Australian leader says he plans to call rare early election

SYDNEY –  Australia's prime minister says he intends to call a rare early election, with the nation likely to head to the polls in July amid waning popularity for the ruling conservative party.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's comments on Tuesday all but confirmed that Australia was on track to hold its first early election since 1987. The early election is called a "double dissolution" because both the House of Representatives and the Senate are dissolved.
Turnbull has until May 11 to officially announce an early election. He had previously said he would call for a double dissolution if the Senate failed to pass government legislation that would create a construction industry watchdog. The Senate rejected the bill for the second time on Monday, providing the trigger Turnbull had been waiting for.
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Turkey: 38 arrested for 'framing' Fenerbahce with scandal

ANKARA, Turkey –  Turkey's state-run news agency says authorities have detained 38 people suspected of "framing" soccer team Fenerbahce's players and directors in a match-fixing investigation in 2011, as the government presses ahead with a crackdown on supporters of a U.S.-based Muslim cleric.
Anadolu Agency says the suspects, including former police chiefs, lawyers and at least one journalist, were detained Tuesday in raids in 28 cities.
Several Fenerbahce officials were arrested and tried as part of the match-fixing scandal but were acquitted in a re-trial last year. The club has long maintained that the case was orchestrated by prosecutors and police affiliated with Fethullah Gulen's moderate Islamic movement.
The government accuses Gulen of attempting to overthrow it and has been clamping down on his supporters and seizing newspapers and businesses associated with him.
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Morocco: one of the world's oldest libraries is renovated

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  This April 14, 2016, photo shows the reading room of the Al-Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, Morocco. Founded 12 centuries ago by a pioneering woman, the al-Qarawiyyin library is wrapping up a careful restoration project and King Mohamed VI is expected to preside over the reopening. But authorities haven't decided whether the public will be able to view its treasured Islamic manuscripts, or whether that privilege will be limited to university researchers. (AP Photo/Samia Errazouki) (The Associated Press)

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FEZ, Morocco –  The settling dust from renovations and the banging of tools aren't ideal sights and sounds for a library — but this is no ordinary library.
Founded 12 centuries ago by a pioneering woman and nestled in the old medina of Fez, Morocco's University of al-Qarawiyyin library is one of the world's oldest libraries, home to unique Islamic manuscripts treasured by historians. Yet it's been largely hidden from the public. The architect leading its restoration, Fez native Aziza Chaouni, didn't even know it existed until she was asked to work on it.
King Mohammed VI is expected to inaugurate its reopening soon. Chaouni is hoping it will mark an ideological change, too, and open to the public for the first time in its long history. Until now, the privilege of using the library has been limited to scholars who seek formal permission, and authorities haven't decided yet whether to change that.
From calligraphic designs on the walls to ceramic patterns on the floors and wooden carvings on the ceilings, the fingerprint of almost every ruling dynasty since the 9th century can be seen in the architecture.
A devout and wealthy Muslim woman from the Tunisian town of Kairaouan, Fatima al-Fihri, provided the endowment for building al-Qarawiyyin in the 9th century. Originally a mosque, it expanded in the 10th century to become a university, Abdelmajid El-Marzi, imam and administrator of the mosque, told The Associated Press.
The library houses a collection of manuscripts written by renowned thinkers from the region, including Ibn Khaldun's "Muqadimmah." The 14th-century historical work spent six months on loan to the Louvre Museum in Paris during the renovations, library curator Abdelfattah Bougchouf said.
Other texts include a 9th-century Quran written in Kufic calligraphy, and a manuscript on the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence by Ibn Rochd, also known as Averroes.
The manuscripts are now kept in a secure room, with strict temperature and humidity control. They weren't always kept like this, however.
"The original manuscript room door had four locks," Bougchouf told The AP. "Each of those keys was kept with four different people. In order to open the manuscript room, all four of those people had to physically be there to open the door."
Now, he chuckled, "all of that has been replaced with a four-digit security code."
A previous renovation and expansion effort in 1940 opened up the library to foreigners and non-Muslims by creating a separate entrance. Before that, the only way to access the library was via the mosque. Non-Muslims aren't allowed to enter the Qarawiyyin mosque to this day.
"It was a sign of tolerance," Abdelfattah said.
Since ascending to the throne in 1999, King Mohammed VI has called for restorations at Qarawiyyin.
Architect Chaouni said she was pleasantly surprised when the Culture Ministry approached her in 2012 to work on the project — especially in a field dominated by men.
"I knew about the mosque, but never even knew there was a library there," she said, despite growing up in the city.
She specializes in restoring old buildings in a sustainable fashion, and is also trained as an engineer, with degrees from Harvard and Columbia universities.
The restoration is fixing a plumbing issue that increasingly threatened to drench the rare manuscripts in sewage water.
Chaouni is also lobbying for opening a public exhibition room for the first time - calling it "the biggest challenge of my soul" during the restoration project.
The Culture Ministry accepted the idea but bureaucratic control over the site shifted to the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. Chaouni worries that this shift will squash her efforts. Authorities are also concerned about the cost of keeping the previous manuscripts secure.
Another way to improve access to the manuscripts is to digitize them, which the library has been doing, and about 20 percent are now available in electronic form.

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Journalist faces charges in Russia-occupied Crimea

MOSCOW –  The prosecutor general for Russian-occupied Crimea says security services are pressing charges against a Crimean journalist for undermining Russia's territorial integrity.
Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, the parliament passed a law making it a criminal offense to question Russia's territorial integrity, which also means opposing the occupation.
The prosecutor general's office said in a statement on Tuesday that the Federal Security Service is pressing charges against an unidentified journalist for reports where he or she "called for the isolation of the peninsula." This could be the first criminal case for denouncing the occupation.
Independent media have been virtually banned in Crimea since the annexation and the few reporters who work for independent media outlets use pen names to hide their identities.

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The Latest: More rescuers arrive in earthquake-hit Ecuador

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  An air force soldier stands guard trying to prevent looting in the earthquake ravaged business district of Manta, Ecuador, Monday, April 18, 2016. A Saturday night quake left a trail of ruin along Ecuador’s Pacific Ocean coast. Hundreds died and thousands are homeless. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) (The Associated Press)

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MANTA, Ecuador –  The Latest on the deadly earthquake in Ecuador (all times local):
3:30 a.m.
Ecuador's foreign minister says more international rescuers are heading to the country's disaster zone of flattened buildings to help in the race against time to find survivors from a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake
Guillaume Long tweeted that 654 search experts from other nations were on the ground late Monday and that more were expected to arrive Tuesday — bringing to 13 the nationalities involved in the rescue.
The government reported Monday that the official death count had increased to 413 and was expected to rise further in the days ahead. Among the dead were an American and two Canadians.
Complicating rescue efforts is the lack of electricity in many areas, meaning noisy power generators must be used, making it harder to hear people who might be trapped beneath rubble.
More than 2,000 people were injured.
Spain's Red Cross said as many as 5,000 people might need temporary housing because of destroyed homes and 100,000 need some sort of aid.
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Suicide attack wounds 10 outside northwest Pakistani office

PESHAWAR, Pakistan –  Police say a suicide bomber has attacked a government office in the northwestern city of Mardan, wounding at least 10 people.
Faisal Shahzad, the city police chief, said the attacker also fired gunshots Tuesday before triggering the explosives outside a tax revenue office.
He says three of the wounded are in critical condition.
No one has claimed responsibility. Suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban and their allied local militants, who have long been attacking the government in a bid to install their own harsh brand of Islamic law.
The Pakistani military has launched multiple offensives against militant hideouts, but the insurgents have proven resilient. An Easter Sunday suicide bombing targeting Christians killed over 70 people in the eastern city of Lahore last month.

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China warns of foreign spies with 'Dangerous Love' campaign

BEIJING –  China is marking its first annual National Security Education Day with a poster warning of handsome foreigners with secret agendas.
Titled "Dangerous Love," the poster tells the story of an attractive young Chinese civil servant, "Little Li" who meets a red-headed foreign man at a dinner party and starts a relationship.
Unbeknownst to her, "David" is a foreign spy and butters her up with compliments on her beauty, bouquets of roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park.
After Little Li provides David with secret internal documents from her government propaganda office, the pair is arrested. In the final panel, Li is shown sitting handcuffed before two policemen who tell her she has a "shallow understanding of secrecy for a state employee."

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