World briefs 12/13/16

Turks detain 235 after bombing

ISTANBUL -- Turkey's police rounded up more than 200 people, mostly Kurds, as the country Monday mourned the dozens killed in a bombing attack near an Istanbul soccer stadium. The interior ministry stated 235 people were detained in 11 cities for alleged connections to a terrorist organization. The detainees were affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and a Kurdish umbrella organization and included individuals deemed guilty of spreading terrorist propaganda on social media, the statement said. The majority of those arrested, according to media reports documenting the raids, were members of a pro-Kurdish party elected to the Turkish Parliament in 2014. Among them were two provincial leaders and an Ankara representative of the Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP. Two bombings outside and near a stadium in Istanbul on Saturday night killed 44 people and wounded more than 149 others, according to the latest tally.

Guterres sworn in as UN's chief

UNITED NATIONS -- Former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres was sworn in Monday as Secretary-General of the United Nations, becoming the ninth U.N. chief in its 71-year history. The former U.N. refugee chief was elected to the top job by acclamation in the General Assembly in October. He takes over from Ban Ki-moon on Jan. 1. Guterres, 67, performed well in answering questions before assembly members, and his executive experience as prime minister and as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015 propelled him to first place among 13 candidates vying for the job in informal polls in the Security Council. After the sixth poll, the council nominated him by acclamation, and his name was sent to the assembly for final approval.

Lack of transparency cited in IS fight

BAGHDAD -- A report released Monday by Airwars, a London-based project aimed at tracking the U.S.-led coalition's air strikes targeting the Islamic State group, criticized the coalition's lack of transparency when assessing civilian casualties. Coalition airstrikes have been critical in the fight against IS in Iraq, where Iraqi forces are trying to push the militant group out of Mosul. While U.S. officials have acknowledged 173 civilians have died in coalition airstrikes since the launch of the campaign against IS in the summer of 2014, the Airwars group said the number of civilian casualties is greater: at least 1,500. The Airwars project said the discrepancy in the numbers of acknowledged civilian casualties is partially due to how civilian deaths are investigated; assessments carried out by the coalition are "opaque, ad hoc and significantly biased towards internal military reporting," the group said. The coalition has been criticized for the slow pace of investigations into civilian casualties in the fight against IS.

Firefighters rescue moose from ice

TORONTO -- Canadian firefighters got out axes to rescue a 500-pound female moose from the ice on the weekend. The Shediac fire department in Canada's East Coast province of New Brunswick got a call Saturday morning from a homeowner on the Shediac River who spotted a moose stuck in ice. "We had all the boys dispatched to retrieve him," firefighter Jos LeBlanc said Monday. He said the moose first appeared agitated by firefighters but calmed and watched them work. LeBlanc said they smashed a path to the shore, but the animal seemed reluctant to mount the riverbank. They returned to scare the moose, which responded by mounting the bank before running away. The rescue took 90 minutes.

-- From wire reports