| North Korea's rocket launch ends in failure: South Korea Posted:  SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's much hyped long-range rocket launch on Friday ended in apparent failure, South Korean officials said, dealing a blow to the prestige of the reclusive and impoverished state that defied international pressure to push ahead with the plan. North Korea said it wanted the Unha-3 rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, although critics believed it was designed to enhance the capacity of North Korea to design a ballistic missile deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States. ...
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| Call for Friday protests is first test of Syria truce Posted:  BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian opposition activists called mass protests for Friday to test a fragile, day-old ceasefire by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, and international pressure mounted for Damascus to fully comply with a U.N.-backed peace plan. Anxious to build on a truce between the armed forces and rebels which brought an eerie calm to Syria on Thursday, after more than a year of clashes, the U.N. Security Council worked on a resolution authorizing U.N. observers to monitor it. ...
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| British PM to assess Myanmar reforms during visit Posted:  KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron will tell Myanmar's president he is ready to call for an easing of European sanctions on the country when he makes an historic visit on Friday, the first by a British premier in six decades. Cameron will meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who in 2010 emerged from 15 years of house arrest to go on to score an April 1 by-election victory, and President Thein Sein, whose reforms in military-dominated Myanmar have startled those who for decades viewed the country as a pariah state. ...
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| UK police judgment poor in News Corp hacking case: report Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - Senior London police staff linked to the News Corp phone hacking scandal showed poor judgment, took bad decisions and got too close to journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, an independent watchdog said on Thursday. While the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)rejected allegations of corruption involving two of the top personnel at the Metropolitan Police (MPS), it was highly critical of their and senior colleagues' media relationships. ...
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| Pakistan parliament backs recommendations on U.S. ties Posted:  ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's parliament on Thursday unanimously approved recommendations from its national security committee on ties with the United States, including a demand to end drone strikes. Action on the recommendations has yet to be decided by the government. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said in a live televised speech to parliament that the government will attempt to implement them "in letter and spirit". He did not say whether Pakistan would reopen overland supply routes to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan. ...
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| Obama, Sarkozy discussed oil market conditions: White House Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama discussed conditions on world oil markets during a video conference on Thursday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the White House said, but declined to say if they talked about the release of strategic reserves. "The president and President Sarkozy agreed to continue their consultations about the tightness in global oil markets, in line with previous conversations," White House press secretary Jay Carney said during a briefing. ...
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| Heavy weapons fire heard in Guinea-Bissau capital Posted:  BISSAU (Reuters)- - Heavy weapons fire echoed through the capital of Guinea-Bissau on Thursday, witnesses said, and soldiers surrounded the residence of former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, the frontrunner in a presidential election in the small West African state. The reason for the military action and Gomes Junior's whereabouts were not immediately known. Armed soldiers stopped journalists from approaching the residence, which is located almost opposite the Angolan embassy in the capital Bissau. Witnesses said the firing later subsided. ...
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| ICC defense lawyer wants Libya reported to U.N. Posted:  AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A senior lawyer at the International Criminal Court has asked the court to report Libya to the U.N. Security Council over its failure to extradite Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the late Libyan leader. Xavier-Jean Keïta, principal counsel at the ICC's Office of Public Counsel for the Defense, asked the court to reject an appeal filed by Libya on Tuesday requesting more time to transfer Saif-al Islam to the Netherlands. ...
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| U.N. Council demands end to Sudan, South Sudan clashes Posted:  UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council demanded on Thursday that Sudan and South Sudan stop border clashes which it said threatened to return the east African neighbors to a full-scale war. A statement from the 15-nation body also insisted that Khartoum stop air strikes and Juba withdraw troops from a vital oil field. Fighting along the ill-defined border between the former civil-war foes has led to a standoff over Heglig oil field after it was seized on Tuesday by troops from South Sudan, which declared independence last year. ...
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| Italy employers' head now supports labor reform Posted:  MILAN (Reuters) - The head of Italian employers' lobby Confindustria said on Thursday that she supported Prime Minister Mario Monti's labor reform proposal only a week after she defined it as "very bad". "We wanted something different on the firing rules, but because of our great sense of responsibility, we will limit ourselves to making some requests for minor changes to the reform proposal," Emma Marcegaglia said at a conference. ...
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| Syrian opposition vows protest to test shaky truce Posted:  Syria's opposition called for widespread protests Friday to test the regime's commitment to an internationally brokered cease-fire that the U.N. chief described as so fragile it could collapse with a single gunshot.
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| Pakistani parliament approves proposals on US ties Posted: Pakistan's parliament on Thursday unanimously approved new guidelines for the country in its troubled relationship with the United States, a decision that could pave the way for the reopening of supply lines to NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan. |
| Afghan leader raises prospect of early elections Posted:  Afghanistan's president raised the prospect Thursday of holding presidential elections a year early to avoid a potentially deadly concurrence of a transition of power and a major drawdown of international forces in 2014.
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| Rejected by US mom, boy adapts to life in Russia Posted:  Two years after Artem Saveliev's American adoptive mother put him alone on a plane back to his homeland, the towheaded 9-year-old shivers and barks "No!" when asked if he ever would go back to the United States.
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| Wrong turn grants glimpse behind N. Korean curtain Posted:  The press bus took a wrong turn Thursday. And suddenly, everything changed in the official showcase of North Korean achievement.
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| Cancer hasn't dimmed Hugo Chavez's electoral hopes Posted:  With less than six months left until Election Day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has hardly hit the campaign trail. Instead, he has been consumed with his fight against cancer, repeatedly traveling to Cuba for treatment and publicly vowing to defeat his illness.
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| Denmark braced for terror trial against 4 Swedes Posted:  Four Swedes accused of plotting a revenge attack on a newspaper that printed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad will go on trial Friday in Denmark, forcing the normally placid Nordic country to revisit an event it would rather put to rest.
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| Egypt ex-VP: I joined race to stop religious state Posted:  Hosni Mubarak's former spy chief said in comments published Thursday that he decided to run for president to prevent Islamists from turning Egypt into a "religious state," and warned that the country would be internationally isolated if one of them won the presidency.
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| J.K. Rowling's next book: 'The Casual Vacancy' Posted:  It may lack wizards and witches, but J.K. Rowling and her publisher are hoping her first novel for adults, "The Casual Vacancy," will have the magic touch.
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| Louvre goes visual with Nintendo 3Ds guide Posted:  The Louvre Museum is used to dealing with antiquities: Nearly all of its thousands of works of art date to 1848 or earlier. Now, it wants to create a relic of its own — the old museum audio guide.
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