Hamas, Abbas’s PLO announce reconciliation agreement
GAZA/RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Gaza-based Islamist group Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) announced a unity pact on Wednesday, deepening a crisis in U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel.
U.S. Western Sahara draft urges respecting human rights, no U.N. monitors
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.S.-drafted resolution that would renew the U.N. peacekeeping mission in disputed Western Sahara urges all sides to respect human rights but does not ask the United Nations to monitor abuses, according to a text obtained b…
U.S. may charge ex-Blackwater guard with murder for Iraq massacre
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is considering charging a former Blackwater Worldwide security guard with murder over his alleged role in a 2007 massacre of unarmed civilians in Baghdad, a federal prosecutor said on Wednesday.
Three charged in plot to ship chemical lab equipment from U.S. to Syria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Three men have been charged in a conspiracy to export chemical laboratory equipment from the United States to Syria, according to an unsealed indictment released on Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsy…
Italy’s Berlusconi to start community service work next week
MILAN (Reuters) – Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Wednesday he would start doing community service with the elderly next week as part of a one-year tax fraud sentence.
Iran prison chief replaced after alleged beatings
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran said on Wednesday it had replaced the country’s prisons chief amid an uproar over alleged beating of political prisoners last week in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison
Cambodian experts deactivate mudslide minefield in Cyprus
MAMMARI, Cyprus (Reuters) – Landmines are meant to lurk underground for years until someone steps on them, but United Nations deminers in Cyprus have now found some that have moved about 50 meters (yards) since being buried almost 40 years ago.
Two policemen, militant killed in Egypt
CAIRO (Reuters) – An Egyptian policeman and a militant were killed when security forces raided a hideout used by radical Islamists near Alexandria on Wednesday, and a senior officer was killed near Cairo when a bomb blew up his car, the Interior Minist…
Bahrain says expels representative of Shi’ite Ayatollah Sistani
MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain expelled a prominent Shi’ite religious figure on Wednesday, accusing him of acting as a representative of influential Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani without permission.
UK says scrambles jets to see off Russian planes near Scotland
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Wednesday scrambled Typhoon fighter jets to see off Russian military planes flying close to its airspace off the coast of Scotland, a spokeswoman from the defense ministry said.
