World

ZAWIYAH, Libya, (Reuters) – Libyan rebels said they  had seized a second strategic town near Tripoli within 24 hours,  completing the encirclement of the capital in the boldest  advances of their six-month-old uprising against Muammar  Gaddafi.

BAGHDAD,  (Reuters) – Suicide attackers and car bombs  struck cities across Iraq yesterday, killing at least 50 people  and wounding scores more in a rash of apparently coordinated  assaults carried out by affiliates of al Qaeda, authorities  said.

LILONGWE, (Reuters) – Malawi police killed 19 unarmed  citizens and shot 58 others during protests in July, the  government’s rights body said yesterday, in the first official  report on unprecedented rallies against President Bingu wa  Mutharika’s government.

TEHRAN, (Reuters) – Beset by civil unrest at home and  lambasted by the West and his Arab neighbours for his violent  crackdown on dissent, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad can  count on one firm ally: Iran.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Global food prices held near  three-year highs in July and stocks were low, piling on  pressure on the world’s poor, the World Bank said yesterday.

TRIPOLI,  (Reuters) – Libyan state television early today broadcast what it said was a live speech by Muammar Gaddafi calling on the Libyan people to arm themselves to  liberate the country from “traitors and from NATO.”

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Former Minnesota Governor  Tim Pawlenty became the first major casualty in the marathon  U.S.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron says his government would mend Britain’s “broken society”  to prevent a repeat of the country’s worst riots in decades.

AMMAN, (Reuters) – Syrian tanks and navy ships  shelled the main Mediterra-nean port city of Latakia yesterday,  residents and rights groups said, killing 26 people as President  Bashar al-Assad’s forces launched an offensive by land and sea  to crush protests against his rule.

ISLAMABAD, (Reuters) – Pakistan gave China access to  the previously unknown U.S.

PARWAN, Afghanistan, (Reuters) – Taliban suicide  bombers killed at least 22 people in a bold attack on a  governor’s compound in central Afghanistan during a security  meeting on Sunday, officials said, with gunbattles and several  blasts heard before the assault was put down.

NEAR ZAWIYAH/TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan government forces and rebels clashed around the western town of Zawiyah yesterday as the insurgents tried to push closer to the capital Tripoli.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Berlin’s mayor said yesterday he was appalled that some Germans were nostalgic for the Berlin Wall and supported a newly fashionable leftist view that there were legitimate reasons for building it in 1961.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian troops killed three people as tanks swept into a coastal city yesterday, activists said, in a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad which drew criticism from an international Muslim group.

AMES, Iowa (Reuters) – Michele Bachmann narrowly won the Iowa straw poll of Republicans yesterday in the first big test of the 2012 presidential campaign, as Texas Governor Rick Perry formally launched a White House bid that could reshape the race.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain needs to tackle deep-seated social problems following riots and looting in English cities this week, the centre-right government said yesterday, and a US street crime expert it has brought in said arrests alone would not solve the problem.

LONDON (Reuters) – With social media brutally accelerating the news cycle and allowing rumours from riots to bank failures to spread at lightning speed, politicians, businesses and governments must adapt fast.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A spree of bad news — market gyrations, fears of a double-dip recession, stubborn unemployment and fallout from a debt deal — has shaken confidence in US President Barack Obama’s leadership and could cloud his chances for winning re-election.

LONDON, (Reuters) –  British Prime Minister David  Cameron, under attack over his leadership during the rioting and  looting that swept English cities this week, has enlisted U.S.

GENEVA, (Reuters) – A cholera epidemic is spreading  in famine-hit Somalia, with alarming numbers of cases among  people driven to the capital Mogadishu by a lack of food and  water, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.