Saudi Arabia to delay activist’s flogging for second time: Amnesty
DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia plans to delay the public flogging of a rights activist on medical grounds, Amnesty International said on Thursday, raising the possibility that Riyadh may be trying to quietly drop the punishment that has drawn internati…
Sri Lanka anti-graft body bars ex-central bank head, Rajapaksa ally from leaving country
COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka has barred former central bank governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal and an ally of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa from leaving the country due to corruption complaints, officials said on Thursday.
Egypt’s Sisi calls for global effort to counter militancy
DAVOS (Reuters) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called on world leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum on Thursday to unite against the global threat of terrorism.
Litvinenko’s wife says inquiry will finally reveal facts of ex-KGB spy’s death
LONDON (Reuters) – Nine years after former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in a plush London hotel in what has been described as Russian “state-sponsored nuclear terrorism”, a public inquiry into his death finally begins in the British capita…
Modi launches campaign to tackle India’s dwindling number of girls
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the blight of India’s dwindling number of girls on Thursday, launching a campaign to address the problem the United Nations has said amounts to a national emergency.
Thai junta caught between rock and hard place over ex-PM impeachment
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s army-stacked parliament will vote in an impeachment hearing against ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Friday, testing a fragile calm between the rural poor and the royalist establishment backed by the Bangkok m…
UK’s Prince Andrew makes first appearance since sex claims
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince Andrew will make his first public appearance on Thursday since he was accused in court documents of having sex with an underage girl introduced to him by a disgraced U.S. financier.
Decades after Auschwitz, past horrors haunt a Polish town
OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) – Bogumila recalls how as a small girl growing up in the Polish town of Oswiecim she saw prisoners beaten by Nazi guards and watched with her mother the distant glow of the crematorium fires of the Auschwitz concentration cam…
Austria’s first trial of alleged Islamic State fighter starts
KREMS, Austria (Reuters) – A 30-year old Chechen who Austrian authorities accuse of fighting with Islamic State jihadists in Syria in 2013 and sending them money pleaded not guilty when the country’s first such trial opened on Thursday.
India, Russia advance arms talks days before Obama trip
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India and Russia have agreed to speed work on a fifth-generation military aircraft, Indian officials said on Thursday, in a vote of confidence in an old defense partner days before U.S. President Barack Obama arrives to advance ti…
