World

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin has risked harming Russia’s economy by firing his finance minister, a prominent economist and business leader said yesterday, adding to scattered warnings of crisis since Putin confirmed he would reclaim the presidency.

SIRTE (Reuters) – Libya’s new rulers have said they believe fugitive former leader Muammar Gaddafi is being shielded by nomadic tribesmen in the desert near the Algerian border, while his followers fend off assaults on his hometown. 

BELGRADE/MITROVICA (Reuters) – NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo (KFOR) reinforced troops at a border crossing in the ethnic Serb north yesterday, a day after more than a dozen people were injured in clashes.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel approved yesterday the construction of 1,100 settlement homes on annexed land in the West Bank, complicating global efforts to renew peace talks and defuse a crisis over a Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan warned the United States yesterday to stop accusing it of playing a double game with Islamist militants and heaped praise on “all-weather friend” China.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese officials today investigated what caused two subway trains to crash in central Shanghai, injuring more than 270 passengers and dealing another blow to the country’s railway system.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Images of Michael Jackson lying dead in a hospital and rehearsing the day before his death, along with recollections of the singer as a troubled “lost boy,” made for a heart-wrenching opening yesterday to the manslaughter trial of the doctor hired to care for him.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A 14-year-old Phoenix boy was arrested by sheriff’s deputies yesterday for threats made over the Internet to “go on a killing spree” and then commit suicide at his former middle school, authorities said.

MIAMI (Reuters) – The suspended chief of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Miami was arrested yesterday, according to jail records, and local media said the arrest involved charges of possessing and distributing child pornography over the Internet.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A divided UN Security Council met behind closed doors yesterday for its first discussion of last week’s Palestinian application for full UN membership as a state, a move seen as certain to fail.

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan provisional government forces have closed in on Muammar Gaddafi loyalists holed up in Sirte, one of the last two bastions of the deposed leader.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Syria’s foreign minister yesterday appealed to the 193 UN member states to halt the “foreign intervention” that he said was behind six months of anti-government demonstrations that have not abated.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq has signed a contract to buy 18 Lockheed Martin F-16 warplanes to bolster its air force, an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said yesterday.

LONDON (Reuters) – Internet activists will this week make an 11th-hour attempt to stop governments seizing more control of the Web that has fuelled Arab revolutions, enabled mass leaks of US diplomatic cables and allowed online piracy to thrive.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Forty-two countries are close to agreeing an upgrade of their Global Procurement Agreement (GPA), a reform that could unlock tens of billions of dollars of commercial opportunities, and many times more if China gets on board, trade sources said yesterday.

JEDDAH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s king announced yesterday women would be given the right to vote and stand in elections, a bold shift in the ultra-conservative absolute monarchy as pressure for social and democratic reform sweeps the Middle East.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s interim rulers said yesterday they had found a mass grave containing the bodies of 1,270 inmates killed by Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces in a 1996 massacre at a prison in southern Tripoli.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – US President Barack Obama kicked off a West Coast fundraising tour yesterday with harsh criticism of his Republicans opponents, accusing them of “ideological pushback” at a time of national crisis.

LONDON (Reuters) – Young people across the globe are having more unprotected sex and know less about effective contraception options, a multinational survey revealed today.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi’s chief spokesman said yesterday the deposed Libyan leader and his family had not helped themselves to Libya’s oil wealth and that they were “among the poorest citizens”.