In brief: Palestinians join war crimes court

JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority formally joined the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, positioning itself to pursue war crimes cases against Israel and deepening the rift between the two sides.

Israel denounced the move as “political, cynical and hypocritical,” and said it violated agreements to pursue a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

At a closed ceremony at the court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, the Palestinian Authority became the 123rd member of the international tribunal.

The United States has joined Israel in opposing the Palestinian actions, calling them unilateral steps circumventing negotiations.

Plane crash victims’ remains recovered

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France – Just over a week after a Germanwings plane crashed into the French Alps, investigators have finished retrieving human remains from the crash site and are now trying to match them with DNA profiles from the 150 people killed – an arduous task that could leave families waiting for months.

The extraordinary recovery process mobilized hundreds of people and cut a stony road into a forested Alpine mountainside to help the team bring back anything they found, from a body part to a tiny shred of skin. Not a single intact body was found.

Francois Daoust, head of the France’s IRCGN national criminal laboratory in Pontoise outside Paris, said that as of Monday afternoon the forensic teams on the site and in Paris had isolated 78 distinct DNA profiles from the hundreds of samples recovered at the site – leaving nearly as many unaccounted for.

At least 54 die when trawler sinks

MOSCOW – A Russian freezer trawler with an international crew of 132 sank this morning in the Sea of Okhotsk off of the Kamchatka Peninsula and at least 54 crew members were killed, rescue workers said.

Emergency services in Kamchatka, citing the head of the rescue operation, said 63 crew members were rescued and the fate of the remaining 15 from the Dalny Vostok trawler was unknown.

No cause for the sinking was given, but the Interfax news agency said drifting ice in the chilly Pacific waters may have played a role.

BANGKOK – Thailand’s junta lifted martial law in most of the nation, but 10 months after staging a coup, it remains firmly in control – with new laws invoked Wednesday that essentially give it absolute power.

The government of former army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha had faced growing pressure from foreign governments, human rights groups and particularly Thailand’s own business community to revoke martial law.

Thailand’s king on Wednesday formally approved a request from the junta that martial law be lifted.

In its place, though, the junta invoked a special security measure called Article 44 in the military-imposed interim constitution that gives Prayuth the power to override any branch of government in the name of national security, and absolves him of any legal responsibility for his actions.