World

NEW DELHI,  (Reuters) – The Indian government bowed to intense opposition pressure and agreed yesterday to a vote on its decision to let foreign supermarkets set up shop in India, taking a major step towards ending a deadlock that has paralysed parliament for days.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. government banned BP Plc from new federal contracts yesterday over its “lack of business integrity” in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, a move that could imperil the British energy giant’s U.S.

LONDON, (Reuters) – A small British company with a dream of building a re-usable space plane has won an important endorsement from the European Space Agency (ESA) after completing key tests on its novel engine technology.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – Argentina has won a reprieve against having to pay $1.33 billion next month to “holdout” investors who rejected a restructuring of its defaulted debt and have waged a long legal battle to be paid in full.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – New York City passed a day without a single report of a person being shot, stabbed or subject to other sorts of violent crime for the first time in recent memory, police said today.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was to travel to Cuba yesterday for medical treatment, following a nearly two-week absence from the public eye, months after undergoing cancer surgery on the communist-run island.

RAMALLAH, West Bank,  (Reuters) – Forensic experts took samples from Yasser Arafat’s corpse in the West Bank yesterday, trying to determine if he was murdered with the hard-to-trace radioactive poison, polonium.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – Tens of thousands Egyptians protested yesterday against President Mohamed Mursi in one of the biggest rallies since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow, accusing the Islamist leader of seeking to impose a new era of autocracy.

ONITSHA, Nigeria,  (Reuters) –  Bank robbers armed with assault rifles and high explosives attacked four banks and two police stations in southern Nigeria, in a coordinated strike that left seven people dead, police said yesterday.

RAMALLAH, West Bank  (Reuters) – The body of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will be exhumed today by a team of international experts trying to discover if he was poisoned, as many Palestinians believe.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) – As many as 200,000 people demonstrated in Rio de Janeiro yesterday to urge Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to veto a bill that local officials say could cost Rio state billions of dollars in lost oil revenue and cripple plans to host the World Cup and Olympics.

DHAKA/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Thousands of angry textile workers demonstrated in the outskirts of Dhaka yesterday after a fire swept through a garment workshop at the weekend, killing more than 100 people in Bangladesh’s worst-ever factory blaze.

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) – Heavy rains in Panama flooded villages and caused landslides that killed at least two people and destroyed hundreds of homes, the government said yesterday.

TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto’s Rob Ford, a magnet for controversy during two years as mayor of Canada’s largest city, was ordered out of office yesterday after a judge found him guilty of breaking conflict-of-interest laws.

VIENNA (Reuters)- The violent crises in Syria, Gaza and Mali show how important it is for different religions to work together to promote understanding rather than sow hatred, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said yesterday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The US State Department has decided that “party til you puke” may not be the best message for the embattled Gulf state of Bahrain.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will push for comprehensive immigration reform, his spokesman said yesterday, an accomplishment that eluded him during his first four years in office.

DHAKA,  (Reuters) – A fire swept through a garment factory on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital killing more than 100 people, the fire brigade said yesterday, in the country’s worst ever factory blaze.

BARCELONA, Spain, (Reuters) – Separatists in Spain’s Catalonia won regional elections yesterday but failed to get a resounding mandate for a referendum on independence, which had threatened to pile political uncertainty on top of Spain’s economic woes.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi will meet senior judges today to try to ease a crisis over his seizure of new powers which has set off violent protests reminiscent of last year’s revolution which brought him to power.