Indian PM Modi expands his cabinet
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his cabinet on Tuesday in a bid to improve the efficiency of the two-year-old administration.
U.S. military to limit legal protection to some contractors in Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) – Washington said it will limit legal protections and benefits to some U.S. civilian contractors working for the military in Japan in a bid to assuage local anger following the killing of a Japanese woman on Okinawa island.
Watch your families, China party says after latest graft case
BEIJING (Reuters) – Party members, especially those in leadership roles, need to ensure they keep their family members on tight leash to prevent corruption, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party said on Tuesday after a high-profile j…
U.S. senators warn against further troop cuts in Afghanistan
KABUL (Reuters) – The international military mission in Afghanistan will fail if troop levels are reduced further, with potentially dangerous repercussions for the rest of the world, a delegation of U.S. lawmakers warned during a visit to Kabul on Mond…
Kuczynski’s key reforms in Peru could get snagged in Congress
LIMA (Reuters) – Centrist President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski arguably has one of the best resumes for steering Peru’s mining-dependent economy through choppy global headwinds in coming years.
Isolated and lacking labor rights, Myanmar’s housemaids toil in silence
YANGON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Khin Htar Kyu was in her late teens when she left her village in Wakema Township in Myanmar’s southern Ayeyarwady Region with a younger sister to find work in Yangon to help pay the debts of her farming family.
Iraqis want crackdown on ‘sleeper cells’ after huge Baghdad bomb
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The death toll from a suicide bombing in a Baghdad shopping district rose above 175 on Monday, fueling calls for security forces to crack down on Islamic State sleeper cells blamed for one of the worst-ever single bombings in Iraq.
India ‘development bond’ helps get girls into school, charity says
MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A new funding model for development programs in India which gives private investors a return on their investment has helped get marginalized girls in Rajasthan into the classroom, its backers said.
U.S. ditched plan to give Afghan forces more armored vehicles
KABUL (Reuters) – As Afghan troops were preparing to take on Taliban militants without NATO combat support in 2014, U.S. officials shelved plans to provide them with hundreds of potentially life-saving armored vehicles, documents reviewed by Reuters sh…
Exit stage right: UKIP leader Farage announces surprise departure
LONDON (Reuters) – The leader of the insurgent right-wing UK Independence Party said on Monday he was stepping down after realizing his ambition to win a vote for Britain to leave the EU, the latest twist in a dramatic reshaping of the nation’s politic…
