World

BANGUI (Reuters) – Ugandan troops in Central African Republic (CAR) have killed at least 15 fighters from the mainly Muslim Seleka force, a group that has carved out fiefdoms in the country since leaving power earlier this year, local sources said yesterday.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said today he would take executive action to revamp the U.S.

NEW DELHI, (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi never had a high opinion of the Planning Commission, an institutional vestige of the country’s attempts to mimic the Soviet command economy during the infancy of its independence more than half a century ago.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, (Reuters) – Suspected Islamist militants killed dozens of people yesterday in an attack on three Nigerian villages, including one targeting worshippers at a church, a few kilometres (three miles) from Chibok, the scene of an abduction of more than 200 school girls.

LONDON, (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline yesterday confirmed the existence of an intimate video recording of its former China head, Mark Reilly, which the Sunday Times reported kicked off a bribery investigation that has damaged the drugmaker’s business in China.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – An offshoot of al Qaeda which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria has declared itself an Islamic “caliphate” and called on factions worldwide to pledge their allegiance, a statement posted on Islamist websites and Twitter said yesterday.

BEIRUT, (Reuters) – As jihadists storm through the Sunni heartlands of Iraq towards Baghdad, where a Shi’ite government they regard as heretic clings on, they have lifted the veil on deep sectarianism which has also stoked the fires of Syria’s civil war and is spilling over into vulnerable mosaic societies such as Lebanon.

NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – British actress Keira Knightley, known for playing tragic heroines in period dramas, strayed into new territory with her first major singing role in “Begin Again,” a feel-good film about the music industry and starting over.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi government forces backed by helicopter gunships began an offensive yesterday to retake the northern city of Tikrit from Sunni Islamist militants while party leaders pursued talks that could end Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s divisive rule.

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – A young couple in Pakistan were tied up and had their throats slit with scythes after they married for love, police said yesterday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A UN expert panel has concluded that a shipment of rockets and other weapons that was seized by Israel came from Iran and represents a violation of the UN arms embargo on Tehran, according to a confidential report obtained by Reuters on Friday.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Sarajevo marked 100 years yesterday since the murder of an Austrian prince lit the fuse for World War One, with a concert by Vienna’s premier orchestra trying to send a message of unity to a divided country and a continent facing new faultlines.

JOHANNESBURG, (Reuters) – Are mispricing and the opacity of commodities trading in Switzerland contributing to Africa’s underdevelopment?

CARACAS, (Reuters) – A blackout cut power to much of Venezuela yesterday afternoon, snarling traffic in the capital Caracas and other major cities and interrupting a televised speech by the president in the country’s second nationwide electricity outage in a year.

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – European Union leaders nominated Jean-Claude Juncker for their bloc’s most powerful job yesterday over the fierce objections of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said the decision would make it harder for him to keep Britain in Europe.

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – The European Union signed an historic free-trade pact with Ukraine yesterday and warned it could impose more sanctions on Moscow unless pro-Russian rebels act to wind down the crisis in the east of the country by Monday.

BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – The most influential Shi’ite cleric in Iraq called on the country’s leaders yesterday to choose a prime minister within the next four days, a dramatic political intervention that could hasten the end of Nuri al-Maliki’s eight year rule.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The United States said on Friday it would no longer make or buy anti-personnel landmines and that it would strive to eventually join the global treaty banning the weapons, but it stopped short of agreeing to destroy its stockpile of 3 million mines.

SOFIA, (Reuters) – Bulgaria’s central bank warned today of a systematic attempt to destabilise the country through attacks on the banking system and vowed to use everything at its disposal to protect citizens’ savings.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court reined in presidential power yesterday, ruling that President Barack Obama went too far when he filled senior government posts without seeking U.S.