World

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition warplanes launched their first airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Tikrit yesterday, officials said, coming off the sidelines to aid Iraqi forces fighting alongside Iran-backed Shi’ite militia on the ground.

LILONGWE, (Reuters) – The Global Fund has redirected $574 million in HIV/AIDS funding away from Malawi’s National Aids Council (NAC) after allegations of financial mismanagement, including the purchase of vehicles that were not budgeted for, it said yesterday.

AMSTERDAM, (Reuters) – Former Liberian President Charles Taylor must spend the rest of his life in a British jail after judges at an international court in The Hague denied his request to serve out his 50-year prison sentence in Rwanda.

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France, (Reuters) – An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed into a mountainside in the French Alps yesterday, killing all 150 people on board including 16 schoolchildren.

BEIJING, (Reuters) – Amnesty International has given its top 2015 human rights award to both Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, a fierce critic of Beijing who has been banned from leaving China after an 81-day detention in 2011, and U.S.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen, U.S.

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – India’s top court struck down a law yesterday that gave authorities powers to jail people for offensive online posts, a verdict hailed as a victory for free speech in the world’s largest growth market for the Internet.

KABUL, March 24 (Reuters) – A prominent Afghan police official was sacked yesterday as hundreds of men and women marched in the capital to protest the lynching of a 27-year-old woman in central Kabul last week.

MARSEILLE, (Reuters) – An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed in southern France today and all 148 on board were feared dead.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon said yesterday it was notifying 100 US troops that a group claiming ties to Islamic State militants had posted their names, addresses and photos on the Internet and was calling for American sympathizers to kill them.

WASHINGTON/MIAMI (Reuters) – The December breakthrough that upended a half-century of US-Cuba enmity has been portrayed as the fruit of 18 months of secret diplomacy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Barack Obama met with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, for about an hour yesterday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The daughter of an imprisoned Mexican Mafia kingpin who pleaded guilty to racketeering and drug trafficking charges and admitted carrying out her father’s orders in running a brutal Los Angeles street gang was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison.

RIYADH/DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen’s top factions are squaring off for battle after months of skirmishes, turning respectively to neighbouring Saudi Arabia and its regional rival Iran for help in what may become all-out war.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, died yesterday aged 91, triggering a flood of tributes to the man who oversaw the tiny city-state’s rapid rise from a British colonial backwater to a global trade and financial centre.

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, died yesterday aged 91, triggering a flood of tributes to the man who oversaw the tiny city-state’s rapid rise from a British colonial backwater to a global trade and financial centre.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s administration is proposing that a new Chinese-led development bank over which Washington has voiced concerns work collaboratively with Western development groups like the World Bank, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

SINGAPORE, (Reuters) – Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and architect of the tiny Southeast Asian city-state’s rapid rise from British tropical outpost to global trade and financial centre, died today, aged 91, the government announced.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Barack Obama said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election disavowal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it “hard to find a path” toward serious negotiations to resolve the issue.

LONDON (Reuters) – Iran’s top leader voiced mistrust yesterday of US efforts to reach a nuclear deal, even as Washington and its allies spoke of real progress and urged Tehran to take “difficult decisions”.