World

(Reuters) – WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama told Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping on Tuesday that Beijing must play fair in international trade and vowed to keep pressing China to clean up its human rights record.

(Reuters) – National fundraising committees for the Democratic and Republican parties, President Barack Obama,     and other major politicians have declined to return campaign     donations totaling $1.8 million from Houston financier R.

AMMAN/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The UN human rights chief accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of launching an “indiscriminate attack” on civilians to end pro-democracy protests and said he had been emboldened by the failure of the Security Council to condemn him.

FREETOWN (Reuters) – The United Nations was pressured by the president of Sierra Leone to cut short the tour of its mission chief ahead of an election later this year, the envoy said in a letter seen by Reuters yesterday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia yesterday, wounding four people.

(Reuters) – National fundraising committees for the Democratic and Republican parties, President Barack Obama, and other major politicians have declined to return campaign donations totaling $1.8 million from Houston financier R Allen Stanford, now on trial for allegedly masterminding a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and his wife Joanna were robbed last week at their vacation home on the Caribbean island of Nevis by a man armed with a machete, a court spokeswoman said yesterday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Soul singer Adele triumphed in her return to music’s stage on Sunday, scooping up six Grammys and winning every category in which she was nominated including album of the year for ‘21’ and best record with “Rolling In the Deep”.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – The Arab League threw its support yesterday firmly behind the opposition mounting an uprising against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, and called for the U.N.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – State governor Henrique Capriles won the Venezuelan opposition coalition’s primary yesterday and will face President Hugo Chavez in an October presidential vote, sources said.

MALE, (Reuters) – The Commonwealth is sending a team to the Maldives to  investigate why the first democratically elected president of the Indian Ocean nation has suddenly been replaced, the 54-nation group said yesterday.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch is under pressure over his Sun tabloid after the arrests of several senior staff in a corruption probe, but whistleblowers inside his media empire may pose more of a threat than the public outrage that forced the closure of its sister paper.

MANAMA, (Reuters) – Iran has built up its naval forces in the Gulf and prepared boats that could be used in suicide attacks, but the U.S.

(CNN) — Legendary singer Whitney Houston has died at age 48, according to her representative Kristen Foster.

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian forces bombarded districts of the city of Homs yesterday in their drive to crush a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, whose ally Russia said it would not support an Arab peace plan circulating at the United Nations.

LONDON (Reuters) – British police yesterday arrested five people at The Sun newspaper, its parent company News Corporation said, as part of an investigation into illegal news gathering that forced the closure of another of the firm’s British tabloids.

TRIPOLI  (Reuters) – Libya urged Niger yesterday to extradite Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saadi, saying his call for Libyans to prepare for a “coming uprising” threatened bilateral ties.

 (Reuters) – Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told lawmakers to back a deeply unpopular EU/IMF rescue in a vote today or condemn the country to a “vortex” of recession.

Portland, Maine – Repub-lican front-runner Mitt Romney bounced back from midweek losses in three states to win the Maine presidential caucuses, the state’s Republican Party announced  yesterday.

The Electoral Assistance Bureau (EAB) has once again moved its public submission report on the 2011 Regional and General Elections to later this month.