Arab League backs Kerry’s Palestinian peace bid
AMMAN (Reuters) – The Arab League endorsed a U.S. drive to relaunch Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations on Wednesday, saying in a statement carried on the Jordanian news agency that it hoped this could lead to a two-state solution.
Italian court sentences politician who urged rape of black minister
ROME (Reuters) – A local Italian politician who called for Italy’s first black minister, the target of repeated racial slurs, to be raped was given a 13-month suspended sentence and banned from public office for three years on Wednesday.
UK spy agency’s use of U.S. data was legal: UK lawmakers
LONDON (Reuters) – British agents did not circumvent the law by using data gathered by a clandestine U.S. spy program, the head of an influential British parliamentary committee said on Wednesday, but added the framework governing such access did need …
Italy minister faces more pressure over Kazakh case
ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta defended his interior minister from growing calls for him to resign over the expulsion of a dissident Kazakh oligarch’s wife and daughter, as pressure on his fragile coalition mounted on Wednesday.
Guinea deploys troops as 17 killed in ethnic clashes
CONAKRY (Reuters) – Guinea deployed security forces to towns in the southeast on Wednesday in a bid to stem three days of ethnic violence in the West African country in which at least 17 people have been killed, officials said.
Russian protest leader wins one battle, faces another
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny won a rare victory on Wednesday by being accepted as a candidate in a Moscow mayoral election which he sees as a stepping stone to challenging Vladimir Putin for the presidency.
Early Zimbabwe vote raises fears of election chaos
HARARE (Reuters) – President Robert Mugabe’s rivals said on Wednesday the chaotic organization of early voting for soldiers and police showed Zimbabwe was not ready for a July 31 general election in which more than six million people are registered to …
Kerry says no U.S. rush to judgment on Egypt coup question
AMMAN (Reuters) – Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday there would be no hasty U.S. decision on whether Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi’s ouster constituted a coup, a determination that would affect U.S. aid for Cairo.
Egypt finance minister says IMF loan is ‘part of the solution’
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s finance minister said on Wednesday that an IMF loan was only “part of the solution” to the country’s problems and the new transitional government would have to draw up a plan that would start to fix the troubled economy.
Stray bullets from Syria kill two in Turkish border town
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – A man and a 15-year-old boy were killed by stray bullets shot from Syria into a Turkish border town, officials said on Wednesday. Turkish troops returned fire, in the most serious spillover of violence in weeks.
