World

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – The deadline for a U.N.-backed ceasefire aimed at halting more than a year of violence in Syria passed last night with no immediate reports of fighting, activists said.

KABUL, (Reuters) – Crouching behind a wooden barrier, 27-year-old Sergeant Sara Delawar fires her M-4 rifle at a target showing the silhouette of a man, part of a training exercise for Afghan special forces.

JACKSONVILLE/SANFORD, Fla., (Reuters) – A special prosecutor in Florida charged neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman with second-degree murder yesterday in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, a move protesters had demanded for weeks in a racially charged case that has riveted the United States.

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Rapper Nicki Minaj shot straight to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart yesterday with her sophomore album “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” usurping the crown from Madonna, who suffered the biggest second week sales drop in chart history.

GETTYSBURG, Pa.,  (Reuters) – Rick Santorum ended his improbable run for the White House yesterday after leading a Republican tilt to the right that could dog the more moderate front-runner, Mitt Romney, in November’s election.

STRASBOURG, France, (Reuters) – Britain can extradite its most notorious Islamist cleric to the United States to stand trial on charges that he supported al Qaeda and aided a fatal kidnapping in Yemen, the European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday.

BEIJING,  (Reuters) – China’s Communist Party suspended former high-flying politician Bo Xilai from its top ranks and named his wife, Gu Kailai, a suspect in the murder of a British businessman, in revelations yesterday likely to shake leadership succession plans.

TOKYO, (Reuters) – Britain and Japan said on Tuesday they have agreed to jointly develop and build defence equipment, the first time since World War Two that Japan has concluded a weapons-building deal with a country other than the United States.

(Reuters) – A New York bride accused of faking terminal cancer so she could raise money from sympathetic well wishers to pay for a dream wedding has been arrested and charged with fraud, authorities said yesterday.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, (Reuters) – Costa Rica’s highest court has rejected an ambitious fiscal reform bill proposed by President Laura Chinchilla to bring the country’s ballooning budget deficit under control.

(Reuters) – The Miss Universe pageant is changing its rules and will allow transgender women to take part in all of its competitions starting in 2013, the organization and gay rights group GLAAD said yesterday.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – A Costa Rican diplomat kidnapped last weekend and held for ransom in the latest attack on foreign envoys in Venezuela was released yesterday and is in good health despite having suffered a blow to the head, authorities said.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – This year’s frenzy of oil and gas exploration in newly accessible Arctic waters could be the harbinger of even starker changes to come.

ORLANDO, Fla., (Reuters) – The special prosecutor investigating the shooting death of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin yesterday ruled out using a grand jury in the case, meaning her office alone will decide whether to charge shooter George Zimmerman with a crime.

BEIRUT,  (Reuters) – Syrian troops shelled villages, fired across frontiers and were accused of massacres in the hours before a deadline today that many doubt can usher in a U.N.-brokered

LONDON, (Reuters) – International vaccines group GAVI has struck a deal for bulk buying rotavirus shots from GlaxoSmithKline and Merck which cuts the price by two-thirds and will allow poorer countries access to them at around $5 per course.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff complained about U.S. monetary policy and failed to make major progress on trade in a White House meeting with President Barack Obama yesterday, highlighting strains between the Western Hemisphere’s two biggest economies.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. government’s federal procurement office is resigning and two senior officials have been dismissed ahead of a report criticizing the agency’s lavish spending on an “over the top” training conference, the White House said on Monday.

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexico’s presidential front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto pledged yesterday to create a new police force made up of former soldiers to fight drug gangs and said ending violence would take priority over battling narcotics trafficking if he wins the election.

OKLAHOMA CITY, (Reuters) – Authorities were investigating racially charged comments on the Facebook page of a suspect in the shootings of five black people in Tulsa but said yesterday it was too early to call the killing spree a hate crime.