World

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – United Nations member states pledged $384 million yesterday to an emergency fund that will allow the world body to respond quickly to natural disasters and other crises in 2013, UN aid chief Valerie Amos said.

 (Reuters) – Researchers at Yale University have named a newly discovered dinosaur Obamadon gracilis in honour of the 44th president’s toothy grin.

PORTLAND, Ore (Reuters) – A gunman opened fire at an Oregon shopping mall outside Portland yesterday and several people were believed to have been shot, authorities said, while local media reported two had been killed.

ALBANY, NY (Reuters) – A New York state anti-terrorism law enacted in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks cannot be used to prosecute a street gang member convicted of shooting a 10-year-old girl and paralysing a rival gang member, the state’s Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The White House and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner’s office held more negotiations yesterday on ways to break the “fiscal cliff” stalemate, although neither side showed any public signs that they were ready to give ground.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a New York hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund chief of sexual assault yesterday settled her civil lawsuit against him for an undisclosed sum, ending one chapter of a scandal that cost him his job and a chance to become president of France.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – Nine people were hurt when unknown attackers fired at protesters camping at Tahrir Square in central Cairo yesterday, according to witnesses and Egyptian media, as opponents and supporters of President Mohamed Mursi’s plans to vote on a new constitution geared up for a day of street demonstrations.

DOHA,  (Reuters) – At the end of another lavishly-funded U.N. conference that yielded no progress on curbing greenhouse emissions, many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair.

GENEVA,  (Reuters) – Mauritania and Maldives, which both permit citizens who renounce Islam to be sentenced to death, were on Monday elected as vice-presidents of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – Egypt’s main opposition coalition rejected yesterday Islamist President Mohamed Mursi’s plan for a constitutional referendum this week, saying it risked dragging the country into “violent confrontation”.

ACCRA,  (Reuters) – Ghana’s electoral authorities said yesterday incumbent leader John Dramani Mahama won a new term as president in the West African state in an election the opposition claimed was marred by tampering.

DOHA (Reuters) – Almost 200 nations extended a weakened United Nations plan for combating global warming until 2020 yesterday with a modest set of measures that would do nothing to halt rising world greenhouse gas emissions.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi cancelled a decree which had sparked huge protests by giving him sweeping powers.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian rebel groups have chosen Brigadier Selim Idris, a former officer in President Bashar al-Assad’s army, to head their new Islamist-dominated military command, opposition sources said yesterday.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, in a defiant speech during his first ever visit to Gaza, told a mass rally yesterday he would never recognise Israel and pledged to “free the land of Palestine inch by inch.”

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti announced yesterday that he would resign once next year’s budget is approved, two days after Silvio Berlusconi’s party withdrew its parliamentary support for his technocrat government.

DOHA, (Reuters) – Disagreements over how to help poor nations cope with everything from floods to rising seas pushed marathon U.N.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – President Mohamed Mursi was expected to press ahead today with talks on ways to end Egypt’s worst crisis since he took office even though the country’s main opposition leaders have vowed to stay away.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. companies kept up their slow but steady hiring pace in November, defying predictions that Superstorm Sandy would deal a big blow to the labor market.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the gay marriage debate for the first time yesterday by agreeing to review two challenges to federal and state laws that define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.