Panel: Let women in combat units

Panel: Let women in combat units

WASHINGTON

Women should finally be allowed to serve fully in combat, a military advisory panel said Friday in a report seeking to dismantle the last major area of discrimination in the armed forces.

The call by a commission of current and retired military officers to let women be front-line fighters could set in motion another sea change in military culture as the armed forces, generations after racial barriers fell, grapples with the phasing out of the ban on gays serving openly.

John Paul II to be beatified May 1

VATICAN CITY

During his 2005 funeral, crowds at the Vatican shouted for Pope John Paul II to be made a saint immediately. “Santo subito!” they chanted for one of the most important and beloved pontiffs in history.

His successor heard their call. On Friday, in the fastest process on record, Pope Benedict XVI set May 1 as the date for John Paul’s beatification — a key step toward Catholicism’s highest honor and a major morale boost for a church reeling from the clerical sex-abuse scandal.

He set the date after declaring that a French nun’s recovery from Parkinson’s disease was the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle is needed to be canonized a saint.

Ohio man charged with killing parents

MOUNT EATON, Ohio

An Ohio man has been charged with killing his parents, whose bodies were found in the blood-splattered basement of their farmhouse.

The sheriff’s office in northeast Ohio’s Wayne County on Friday filed two counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated burglary against 31-year-old Rodney R. Stutzman. He was arrested without incident late Thursday in West Virginia.

Tunisians drive Ben Ali from power

TUNIS, Tunisia

Protesters enraged over soaring unemployment and corruption drove Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power Friday after 23 years of iron-fisted rule, an unprecedented popular uprising in a region dominated by strongmen who do not answer to their people.

The upheaval took place after weeks of escalating unrest fueled partly by social media and cell phones, as thousands of demonstrators from all walks of life rejected Ben Ali’s promises of change and mobbed the capital of Tunis to demand his ouster in the country’s largest demonstrations in generations.

More than 100 killed in stampede

KOCHI, India

A stampede of pilgrims returning from one of India’s most popular Hindu festivals killed more than 100 people and injured 25 others Friday night, police said.

The stampede was set off when a group of pilgrims in a jeep drove into a crowd of worshippers walking along a narrow forest path as they returned from offering prayers at the hilltop Sabarimala shrine in the state of Kerala in southern India, said local police official Sanjay Kumar.

Obama to ease travel restrictions to Cuba

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.

President Barack Obama plans to loosen Cuban travel policy to allow students and church groups to go to the communist country, the administration announced Friday.

Students seeking academic credit and churches traveling for religious purposes will be able to go to Cuba.

The plan also will let any American send as much as $500 every three months to Cuban citizens who are not part of the Castro administration and are not members of the Communist Party.

Associated Press