World

LISBON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands marched in Lisbon and Porto yesterday to protest against austerity measures imposed under the terms of an EU/IMF bailout, the first major rallies since a centre-right government took power in Portugal in June.

Presidential candidate of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Brigadier (ret) David Granger has challenged Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir’s claim that Guyana’s unemployment rate had fallen from 11.7 to 10.7 per cent.

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Saturday the Andean nation will not award oil exploration and production contracts off the San Andres archipelago, an important bio-diverse tourist destination.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Commonwealth must act decisively to uphold human rights among its 54 member nations or risk a slide into irrelevance, according to a report set to divide the group’s leaders at their summit this month.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) -The killing of Anwar  al-Awlaki in Yemen yesterday by a U.S.

(Gerard Wynn is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed  are his own.

BERLIN – Following a now-familiar script, Europe again  averted disaster in its debt crisis when German lawmakers  rallied behind Chancellor Angela Merkel to approve a stronger  euro zone bailout fund yesterday.

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – A former bodyguard for  Michael Jackson testified yesterday that the pop star’s  doctor asked him to grab vials of medicine and an IV bag before  an ambulance was called for Jackson the day he died.

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.