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Police questioned one of Israel's top religious officials, Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, on Thursday on suspicion of bribery, fraud and money laundering, a police spokesman said. _0"> Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld gave no details about the allegations against Metzger and three other suspects but said the questioning had followed an undercover investigation. A spokesman for Metzger had no comment on the matter. Metzger is one of two state-appointed chief rabbis who oversee official religious policy and conduct state ceremonies. He has also been one of the Jewish state's main interlocutors with the pope.   Metzger represents Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestry originates in eastern Europe but he and Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who represents Jews of Middle Eastern origin, hold relatively little sway over ultra-Orthodox Jews who answer to their own rabbis. The 10-year term of both chief rabbis is set to end next month when elections for successors are due to be held. Metzger is the

Turkey warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday not to play politics with its European Union ambitions as Berlin blocked moves to open a new chapter in Ankara's EU membership talks next week. Turkey said failure to open the chapter would be a major setback in Ankara's relations with the bloc and one senior Turkish official said it would "draw a strong reaction".   Many EU capitals want to take the long-awaited step on Turkey's path towards the EU next Wednesday, arguing Europe should capitalize on Ankara's rising influence in the Middle East. But Germany has criticized Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's heavy-handed response to weeks of anti-government protests and refuses to agree to open a new negotiation area, potentially the first such step in three years. Germany blocked the opening of the new chapter, dealing with regional funding issues, at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Thursday, EU diplomats said. The EU has so far not cancelled ne

Guinea's opposition parties on Thursday pulled out of U.N.-mediated election talks with the government, accusing police and youths of attacking one of their leaders and his supporters. The negotiations aim to secure opposition participation in long-delayed parliamentary polls, which are meant to seal the mineral-rich nation's transition to civilian rule following a coup in 2008. Cellou Dalein Diallo, who heads the UFDG party, announced earlier on Thursday that he was pulling out of the process after the attack by stone-throwing youths and police near his home in the capital Conakry on Wednesday.   The opposition said 17 people were injured in the clashes. Other opposition parties decided to withdraw from the talks after a meeting on Thursday. "We decided to suspend our participation in the dialogue to protest against the aggression suffered yesterday by former Prime Minister Diallo," said opposition spokesman Aboubacar Sylla. He said the opposition would not r

Two people were killed on Thursday in a massive explosion and fire at a fireworks plant near Montreal, provincial police in Quebec said. _0"> The early-morning blast at the B.E.M. Fireworks factory rocked the suburb of Coteau-du-Lac about 37 miles southwest of the city. Police evacuated the surrounding area and temporarily closed a nearby highway. Residents were returning to their homes by midafternoon and roads had reopened, they said. The cause of the blast and subsequent blaze is not known. The company was not immediately available for comment. B.E.M. on its website says it has more than 25 years of experience "in the conception, production and performance of fireworks displays."   An amateur video of the explosion posted online showed a plume of smoke and debris billowing into the sky and a building in flames. The Montreal Gazette newspaper quoted eyewitnesses as saying there had been two explosions about one hour apart and that they felt the ground shake.

An Ethiopian opposition party called on Thursday for the government to scrap an anti-terrorism law it says is used to stifle dissent, threatening a repeat of protests that brought thousands onto the streets of Addis Ababa early this month. The rally on June 2, organized by another opposition group, was the first large-scale protest in the Ethiopian capital since a disputed 2005 election ended in street violence that killed 200 people.   Opposition groups in the Horn of Africa country were vibrant until that vote but have since largely retreated from public view, the result, analysts say, of harassment by the authorities and divisions within their ranks. They routinely accuse the government of intimidating and imprisoning their members and rigging elections against them. Ethiopia's 547-seat legislature has only one opposition member. The anti-terrorism law ratified in 2009 makes anyone caught publishing information that could induce readers into acts of terrorism liable to jai

Neighboring Iraq warned that Syria's civil war is tearing the Middle East apart and Lebanon's president urged his country's Hezbollah movement on Thursday to pull its fighters out of the conflict. After two years of fighting that has killed more than 93,000 people, Syria's turmoil is dragging its neighbors into a deadly confrontation between Shi'ite Iran supporting President Bashar al-Assad and Sunni Arab Gulf nations backing the Syrian rebels. The insurgents have suffered a series of setbacks on the battlefield and are besieged in the outskirts of Damascus facing a slow but steady advance by Assad's forces, which have begun to regain the upper hand.   In a sign of the devastation being wrought by the war, the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO put the six World Heritage Sites in Syria on its danger list of imperiled monuments on Thursday, urging international efforts to protect them. Both Iraq and Lebanon have suffered growing violence at home as the

Afghanistan and Pakistan traded accusations in the U.N. Security Council on Thursday over the whereabouts of Islamist extremists on their porous border as the United Nations described increased tensions between the neighbors as "unfortunate and dangerous." Afghanistan's U.N. envoy, Zahir Tanin, told a council debate on the situation in Afghanistan that "terrorist sanctuaries continue to exist on Pakistan's soil and some elements continue to use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy."   Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Masood Khan, said "terrorists operate on both sides of the porous border" and many attacks against Pakistan were planned on Afghan soil. He said aggressive policing and border surveillance were needed. "I reject most emphatically Ambassador Tanin's argument - root, trunk and branch - that terrorist sanctuaries exist in Pakistan and some elements continue to use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy,"