BEIJING | Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:01pm EST BEIJING (Reuters) - If corruption is allowed to run wild in China then the ruling Communist Party risks major unrest and the collapse of its rule, state media on Monday quoted Communist Party chief Xi Jinping as saying at one of his first major meetings since taking the role. In unusually blunt language, Vice Presid...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sun Nov 18, 2012 1:51pm EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, in an apparent attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down. International pressur...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sun Nov 18, 2012 9:04am EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion while also spelling out its conditions for a truce. Palestinians launched dozens ...

NAIROBI | Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:58am EST NAIROBI (Reuters) - At least five people were killed when a grenade ripped apart a minibus in Nairobi's Somali-dominated Eastleigh neighborhood on Sunday, a Reuters witness said. "I saw bodies ripped apart," the Reuters photographer said.Nairobi regional police commander M...

By Emma Pinedo MADRID | Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:56am EST MADRID (Reuters) - The Catalan nationalist party CiU will win regional parliamentary elections in Spain on November 25, but will not gain an absolute majority, newspaper polls showed on Sunday, weakening any bid for independence. Hundreds of thou...

By Jonny Hogg KINSHASA | Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:41am EST KINSHASA (Reuters) - Rebels in Congo were on the outskirts of the eastern city of Goma on Sunday after pushing back U.N. peacekeepers and government troops, but a spokesman for the M23 rebels said they did not plan to take the city. In four days of battles, the rebels have advanced closer than ...

By Manuel Mogato and Stuart Grudgings PHNOM PENH | Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:34am EST PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Southeast Asian nations displayed a rare show of unity on Sunday against China's sweeping maritime claims, calling for the first formal talks with Beijing over a sea dispute that has raised tensions and exposed deep divisions in the region. As Ch...

By Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:33am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - The Coptic Orthodox church staged a ceremony rich in ritual on Sunday to install its pope, Tawadros II, who Christians hope will guide them through the new, Islamist-led Egypt. The 60-year-old pope was picked on November 4 and the ceremony on Sunday filled with incense, elabor...

By Erik Kirschbaum HANOVER, Germany | Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:28am EST HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Germany's Greens have gone grey. The world's most successful pro-environment party has turned deadly serious about gaining power by stealing votes from Chancellor Angela Merkel - and perhaps by joining her. The muesli, woolly sweaters, thick beards and ...

By Naomi O'Leary ROME | Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:07am EST ROME (Reuters) - At dawn before lessons could start last week, high school pupils at the Nomentano Science School in a northern suburb of Rome slipped chains around the gates and blocked the doors with chairs taken from classrooms. Between the ragged European Union flag and Italian tricolour ove...

By Daren Butler and Seyhmus Cakan ISTANBUL/DIYARBAKIR | Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:55am EST ISTANBUL/DIYARBAKIR (Reuters) - Hundreds of Kurdish militants ended a hunger strike in jails across Turkey on Sunday in response to an appeal from their leader, fuelling hopes a deal had been struck that could revive talks to end a decades-old conflict. Kurdistan ...

By Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH | Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:19am EST PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Southeast Asian leaders will put pressure on Myanmar to resolve violence between Buddhists and minority Muslims, a senior regional official said on Sunday, after unrest left scores dead and as many as 100,000 people displaced since June. Myanmar President Thein Sein...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:44pm EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the "Iron Dome" defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that ...

By Jonny Hogg KINSHASA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:33pm EST KINSHASA (Reuters) - U.N. attack helicopters hit rebel positions in eastern Congo on Saturday after insurgents gained ground in heavy fighting with government troops and took control of a town, the United Nations said. The clashes to the south of the town Kibumba mean the rebels have advanced t...

Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:09pm EST PARIS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people, joined by Catholic church leaders, marched in cities across France on Saturday to protest against government plans to legalize same-sex marriage. Demonstrators, holding banners with slogans such as "don't touch civil marriage", "all born from the union of a man and a woman" and "one father...

By Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:44pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - A group of technical advisers helping to write Egypt's new constitution resigned on Saturday, saying they would draw up a draft of their own because their voices were not being heard, state news agency MENA said. The resignations further complicate a drafting process delayed b...

ARBIL, Iraq | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:26pm EST ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani said on Saturday the region was fully prepared to defend itself, after a skirmish between Iraqi forces and Kurdish troops along their disputed internal border. Tensions have been building between the autonomous Kurdish region and the central governmen...

WARSAW | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:34pm EST WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak said he would resign from the government after unexpectedly losing a battle for the leadership of the junior coalition partner on Saturday, but there was no threat to the stability of the coalition. Janusz Piechocinski, a 52-year-old member of parliamen...

By Francesca Landini MILAN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:29pm EST MILAN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Mario Monti rejected suggestions on Saturday that Italy should seek aid from its euro zone partners to bind a new government to strict reform conditions after elections likely to be held in March. Monti's comments, in a panel discussion at Milan's Bocconi Un...

By Renee Maltezou ATHENS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:17pm EST ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of Greeks protesting against austerity policies rallied in Athens on Saturday to mark a bloody student uprising almost four decades ago against the military junta that ruled the country at the time. The annual protest often becomes a focal point for groups protest...

DUBAI | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:04pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States has denied visas to Iranian officials hoping to attend a U.N. meeting in New York, Iran's state news agency reported on Saturday. The Iranian judiciary's Human Rights Headquarters said in a statement that the United States denied visas to members of an Iranian delegation that planned...

BEIRUT | Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:38pm EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels said they captured an airport used by Syria's military near the Iraqi border on Saturday, strengthening their hold on the recently seized border town of Albu Kamal. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaliated by bombing the airport with fighter jets, said Ziad al-Amir, a local oppositi...

BAGHDAD | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:51am EST BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least seven foreign Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims were killed and another 25 wounded when a car bomb went off in the Iraqi city of Balad on Saturday, police and hospital sources said. A parked car blew up near a restaurant on the outskirts of Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing pilgrims...

BEIRUT | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:17am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels captured an airport used by Syria's military near the Iraqi border on Saturday, activists said, a move which they said would allow them to maintain their hold on the recently seized border town of Albu Kamal. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have...

BERLIN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:14am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - Turkey will formally ask NATO on Monday to set up missiles on its border with Syria due to growing concern about spillover from a 20-month-old civil war in its neighbor, a German newspaper reported on Saturday. The Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which did not cite its sources, also said that up ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Crispian Balmer GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:08am EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, preparing for a possible ground invasion. Isr...

By Angel Krasimirov SOFIA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:06am EST SOFIA (Reuters) - In one of Bulgaria's biggest anti-austerity rallies for years, thousands of people protested on Saturday against the government's handling of the weak economy and called on the cabinet to resign. Supporters of the opposition...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:32am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has postponed until 2014 the planned start-up of a research reactor which Western experts say could potentially offer the Islamic Republic a second route to produce material for a nuclear bomb, a U.N. report showed. Tehran has continued to install cooling and moderator c...

PARIS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:18am EST PARIS (Reuters) - Syria's opposition coalition is to appoint an envoy to France, French President Francois Hollande said after meeting the head of the Syrian National Coalition on Saturday. A French diplomatic source said the official would act as a representative of the coalition, becoming ambassador once a provisiona...

By Tarek Amara TUNIS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:17am EST TUNIS (Reuters) - A second Tunisian Salafist held in custody ‮‮‮‮‬since protesters ransacked the U.S. embassy in Tunis in September has died after a hunger strike, his lawyer and the Justice Ministry said on Saturday. Muhammed Bakhti died in hospital on Saturday, two days after 26-year-old studen...

By Edmund Blair CAIRO | Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:54am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Fifty people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed tracks in a city south of Cairo on Saturday, state media and officials said. All but two of the dead were children, aged around four to eight, said a senior security official in Assi...

By Simon Akam and Pascal Fletcher FREETOWN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:16am EST FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leoneans crowded polling stations to vote on Saturday, saying they wanted to elect leaders who would bring prosperity to the poor, conflict-scarred West African state after a decade of recovery from civil war. The presidential and parliamentary po...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller GAZA/JERUSALEM | Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:31pm EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists late on Friday, preparing the ground for a possible Gaza invasion after Palestinians fired a rocket toward Jerusalem for the first time in decades. Tel Aviv, Israel...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:40pm EST VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground plant after installing all the centrifuges it was built for, a U.N. report said, a move likely to increase Western alarm about Tehran's nuclear course. It also showed that Iran's stockpile of its most sens...

DUBLIN | Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:09pm EST DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's prime minister said on Friday he would not be rushed into making a decision on the issue of abortion, after an Indian woman who was refused a termination died from blood poisoning in an Irish hospital. "This is a matter that has divided Irish society now for a great number of years, and I ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA | Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:47pm EST GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades on Friday and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day, in a stinging challenge to Israel's Gaza offensive after an Egyptian bid to broker a truce. The attacks came just hours after Egypt's prim...

By Douglas Busvine and Timothy Heritage MOSCOW | Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:57pm EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel took Russian President Vladimir Putin to task over a clamp-down on dissent and treatment of the Pussy Riot punk band when they held frosty talks on Friday. But despite the chill descending on relations, they signed a ho...

LONDON | Fri Nov 16, 2012 9:18am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Britain needs more details from the fledgling Syria opposition coalition before it can formally recognize the group, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Friday ahead of talks with Syrian opposition officials. The coalition was formed in Doha on Sunday in an attempt to unify Syria's oppos...

ZAGREB | Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:48am EST ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia's parliament approved a new economy minister on Friday after Deputy Prime Minister Radimir Cacic, who was also in charge of reviving the economy, was sentenced to jail in Hungary over a car crash. Ivan Vrdoljak, 40, will take over the ministry tasked with making Croatia's economy more compet...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA | Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:47am EST GAZA (Reuters) - Egypt tried to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy in Gaza on Friday, but hopes for even a brief ceasefire while its prime minister was inside the bombarded enclave to talk to leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement were immediately dashed. Prime Minister Hisham K...