World News

Peru's Supreme Court overturned a medical pardon for the polarizing former President Alberto Fujimori, saying the 80-year-old must return to jail to serve his sentence for crimes against humanity, which cannot be pardoned under Peruvian and international law.

The pardon late last year was described at the time by a group of U.N. human rights experts as "a slap in the face to victims of human rights abuse."

The disappearance of an outspoken Saudi critic, who was last seen walking into a Saudi consulate in Turkey, has left activists, foreign officials and friends fearing for his safety.

Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée told media outlets that she waited hours for Khashoggi to emerge from the consulate in Istanbul. He was there to fill out paperwork so that the two could be married.

Earlier this summer, an 8-year-old girl named Saga Vanecek was doing what she often does: wading in Sweden's Lake Vidostern.

"I like to walk around finding rocks and sticks in the water, and then I usually walk around with my hands and knees in the water and in the sand," she explained to Radio Sweden Wednesday.

It was then that she felt something odd beneath her hand and knee. She lifted the object and saw that it had a handle.

The mayor of Osaka, Japan, is ending its "sister city" relationship with San Francisco this week, following a dispute over a statue that honors women and girls who were sexually enslaved by Japan's Imperial Army during World War II.

The Column of Strength memorial consists of three women in bronze who are holding hands in a circle as they look into the distance. An older woman stands to the side.

The statue commemorates "comfort women," a euphemism for thousands who were forced, coerced and deceived into serving men at brothels near the front lines.

Nearly a week after an earthquake struck Sulawesi, spawning a massive tsunami that overwhelmed the Indonesian island's central coast, aid groups are finally getting a foothold in the badly battered region — though challenges remain immense for relief and recovery efforts.

"Some people are now receiving basic food items like rice, noodles and canned food, but this remains a small minority. The food situation in Palu remains dire, and with the market closed we're even struggling to feed ourselves," said Genadi Aryawan, a Mercy Corps team member stationed in the city.

Updated at 3:18 p.m. ET

The Trump administration is accusing China of trying to interfere in the U.S. political process in an effort to undermine the president and his agenda in the upcoming midterm elections.

In a speech to the Hudson Institute on Thursday, Vice President Pence amplified the charge leveled by President Trump last week. Pence said China has used covert actors, front groups and propaganda in an attempt to sway U.S. public opinion.

The story Nicole Chung was told about her adoption was always the same: "Your birth parents had just moved here from Korea. They thought they wouldn't be able to give you the life you deserved."

Her adoptive parents were white Catholics living in Oregon who told the story with joy: explaining that Chung was born 10 weeks premature, that her birth parents worried she would struggle all her life, that they believed adoption was the best thing for her.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET

A federal grand jury in Pennsylvania has indicted seven Russian military intelligence officers, accusing them of hacking into U.S. and international anti-doping agencies and sports federations and of accessing data related to 250 athletes from about 30 countries.

"A thousand newspapers with the same front page" is how the Chinese have for decades described the enforced uniformity of the country's state-controlled media.

Now, one face increasingly dominates those front pages. It belongs to China's president, Xi Jinping, who has gone to extraordinary lengths to control the narrative about China.

"The party controls the media, and of course, that means it controls the message," says University of Hong Kong media expert David Bandurski. "And basically, Xi Jinping is the message."

One of France's most notorious criminals, Rédoine Faïd, has been captured three months after he made an astonishing escape by helicopter from a French prison.

The repeat offender has fascinated the country, as NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, and is known there as the "jailbreak king." He's spoken about how his actions are inspired by Hollywood gangster movies like Scarface.

Faïd had been serving a 25-year-sentence for a botched armed robbery in 2010 that killed a policewoman. And, he had previously escaped from another prison in 2013, that time using explosives.

China's ambassador to the United States says his country is "ready to make a deal" to end a trade war with the United States — if they could find a trustworthy partner in Washington.

Cui Tiankai accused the United States of shifting positions and passing up opportunities for agreement. The United States has been escalating tariffs on imports from China, and China he responded with taxes on U.S. goods.

In a wide-ranging interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the U.S., discusses trade and openness between the two countries, better understanding President Trump, China's social credit system.

Steve Inskeep: What is preventing an end to the trade war with the United States, if anything?

Ambassador Cui Tiankai: Well, first, we certainly don't want to have a trade war with the United States or with any other country.

You have one.

It used to be that the Communist Party focused on censoring free speech primarily inside of China. In recent years, though, China's authoritarian government has tried to censor speech beyond its borders, inside liberal democracies, when speech contradicts the party's line on highly sensitive political issues, such as the status of Tibet and Taiwan. It's part of the party's grand strategy to change the way the world talks about China.

When British Prime Minister Theresa May strutted up to the podium Wednesday, she was all smiles. And shimmies. And were those jazz hands?

For decades, the label "Made in Germany" has stood for quality and a guarantee of expensive, precision engineering. Conversely, "Made in China" has long been a marker of substandard, cheap, knockoff products. But this is changing.

Beijing's "Made in China 2025" policy aims to transform its manufacturing sector into an excellence-driven, global leader in high-end technology. While Germany still has the edge in engineering expertise, a steady increase in the number of Chinese firms buying up key German tech firms has triggered angst in Berlin.

Travelers arriving in New Zealand may be asked to enter their passcode or fingerprint to allow customs agents to search their electronic devices. And if they don't comply? They could be fined up to 5,000 New Zealand dollars — about $3,270 U.S.

This is due to new legislation called the Customs and Excise Act 2018, which updates language from a 1996 law. The law, which went into effect this week, also gives agents the authority to copy or clone any data on searched devices.

The shelves in Umesh Soni's little store in downtown Mumbai are neatly stacked with soaps. There are handmade translucent bars, brightly colored circular soaps in tropical variants and square black bathing bars. It looks like any other soap shop.

Except all the soaps include cow dung and cow urine as ingredients.

Why make soap from this stuff?

The Mascot lander floated down to the surface of an asteroid hurtling through space, capturing photographs and other data, according to the German Aerospace Center. The lander sent a photo of its descent — showing its own shadow on the asteroid's surface.

The craft's Twitter feed echoed Alice in Wonderland, declaring: "And then I found myself in a place like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery and danger!"

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET

The U.N.'s top court gave a partial victory to Iran in its dispute with the U.S. on Wednesday, saying the U.S. "must remove" sanctions that could stop food, medical supplies and other humanitarian products from entering Iran.