World

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – The United States increased pressure on Russia yesterday to hand over Edward Snowden, the American charged with disclosing secret US surveillance programs, and said it believed he was still in Moscow.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An immigration bill endorsed by President Barack Obama easily cleared an important test yesterday when the US Senate backed new border security steps seen as essential to the legislation’s fate.

MILAN,  (Reuters) – A Milan court sentenced former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday to s even years in jail and banned him from public office after finding him guilty of paying for sex with a minor and abusing his powers of office to cover up the affair.

HONG KONG/MOSCOW,  (Reuters) – Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor 2 sought asylum in Ecuador yesterday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a blow to Washington’s efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.

JOHANNESBURG,  (Reuters) – Former South African President Nelson Mandela’s condition deteriorated to “critical” yesterday, the government said, two weeks after the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader was admitted to hospital with a lung infection.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – Egypt’s army stepped in to a deepening political crisis yesterday to demand that the Islamist government and its opponents settle their differences and warned that it would act to stop violence spinning out of control.

LITTLE COLORADO RIVER, Ariz.,  (Reuters) – Daredevil Nik Wallenda completed a historic high-wire walk over a section of the Grand Canyon on Sunday, greeted with wild cheers after finishing his journey over the yawning chasm on a 2-inch (5-cm) steel cable.

CALGARY, Alberta, (Reuters) – Power outages in the Canadian oil capital of Calgary could last for weeks or even months, city authorities said yesterday, after record-breaking floods that killed three people and forced more than 100,000 to flee their homes swept across southern Alberta.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Gunmen stormed a mountaineering base camp in northern Pakistan on Sunday and shot dead nine foreign trekkers and a Pakistani guide as they rested during an arduous climb up one of the world’s tallest peaks, police said.

HONG KONG,  (Reuters) – A former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, charged by the United States with espionage, was allowed to leave Hong Kong today, his final destination as yet unknown, because a U.S.

DOHA (Reuters) – International opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed yesterday to give urgent military support to Western-backed rebels, aiming to stem a counter-offensive by Assad’s forces and offset the growing power of jihadist fighters.

CAIRO (Reuters) – The governor of Egypt’s Luxor province, controversially appointed despite belonging to a hardline Islamist group that massacred 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997, will step down on Sunday “for the sake of Egypt”, the group said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish riot police fired water cannon to disperse thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Istanbul yesterday, as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan castigated those behind protests he said had played into the hands of Turkey’s enemies.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton has fed speculation that she might run for the White House in 2016 by telling an audience in Canada that she would like to see a woman president in the United States in her lifetime.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A leading apartheid-era activist launched South Africa’s first new political party in five years yesterday, saying the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was destroying the continent’s biggest economy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said yesterday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges.

DOHA, (Reuters) – International opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to Western-backed rebels, aiming to stem a counter-offensive by Assad’s forces and offset the growing power of jihadist fighters.

(The author is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.)

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The United States filed charges against Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who revealed surveillance programs to media outlets, in a sealed criminal complaint dated June 14, according to a court document made public yesterday.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has tapped fibre-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the U.S.