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| Nightclub fire kills 233 in Brazil Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 04:44 PM PST  SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked exits in the ensuing panic. Most of those who died were suffocated by toxic fumes that rapidly filled the crowded club after sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling, local fire officials said. "Smoke filled the place instantly, the heat became unbearable," survivor Murilo Tiescher, a medical student, told GloboNews TV. ... Full Story | Top |
| Egypt's leader declares emergency after clashes kill dozens Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 07:17 PM PST  CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi declared a month-long state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal where dozens of people have been killed over the past four days in protests that his allies say are designed to overthrow him. Seven people were shot dead and hundreds were injured in Port Said on Sunday during the funerals of 33 people killed there when locals angered by a court decision went on the rampage as anti-government protests spread around the country. ... Full Story | Top |
| Obama says struggling over whether to intervene in Syria Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 05:27 PM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said he has been wrestling with the question whether a U.S. military intervention in Syria's 22-month-old civil war would help resolve the bloody conflict or make things worse. In a pair of interviews, Obama responded to critics who say the United States has not been involved enough in Syria, where thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced according to U.N. officials. Transcripts of both interviews were released on Sunday. ... Full Story | Top |
| Trial of China's Bo not being held Monday - court official Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 07:23 PM PST  GUIYANG, China (Reuters) - The trial of disgraced senior Chinese leader Bo Xilai, the central figure in the country's biggest political scandal in decades, will not be held on Monday as some media had reported, a court official in the southern Chinese city of Guiyang said. "To date, the People's Intermediate Court of Guiyang has received no information whatsoever about the trial of Bo Xilai taking place in Guiyang," said Jiang Hao, a court official in the city, the capital of Guizhou province. ... Full Story | Top |
| Exclusive: Bank probes find manipulation in Singapore's offshore FX market - source Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 04:40 PM PST  SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Internal reviews by banks in Singapore have found evidence that traders colluded to manipulate rates in the offshore foreign exchange market, according to a source with knowledge of the inquiries. The discovery widens a global lending rate scandal into new markets, as fallout from the Libor case puts banks under added scrutiny and spurs both regulators and institutions to reconsider how certain key interest and currency rates are set. ... Full Story | Top |
| Malians celebrate, French-led forces clear Timbuktu Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 03:10 PM PST  GAO/SEVARE, Mali (Reuters) - Residents of Mali's northern town of Gao, captured from sharia-observing Islamist rebels by French and Malian troops, danced in the streets to drums and music on Sunday as the French-led offensive also drove the rebels from Timbuktu. The weekend gains made at Gao and Timbuktu by the French and Malian troops capped a two-week whirlwind intervention by France in its former Sahel colony, which has driven al Qaeda-allied militant fighters northwards into the desert and mountains. ... Full Story | Top |
| Clinton coy about political future in joint interview with Obama Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 04:02 PM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sidestepped questions about whether she would run for president in 2016 in a CBS television interview done jointly with President Barack Obama, her rival in the 2008 race. Clinton, 65, denied there were any political tea leaves to read in the unusual joint interview for the CBS show "60 Minutes," and acknowledged that she still has "some lingering effects" from a recent concussion and blood clot that she said doctors expect to disappear over time. ... Full Story | Top |
| Russia set to start posthumous trial of whistleblower Magnitsky Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 03:22 PM PST  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia prepared to put whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on trial more than three years after his death, with a preliminary hearing set for Monday in a move relatives and rights groups called politically motivated and a travesty of justice. Magnitsky's death in a Moscow jail has harmed Russia's image abroad and badly strained relations with the United States. His mother and her lawyer said they refused to participate. "I think it is inhuman to try a dead man," Magnitsky's mother Natalya told Reuters by telephone. ... Full Story | Top |
| Russia says Assad's prospects fading Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 08:54 AM PST  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said the chances of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad staying in power were growing "smaller and smaller", as fighting on Sunday in southwestern Damascus shut a main highway from the capital. Assad has long counted Moscow as an ally and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's remarks were the most vocal Russian statement yet that his days may now be numbered, although they come after predictions from France, an avowed enemy, and from neighboring Jordan that the Syrian president's downfall is not imminent. ... Full Story | Top |
| Venezuela transfers inmates from prison after riot kills 58 Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 05:01 PM PST  URIBANA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities transferred inmates out of a prison on Sunday following a bloody riot two days earlier that killed 58 people and again highlighted chaos in the country's jails. It was the fourth high-profile incident in 18 months in a penal system that has experienced repeated fatal clashes and shootouts. Venezuela's prisons house three times the number of inmates they were designed to hold. ... Full Story | Top |
| Egypt's leader declares emergency after clashes Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 03:10 PM PST  CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi declared a month-long state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal where dozens of people have been killed over the past four days in protests his allies say are designed to overthrow him. Seven people were shot dead and hundreds were injured in Port Said on Sunday during the funerals of 33 people killed there when locals angered by a court decision went on the rampage as anti-government protests spread around the country. ... Full Story | Top |
| Comprehensive immigration plan coming this week: McCain Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 12:12 PM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Democratic and Republican senators said on Sunday there were encouraging signs in the push to overhaul U.S. immigration laws - a top priority for President Obama's second term - and they would introduce their plan this week. With Obama set to begin his push for immigration reform with a speech in Las Vegas on Tuesday, a group of three Democratic and three Republican senators have been working for weeks on a plan. ... Full Story | Top |
| House budget chief: automatic spending cuts "going to happen" Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 11:34 AM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Automatic spending cuts postponed at the start of the year will go into effect as scheduled in March but "no one" is talking about allowing a U.S. government shutdown, the Republican House of Representatives Budget Committee chairman said on Sunday. The automatic spending cuts had been delayed by two months as part of the deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and deep spending reductions - known as sequestration - that had loomed at the beginning of this month. ... Full Story | Top |
| Venezuela prison riot kills 61, government mum Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 03:24 PM PST  URIBANA, Venezuela (Reuters) - A prison riot in southwestern Venezuela killed 61 people, a hospital official said on Sunday, although the government has refused to give an official death toll in the bloody standoff that highlighted chaos in the country's jails. The violence took place on Friday at the Uribana jail near the city of Barquisimeto. Relatives who gathered outside the jail fumed at the lack of information from authorities who have started transferring prisoners to other facilities but have not confirmed how many were killed. ... Full Story | Top |
| Nightclub fire kills 233 in Brazil Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 02:58 PM PST  SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said. The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was ignited by sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects. They set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling and the club rapidly filled with toxic smoke, local fire officials said. ... Full Story | Top |
| Feinstein has assurance assault weapon ban will get a vote Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 10:09 AM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The senator leading the charge to revive a assault weapons ban conceded on Sunday, just days before hearings on gun control open, that winning Senate passage will be tough but said she has been assured she will have the chance to bring it up for a vote. President Barack Obama, who has made gun control a top priority after 20 children and six adults were killed by a gunman on December 14 at a Connecticut school, said in remarks published on Sunday that gun control advocates should take into account the views of rural Americans who use guns for hunting. ... Full Story | Top |
| Berlusconi defends Mussolini, draws outrage from political left Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 10:49 AM PST  ROME (Reuters) - Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi triggered outrage from Italy's political left on Sunday with comments defending fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini at a ceremony commemorating victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Speaking at the margins of the event in Milan, Berlusconi said Mussolini had been wrong to follow Nazi Germany's lead in passing anti-Jewish laws but that he had in other respects been a good leader. ... Full Story | Top |
| Insight: Lawyers in gay marriage cases aim pitches at Obama Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 09:57 AM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - On separate occasions in recent days, lawyers on opposite sides of a Supreme Court fight over same-sex marriage took an elevator to the fifth floor of the Department of Justice, entered a large conference room and made a pitch to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and other top Obama administration lawyers. Each side wants the administration's support in a late-March showdown on the fundamental rights of gay men and lesbians. ... Full Story | Top |
| Third bomb attack in 24 hours kills eight Afghan police Saturday, Jan 26, 2013 11:22 PM PST  KABUL (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed eight policemen in Afghanistan's volatile southern province of Kandahar, police said on Sunday, the third deadly attack by insurgents against police in 24 hours. Twenty police have been killed across Afghanistan since midday on Saturday, a level of violence that underlines concern over how the 350,000-strong Afghan security forces will manage once most NATO-led troops withdraw by the end of next year. ... Full Story | Top |
| Obama says rural voices need to be heard in gun debate: report Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 07:38 AM PST  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged gun control advocates to listen to views of rural Americans who use guns for hunting and said bridging a cultural divide in attitudes to gun ownership will be critical to his administration's push to curb gun violence. "If you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that," Obama said in an interview with The New Republic magazine published on Sunday on its website. ... Full Story | Top |
| Monte Paschi seeks new investor as scandal deepens Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 11:43 AM PST  ROME/MILAN (Reuters) - Monte dei Paschi di Siena said on Sunday it was seeking a financial investor as the political storm over a derivatives scandal at the ailing bank intensified ahead of next month's Italian election. Italy's third-biggest lender, which needs state loans to stay afloat, this week revealed opaque derivatives trades, conducted between 2006 and 2009, that could cost it some 720 million euros. ... Full Story | Top |
| China keeps mum on Bo trial despite talk it could start on Monday Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 02:43 AM PST  BEIJING (Reuters) - China's government is giving no details on the trial of shamed senior leader Bo Xilai, the final chapter in its worst political scandal in decades, as speculation mounted the case could be heard as early as Monday. A Beijing-backed Hong Kong newspaper, the Ta Kung Pao, reported on Friday that Bo's trial would begin on Monday in the southern Chinese city of Guiyang. But the government has not confirmed or denied this, belying recent efforts to promote transparency and openness, and at least two well-informed sources said on Sunday the reports were not true. ... Full Story | Top |
| Israel threatens Syria strike if rebels get chemical arms Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 08:33 AM PST  JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Any sign that Syria's grip on its chemical weapons is slipping as it battles an armed uprising could trigger Israeli military strikes, Israel's vice premier said on Sunday. Silvan Shalom confirmed a media report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had last week convened a meeting of security chiefs to discuss the civil war in Syria and the state of its suspected chemical arsenal. Israel and NATO countries say Syria has stocks of chemical warfare agents at four sites. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italy central bank approves Monte Paschi bailout request Sunday, Jan 27, 2013 03:14 AM PST  ROME/MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's central bank on Saturday gave its approval to a request by scandal hit bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena for 3.9 billion euros ($5.3 billion) of state loans, the latest step in the battle to revive the ailing bank. The Bank of Italy's backing was the final stage required to free up the financial help for Italy's third biggest lender, which this week revealed loss-making derivatives trades that could cost it about 720 million euros. ... Full Story | Top |
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