ROME – Italy’s election campaign drew to a close on Friday with the weak performance of outgoing premier Mario Monti key to a deeply uncertain and potentially unstable result.
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VIENNA – Iran appears to be advancing in its construction of a research reactor Western experts say could offer the Islamic state a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb, if it decided to embark on such a course, a U.N. report showed.
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TUNIS – Tunisia’s prime minister-designate Ali Larayedh, a hardliner from the main Islamist Ennahda party, said on Friday he hoped to form a “government of all Tunisians”, but opposition leaders swiftly signalled discontent.
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BRUSSELS – The euro zone will not return to growth until 2014 and struggling Spain and France will be among those who miss debt-cutting targets as a result, the European Commission said on Friday.
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HYDERABAD, India – India had intelligence agency warnings of a security threat several days before two bombs went off in a market in the city of Hyderabad, the interior minister said on Friday, adding that the death toll had risen to 16.
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WASHINGTON – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe brought a clear message to Washington on Friday: “I am back and so is Japan.”
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GAO, Mali – Five people were killed in a remote Malian town on Friday in car bomb attacks by Islamists on Tuareg MNLA rebels with close links to French forces, a spokesman for the Tuareg fighters said.
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BEIRUT – Rockets struck two eastern districts of Aleppo city on Friday, killing at least 12 people and trapping many families in the ruins of their homes, activists in the city said.
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WASHINGTON – The Pentagon on Friday suspended the flights of all 51 F-35 fighter planes after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California.
