PM: End protests

PM: End protests

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s prime minister took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early today, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end.

Tens of thousands of protesters have conducted demonstrations that have spread to dozens of cities across Turkey, sparked by the violent police reaction last Friday to what started out as a small protest against a plan to develop Istanbul’s central Taksim Square.

Putins divorcing

MOSCOW

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his long-suffering wife, Lyudmila, are ending their nearly 30-year marriage, they announced on state television Thursday in a tone of mutual indifference.

“We practically never saw each other,” Putin told a reporter from the Rossiya 24 network as he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife departed a Kremlin ballet performance. “To each his own life.”

Officials: Self-help duo commit suicide

NEW YORK

On a radio show they hosted called “The Pursuit of Happiness,” John Littig and Lynne Rosen urged listeners to embrace spontaneity.

“So much about life is about impulse,” Littig said on a broadcast this year on WBAI in New York. “It’s about doing it right now.”

A shocking decision the couple made together appeared more methodical: Police say they killed themselves side by side as part of a suicide pact.

Autopsies found that both Littig, 47, and Rosen, 45, died from asphyxiation after inhaling helium, a spokeswoman for medical examiner’s office said Thursday.

Combined dispatches