World

DURBAN, South Africa, (Reuters) – The world’s  three biggest polluters China, the United States and India  refused to move towards a new legal commitment to curb their  carbon emissions yesterday, increasing the risk that climate  talks will fail to clinch a meaningful deal this week.

OTTAWA, (Reuters) – Canada is betraying its  native peoples, who must deal with dreadful living conditions,  poor health care and discrimination, the country’s top  aboriginal leader said in a fiery speech yesterday.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama told  U.S. diplomats and foreign aid workers today to do more to  advance gay rights abroad, a move that promotes U.S.

KABUL, (Reuters) – A suicide attack killed  dozens of Shi’ite Muslims at a crowded Kabul shrine yesterday,  and four others died in a smaller blast in a key northern city,  in the worst sectarian violence Afghanistan has seen since the  fall of the Taliban.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The top U.S. aviation safety  official resigned yesterday over a drunken driving charge.

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO,  (Reuters) – Brazil’s  economy stalled in the third quarter as the euro zone debt  crisis dragged on global demand and the country’s increasingly  indebted consumers retreated after nearly three years of  buoyant spending.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Shadowy death squads   are operating in Syria’s flashpoint city of Homs, according  to accounts from anti-government activists in the country, from  which foreign reporters are officially banned.

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Hundreds of people took to  the streets of Moscow for a second successive day yesterday to  demand an end to Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule, defying a  crackdown by tens of thousands of police reinforced by crack  Interior Ministry troops.

TOKYO, (Reuters) – An independent panel issued a  damning report on a $1.7 billion accounting scandal at Japan’s  disgraced Olympus Corp yesterday, urging legal action against  “rotten” executives responsible for the cover-up and the  replacement of other board members.

LIMA, (Reuters) – Peru’s counterterrorism police yesterday detained two leaders of protests that have stalled  Newmont Mining’s $4.8 billion Conga gold mine project, in a  widening crackdown by President Ollanta Humala.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Several thousand protesters took to the streets yesterday to demand an end to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule after voters cut his party’s parliamentary majority in an election that was condemned as unfair by European monitors.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium finally secured a government yesterday after record-long talks to form a coalition that promises the most profound state reform in decades and a commitment to restore the country’s finances.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo appeared at the International Criminal Court yesterday to face charges of crimes against humanity, the first former head of state expected to be tried by the court since its inception in 2002.

LONDON (Reuters) – Campaign group Global Witness has pulled out of the Kimberley Process, a scheme designed to prevent “blood diamonds” from entering the mainstream market, calling the scheme outdated and a failure, almost nine years after its launch.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The UN Security Council yesterday expanded sanctions against Eritrea for continuing to provide support to Islamist militants, including al Shabaab, in the virtually lawless Horn of Africa nation of Somalia.

Movie actor and director Dev  Anand, known for his joie de vivre as Bollywood’s “evergreen  hero”, has died aged 88, Reuters reported yesterday bringing, it said, the end to an  era of Indian cinema.

ORDOS, China, (Reuters) – The monumental,  neo-Mongolian sculptures, empty plazas and hulking concrete  shells of buildings in Ordos, deep in the steppes of Inner  Mongolia, are a potent symbol of how China’s property boom can  turn to bust.

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Russian voters dealt  Vladimir Putin’s ruling party a heavy blow yesterday by cutting  its parliamentary majority in an election that showed growing  unease with his domination of the country as he prepares to  reclaim the presidency.

RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuters) – Brazil’s Labour Minis-ter  Carlos Lupi resigned yesterday in the face of mounting  corruption allegations, the latest in a series of  scandal-driven departures from President Dilma Rousseff’s  cabinet.

(Reuters) – At least a dozen Syrian secret  police have defected from an intelligence compound, activists  said, in what appeared to be the first major desertion from a  service that has acted as a pillar of President Bashar  al-Assad’s rule.