World

A spire atop the Washington National Cathedral shows damage following an earthquake along the eastern United States yesterday.

 WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – A strong earthquake rattled  the U.S. East Coast yesterday, sending tremors as far as  Canada, damaging well-known buildings in the nation’s capital  and sending scared office workers into the streets. 

NASSAU,  (Reuters) – The United States put its  eastern seaboard on alert for Hurricane Irene yesterday, as  the powerful storm barreled up from the Caribbean on a path  that could hit the U.S.

SAO PAULO,  (Reuters) – A political crisis in Brazil  is starting to careen out of control as new allegations of  graft surface almost daily and President Dilma Rousseff looks  increasingly like a bystander with little ability to keep the  fallout from spreading to the economy.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – Former IMF chief Dominique  Strauss-Kahn had consensual sex with the hotel maid who accused  him of sexual assault, his defense lawyer said yesterday,  adding that their comparative sizes would have ruled out a  forcible encounter.  

TRIPOLI,  (Reuters) – A son of Muammar Gaddafi who  rebels said they had captured appeared with cheering supporters  in Tripoli, giving a boost to forces loyal to the veteran leader  trying to fight off insurgents who say they control most of the  capital.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – New York prosecutors asked a  judge to dismiss sexual assault charges against former IMF  chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn yesterday, a stunning reversal  that could revive the political future of a man many had seen  as the next president of France.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – U.S. songwriter Nickolas  Ashford, who penned such rhythm and blues hits as “Ain’t No  Mountain High Enough” and “I’m Every Woman” with his wife  Valerie Simpson, died on Monday at age 70.

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – In July 2010, U.S. investor  Todd Lemons and Russian energy giant Gazprom believed they were  just weeks from winning final approval for a landmark forest  preservation project in Indonesia.

UNITED NATIONS,  (Reuters) – Clashes in South Sudan  have left at least 600 people dead and hundreds wounded, and  possibly displaced more than a quarter million people, the U.N. 

TRIPOLI,  (Reuters) – Jubilant rebel fighters streamed  into the heart of Tripoli as Muammar Gaddafi’s forces collapsed  and crowds took to the streets to celebrate, tearing down  posters of the Libyan leader.

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – More than 2,000 corpses have  been found buried in several unmarked graves in Indian Kashmir,  believed to be victims of the divided region’s separatist  revolt, a government human rights commission said in a report.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – A newly discovered deep,  cold current flowing off Iceland’s coast may reveal that the  North Atlantic is less sensitive to climate change than  previously thought, researchers reported yesterday.

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – It takes a lot to start a mass  campaign with political overtones in Singapore, but there’s no  better catalyst than food.

RABAT (Reuters) – Libyan rebels control most of the Tajourah district in the east of the capital and have surrounded an airbase there, an opposition activist in Tripoli told a Reuters reporter outside of Libya.

 NEW DELHI (Reuters) – At least 20,000 people gathered yesterday to support an anti-corruption social activist who has galvanized much of India against the government with his hunger strike, amid signs from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of compromise to end the impasse.

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-il arrived in Russia yesterday for his first visit in nearly a decade as the isolated state sought economic aid after heavy flooding exacerbated its chronic food shortages.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian forces fired heavy machineguns at a residential district in the central city of Homs yesterday after protests against President Bashar al-Assad, who faces growing world isolation for his repression of five months of popular unrest.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Authorities in Mexico found the decapitated bodies of four men and a woman in Acapulco yesterday, the latest in a string of slayings in the popular Pacific resort this week.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The prosecutors in the case of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will meet tomorrow with the hotel maid accusing him of sexual assault, in a sign the case may be headed for dismissal, one of her lawyers said yesterday.