World

UNITED NATIONS,  (Reuters) – Delegations from around the world failed yesterday to agree a landmark U.N.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands,  (Reuters) – Known as a tax haven for the mega rich around the world, the Cayman Islands is proposing the unthinkable: a direct tax on expatriates to help fix the budget woes of the British territory.

DENVER,  (Reuters) – A former University of Colorado graduate student accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 others in a shooting rampage at a Denver-area movie theater last week had been under the care of a psychiatrist who was part of a campus threat-assessment team.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth declared the London Olympics open after playing a cameo role in a dizzying ceremony designed to highlight the grandeur and eccentricities of the nation that invented modern sport.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. government should block a bid by China’s state oil company CNOOC for Canadian oil company Nexen until China’s government provides fair access for U.S.

KANSAS CITY, Mo./NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Google Inc made its foray into the market for bundled Internet and television services on Thursday, promising access speeds more than 100 times faster than those of traditional U.S.

AMMAN/BEIRUT,  (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad’s forces renewed a ground and aerial bombardment of Aleppo  yesterday, extending efforts to crush rebels in Syria’s commercial capital in what the United States said it feared could become a massacre.

BEIJING,  (Reuters) – China will try Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai, on charges of murdering a British man, state media said on Thursday in the latest turn in a scandal that has rocked the government in Beijing and could bring Gu the death penalty.

SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – Murders and robberies are soaring in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city and financial capital, in a crime wave that could further hurt the local economy and have national political implications.

AZAZ, Syria, (Reuters) – The Syrian army turned its forces on Aleppo yesterday, ordering an armoured column to advance on the country’s second biggest city and pounding rebels there with artillery and attack helicopters, opposition activists said.

SEOUL,  (Reuters) – North Korea’s new young leader, Kim Jong-un, is married, state media said on Wednesday, putting an end to speculation over the relationship with a woman seen at his side during recent events.

AURORA, Colo.  (Reuters) – The man accused in the movie theater massacre at the opening of the new “Batman” film mailed a notebook detailing his plans to a psychiatrist at his university before the attack, Fox News reported yesterday, as the first funeral was held for one of the 12 people killed.

LONDON/PARIS, (Reuters) – The world’s first vaccine against dengue fever, being developed by French drugmaker Sanofi SA, protected against three of the virus’s four strains in a keenly awaited clinical trial in Thailand.

TWO KM BENEATH WELKOM, South Africa, (Reuters) – One of South Africa’s biggest gold firms has taken the drastic step of banning all food underground to cut supply lines to gangs of illegal miners used to staying deep in the mines for months on end, threatening lives and official production.

LONDON, (Reuters) – HSBC has been fined $27.5 million in Mexico for lax controls in its anti-money laundering systems, a week after a scathing U.S.

CARTAGENA, Colombia, (Reuters) – Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos rejected accusations that leftist FARC guerrillas are making a comeback, describing recent attacks as a last-gasp effort to grab headlines that did not pose a threat to economic prosperity.

ACCRA, (Reuters) – Ghana’s President John Atta Mills, who won international praise for presiding over a stable model democracy in Africa, died suddenly yesterday and his vice-president was quickly sworn in to replace him at the helm of the oil, gold and cocoa producer.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said yesterday the South American nation is withdrawing from a regional human rights court that Latin America’s leftist leaders have increasingly criticized as a pawn of Washington.

AMMAN/BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Syria sent thousands of troops surging towards Aleppo in the early hours of Wednesday, where its forces have been pounding rebel fighters from the air, engulfing the country’s largest city in total warfare to put down a revolt.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – A new combination of three drugs killed 99 percent of patients’ tuberculosis bacteria in two weeks, raising hope for a new weapon against increasingly resistant forms of TB.