World

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations appointed Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan a goodwill ambassador yesterday, with a mission to help stop new HIV infections in children and promote increased access to anti-retroviral treatment.

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea plans to allow farmers to keep more of their produce in an attempt to boost agricultural output, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said, in a move that could boost supplies, help cap rising food prices and ease malnutrition.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran plans to switch its citizens onto a domestic Internet network in what officials say is a bid to improve cyber security but which many Iranians fear is the latest way to control their access to the web.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If Secretary of State Hillary Clinton harbors ambitions to run for president, she is keeping them under tight wraps.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran could launch a pre-emptive strike on Israel if it was sure the Jewish state was preparing to attack it, a senior commander of its elite Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying yesterday.

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus belonging to the same family as the SARS virus that killed 800 people in 2002 has been identified in Britain in a man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – An Islamist militia was driven out of the city of Benghazi early yesterday in a surge of anger against the armed groups that control large parts of Libya more than a year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A Pakistani minister offered $100,000 yesterday to anyone who kills the maker of an online video which insults Islam, as sporadic protests rumbled on across parts of the Muslim world.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) has moved its leadership for the first time from Turkey to parts of Syria that are now controlled by rebels, the group’s commander-in-chief said yesterday.

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – A Libyan Islamist militia was swept out of the eastern city of Benghazi in a popular protest against the armed groups that ran into the early hours of this morning, Reuters witnesses said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Arab countries proposed yesterday extending the mandate of UN investigators documenting war crimes in Syria and said that more experts were needed for the growing task.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev offered rare criticism of President Vladimir Putin’s methods of dealing with business leaders yesterday, heightening speculation of a growing rift between Russia’s top two rulers.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Siberian tiger critically injured a man who jumped into the big cat’s den at New York City’s Bronx Zoo yesterday, retreating only after emergency workers scared it off with a fire extinguisher.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Myanmar’s government says it is not worried opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will upstage the president during their overlapping US visits because they work together for democracy, just as Nelson Mandela did with South Africa’s last apartheid-era leader.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thirteen employees of the US Secret Service were entangled in a prostitution scandal in Colombia earlier this year but their actions did not compromise the safety of the president, a Department of Homeland Security investigation found.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya apologized yesterday to visiting US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns for an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died.

WASHINGTON/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – US Trade Representative Ron Kirk urged Brazil to reconsider plans for tariff increases, prompting a stinging rebuke of American monetary policy that has “distorted” global exchange rates.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Muslims angered by cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad should follow his example of enduring insults without retaliating, Egypt’s highest Islamic legal official said yesterday.

CARACAS (Reuters) – A fire caused by lightning at Venezuela’s 146,000 barrel-per-day El Palito refinery should be extinguished today and operations remained unaffected, President Hugo Chavez said.

AUCKLAND (Reuters) – The last of the 33,000 ‘surge’ troops ordered into Afghanistan by President Barack Obama in 2009 have withdrawn from the country, returning the American presence to pre-surge levels, a senior US defence official said today.