Reuters World News Highlights

WASHINGTON – U.S. employers hired the most workers in five months in July, but an increase in the jobless rate to 8.3 percent kept prospects of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve on the table.
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MOSCOW – Banker and media magnate Alexander Lebedev says he could sell his business assets in Russia after coming under pressure from the Kremlin, adding he feared he might be jailed in a criminal case he regards as politically motivated.
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FRANKFURT – German central bank chief Jens Weidmann is locked in an increasingly tense and high-stakes struggle with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi over the ECB’s policy response to the euro zone crisis.
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BEIJING/SEOUL – North Korea’s new young leader has told chief backer China that his priority is to develop the decaying economy and improve living standards in one of the world’s poorest states, the latest sign that he may be planning economic reforms.
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BEIJING – China will open the murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai, on Aug. 9, two sources said on Friday, a case at the centre of a scandal that has rocked the government and could bring Gu the death penalty.
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ULAN BATOR – A Mongolian court has jailed former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar for four years for corruption, a move that could threaten the government’s fragile coalition and increase uncertainties for foreign investors.
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POZZUOLI, Italy – Across the bay of Naples from Pompeii, where thousands were incinerated by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, lies a hidden “super volcano” that could kill millions in a catastrophe many times worse, scientists say.
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PASADENA – By the time the robotic Mars laboratory dubbed Curiosity streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speed on Sunday night, the spacecraft will be in charge of its own seven-minute final approach to the surface of the Red Planet.