By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mohammed Abbas AMMAN | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:43pm EST AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels fired mortars at President Bashar al-Assad's palace in Damascus on Wednesday but missed, in an attack underlining the growing boldness of forces fighting to end his family's 42 years in power. As violence flared in other parts of the coun...

By Hadeel Al Shalchi TRIPOLI | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:16pm EST TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi's former right-hand man is languishing in a Libyan jail with kidney cancer and no access to lawyers, his daughter said on Wednesday, calling for him to get a fair trial. Abdullah al-Senussi, who as spy chief was one of Libya's most feared men, fled the ...

By Margarita Antidze TBILISI | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:15pm EST TBILISI (Reuters) - The Georgian government detained the army's chief-of-staff on Wednesday on suspicion of abuse of power, stepping up what the opposition says is a political witch hunt against President Mikheil Saakashvili's allies. New Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili's coalition ous...

By Sylvia Westall KUWAIT | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:13pm EST KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwaiti opposition groups plan to stage a joint demonstration on Sunday against new voting rules as a standoff with the government intensifies ahead of an election on December 1. While opposition groups say the rules are a bid to skew the election, the government, so far sp...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:12pm EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Libya should not grant amnesty for war crimes committed during last year's uprising against former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, regardless of who committed them, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Wednesday. In her first of...

BAGHDAD/ANKARA | Wed Nov 7, 2012 11:35am EST BAGHDAD/ANKARA (Reuters) - Two Iraqi civilians were killed and three wounded in a Turkish air strike in Iraqi Kurdistan during the latest operation targeting Kurdish PKK separatist rebels sheltering there, a Kurdistan official said on Wednesday. The strike on Tuesday hit a village near Rania, close to the remo...

By Njuwa Maina and Ben Makori KOGELO, Kenya | Wed Nov 7, 2012 11:14am EST KOGELO, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyans in Barack Obama's ancestral homeland stayed up all night and danced with joy on Wednesday as America's first black president won a second term in the White House, raising the prospects of a fresh start for his ties with Africa. Many African...

By Robert Muller PRAGUE | Wed Nov 7, 2012 11:06am EST PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas won a confidence vote in parliament and pushed through tax rises on Wednesday after quelling a rebellion that threatened to bring down his center-right government. The lower house voted to raise value-added and income taxes in a move aimed at ...

By Alexandra Hudson BERLIN | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:48am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - Two years in age separate Vladimir Putin, the German-speaking former KGB agent who spent five years in Dresden in East Germany's twilight years, from Angela Merkel, the Russian-speaking physicist who grew up near East Berli...

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:41am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an even more awkward time with Washington and re-energized critics at home who accused him on Wednesday of backing the loser in the U.S. presidential election. With Iran topping his conservative agenda, Netanyahu will hav...

By Karolina Tagaris and Renee Maltezou ATHENS | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:39am EST ATHENS (Reuters) - The Greek government overcame divisions on Wednesday to defeat an early challenge to an austerity package needed to secure vital international aid, but it still faced internal dissent and angry protests ahead of a final vote. Prime Minister Antonis Samar...

By Mohamed Ahmed MOGADISHU | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:36am EST MOGADISHU (Reuters) - At least one person was killed on Wednesday when a car laden with explosives detonated in the car park of the country's parliament building in the capital Mogadishu, police said. The explosion went off while the country's new legislators were holding a session inside.Ge...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mohammed Abbas AMMAN | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:20am EST AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels fired mortars at President Bashar al-Assad's palace in Damascus on Wednesday but missed, in an attack underlining the growing boldness of forces fighting to end his family's 42 years in power. Residents told Reuters the heavy-caliber shell...

By Mohammed Abbas and Khaled Yacoub Oweis JEDDAH/AMMAN | Tue Nov 6, 2012 6:11pm EST JEDDAH/AMMAN (Reuters) - Deadly explosions struck a Damascus district housing members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect and gunmen killed the brother of the speaker of parliament, as violence escalated in the capital. Britain suggested offering As...

By Michael Winfrey and Karolina Tagaris ATHENS | Tue Nov 6, 2012 6:10pm EST ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's coalition government hopes to overcome its own divisions and defy protesters' fury at parliament's gates on Wednesday to push through an austerity package needed to secure an injection of aid and avert bankruptcy. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras...

By John Ruwitch BEIJING | Tue Nov 6, 2012 4:38pm EST BEIJING (Reuters) - In 1981, five years after his death, China's ruling Communist Party began to save history from Mao Zedong. Today, speculation about whether it is poised to finish the job has cast a spotlight on one of the most emotive debates simmering inside the party - how much of Mao can...

By Robert Muller PRAGUE | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:56pm EST PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech center-right cabinet will survive a parliamentary vote of confidence on Wednesday after a group of backbenchers in the ruling center-right Civic Democratic Party gave up a rebellion threatening to bring down Prime Minister Petr Necas. Necas has been struggling to ke...

DUBAI | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:55pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain said it had arrested four suspects on Tuesday in the bombings that killed two people in the capital Manama and accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of being behind the attacks. Public Security Chief Major-General Tariq Al Hassan said in a statement published by the official Bahrain New...

By Mohammed Abbas and Suleiman Al-Khalidi JEDDAH/AMMAN | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:45pm EST JEDDAH/AMMAN (Reuters) - Britain floated the notion on Tuesday of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad leaving power with immunity from prosecution while the opposition said at least 100 more people were killed in the country's 19-month revolt. "Anything, anything, t...

By Jon Herskovitz JOHANNESBURG | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:40pm EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Photographs suggesting that South African police planted weapons on the bodies of workers shot dead by police at Lonmin's Marikana platinum mine have been shown to an inquiry into the bloodiest security incident since apartheid. In police photographs taken shortl...

PRETORIA | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:39pm EST PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa immortalized former president Nelson Mandela on Tuesday in a set of new banknotes bearing the image of the anti-apartheid leader, who remains a rare unifying force in a country still scarred by its racially divided past. The government announced the new notes earlier this year on the...

By Hadeel Al Shalchi TRIPOLI | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:34pm EST TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A member of Libya's former ruling council was found dead in a locked car after he went missing for a day, a security official said on Tuesday. The official, who declined to be named, said that Abdel-Basset Bin Naama was the victim of a family feud. He was found dead on ...

By Petar Komnenic BELGRADE | Tue Nov 6, 2012 1:13pm EST BELGRADE (Reuters) - Montenegro's Democratic Party of Socialists, in power for more than two decades, sealed a coalition deal on Tuesday to govern for the next four years and steer the ex-Yugoslav republic through EU accession talks. The DPS, in coalition with the Social Democratic Party, wo...

By Ece Toksabay ISTANBUL | Tue Nov 6, 2012 12:16pm EST ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey on Tuesday opened the trial in absentia of former Israeli military commanders charged over the 2010 killings of nine Turks aboard a Gaza-bound aid ship. The proceedings against four of Israel's most senior retired commanders, including the ex-head of the army, has ...

By Randall Palmer NEW DELHI | Tue Nov 6, 2012 11:32am EST NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal. Once implemented, the agreement...

By Tiemoko Diallo BAMAKO | Tue Nov 6, 2012 11:26am EST BAMAKO (Reuters) - Military experts from Africa, the United Nations and Europe have drawn up preliminary plans to recapture northern Mali from al Qaeda-linked rebels, African officials said on Tuesday. A source with knowledge of the plan said it will involve a force of more than 4,000 personn...

By Hamid Shalizi and Michael Georgy KABUL | Tue Nov 6, 2012 9:14am EST KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan welcomes the United Nations' decision to impose sanctions on the Haqqani network and would not negotiate for peace with the group blamed for several high-profile attacks in the country, the preside...

By Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS | Tue Nov 6, 2012 8:59am EST ATHENS (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Greeks began a crippling 48-hour strike on Tuesday to protest against a new round of wage and pension cuts that parliament is expected to approve by a narrow margin. The parliamentary vote on Wednesday is the biggest test yet...

By Chris Borowski WARSAW | Tue Nov 6, 2012 8:57am EST WARSAW (Reuters) - One of Poland's best-selling newspapers fired its most senior editors on Tuesday over a "flawed" article that triggered a political row when it said traces of explosives had been found in the wreckage of a presidential jet that crashed in 2010. Polish prosecutors denied a re...

BEIRUT | Tue Nov 6, 2012 8:43am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - The international envoy for Syria fears the country could turn into a new Somalia unless its crisis is resolved, warning of a scenario in which warlords and militia fill a void left by a collapsed state. In an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahi...

By Ece Toksabay ISTANBUL | Tue Nov 6, 2012 8:19am EST ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters chanting "Murderer Israel!" gathered outside an Istanbul court on Tuesday at the start of a trial of a group of former Israeli military commanders charged over the 2010 killing of nine Turks aboard a Gaza-bound aid ship. The trial in absentia of four...

KUWAIT | Tue Nov 6, 2012 7:53am EST KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's ruler said on Tuesday there would be no leniency towards threats to "the security of the homeland", two days after police broke up an unauthorized protest against new voting rules. OPEC member Kuwait allows more dissent than some of its fellow Gulf states but in recent weeks protests have sp...

BAGHDAD | Tue Nov 6, 2012 6:53am EST BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber rammed his explosive-filled car into soldiers outside an army base near Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 31 people and injuring tens more in one of the worst attacks this year on the country's military. Bombings and attacks have eased sharply since the height of Iraq's sectarian strife ...

By Thomas Grove MOSCOW | Tue Nov 6, 2012 6:51am EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly dismissed his defense minister on Tuesday after a multi-million dollar corruption scandal and appointed a longtime ally to oversee military reforms. Putin announced on television that he had fired Anatoly Serdyukov, who had become a li...

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Michael Martina BEIJING | Tue Nov 6, 2012 6:45am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's outgoing leader and his likely successor are pushing the ruling Communist Party to adopt a more democratic process this month for choosing a new leadership, sources said, in an attempt to boost its flagging legitimacy in the eyes of the publi...

BEIJING | Mon Nov 5, 2012 7:57pm EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform. Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party's next Politburo St...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:33pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish photographer Jordi Ruiz Cirera has won the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize in London for his picture of a young woman in Bolivia whose religious conservatism made her uncomfortable before the camera. Ruiz Cirera, 28, is based in the British capital and was one of four photographers...

By Basil Katz NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:08pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the conviction and 86-year prison sentence of a Pakistani neuroscientist for shooting at FBI agents and soldiers after her arrest in Afghanistan. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court judge had not erred in...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:57pm EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council's Taliban sanctions committee on Monday added the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, to a U.N. blacklist, the United States said. The Security Council committee's move also singled out ...

SANTIAGO | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:27pm EST SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean President Sebastian Pinera is planning to shuffle his cabinet this week to allow ministers with presidential ambitions to exit, the head of a political party that is part of the governing right-wing coalition said on Monday. Pinera's embattled conservative bloc suffered a loss in last mon...