Venezuela rejects "absurd" rumors over Chavez's death

CARACAS (Reuters) - Senior aides and relatives of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez countered on Friday a crescendo of rumors that the socialist president may be dead from cancer, saying he was still battling for his life. "There he is, continuing his fight, his battle, and we are sure of victory!" his older brother Adan Chavez, the governor of Barinas state, told cheering supporters. ...

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World powers and Iran end talks, sides to meet again

ALMATY (Reuters) - World powers ended two days of talks with Iran on Wednesday with no sign of a breakthrough, and the two sides have agreed to meet at expert level in Istanbul next month and to hold further high-level negotiations in Kazakhstan in April. At the talks that ended in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the six world powers - France, Germany, the United States, China Russia and Britain...

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Mexico security forces abducted dozens in drug war: rights group

IGUALA, Mexico (Reuters) - Dozens of people were abducted and murdered by Mexican security forces over the past six years during a gruesome war with drug cartels, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, urging President Enrique Pena Nieto to overhaul the military justice system. The rights group said that since 2007 it has documented 149 cases of people who were never seen again after falling...

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Insight: Rome will burn, regardless of Italian election result

ROME (Reuters) - Regardless of who wins next weekend's parliamentary election, Italy's long economic decline is likely to continue because the next government won't be strong enough to pursue the tough reforms needed to make its economy competitive again. Bankers, diplomats and industrialists in Rome and Milan despair at how Italians are shifting allegiances ahead of the February 24-25...

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Chavez back in Venezuela, on Twitter with four million followers

CARACAS (Reuters) - After Hugo Chavez spent two months out of the public eye for cancer surgery in Cuba, the Venezuelan government hailed his homecoming on Monday and said the president had achieved another milestone - four million followers on Twitter. The 58-year-old flew back from Havana before dawn and was taken to a military hospital. No new details were given on his health, and...

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Pakistan Shi'ites demand protection from militants

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani Shi'ites furious over a sectarian bombing that killed 85 people protested on Monday, demanding that security forces protect them from hardline Sunni groups. The attack, near a street market in the southwestern city of Quetta on Saturday, highlighted the government's failure to crack down on militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan just a few months before...

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Pakistan faces growing anger over sectarian bombings

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's unpopular government, which is gearing up for elections expected within months, came under fire on Sunday for failing to improve security after a sectarian bombing in the city of Quetta killed 80 people. The nuclear-armed country's leaders have done little to contain hardline Sunni Muslim groups which have stepped up a campaign of bombings and assassinations...

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Exclusive: North Korea tells China of preparations for fresh nuclear test - source

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks, said a source with direct knowledge of the message. Further tests could also be accompanied this year by another rocket launch, said the source, who has direct access to the top levels of...

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Meteorite hits central Russia, 400 hurt

YEKATERINBURG/CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - About 400 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky in central Russia on Friday sending fireballs crashing to Earth, smashing windows and setting off car alarms. Residents on their way to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave, according to a Reuters correspondent...

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North Korea nuclear test prompts stern warnings from neighbors

SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - South Korea sent a stern warning to North Korea on Thursday, two days after the North tested a nuclear bomb, saying it could strike the isolated state if it believed an attack was imminent as it deployed a new cruise missile to drive home its point. North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, pushing it further along...

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Analysis: North Korea nuclear-test drama rehashes old script

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - A North Korean nuclear test draws international condemnation, modest U.N. sanctions and expressions of hope in the United States that China will finally rein in its brazen ally. Beijing chides North Korea, but nothing much happens. The world has seen this movie before and it's likely to witness another rerun after North Korea's third nuclear...

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North Korea conducts third nuclear test, drawing new sanctions threat

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of existing U.N. resolutions, angering the United States and Japan and prompting its only major ally, China, to call for calm. The North said the test had "greater explosive force" than the 2006 and 2009 tests that were widely seen as small-scale. Its KCNA news agency said it had used a "miniaturized"...

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Back to the future as G20 comes to Russia

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Group of 20 policymakers have an ideal chance in Moscow this week to ponder whether monetary policy largesse will blunt their will to carry out the economic reforms needed to put global growth on a sustainable footing. On their drive from the airport to the city center, down highways clogged with luxury cars, it may dawn on finance ministers and central bankers that...

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Israel's Lieberman says Palestinian peace accord impossible

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has no chance of signing a permanent peace accord with the Palestinians and should instead seek a long-term interim deal, the most powerful political partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday. The remarks by Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist whose joint party list with Netanyahu narrowly won a January 22 election while centrist challengers...

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Japan may release data proving Chinese radar incident: media

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan may release data it says will prove a Chinese naval vessel directed its fire control radar at a Japanese destroyer near disputed islands in the East China Sea, local media reported. Japan has said a Chinese frigate on January 30 locked its targeting radar on a Japanese destroyer - a step that usually precedes the firing of weapons - but China insists that its vessel...

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Opposition leader's funeral brings day of reckoning for Tunisia

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's political crisis looked likely to deepen on Friday with strikes and protests planned around the funeral of assassinated opposition politician Chokri Belaid. Belaid's killing on Wednesday has brought thousands of people onto the streets of the capital Tunis and other cities in violence-marred protests. Unions have called a general strike for Friday,...

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Tunisian government dissolved after critic's killing causes fury

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's ruling Islamists dissolved the government and promised rapid elections in a bid to restore calm after the killing of an opposition leader sparked the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago. The prime minister's announcement late on Wednesday that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of...

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