World

KABUL, (Reuters) – Wealthy Afghans are carrying about $8 billion — almost double the state budget — in suitcases out of the country each year, an amount likely to rise as the exit of foreign troops nears and threatening to ruin the fragile economy, a senior official said.

By Pascal Fletcher DAKAR (Reuters) – Asked what might happen if Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade is declared winner of the West African country’s elections, student Nando da Silva mouths the sound of an explosion: “Boom!”

WASHINGTON/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Monday the massacre of 16 villagers by a US soldier raises his determination to get American troops out of Afghanistan, while a US official said the accused staff sergeant previously had suffered traumatic brain injury.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Iran executed some 670 people last year, most of them for drug crimes that do not merit capital punishment under international law and more than 20 for offences against Islam, a United Nations investigator said yesterday.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The world’s first permanent war crimes court opened nearly a decade ago, promising accountability for brutal tyrants, justice for victims and swift trials for perpetrators.

VIENNA (Reuters) – Bolivian President Evo Morales yesterday defended Bolivians’ right to chew coca leaves, the main ingredient of cocaine, saying it was an ancient tradition and the world’s No 3 cocaine producer was working to fight drug trafficking.

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Responding to an Internet campaign backed by celebrities who want Uganda to capture fugitive warlord Joseph Kony and save child soldiers, the government complained yesterday it needed more help from its African neighbours.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The man holds up two pictures of his friend, which tell the story of what it now means to be gay in Iraq.

Veteran Bollywood actor-filmmaker Joy Mukherjee was cremated in Mumbai on Saturday morning, the Indian Express reported.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan,  (Reuters) – Sixteen Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described as a nighttime massacre yesterday near a U.S.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has ended talks with President Bashar al-Assad and left Syria with little sign of progress on halting the country’s growing political bloodshed.

TORONTO/MELBOURNE,  (Reuters) – Indonesia’s decision to shut the door on foreign control of its mines has gone down badly with global miners but none are yet threatening to quit the country: the truth is, they no longer have any easy investment destinations to turn to.

PALANPUR, India,  (Reuters) – A village in western India hosted a mass wedding and engagement ceremony of 21 girls yesterday aimed at breaking a tradition of prostitution which has for centuries exploited women of a poor, marginalised and once nomadic community in the region.

SANAA/ADEN (Reuters) – US drone attacks killed at least 25 al Qaeda-linked fighters including one of their leaders while a Yemeni air force raid killed 20 more in the south, sources said yesterday, in the biggest airstrikes since Yemen’s new president took office.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Former UN chief Kofi Annan held blunt talks with Bashar al-Assad this weekend but appeared to be making little headway, as the Syrian president blamed political bloodshed on “terrorists”.

ROME (Reuters) – Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, met and prayed together yesterday but made only glancing references to the divisions between their Churches.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Dozens died in fighting between al Shabaab rebels and Ethiopian troops near the central Somali town of Baidoa and another small town yesterday, residents, regional officials and the Islamist rebels said.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Authorities are investigating a mass grave in southern Mexico containing 167 bodies that may have been dumped there at least 50 years ago, a Mexican official said yesterday.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Thousands of students at an all-female university in Saudi Arabia boycotted classes yesterday, protesting against poor services, witnesses said, in a rare display of dissent from women in the conservative Islamic kingdom.

(Reuters) – U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan meets President Bashar al-Assad today to press for a political solution to Syria’s year-long uprising and bloody crackdown in which thousands of people have been killed.