World

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif., (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will go to Guatemala on Friday to meet Central American leaders about the influx of unaccompanied minors illegally entering the United States, senior administration officials said yesterday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An offensive by insurgents that threatens to dismember Iraq seemed to slow yesterday after days of lightning advances as government forces regained some territory in counter-attacks, easing pressure on the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

KIEV/NOVOHANNIVKA, Ukraine (Reuters) – Pro-Russian separatists shot down an army transport plane in east Ukraine yesterday, killing 49 servicemen and dealing a blow to a military campaign to defeat the rebels and hold the country together.

 KABUL (Reuters) – Millions of Afghans turned out for a second time yesterday to elect a successor to President Hamid Karzai, a decisive test of the country’s ambitions to transfer power democratically for the first time in its tumultuous history.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s main opposition party launched the candidacy of its leader Aecio Neves yesterday to challenge President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election bid in October on a platform of fiscal austerity and pro-market policies.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine, (Reuters) – Pro-Russian separatists shot down a Ukrainian army transport plane with an anti-aircraft missile as it came in to land early on Saturday in the eastern city of Luhansk, killing all 49 military personnel on board.

BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite Muslim cleric urged followers to take up arms against a full-blown Sunni militant insurgency to topple Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a conflict that threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country.

SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) – The openly gay U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic and his husband have fired back at critics who ridiculed them for their sexual orientation.

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s highest court has scrapped a criminal defamation law which local journalists say has been used by the government to restrict the freedom of the press, according to a ruling seen by Reuters yesterday.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela’s inflation soaring above 60 percent has boosted pressure on President Nicolas Maduro to speed up a transition toward a market-driven economy as the OPEC nation’s model of state-controlled socialism heads toward stagflation.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon got an unusual treat for his 70th birthday yesterday when the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, presented him with a cake made with coca leaves.

GENEVA, (Reuters) – Hundreds of people were killed, many of them summarily executed, after Sunni Islamist militants overran the Iraqi city of Mosul this week, U.N.

BAGHDAD/ARBIL, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama yesterday threatened U.S. military strikes in Iraq against Sunni Islamist militants who have surged out of the north to menace Baghdad and want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.

KINGSTON, (Reuters) – The Jamaican government has decided to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana, joining the trickle of countries moving to soften laws on the drug known on the Caribbean island as “ganja.”

TIKRIT, Iraq, (Reuters) – Sunni rebels from an al Qaeda splinter group overran the Iraqi city of Tikrit yesterday and closed in on the biggest oil refinery in the country, making further gains in their rapid military advance against the Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad.

DAKAR, (Reuters) – Governments in West Africa should decriminalise drug use and treat the issue as a health problem, because a “war on drugs” will fail in the region as it has elsewhere, a new report by regional experts said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A shock primary election defeat for Eric Cantor, the No.

MOSUL, Iraq, (Reuters) – An al Qaeda splinter group seized control of the Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, putting security forces to flight in a spectacular show of strength against the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia lost to a Tea Party challenger yesterday in a stunning Republican primary upset that sent shockwaves through Congress and gave the conservative movement a landmark victory.

BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has begun exploratory peace talks with leftist ELN rebels, he said on Tuesday, just days before voters go to the polls in one of the tightest presidential election battles in decades.