World/Nation

Highway reopens after collapse; 1 dead, 1 injured

CINCINNATI - A highway where an overpass collapse during demolition work left one worker dead and a tractor-trailer driver injured was cleared of concrete and steel on Tuesday and reopened, but police were left wondering what the casualty toll might have been had the accident occurred amid heavy traffic.

The removal of tons of debris from Interstate 75 began Tuesday afternoon and was completed by nighttime, allowing the closed southbound lanes to reopen to traffic. Minor repairs were made, the state Department of Transportation said.

Casualties could have been much higher had the late-night collapse happened at a busy time on the interstate, which carries more than 178,000 vehicles a day through the area 5 miles north of the Ohio River, Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell said.

Authorities identified the worker who was killed as Brandon William Carl, of Augusta, Ky. The Hamilton County coroner's office will do an autopsy to determine the cause of his death. Fire officials said his body was recovered from rubble with the help of air bags and special equipment early Tuesday morning, about four hours after the accident.

Four men first to face Paris terror attacks charges

PARIS - French anti-terror prosecutors sought Tuesday to charge four men in connection with the attacks in Paris that left 20 people dead, which would be the first suspects charged in the country's bloodiest terrorist attacks in decades.

The four men awaited an anti-terror judge's decision early Wednesday on whether to open preliminary investigations against them.

The possible charges were expected just hours before the French government was to unveil new measures aimed at helping head off future attacks, giving police more power to tap phones, monitor websites and force Internet companies to block messages of hate posted online.

Prime minister Manuel Valls will present new security measures Wednesday that will include efforts to increase intelligence-gathering against jihadis and other radicals, block their activities on the Internet, and prevent them from collaborating inside prisons or traveling abroad to fight, President Francois Hollande said.

France is on high security alert after the country's worst terrorist attacks in decades. The court case and the arrests came as Valls urged his nation to do some soul-searching about the country's deep ethnic divisions and declared that fighting hatred, anti-Semitism and racism was a top priority, especially in France's impoverished housing projects.

Islamic State group threatens more hostages

CAIRO - The Islamic State group threatened to kill two Japanese hostages within 72 hours, demanding a $200 million ransom in a video posted online Tuesday that showed a knife-brandishing masked militant standing over the two kneeling captives.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was traveling in the Middle East, vowed to save the men. But with his military only operating in a self-defense capacity at home, Abe faces a hard choice: openly pay the extremists or ask an ally like the United States to attempt a risky rescue inside Syria.

Tuesday's video, released via militant websites associated with the Islamic State group, mirrored other hostage threats the extremists have made. In it, the captives, 47-year-old Kenji Goto and 42-year-old Haruna Yukawa, were shown in orange jumpsuits with a rocky hill in the background, a black-clad militant standing between them. The scene resembles others featuring five hostages previously beheaded by the Islamic State group, which controls a third of Iraq and Syria.

Speaking in English with a British accent, the militant demanded $200 million for the men's release and appeared to link the ransom to a pledge Abe made Saturday of nonmilitary aid to help the government of Iraq and to assist Syrian refugees who have fled the Islamic State's brutality.

Saudi crackdown on speech linked to war on terror

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A man is given 50 lashes in a public square for "insulting Islam" on a liberal blog. Another is arrested for filming and uploading a woman's public beheading. Two females are imprisoned and put on trial for writing on Twitter in support of women driving.

These cases have thrust Saudi Arabia's record on human rights back into the spotlight, with international concern mounting over the limits of free speech in the Arab monarchy.

Human rights activists and lawyers say the cases are part of a sweeping clampdown on dissent that has intensified in Saudi Arabia since the region's 2011 Arab Spring upheaval. They say acts that offend the country's religious hard-liners or open up the kingdom to criticism - like the video of the execution of a woman convicted of murdering her stepdaughter - have landed people in jail as a warning to others.

Shiite rebels shell Yemen president's home

SANAA, Yemen - Shiite rebels shelled the residence of Yemen's leader and swept into the nearby presidential palace Tuesday in what a top army commander said was an unfolding coup.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi - an important U.S. ally in the fight against the highly lethal Yemeni branch of al-Qaida that claimed responsibility for the newspaper-office attack in Paris - was unharmed, authorities said. But his grip on power appeared increasingly precarious.

The Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, took over the capital, Sanaa, in September as part of a long power struggle with Hadi and effectively govern several other cities as well.

- The Associated Press