolding supporting a church under construction in Ethiopia’s Amhara region collapsed Wednesday, killing at least 25 people and injuring scores of others, authorities said. The accident happened in the morning at Menjar Shenkora Arerti Mariam Church in Amhara, northern Ethiopia, as worshippers gathered for an annual event celebrating St. Mary. Many worshippers had climbed up the wooden scaffolding to see a ceiling mural when the support structure collapsed, according to witnesses. “We all had gathered in prayers when all of a sudden the scaffolding collapsed and people starting falling from the ceiling,” witness Mikias Mebratu, who lost three of...

 South Korea’s president apologized Thursday for poorly managed foreign adoption programs that were rife with abuses and fraud, months after the country’s truth commission admitted state responsibilities for such practices for the first time. President Lee Jae Myung said in a Facebook post that he was offering “heartfelt apology and words of comfort” on behalf of the country to South Koreans adopted abroad and their adoptive and birth families. Findings by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and recent court rulings have confirmed some cases of human rights abuses in the course of international adoptions, Lee said, adding that the government failed to play its role in...

Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday ordered all remaining Palestinians to leave Gaza City, saying it was their “last opportunity” and that anyone who stayed would be considered a militant supporter and face the “full force” of Israel’s latest offensive. At least 21 Palestinians were killed across the territory, according to local hospitals, as Hamas weighed a new proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump aimed at ending the war and returning the remaining captives taken in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered it. A senior Hamas official told The Associated Press that there are some points in the proposal that are unacceptable and...

 Indonesian rescue authorities made the tough decision on Thursday to start using heavy machinery to move large sections of a collapsed school, with no more signs of life from beneath the rubble and nearly 60 teenage students still unaccounted for three days after the building caved in. Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs Pratikno told reporters on the scene in Sidoarjo that the decision had been made in consultation with the families of those still missing. Five students were rescued Wednesday by workers who tunneled into the rubble using only hand tools. Pratikno said on Thursday work would...

Scores of political prisoners pardoned by the authoritarian leader of Belarus sat on a bus waiting to cross the border with Lithuania last month, minutes from freedom. Suddenly, one of them stood up, forced the door open and got off, defiantly refusing to leave his homeland in what he called as a forced deportation. Since that incident on Sept. 11, Mikalai Statkevich hasn’t been seen. Human rights activists are demanding that Belarusian authorities reveal what has happened to the 69-year-old opposition politician and former presidential candidate. Statkevich was one of 52 political prisoners pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko as part of a deal brokered by...