World

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuelan officials yesterday accused hardline opposition leader Maria Corina Machado of leading plots to topple President Nicolas Maduro in league with U.S.

DONETSK, Ukraine, (Reuters) – Relative calm returned to the streets of Donetsk yesterday after the biggest battle of the pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine, a conflict transformed by the landslide election of a pro-European leader who vowed to crush the revolt.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who toppled Egypt’s first freely elected leader, swept to victory in a presidential election, provisional results showed yesterday, joining a long line of leaders drawn from the military.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, (Reuters) – Four more of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last month have escaped than previously thought, Nigeria’s Borno state said on Wednesday, but 219 others were still missing and assumed held by the Islamist militants.

GENEVA/CONAKRY, (Reuters) – Guinea’s capital Conakry has recorded its first new Ebola cases in more than a month, while other previously unaffected areas have also reported infections in the past week, according to the World Health Organisation.

PARACHINAR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan, (Reuters) – T he Pakistan Taliban split into two groups today, highlighting growing divisions within the movement and diminishing the government’s chances of finding a negotiated settlement with the insurgency.

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – An army assault on pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine will not have taken Vladimir Putin by surprise, but the ferocity of the clashes may have – and could be a game-changer if they spin out of control.

(Reuters) – The kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls last month has sparked global outrage, launched an international manhunt and instantly turned an obscure West African militant group into a household name in the United States.

ROME (Reuters) – Pope Francis yesterday branded sexual abuse of children by priests a crime comparable to a “satanic Mass” and said he would show zero tolerance for anyone in the Catholic Church who abused children, including bishops.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s prime minister in an elaborate ceremony at New Delhi’s resplendent presidential palace yesterday, after a sweeping election victory that ended two terms of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine launched air strikes and a paratrooper assault against pro-Russian rebels who seized an airport yesterday, as its newly elected leader rejected any talks with “terrorists” and said a robust military campaign in the east should be able to put down a separatist revolt in “a matter of hours”.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine, (Reuters) – Ukraine launched air strikes and a paratrooper assault against pro-Russian rebels who seized an airport today, as its newly elected leader rejected any talks with “terrorists” and said a robust military campaign in the east should be able to put down a separatist revolt in “a matter of hours”.

BEIJING, (Reuters) – China plans to take more than five million ageing vehicles off the roads this year in a bid to improve air quality, with 330,000 cars set to be decommissioned in Beijing alone, the government said in a policy document published on Monday.

BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Opposition candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga won the most votes in Colombia’s presidential election yesterday but fell short of a first-round victory and will face President Juan Manuel Santos in a runoff that casts doubts over peace talks with Marxist rebels.

MOSCOW, (Reuters) – In 2005, President Vladimir Putin personally ordered up a vast programme to improve Russia’s poor healthcare facilities.

BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front scored a stunning first victory in European Parliament elections in France yesterday as critics of the European Union registered a continent-wide protest vote against austerity and mass unemployment.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., (Reuters) – A 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town said in a chilling manifesto that police who knocked on his door last month to check on his welfare nearly foiled his plot.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., (Reuters) – A 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town said in a chilling manifesto that police who knocked on his door last month to check on his welfare nearly foiled his plot.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine, (Reuters) – Billionaire Petro Poroshenko claimed Ukraine’s presidency on Sunday after exit polls gave him an absolute majority in a first round of voting and, vowing to end a conflict with pro-Russian rebels, he pledged to align his country with Europe.

KIEV/DONETSK (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would work with the new Ukrainian administration formed after a presidential election today that the Kiev government said yesterday would anchor the ex-Soviet state to the West.