| Caretaker govt will take Greece to risky repeat vote Posted:  ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek political leaders meet on Wednesday to form a caretaker government that will lead the country into its second election in just over a month, with Greece's euro membership at stake in a mounting crisis rocking world markets. Parties deeply divided over an unpopular EU-IMF rescue plan threw in the towel on Tuesday after nine days of failed attempts to put together a coalition, hitting heavyweight financial stocks as investors worried at the prospect that the euro zone weakling would remain in limbo for at least another month. ...
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| Ex-Murdoch editor Brooks charged in hacking scandal Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - Rebekah Brooks, a close confidante of Rupert Murdoch, was charged on Tuesday with interfering with a police investigation into a phone hacking scandal that has rocked the tycoon's empire and sent shockwaves through the British political establishment. Brooks, 43, was charged with conspiring to remove boxes of archive records from Murdoch's London headquarters, concealing material from detectives, and hiding documents, computers and other electronic equipment from the police. If found guilty she could face a prison sentence. ...
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| U.N. and Iran agree to keep talking on nuclear Posted:  VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog ended two days of talks on Tuesday by agreeing to meet again next week, just two days before Tehran resumes negotiations with world powers concerned it may be seeking to develop atomic bomb capability. While both sides were upbeat about the discussions, which will continue on Monday, there was no word on whether the U.N. agency had made progress towards one of its main aims - to secure access to a suspect military site near Tehran. ...
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| Strauss-Kahn countersues NY hotel maid for $1 million Posted:  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has filed a $1 million countersuit against the hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault, costing him his job and any chance of being elected president of France. New York police arrested Strauss-Kahn a year ago when hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo accused him of forcible oral sex and trying to rape her in his luxury suite at the Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan. Strauss-Kahn denied the allegations, saying the sexual encounter with Diallo was consensual. Prosecutors later dropped the charges after losing confidence in Diallo's credibility. ...
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| Mladic goes on trial for atrocities in Bosnia Posted:  AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic goes on trial for genocide on Wednesday, accused of leading the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. Mladic, now 70, is the last of the main protagonists in the Balkan wars of the 1990s to go on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He is accused of orchestrating not only the week-long massacre in Srebrenica, at the time a U.N. ...
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| Obama, Monti agree Europe ought to "intensify" growth: White House Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Tuesday discussed the need for Europe to do more to boost growth, speaking ahead of a weekend meeting of Group of Eight (G8) leaders at Camp David, Maryland, the White House said. Obama and Monti "discussed the current economic situation in Europe and agreed on the need to intensify efforts to promote growth and job creation," the White House said in a readout of their telephone call. (Reporting By Alister Bull)
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| Taylor to reject call for 80-year sentence Posted:  AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor will on Wednesday tell judges he bears no responsibility for atrocities during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war, rejecting the prosecution's demand for an 80-year sentence in a maximum-security British jail. Taylor, convicted last month of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone's conflict, is the first head of state to be found guilty by an international tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg. ...
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| Syria attack kills 21; rebels say protect U.N. monitors Posted:  BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 21 people were killed on Tuesday in an attack in northern Syria, activists said, and members of a team of U.N. monitors caught in the incident said they were in rebel hands "for their own protection." When Reuters asked one of the four monitors by phone if they were being held prisoner, he said: "We are safe with the (rebel) Free Army." A spokesman for the rebel military council said the rebels were working on a safe exit for the monitors. An internal U.N. ...
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| One killed in grenade blast in Kenyan coastal city Posted:  NAIROBI (Reuters) - Gunmen detonated grenades outside a night club in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa on Tuesday, killing one person and wounding several others in the latest attack since Kenya sent troops into Somalia to crush Islamist militants. Nairobi has said al Shabaab militants, who merged with al Qaeda earlier this year, are behind a surge in violence and kidnappings threatening tourism in east Africa's biggest economy. ...
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| Hollande gets stormy welcome to power Posted:  PARIS (Reuters) - Francois Hollande was greeted by a thunderstorm in Paris and storm clouds gathering over the euro zone as France's first Socialist president in 17 years was sworn in on Tuesday before flying to Berlin to plead his case for less austerity in Europe. Hollande's first day in power was marred by a downpour as he rode by open-top car through Paris to mark his investiture, and lightning that hit his presidential jet, forcing him to make a U-turn en route to Germany and switch to a smaller Falcon jet. ...
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| Mexican novelist, essayist Carlos Fuentes dies Posted:  Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America's novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. He was 83.
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| Prominent Legion priest admits he fathered child Posted: The Legion of Christ religious order, still reeling from 2009 revelations that its founder was a pedophile who fathered three children, was hit Tuesday by another scandal after its most well-known priest — a prominent author, lecturer and television personality — admitted he had fathered a child several years ago. |
| Lightning hits French president's plane, none hurt Posted:  Socialist Francois Hollande took over as France's president Tuesday and jetted off to Berlin hours later for talks on Europe's debt crisis — only to have his plane struck by lightning. No one was hurt.
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| US helps Yemen in offensive on al-Qaida in south Posted:  Yemeni warplanes and troops backed by heavy artillery waged a four-front assault Tuesday against the strongholds of al-Qaida militants in the south, with U.S. troops for the first time helping direct the offensive from a nearby desert air base-turned-command center.
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| Egypt group documents 841 deaths in 2011 uprising Posted: An Egyptian rights group released Tuesday the most comprehensive list to date of the more than 800 civilians killed by security forces in last year's uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak last year. |
| Israeli group wins terror suit against Syria, Iran Posted: An Israeli advocacy group won a $323 million judgment in a U.S. court against Iran and Syria for supporting Palestinian militants that killed an American teenager and ten others in a 2006 bombing, the group's director said Tuesday. |
| UN observers caught up in Syrian violence Posted:  The U.N.'s observer mission in Syria was caught up in a burst of violence Tuesday captured on video, with a roadside bomb damaging its cars just minutes after witnesses said regime forces gunned down mourners at a funeral procession nearby.
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| EU navy, helicopters strike pirate supply center Posted: European Union naval forces in attack helicopters on Tuesday conducted their first onshore raid on a suspected pirate lair in Somalia. A pirate said the strike destroyed a supply center and set back operations. |
| France's new leader Hollande has tough to-do list Posted:  Francois Hollande campaigned for the French presidency with some pretty radical promises. But his carefully worded agenda and his political record suggest as president he's likely to revert to the moderate consensus-building that has characterized his career.
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| Iran hangs alleged Israeli agent in shadow war Posted:  At the gallows, the condemned prisoner Tuesday repeated the allegations Iran lodged against him: That he was trained by Israel's spy agency to carry out one of the first attack on Iranian scientists in a suspected shadow war against Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
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