Brazil police arrest 12 men suspected of stealing millions

Twelve men suspected of taking part in a dramatic, multimillion-dollar theft from an armored car company in a Paraguayan border city have been arrested in Brazil, officials in the Brazilian Federal Police said Tuesday.

The men are thought to be among roughly 50 men who used explosives to blast into the vault of the Prosegur company in Ciudad del Este, then escaped into Brazil, Federal Police Inspector Fabiano Bordignon said.

Nationwide protests bring thousands to Russia's streets

Russia's opposition, often written off by critics as a small and irrelevant coterie of privileged urbanites, put on an impressive nationwide show of strength Sunday with dozens of protest across the vast country. Hundreds were arrested, including Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic.

It was the biggest show of defiance since a 2011-2012 wave of demonstrations rattled the Kremlin and led to harsh new laws aimed at suppressing dissent. Almost all of Sunday's rallies were unsanctioned, but thousands braved the prospect of arrest to gather in cities from the Far East port of Vladivostok to the "window on the West" of St. Petersburg.

Belarus police arrest over 400 protesters; many are beaten

Police in Belarus cracked down hard Saturday on opposition protesters who tried to hold a forbidden demonstration in the capital — a human rights group said more than 400 people were arrested and many were beaten.

The demonstrators had hoped to build on a rising wave of defiance of the former Soviet republic's authoritarian government, led by President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled since 1994.

India police arrest cheap mobile maker on fraud charges

The director of an Indian company that claimed it was selling the world's cheapest smartphone was arrested Thursday on fraud charges, police said Friday.

Mohit Goel was arrested in the New Delhi suburb of Ghaziabad following a complaint that his company Ringing Bells had not supplied the handsets that a phone distribution company had paid for.

Reported treason arrests fuel Russian hacking intrigue

In the days since it emerged that four men had been arrested on treason charges linked to cyber intelligence and Russia's domestic security agency, conspiracy theories and speculation about the case have swept through Moscow.

Was it some fallout from the alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election? Were they part of a hunt for a possible mole who tipped off American intelligence agencies? Was it a power struggle within Russia's security services?

S. Koreans' ties with Samsung are lifelong, often conflicted

The family smartphones? An assortment of Samsung Galaxies. The flat-screen TV that illuminates the living room? A Samsung SUHD, with the brand name sparkling on the nameplate. The maker of the digital toilet seat? You guessed it: Samsung.

It's difficult for people outside South Korea to fully grasp what Samsung, a truly global brand, means inside its home country, where it is far more than just another big company. It is seen variously as both a talisman and a millstone, as national savior and greedy business behemoth. Those diverse views only intensified Thursday when a court rejected prosecutors' request to arrest Samsung heir and Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong in the corruption scandal surrounding impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Court denies a request to arrest Samsung's de facto head

A Seoul court on Thursday denied a request to arrest one of South Korea's most powerful men, the heir to the Samsung Electronics juggernaut, in a setback to prosecutors investigating an influence-peddling scandal that toppled South Korea's president.

The Seoul Central District Court said that a judge concluded that there was not enough justification to detain the 48-year-old billionaire Samsung vice chairman, Lee Jae-yong, at this stage.

South Korea seeks arrest of Samsung scion in graft scandal

In a departure from the leniency typically given South Korean big businesses, prosecutors on Monday requested the arrest of the de facto head of Samsung Electronics, the country's most valuable company, in an influence-peddling scandal that has toppled the country's president.

Lee Jae-yong, the 48-year-old vice chairman at Samsung Electronics, faces allegations of embezzlement, of lying under oath during a parliamentary hearing and of offering a bribe of 43 billion won ($36 million) to a long-time friend of impeached President Park Geun-hye, according to Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for a special prosecutors' team investigating the political scandal.

Man arrested in the case of the 'HOLLYWeeD' sign

Los Angeles police have made a "HOLLYWeeD" bust.

Zachary Cole Fernandez, 30, was arrested Monday, just over a week after a prankster used white tarps to make the "HOLLYWOOD" sign read "HOLLYWeeD," the LAPD said in a statement.

Fernandez turned himself in with his attorney and was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, police said.

Mexico gas protests, looting leave 2 dead, 600 arrested

Anger over gasoline prices hikes in Mexico fueled more protests and looting Thursday, and officials said the unrest had resulted in the death of a policeman and a bystander, the ransacking of 300 stores and arrests of over 600 people.

The country's business chambers said the combination of highway, port and terminal blockades and looting this week forced many stores and businesses to close and threatened supplies of basic goods and fuel.

CBI arrests former IAF chief S.P. Tyagi

The CBI on Friday arrested former Indian Air Force (IAF) chief S.P. Tyagi on charges of corruption in its ongoing probe into the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

S.P. Tyagi was taken into custody from Delhi along with his cousin Sanjeev Tyagi alias Julie Tyagi and a Delhi-based lawyer, Gautam Khaitan.

Russian police arrest woman seen waving child's head

Russian police on Monday arrested a woman who was seen waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station. She is suspected of killing the child when it was in her care, officials said.

Videos posted on Russian news websites show a woman dressed all in black, holding the severed head and shouting "I am a terrorist" in Russian, although most of what she says is incomprehensible. In some of the videos the woman is tackled by men who appear to be police.

Amnesty criticizes India for intolerance of dissent

Amnesty International has joined a growing chorus accusing India of supporting a climate of intolerance by cracking down on dissent through arbitrary arrests, caste-based discrimination, extrajudicial killings and attacks on freedom of expression.

The rights group said in its annual global report, published Wednesday, that India's Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to prevent hundreds of incidents of communal violence, usually involving members of the Hindu majority pitted against Muslims or other minorities. Instead, ruling party lawmakers and politicians were fueling religious tensions with provocative speeches and justifications for the violence, it said.

Protests against India student leader's arrest spread

A protest that rocked a New Delhi university this week spread across India on Thursday, with students and teachers in at least 10 cities demanding the release of a student leader arrested on sedition charges and accused of being anti-Indian.

The protesters were outraged by nationally televised scenes of Kanhaiya Kumar, the student union president at Jawaharlal Nehru University, being kicked and punched while he was escorted to a court hearing Wednesday, renewing allegations that the Hindu nationalist governing party is intolerant.

Assange to accept arrest if UN panel rules against him

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he will accept arrest by British police if a U.N. working group investigating his claims decides that the three years he has spent inside the Ecuadorean Embassy doesn't amount to illegal detention.

Writing on WikiLeaks' Twitter account, Assange said if the U.N. panel finds he has lost his case against the United Kingdom and Sweden then he will turn himself in to police at noon on Friday.

Pakistani top militant in gov't custody over attack in India

The leader of an outlawed Pakistani militant group has been taken into "protective custody" amid a probe as to whether he is linked to a deadly attack earlier this month on an Indian air base, two security officials and a provincial minister said Friday.

The security officials also said that Pakistan has arrested this week a total of 25 militants suspected in the Jan. 2 assault in Pathankot, close to India's border with Pakistan.

Police arrest 3 men on suspicion of links to Jakarta attack

Indonesians were shaken but refusing to be cowed a day after a deadly attack in a busy district of central Jakarta that has been claimed by the Islamic State group.

In a new development, police on Friday told an Indonesian TV channel they arrested three men on suspicion of links to the attack that killed seven people including five attackers.

Pakistan announces 'several' arrests over attack in India

Pakistan on Wednesday announced the arrest of "several individuals" from an outlawed Islamic militant group believed to be linked to a four-day assault on an Indian air base earlier this month that killed seven Indian soldiers.

The government announced the arrests in a statement after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presided over a meeting to discuss security issues. The meeting was also attended by Pakistan's army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, the country's intelligence chief and other security officials.