Mexico 1st Woman Major Part Candidate Concedes

Suicide bombers in Niger detonated two car bombs simultaneously on Thursday, one inside a military camp in the city of Agadez and another in the remote town of Arlit inside a French-operated uranium mine, killing a total of 25 people and injuring 29, according to the ministry of defense. The timing of the attacks, which occurred at the same moment more than 100 miles apart, and the fact that the bombers were able to penetrate both a well-guarded military installation and a sensitive, foreign-operated uranium mine, highlight the growing reach and sophistication of the Islamic extremists based in neighboring Mali. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic extremist group the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, said French radio RFI. The group is a spinoff of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which along with MUJAO controlled a France-sized chunk of northern Mali for nearly 10 months last year. They were flushed out of the major towns in northern Mali by a French-led military intervention which began in January. Because the French carried out the bulk of the operations, MUJAO and Al Qaeda's chapter in Africa warned that they would hit French interests all over the world in revenge, as well as all African states that help them. The bomb blasts on Thursday are the most damaging attacks by the jihadists in Niger to date and succeeded in hitting both an important French asset and the military of Niger, which sent 650 troops to help France combat the Islamists in Mali. The highest toll was in the desert city of Agadez, located almost 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of the capital, where the attackers punched their explosive-laden car past the defenses at a military garrison and succeeded in entering the base, killing 20 soldiers and 16 others when they detonated themselves, said Niger's Minister of Defense Mahamadou Karidjo at a hastily assembled press conference in the capital, Niamey, on Thursday. Three suicide bombers also died. The defense minister said the government decreed a 72-hour national period of mourning. He said that another two suicide bombers died in Arlit. No one else was killed, although Paris-based nuclear giant Areva said in a statement 13 employees of its mine were injured in the attack. Residents in the two towns immediately remarked on how closely coordinated the attacks appear to have been, taking place just moments apart at 5:30 a.m., a time when many in this majority Muslim nation are prostrating themselves in the first prayer of the day. Alhousseiny Moussa, a resident of Agadez, was walking to the mosque to pray when he heard the boom coming from the city's military camp. "I heard the explosion and immediately after, I heard a volley of gunfire. The area where it happened was inside the military camp and it's now been roped off so we cannot go in. It was right at 5:30 a.m.," he said. Another resident of Agadez, a city situated on the sandy fringe of the Sahara desert, said the car bomb awoke anyone who was still sleeping. `'We heard a strong detonation that woke the whole neighborhood, it was so powerful," explained Abdoulaye Harouna. "The whole town is now surrounded by soldiers looking for the attackers." Al Qaeda's affiliate in Africa and groups allied with them seized the northern half of Mali in April of last year. They pushed into the major towns, setting up their own administration. But for nearly a decade before that, they had already made themselves at home in Mali, using its remote, and lawless northern desert to train fighters and to hold the European hostages they kidnapped -- including many from Niger. In 2008, they grabbed two Canadians on the outskirts of Niger's capital, including United Nations special envoy Robert Fowler, who was held for 130 days before a ransom was negotiated. Two years later, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb infiltrated the mining town of Arlit, which was the scene of Thursday's car bombing, grabbing seven employees of French company Areva, and one of its contractors, SATOM, as well as the wife of one of the workers. Four of them -- all French nationals -- are still being held by the terror cell and their whereabouts are unknown. The terror group has repeatedly threatened to execute them in retaliation for the French-led intervention in Mali. On Thursday at 5:30 a.m., an all-terrain Toyota sports-utility vehicle penetrated the SOMAIR mine, where Areva is extracting uranium in Arlit, located 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) to the north of the capital, Niamey, according to residents. The car exploded not far from the machinery used at the mine. "We saw a car enter the factory and immediately it exploded," said Agoumou Idi, a worker inside the factory who was reached by telephone. "The terrorists, probably from MUJAO, took advantage of the fact that the entrance gate was open in order to let in a truck carrying the next shift of workers. They used that opening to enter the heart of our factory and explode their vehicle." In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks but said it was too early to give a definitive toll. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius spoke with his counterpart in Niger and said France was ready to offer any assistance needed. It added that France fully supports Niger's "fight against terrorist groups."

A court has banned what would have been Ukraine's first gay-pride demonstration. Kiev's district court on Thursday upheld a suit by city authorities, who argued that the rally would disturb annual Kiev Day celebrations and spark violence. Last year, organizers canceled the event at the last minute when skinheads gathered at its planned location, intent on beating up the participants. Members of radical groups attacked two leading gay activists in subsequent weeks. Lingering attitudes from the Soviet era, when homosexuality was illegal, and the influence of Orthodox Christianity ensure antipathy toward gays remains strong in Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

An Iranian semi-official news agency reports the country is denying that an unmanned drone violated the airspace of Bahrain, the strategic Gulf kingdom that hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The Thursday report by ISNA quotes an unnamed official in Iran's Foreign Ministry. The statement did not elaborate, instead urging Bahrain's rulers to pay attention to their people's demands. On Wednesday, Bahrain said an Iranian drone has been found in the tiny island kingdom across the Persian Gulf from Iran. Bahrain has repeatedly accused Shiite Iran of encouraging the more than two-year-long uprising in Bahrain by its majority Shiites. Iran denies it has any direct role. Iran has recently claimed advances in its technology in unmanned aircraft.

El Salvador's president gave Pope Francis a relic of assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero on Thursday amid mounting indications that the Vatican might soon move to beatify him. President Mauricio Funes flew from El Salvador to Rome for a 12-minute meeting with Francis to encourage the beatification, the first step to possible sainthood. A Vatican communique said the talks focused on Romero "and the importance of his witness for the entire nation." During the audience, Funes presented Francis with a bloodstained piece of the priestly vestments Romero was wearing when he was gunned down by right-wing death squads on March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. Romero's long-shelved sainthood case has been given new life by the election of the first Latin American pope and a pro-beatification campaign by Funes' government, which is made up of former guerrilla fighters who battled the same military hierarchy that Romero denounced. Earlier this week, El Salvador's ambassador to the Holy See, Manuel Lopez, said Funes' "principal objective" in traveling to Rome was to press for the beatification and thank Francis for the support he has already given it. Lopez said Francis told him in their first audience after his election that "I hope that under this pontificate we can beatify him.'" Lopez said Francis said something similar to Funes' wife who headed El Salvador's delegation to the pope's installation Mass. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was significant that the communique about the talks named Romero — an unusual break with protocol that signaled that Francis was indeed very much in favor of the slain archbishop's sainthood case. The death of Romero, a human rights proponent who spoke out for the poor and against repression by the Salvadoran army, presaged a civil war that killed nearly 75,000 over the next 12 years. The government and guerrillas reached a peace treaty in 1992, and five years later the Vatican opened a sainthood case for Romero, who is considered a martyr for the faith. Beatification is the first major step in the path towards being declared a saint. The cause stalled under two successive popes who were hostile to liberation theology, the Latin American-inspired view that Jesus' teachings imbue followers with a duty to fight for social and economic justice. Some say El Salvador's conservative governments headed by the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party, or Arena, blocked the cause. The Funes government, which came into power in 2009, has firmly supported it. In 2010, Funes publicly apologized on behalf of the state for the assassination. That same year, the government opened its first embassy to the Holy See in Rome — a clear indication that it wanted better, closer ties with the Vatican and a sign of intent and interest in Romero's cause. Previously, its embassy in London handled Vatican affairs. In 1993, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission determined that the assassination had been ordered by a former army major and Maj. Roberto D'Abuisson, the Arena founder. D'Abuisson had died years before. An amnesty law was passed shortly before the findings were made public. Arena never accepted the results of the commission's investigation. ___ Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Russia's top military officer has voiced skepticism about deeper nuclear arms cuts, saying they should require parallel cuts in non-nuclear precision weapons. Thursday's statement by chief of Russia's military General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, appeared to signal the Kremlin's reluctance to negotiate a new nuclear arms deal with Washington. President Barack Obama has pledged to work with Moscow to seek further reductions in nuclear arsenals. But Russia, which has increasingly relied on its nuclear deterrent due to a relative weakness of its conventional forces, appears concerned about the U.S. edge in precision weapons. While he did not mention the United States, Gerasimov appeared to refer to U.S. plans to fit conventional warheads to some of its long-range missiles. He said that such weapons should be part of arms control talks.