World

JOHANNESBURG, (Reuters) – South Africa lost a record number of rhinos in 2014 as big animals across Africa were relentlessly poached to meet rising demand for horn and ivory in newly affluent Asian countries or to provide meat to fighters in the bush.

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – In a move that heightened tensions with Israel and could lead to cuts in U.S.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Looking for a safe, affordable place for retirement?

BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff began her second term yesterday vowing to rein in government spending to curb inflation and pull Latin America’s largest economy out of a four-year slump.

ALBANY, N.Y., (Reuters) – Mario Cuomo, the three-time governor of New York who turned down several invitations to seek the U.S.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – Egypt’s highest court has ordered a retrial of three jailed journalists working for Al Jazeera television, citing procedural flaws in last year’s trial, defence lawyers said on Thursday.

RAMALLAH, West Bank, (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed on to 20 international agreements on Wednesday, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a day after a bid for independence by 2017 failed at the United Nations Security Council.

SEOUL, (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he was open to a high-level summit with neighbouring South Korea, days after a proposal from Seoul to resume dialogue.

GENEVA, (Reuters) – The Ebola virus is still spreading in West Africa, especially in Sierra Leone, and the number of known cases globally has now exceeded 20,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.

(Reuters) – Luise Rainer, the German-born actress who made cinema history by winning back-to-back Oscars as best actress for the 1936 musical “The Great Ziegfeld” and the 1937 drama “The Good Earth” during a brief, stormy Hollywood career, died on Tuesday at age 104.

SHANGHAI, (Reuters) – A stampede killed at least 35 people during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Shanghai, authorities said, possibly caused by people rushing to pick up fake money thrown from a building overlooking the city’s famed Bund waterfront district.

SURABAYA, Indonesia/JAKARTA, (Reuters) – Ships and planes resumed the search for wreckage, bodies and black boxes of a doomed AirAsia plane yesterday after Indonesian rescuers found several bodies and debris floating in shallow waters off the coast of Borneo.

WASHINGTON, Dec 30 (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Tuesday bowed to months of growing pressure over a 40-year-old ban on exports of most domestic crude, taking two steps expected to unleash a wave of ultra-light shale oil onto global markets.

COLOMBO, (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s central bank yesterday raised fixed deposit rates for some savers aged over 60 to 12 percent, as promised in the 2015 budget and ahead of a Jan.

(Reuters) – A woman was accidentally shot and killed at a Walmart store in northern Idaho on Tuesday when her 2-year-old son pulled a loaded handgun from her purse that then went off, a county sheriff said.

LONDON, (Reuters) – A health worker who has become the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in Britain was being treated at a London hospital yesterday after contracting the disease in West Africa.

BANJUL, (Reuters) – Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh said he was returning home from Chad late yesterday, after gunfire erupted around the presidential palace in the Gambian capital of Banjul last night.

JAKARTA, (Reuters) – Indonesian rescuers searching for a missing AirAsia plane carrying 162 people pulled bodies and wreckage from the sea off the coast of Borneo today as relatives of those on board broke down in tears on hearing the news.

SURABAYA, Indonesia/JAKARTA – (Reuters) A missing AirAsia jet carrying 162 people could be at the bottom of the sea after it was presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, an official said yesterday, as countries around Asia sent ships and planes to help in the search.

WASHINGTON/BOSTON (Reuters) – US investigators believe that North Korea likely hired hackers from outside the country to help with last month’s massive cyberattack against Sony Pictures, an official close to the investigation said yesterday.