By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING | Thu Oct 25, 2012 5:29pm EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - China's year of political intrigue is likely to spring a few more surprises yet, as the ruling Communist Party tries to pull off a smooth leadership change next month against a backdrop of purges, plots and prison sentences. Just weeks away from the once-in-a-decade successi...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Thu Oct 25, 2012 5:27pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The government of Myanmar is delaying crucial decisions on ways to reduce tensions in volatile regions, a U.N. investigator said on Thursday, as sectarian violence raged for a fifth day between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in western Myanmar. Hundreds o...

By Alexei Anishchuk and Gleb Bryanski MOSCOW | Thu Oct 25, 2012 5:02pm EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Thursday dismissed talk that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a back problem that prompted him to postpone foreign visits and might require surgery. Putin, who began a six-year presidential term in May and turned 60 on October 7, was s...

By Michael Stott NOVO OGARYOVO, Russia | Thu Oct 25, 2012 4:44pm EDT NOVO OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin flatly rejected on Thursday Western criticism of the imprisonment of the Pussy Riot punk protest band, saying its three female members deserved their fate because they threatened the moral foundations of Russia. During a...

LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 4:41pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange said on Thursday the United States would have to give up its "immoral" investigation into his whistle blowing website before he considered leaving the confines of the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Assange has been sheltering in the embassy since June to avoid extrad...

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:57pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate intelligence committee on Thursday said it will hold hearings in November on security and intelligence issues raised by the September 11 attacks on American facilities in Libya. In a statement, the committ...

By Dan Williams JERUSALEM | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:53pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, plan to merge their right-wing parties ahead of Israel's January 22 election, a cabinet minister said on Thursday. "The fact they reached agreement should be welcomed b...

BRUSSELS | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:52pm EDT BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has agreed to discuss future steps in nuclear talks with Iran's chief negotiator, a spokeswoman said on Thursday. It would be the first contact between Ashton and Iran's Saeed Jalili since EU governments imposed new sanctions on Tehran in mid-...

By Mariam Karouny and Stephanie Nebehay BEIRUT/GENEVA | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:25pm EDT BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria's army command announced a ceasefire on Thursday to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha but said it reserved the right to respond to any rebel attack or moves to reinforce President Bashar al-Assad's armed foes. A Free Syrian Arm...

By Ange Aboa DIVO, Ivory Coast | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:10pm EDT DIVO, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - Extortion at illegal roadblocks manned by police, soldiers and customs officials has increased in Ivory Coast's main cocoa regions in recent months and threatens to undermine reforms aimed at improving farmer incomes, officials said on Thursday. Main crop h...

By Gabriela Baczynska MOSCOW | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:02pm EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia wants to know more about the scale and scope of NATO's post-2014 mission in Afghanistan before deciding whether to keep cooperating with the Western alliance, an envoy for President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. Moscow, NATO's Cold War-era foe and still a freq...

YANGON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 12:13pm EDT YANGON (Reuters) - Hundreds of homes burned and gunfire rang out as sectarian violence raged for a fifth day between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in western Myanmar on Thursday, pushing the death toll to nearly 60 and testing the country's nascent democracy. Security forces struggled to stem Myanmar's worst communa...

KABUL | Thu Oct 25, 2012 11:46am EDT KABUL (Reuters) - A man wearing an Afghan police uniform has shot dead two U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan, NATO said on Thursday. The assailant turned his weapon against the forces in Uruzgan province, it said in a statement."Insider" attacks on Western forces have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces ...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:25am EDT VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to have nearly finished installing centrifuges at its underground nuclear plant, Western diplomats say, potentially boosting its capacity to make weapons-grade uranium if it chose to do so. Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow plant, built inside a mou...

By Sherilee Lakmidas JOHANNESBURG | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:21am EDT JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's gold mines agreed a wage deal with unions on Thursday as the bulk of the gold sector's striking miners returned to work under threat of dismissal. The returns marked success of a sort for a new tough approach by mining firms, but at least 12,00...

By Catherine Bremer PARIS | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:17am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - France made a new attempt on Thursday to fix an annual day of remembrance for those who died in the 1954-62 Algerian war and independence struggles in Morocco and Tunisia that ended more than a century of French colonial rule. The Socialist-controlled Senate postponed to No...

VIENNA | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:15am EDT VIENNA (Reuters) - Josef Fritzl, who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, has divorced his wife of 52 years for failing to visit him in prison, a magazine reported on Thursday. The country's most notorious living criminal, now 77, is serving a life sentence in a pris...

CAIRO | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:03am EDT CAIRO (Reuters) - A Libyan militant suspected by Egypt of involvement in last month's attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya has been killed during a raid by Egyptian security forces in Cairo, a security official said on Thursday. The Libyan was killed on Wednesday in a raid targeting him and other militants with suspec...

VATICAN CITY | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:50am EDT VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict's former butler who was convicted this month for stealing papal documents and leaking them to the media, will be moved from house arrest to a Vatican jail cell, the Vatican said on Thursday. A statement said Gabriele would moved later on Thursday to the Vati...

LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:41am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets. In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations ...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis AMMAN | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:32am EDT AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops bombarded a town near Damascus on Thursday and fighting raged in and around the northern city of Aleppo, a day before a proposed truce for a four-day Muslim religious holiday. President Bashar al-Assad's government was expected to make a statement later in ...

BEIJING | Thu Oct 25, 2012 6:57am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - A lawyer for disgraced former top Chinese politician Bo Xilai, who has been employed by the family to represent him, said on Thursday he was unable to say whether the government would allow him to represent Bo when the case comes to trial. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and his former police chief, Wang Li...

By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS | Wed Oct 24, 2012 4:07pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has indicated to Russia that it will accept U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's proposal for a Muslim holiday ceasefire in Syria, Moscow's U.N. envoy said on Wednesday. "We...

By Ulf Laessing and Khalid Abdelaziz KHARTOUM | Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:10pm EDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan said on Wednesday that an Israeli air strike had caused the huge explosion and fire at an arms factory in Khartoum that killed two people, while Israel's defense and foreign ministry declined to comment. Sudan, which analysts say is used as an a...

By Oliver Holmes and Shaimaa Fayed BEIRUT/CAIRO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:05pm EDT BEIRUT/CAIRO (Reuters) - Syria said on Wednesday its military command was still studying a proposal for a holiday ceasefire with rebels - contradicting international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi's announcement that Damascus had agreed to a truce. The statement threw Brahimi...

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:54pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday a Facebook post in which an Islamic militant group claimed credit for a recent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible. "Posting something on Fac...

By Clair MacDougall ACCRA | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:19pm EDT ACCRA (Reuters) - A court in Ghana released a top ally of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo on Wednesday after dismissing charges brought by Ivorian authorities that he murdered two men during last year's post-election civil war. Allegations that pro-Gbagbo exiles in Ghana have ma...

ROME | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:16pm EDT ROME (Reuters) - Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi confirmed on Wednesday he would not lead his center-right People of Freedom (PDL) party in next year's election. "I will not stand for premier again but I remain at the side of younger people who can play and score goals," the 76 year-old media magnate a...

BISSAU | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:10pm EDT BISSAU (Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau's caretaker government said on Wednesday it sent an extradition request to Portugal for its exiled former prime minister, whom it accuses of ordering the assassination of a former president in 2009. Tensions between Guinea Bissau and its former colonial ruler Portugal have soared sinc...

By John Mkhize and Olivia Kumwenda CARLETONVILLE, South Africa | Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:50am EDT CARLETONVILLE, South Africa (Reuters) - AngloGold Ashanti sacked 12,000 wildcat strikers who defied a deadline to return to work on Wednesday, the latest South African company to resort to mass firings after weeks of crippling labor unrest. Thousands of ...

By Brian Love PARIS | Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:15am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief whose French presidential ambitions were shattered by a sex scandal last year, is making a comeback in business and at conferences. The 63-year-old Strauss-Kahn was accused of trying to rape a New York hotel maid in May 2011. He prote...

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM | Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:13am EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinians fired dozens of rockets into Israel from Gaza on Wednesday and an Israeli air strike killed a militant in a surge of violence after the Emir of Qatar embraced the enclave's Hamas leadership with a visit. Hamas claimed responsibility for some of the rocke...

By Steve Gutterman and Maria Golovnina MOSCOW/LONDON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:44am EDT MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) - Ecuador is worried about the health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and has asked Britain to guarantee him safe passage from its London embassy to hospital if he needs medical treatment, a senior Ecuadorean diplomat said in Moscow. As...

By Oliver Holmes and Shaimaa Fayed BEIRUT/CAIRO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:53am EDT BEIRUT/CAIRO (Reuters) - Syria said on Wednesday its military command was still studying a proposal for a holiday ceasefire with rebels - contradicting international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi's earlier announcement that Damascus had agreed to a truce. The statement threw...

MOSCOW | Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:13am EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ecuador is worried about the health of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and has asked Britain to guarantee him safe passage from its London embassy to a hospital if he needs medical treatment, a senior Ecuadorean diplomat said in Moscow. "Assange has grown noticeably thinner, and we are very concern...

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard BEIJING | Wed Oct 24, 2012 5:33am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - A loyal ally of Chinese President Hu Jintao is the front-runner to become propaganda minister during a once-in-a-decade generational leadership change, two sources said, but while media-savvy he is unlikely to drastically loosen tight controls. Liu Qi...

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. The emails, obt...

By Regan Doherty DOHA | Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:23pm EDT DOHA (Reuters) - A second Sudanese rebel group in the western region of Darfur has agreed to start Qatar-sponsored peace talks with the government in Khartoum, officials said on Tuesday, in the first attempt by mediators to revive a stalled peace...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:20pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Countries around the world are increasingly viewing capital punishment as a form of torture because it inflicts severe mental and physical pain on those sentenced to death, a U.N. torture investigator said...

By Andrew Hammond ADEN | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:38pm EDT ADEN (Reuters) - A U.S.-backed military onslaught may have driven Islamist militants from towns in Yemen they seized last year, but many have regrouped into "sleeper cells" threatening anew the areas they vacated, security officials and analysts say. The resilience of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Pe...