By Feisal Omar and Abdi Sheikh MOGADISHU | Sat Nov 3, 2012 11:37am EDT MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers attacked a restaurant in the Somali capital on Saturday, killing a security guard who stopped them entering the building, locals said. It was not clear who was behind the bombings but Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab insurgents have conducte...

YENAGOA, Nigeria | Sat Nov 3, 2012 11:26am EDT YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian security forces have killed 13 members of a gang suspected of abducting a Turkish man in a dawn raid on their hideout in oil-producing Rivers state, police said on Saturday. A 20 million naira ($127,600) ransom was paid for the release of Bayram Karakus, who worked for t...

By Sandor Peto BUDAPEST | Sat Nov 3, 2012 10:58am EDT BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The European Union risks undermining the credibility of its drive against national budget overshoots if it strips Hungary of structural funds as punishment for running an excessive deficit, a leader of the ruling Fidesz party said. The EU is due to unveil its assessment of...

CAIRO | Sat Nov 3, 2012 9:44am EDT CAIRO (Reuters) - Two Egyptian policemen died on Saturday when gunmen fired on their car in the northern Sinai Peninsula city of al-Arish before escaping, security sources said. A police source said the attackers were probably Islamist militants who Egyptian forces have been ...

MOGADISHU | Sat Nov 3, 2012 8:32am EDT MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers killed three people outside a restaurant in the Somali capital on Saturday, residents said, underlining the serious security challenges the Horn of Africa nation faces. A Reuters witness said he saw the bombers' two bodies and that of a guard."Two suicide bombers opened fire...

NICOSIA | Sat Nov 3, 2012 8:24am EDT NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus said on Saturday it had seen no sign in talks with the troika of international lenders that its proposals on an austerity package were "insufficient", as suggested by a document this week. While Cypriot Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly openly admitted on Friday that a number of issues were st...

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Sat Nov 3, 2012 3:27am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Authorities in Tunisia have agreed to allow FBI investigators access to a detained Islamic militant suspected of playing a role in the September 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, U.S. officials said on Friday. Under an arrangement worked ou...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Fri Nov 2, 2012 6:12pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - North Korea's U.N. delegation declared on Friday that it was proud of Pyongyang's social system and human rights record and rejected as baseless a U.N. monitor's report that described appalling human rights abuses in the reclusive country. Pyongyang was re...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:29pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital. But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, th...

WASHINGTON/KHARTOUM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:58pm EDT WASHINGTON/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - President Barack Obama renewed U.S. sanctions on Sudan on Friday, acknowledging Khartoum had resolved disputes with South Sudan but warning that Darfur and other conflicts still impeded normal ties, the State Department said. Khartoum reacted by accusing the United States of...

By Ibrahim Mshelizza MAIDUGURI, Nigeria | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:41pm EDT MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian troops shot dead at least 30 people during raids in the northeast city of Maiduguri, bastion of the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, witnesses and hospital staff said on Friday. Boko Haram says it wants to create an Islamic state in Niger...

KHARTOUM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:38pm EDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Rebels in Sudan's main oil state said on Friday they had killed scores of government troops in one of the largest clashes reported in the South Kordofan region in recent months. Sudan's armed forces were not available to comment on the report by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement North ...

JERUSALEM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:06pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli official described Egypt's new government on Friday as a "shocking dictatorial force" and predicted there would be no high-level contacts between the two countries, but the Israeli government distanced itself from his comments. The remarks by Amos Gilad, a top aide to Defense M...

KIEV | Fri Nov 2, 2012 3:31pm EDT KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian opposition parties accused President Viktor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions of "stealing" several parliamentary seats as the vote count from Sunday's election neared completion on Friday. The Party of the Regions is set to retain a majority in the 450-seat parliament with their traditional co...

By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:17pm EDT KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda will tell the United Nations it is withdrawing its forces from military operations in Somalia and other regional hotspots after the world body accused it of supporting Congolese rebels, the security minister said on Friday. Minister Wilson Mukasa said the decisio...

By Alessandra Prentice LONDON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:16pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - An inquest into the death of a former Russian agent who died in London after being poisoned with a radioactive isotope could examine whether the British government is culpable in his murder, a lawyer said on Friday. Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who had been gr...

ISLAMABAD | Fri Nov 2, 2012 10:38am EDT ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked a bus in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province on Friday, killing at least 18 people including a woman and a child, police said. Most of the victims died from fire caused by the attack at a petrol station in Khuzdar, a town about a four-hour drive from Quetta. The fire e...

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard BEIJING | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:29am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to promote two rising stars and possible future national leaders at a Communist Party congress opening next week, one taking the old job of disgraced former high-flyer Bo Xilai in the country's biggest metropolis, sources said. Southwester...

By Sarah O'Connor DUBLIN | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:28am EDT DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland sentenced former billionaire Sean Quinn to jail on Friday for failing to disclose assets he was hiding abroad, completing the fall from grace of the richest man in Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" boom. Quinn, whose four bill...

MOMBASA, Kenya | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:19am EDT MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - The union at Kenya's main port of Mombasa on Friday called off a strike after its management issued letters of employment to casual workers at east Africa's main trade gateway who were demanding permanent jobs. Simon Sang, secretary general of the dock workers union told workers the d...

By Agnieszka Flak JOHANNESBURG | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:16am EDT JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Striking miners at AngloGold Ashanti will return to work on Sunday at two mines where operations were suspended this week in a dispute over bonus payments, the world's third largest bullion producer said. The disruptions underscored the residual tensions between ...

GENEVA | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:03am EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official urged China on Friday to address deep-rooted frustrations that have led to desperate forms of protest by Tibetans, including some 60 self-immolations since March 2011. "Social stability in Tibet will never be achieved through heavy security measures and suppression ...

By Daren Butler ISTANBUL | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:45am EDT ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in published remarks on Friday he was losing hope of building cross-party support for reforms that could see him installed in a newly empowered presidency but was determined to push the plans forward. Erdogan has dominated Turkish...

BEIRUT | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:06am EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have withdrawn from their last base near the northern town of Saraqeb, further weakening his ability to fight rebels in the country's largest city Aleppo, a violence monitoring group said on Friday. Saraqeb straddles the junction of two main highways l...

By Kaori Kaneko TOKYO | Fri Nov 2, 2012 6:57am EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan complained on Friday about a "deplorable" incident in which a U.S. serviceman is believed to have assaulted a teenaged boy on the southern island of Okinawa where opposition to U.S. military bases is running high. The U.S. ambassador to Japan, John Roos, was summoned to th...

PRAGUE | Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:57am EDT PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas will seek to use his re-election as Civic Democrat (ODS) leader this weekend to quash a rebellion over tax hikes that threatens to bring down his government. Civic Democrat leaders are racing to sway a handful of rebel party deputies to support a tax bill that has been...

By John Ruwitch and David Stanway SHANGHAI/BEIJING | Thu Nov 1, 2012 5:03pm EDT SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - It looked like another victory for the people when the Chinese city of Ningbo announced the suspension on Sunday of a petrochemical project after days of street protests by citizens concern...

By Renee Maltezou ATHENS | Thu Nov 1, 2012 4:48pm EDT ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 of his compatriots who held Swiss bank accounts was acquitted on Thursday in a case that touched a nerve over the role of tax evasion in the country's debt crisis. The trial of Costas Vaxevanis, editor of the week...

By Dan Williams JERUSALEM | Thu Nov 1, 2012 4:26pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a rare if symbolic concession to Israel on Thursday, saying he had no permanent claim on the town from which he was driven as a child during the 1948 war of the Jewish state's founding. Among several disputes deadlocking Middle Ea...

By Michael Stott MOSCOW | Thu Nov 1, 2012 4:13pm EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - When Vladimir Putin celebrated his 60th birthday this month, a group of patriotic mountaineers unfurled a portrait of the Russian leader on a 4,150-metre mountain peak. Hailing him as a guarantor of happiness and stability, the climbers' leader explained: "We have stuck Putin...

ATHENS | Thu Nov 1, 2012 3:57pm EDT ATHENS (Reuters) - Pension reform demanded by foreign lenders may be unconstitutional, a Greek court ruled on Thursday, in a setback to the government's efforts to push through an austerity package for the near-bankrupt country. The Court of Auditors, which vets Greek laws before they are submitted to parliament, said ...

JERUSALEM | Thu Nov 1, 2012 1:42pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Kicking off his election campaign, Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz on Thursday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being driven by an obsession to bomb Iran. Mofaz, head of the centrist Kadima party that quit Netanyahu's coalition weeks ago citing differences over how to rein in ...

ISLAMABAD | Thu Nov 1, 2012 1:36pm EDT ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani couple killed their teenage daughter by pouring acid on her face and body after they caught her talking to a boy, police and a doctor said on Thursday. The parents of the 16-year-old confessed to police in Kotli, a town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, that they attacked their daug...

By Angus McDowall RIYADH | Thu Nov 1, 2012 1:36pm EDT RIYADH (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed when a fuel truck crashed into a flyover in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Thursday, triggering an explosion that brought down an industrial building and set fire to nearby vehicles. State-owned Ekhbariya television news channel reported on that t...

By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT | Thu Nov 1, 2012 1:27pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Anti-government rebels killed 28 soldiers on Thursday in attacks on three army checkpoints around Saraqeb, a town on Syria's main north-south highway, a monitoring group said. Some of the dead were shot after they had surrendered, according to video footage. Rebels berated th...

VENICE | Thu Nov 1, 2012 1:20pm EDT VENICE (Reuters) - Tourists in Venice put plastic bags over their legs and residents wore rubber boots as water rose to knee-high levels in many parts of the lagoon city on Thursday. The median level of the Adriatic Sea swelled to about 1.4 meters (1.5 yards) above normal - the highest in nearly two years - sending wat...

TUNIS | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:56am EDT TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian security forces arrested four people for allegedly plotting to kidnap local Jews and hold them for ransom, an Interior Ministry official said on Thursday. There are less than 2,000 Jews in Tunisia, mostly living in Zarzis and the nearby island of Dj...

By Daren Butler ISTANBUL | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:45am EDT ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Jailed Kurdish militants on hunger strike in Turkey may start to die within the next 10 days, Turkey's main medical association warned on Thursday, saying the prime minister's dismissal of the protest as a "show" risked hardening their resolve. The hunger strike entered it...

KUWAIT | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:29am EDT KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwaiti authorities have decided to free a prominent opposition politician on bail after charging him with insulting the ruling emir, his lawyer said on Thursday. Although OPEC member Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass pro-democracy unrest seen in other Arab countries, tensions have mounted between ...

BAGHDAD | Thu Nov 1, 2012 9:28am EDT BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi court sentenced fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi to death for a second time on Thursday on a charge of involvement in a plot to assassinate an interior ministry official, a judicial spokesman said. Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim who fled to Turkey earlier this year when Shi'ite-led Iraqi ...