World

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Libya told an Arab summit yesterday that a UN arms embargo on the country must be lifted to help prevent the advance of Islamic State militants.

BEIRUT  (Reuters) – Islamist groups including al Qaeda’s Nusra Front have seized the city of Idlib for the first time in Syria’s civil war, fighters and a monitoring group said on yesterday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US and coalition forces conducted 18 air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq during a 24-hour period, with eight strikes near militant-held Tikrit, the US military said yesterday.

ADEN (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s navy evacuated dozens of diplomats from Yemen yesterday and the United Nations pulled out international staff after a third night of Saudi-led air strikes trying to stem advances by Iranian-allied Houthi fighters.

SHANGHAI/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – China’s Finance Ministry said yesterday that the UK and Switzerland had been formally accepted as founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a day after Brazil accepted China’s invitation to join the AIIB.

LAUSANNE, Switzer-land (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of France and Germany joined the top US and Iranian diplomats yesterday to help break an impasse in nuclear negotiations as major powers and Iran closed in on a two- or three-page accord that could form the basis of a long-term deal.

FREETOWN (Reuters) – Police fired tear gas at an angry crowd fighting over food supplies in Sierra Leone yesterday, while other residents defied a three-day national lockdown that the government hopes will accelerate the end of the Ebola epidemic.

MOGADISHU, (Reuters) – A hotel siege by al Shabaab militants in the Somali capital has ended and the final death toll from the attack stands at 14, a senior government official said today.

ADEN, (Reuters) – Yemen’s Houthi rebels made broad gains in the country’s south and east yesterday despite a second day of Saudi-led air strikes meant to check the Iranian-backed militia’s efforts to overthrow President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

DUESSELDORF, Germany, (Reuters) – German authorities said yesterday they had found torn-up sick notes showing that the pilot who crashed a plane into the French Alps was suffering from an illness that should have grounded him on the day of the tragedy.

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked for a drastic cutback of an ambitious health care plan after cost estimates came in at $18.5 billion over five years, several government sources said, delaying a promise made in his election manifesto.

  WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Republican chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks said yesterday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had failed to respond to the panel’s subpoena for documents in the case.

MONTABAUR, Germany, (Reuters) – The German pilot believed to have deliberately crashed a plane in the French Alps killing 150 people broke off his training six years ago due to depression and spent over a year in psychiatric treatment, a German newspaper reported today.

SANAA/ADEN, Yemen, (Reuters) – Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi left his refuge in Aden for Saudi Arabia yesterday as Houthi rebels battled with his forces on the outskirts of the southern port city.

PARIS/SEYNE-LES-ALPES, (Reuters) – A young German co-pilot barricaded himself alone in the cockpit of Germanwings flight 9525 and apparently set it on course to crash into an Alpine mountain, killing all 150 people on board including himself, French prosecutors said yesterday.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Four apartment buildings in New York’s East Village neighborhood caught fire from an apparent gas explosion on Thursday and three collapsed, causing 19 injuries, authorities said.

ORLANDO, Fla., (Reuters) – Two of the most destructive termites species in the world are mating in South Florida, producing hybrid colonies that are growing at twice the normal rate of other termites, scientists reported yesterday.

ADEN/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia announced yesterday it had launched military operations in Yemen, carrying out air strikes in coordination with a 10-country coalition seeking to beat back Houthi militia forces besieging the southern city of Aden where the country’s president had taken refuge.

SEYNE-LES-ALPES/PARIS, (Reuters) – Investigators have retrieved cockpit voice recordings from one of the black boxes of the German Airbus plane that crashed into the Alps, killing everyone onboard, officials said yesterday.

ABIDJAN, (Reuters) – The three nations hardest hit by West Africa’s Ebola epidemic recorded the lowest weekly total of new cases so far this year in the week leading up to March 22, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.