WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The U.S.’s top media regulator voted to end rules protecting an open internet on Thursday, a move critics warn will hand control of the future of the web to cable and telecoms companies.
At a packed meeting of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, the watchdog’s commissioners voted three to two to dismantle the "net neutrality” rules that prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from charging websites more for delivering certain services or blocking others should they, for example, compete with services the cable company also offers.
Outside, protesters angrily called on Congress to block the FCC’s efforts. Bouquets of flowers and white candles were placed on the grass outside the building, an apparent reference to the "death” of open internet. Posters of the angry-face emoji covered the walkway.
And activists carried hand-made signs that read: "Don’t make the internet a private toll road”; "Ajit Pai doesn’t want you to meet your fiancé online”; and "Don’t undermine our democracy – that’s Russia’s job”.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Two people were killed and three injured Thursday night in two stabbing incidents in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht, authorities said.
Police said in a tweet that one suspect had been detained on suspicion of involvement in the incidents. They released no details on the suspect or the victims.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte said it was not a terror attack, echoing comments from the police.
"It is terrible what happened there. People were killed and others were injured," Rutte said at an EU summit in Brussels.
The incidents happened in a residential neighborhood in the north of Maastricht, a city 215 kilometers (133 miles) south of the capital, Amsterdam, and close to the Netherlands' borders with Belgium and Germany.
 
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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -- At least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including many children, were killed in the first month of violence that erupted in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state in August, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday.
The medical charity said the first major survey on the scale of mortality was the "clearest indication yet of the widespread violence” that began on Aug. 25, which has driven over 600,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh.
Based on interviews at refugee settlements in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region, MSF estimated at least 6,700 Rohingya – including some 730 children below the age of five – were killed by violence between Aug. 25 and Sept. 24.
The charity said the figures were "the most conservative” estimates.
"What we uncovered was staggering, both in terms of the numbers of people who reported a family member died as a result of violence, and the horrific ways in which they said they were killed or severely injured,” MSF’s medical director Sidney Wong said.

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KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) --Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a report that Kenyan security forces raped, beat and assaulted civilians during the recent election turmoil across the East African country.
Kenya has been in turmoil since September when the Supreme Court nullified the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta over "irregularities and illegalities".
The court ordered a rerun in October that was boycotted by opposition leader Raila Odinga, handing Kenyatta a landslide of 98% of votes cast by just 39% of the electorate.
The leading international rights group on Thursday said it recorded "police use of excessive force against protesters, killings, beatings and maiming of individuals, looting and destruction of property".
The report also cited multiple gang-rapes by men in uniform in the slums of the capital, Nairobi, and the opposition strongholds of Kisumu and Bungoma.

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MOGADISHU (AFP) -- A suicide bomber from Somalia's al-Shabaab insurgents killed 18 police officers and wounded 15 others on Thursday when he blew himself up inside the country's main police academy, the force's chief said.
Witnesses said the police were gathered in a square ahead of their early morning parade when the bomber attacked in the capital Mogadishu.
The assault is the latest in a decade-old battle by the extremists to overthrow Somalia's internationally-backed government.
"Eighteen members from the police were killed, and 15 others were wounded, after a suicide bomber blew himself inside the academy," acting police chief Gen. Muktar Hussein Afrah told reporters.
The attacker disguised himself in a police uniform to access the camp, Afrah said.

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LIMA (Reuters) -- Peru’s center-right President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Thursday he would not resign in the face of possible impeachment over payments to a firm he owned by a Brazilian company that has bribed politicians across Latin America.
In a defiant national address flanked by members of his cabinet and party lawmakers, Kuczynski said he owned Westfield Capital Ltd when it received deposits from Brazilian builder Odebrecht.
But he denied wrongdoing and said he did not manage it while he held senior government roles.
Before Kuczynski spoke, the leaders of several parties in Congress vowed to seek his impeachment if he did not step down. Opposition parties control enough seats in the single-chamber body to force him out.
He plotted strategy with advisors for hours on Thursday. Several senior officials wanted him to resign to avoid a drawn-out battle for survival, two government sources told Reuters.