World

COLUMBIA, Md., (Reuters) – Three people died in a shooting at a large shopping mall outside of Baltimore, Maryland, on Saturday, and one of the dead was believed to be the shooter, police said.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela yesterday decreed a new price control law that sets limits on company profits and establishes prison terms for those charged with hoarding or over-charging, part of socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s efforts to tame inflation.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – A wave of bomb attacks targeting police hit Cairo yesterday, killing six people on the eve of the third anniversary of the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak and raising fears that an Islamist insurgency is gaining pace in Egypt.

GENEVA, (Reuters) – The Syrian government and its opponents will hold their first joint meeting today to launch peace talks aimed at resolving nearly three years of civil war, after negotiations almost collapsed before they began.

MIAMI, (Reuters) – One of Colombia’s top former drug traffickers, Diego Perez Henao, pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 80 tons of cocaine into the United States over the course of almost two decades, according to federal prosecutors in Miami.

BANGUI,  (Reuters) – A Muslim former minister was hacked to death by machete-wielding militiamen in the capital of the Central African Republic yesterday, as clashes escalated a day after interim President Catherine Samba-Panza took office.

DAVOS, Switzerland,  (Reuters) – Pepsico, Nestle and Cisco yesterday announced major investments that together totaled more than $7 billion in Mexico, where the government has pushed through a series of economic reforms that aim to boost foreign investment and growth.

KIEV, (Reuters) – Ukrainian anti-government protesters erected more street barricades in the capital Kiev early on Friday after opposition leaders emerged empty-handed from talks with President Viktor Yanukovich that were aimed at defusing two months of unrest.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The U.S. National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records provides only minimal benefits to countering terrorism, is illegal and should end, a federal privacy watchdog said in a report released ysterday.

ZHENGZHOU, China, (Reuters) – Asia’s top mergers and acquisitions bankers gathered two years ago at the swanky Island Shangri La in Hong Kong to celebrate the top deals of 2012.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuela revamped its 11-year-old currency controls yesterday, creating a dual-rate system intended to stem rampant embezzlement of oil dollars, a change critics pilloried as a disguised devaluation.

MONTREUX, Switzerland, (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday that talks to end the war in Syria should cover all topics of concern to the two sides, including the future of President Bashar al-Assad.

KIEV,  (Reuters) – Ukrainian opposition leaders emerged from crisis talks with President Viktor Yanukovich yesterday saying he had failed to give concrete answers to their demands, and told their supporters on the streets to prepare for a police offensive.

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The World Bank’s private-sector arm yesterday accepted criticism from its internal watchdog that it should have done more due diligence on a loan to a Honduran company allegedly linked to multiple killings.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Flies who play the mating game while also living with their brothers are gentler to females during sex and tend to hassle them less, according a study by British scientists.

MONTREUX, Switzerland,  (Reuters) – Syria’s government and its enemies come face to face today for the first time as world powers try to set aside their own differences and push for an end to three years of civil war that is unsettling the entire Middle East.

CASTRIES, St Lucia, (Reuters) – Authorities on the Caribbean island of St.

TORONTO,  (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who pledged last year to go clean after a crack-smoking scandal, admitted yesterday he had been drinking again after a video surfaced of him ranting about police surveillance in a mock Jamaican accent in a suburban eatery.

MOSCOW/KIEV, (Reuters) – Russia told European governments yesterday to stop meddling in Ukraine’s political crisis and said events could be spinning out of control in Kiev after violence that left vehicles burning in the streets.

NEW DELHI,  (Reuters) – An overdose of anti-depressant drugs likely killed the wife of a high-profile Indian federal minister, according to an autopsy released days after she accused him of having an extramarital affair.