World

(Reuters) – The Miss Universe Organization yesterday launched a legal action for defamation against a beauty queen who said recent Miss USA pageant results were rigged.

MIAMI,  (Reuters) – Civil rights groups filed a legal challenge yesterday to Florida’s controversial effort to purge its voter lists prior to the November presidential election.

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Bob Welch, an early member of rock band Fleetwood Mac who enjoyed a successful solo career with hits such as “Ebony Eyes,” died yesterday of an apparent suicide at home in Nashville.

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – European Union governments would be able to suspend passport-free travel in parts of Europe for as long as two years under regulations proposed yesterday to address concerns over large-scale immigration.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – New York City’s top health official yesterday shot back at critics who have blasted the city’s plan to limit the sale of oversized sugary drinks such as soda, calling beverage industry opposition ridiculous.

CANBERRA,  (Reuters) – Australia will lift its remaining financial and travel sanctions against Myanmar and double its aid in a move to encourage further democratic reform as the country tentatively emerges from decades of military rule, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said.

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – World powers will insist on Iran curbing its production of high-grade uranium at the next round of nuclear talks in Moscow, a senior European Union negotiator told her counterpart in Tehran yesterday.

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – A Mexican court cleared the way yesterday for authorities to extradite Sandra Avila, Mexico’s highest-profile woman drug smuggler and known as the “Queen of the Pacific”, to face trafficking charges in the United States.

KABUL, (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said yesterday the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens the country offered to insurgents in neighbouring Afghanistan.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Parasitic mites have turbo-charged the spread of a virus responsible for a rise in honey bee deaths around the world, scientists said yesterday.

BEIRUT,  (Reuters) – United Nations monitors were unable to visit the village of Mazraat al-Qubeir yesterday where activists say at least 78 people were massacred, and will continue efforts to reach the site today in daylight hours, a spokeswoman said.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Activists said pro-government militia men and security forces killed at least 78 people, including children, in Syria’s central province of Hama yesterday.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – Ray Bradbury, a giant of American literature who helped popularize science fiction with works such as “The Martian Chronicles,” died on Tuesday at age 91, his publisher said yesterday.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Drug-resistant strains of gonorrhoea have spread to countries across the world, the U.N.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, (Reuters) – Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday ordered police and government officials to fly to a mountain village to investigate whether four women were killed for clapping and singing as men danced at a wedding.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Large-scale engineering projects aimed at fighting global warming could radically reduce rainfall in Europe and North America, a team of scientists from four European countries have warned.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., (Reuters) – The planet Venus made a slow transit across the face of the sun on Tuesday, the last such passing that will be visible from Earth for 105 years.

MIAMI, (Reuters) – Florida yesterday disputed a Justice Department claim that its controversial voter purge efforts may be illegal and said it was the federal government that appeared to have run afoul of the law.

WASHINGTON/PESHAWAR, (Reuters) – A U.S. drone strike in Pakistan killed one of al Qaeda’s most powerful figures, the U.S.

TRIPOLI,  (Reuters) – Invading Libya’s biggest international airport was embarrassingly easy: the attackers cut the wire perimeter fence in broad daylight, and then drove onto the tarmac while airport security chiefs stood and watched.