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| Obama talks tough, shows no rush to act on Syria chemical arms evidence Friday, Apr 26, 2013 06:08 PM PDT  By Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama warned Syria on Friday that its use of chemical weapons would be a "game changer" for the United States but made clear he was in no rush to intervene in the civil war there on the basis of evidence he said was still preliminary. Speaking a day after the disclosure of U.S. intelligence that Syria had likely used chemical weapons against its own people, Obama talked tough while calling for patience as he sought to fend off pressure for a swift response against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ... Full Story | Top |
| Rush to help airlines, travelers could crack open budget door Friday, Apr 26, 2013 08:16 PM PDT  By David Lawder and Doug Palmer WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress got rid of a headache on Friday when it rescued the flying public from flight delays caused by its budget cutting. But in the view of many lawmakers, the pain is just about to begin. Members of Congress and groups representing people hit by across-the-board budget cuts, ranging from cancer patients to welfare recipients, say the quick action on air traffic control staffing underscored the importance of being visible to millions of Americans. ... Full Story | Top |
| Growth falls short of forecasts, weakness ahead Friday, Apr 26, 2013 10:36 AM PDT  By Lucia Mutikani WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The economy regained speed in the first quarter, but not as much as expected, heightening fears it could struggle to cope with deep government spending cuts and higher taxes. Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Friday, after growth nearly stalled in the fourth quarter. Economists had expected a 3.0 percent growth pace. ... Full Story | Top |
| North Korea says American tourist it is holding will face trial Friday, Apr 26, 2013 08:59 PM PDT  SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday a Korean-American tourist, who has been held in prison by the reclusive state since late last year, will face trial for "committing crimes" against the North, a move that could further stoke tensions with the United States. Kenneth Bae, 44, was in a group of five tourists who visited the northeastern city of Rajin on a five-day trip last November and has been held by police since then. KCNA, the North's official news agency, said Bae entered the North on November 3. ... Full Story | Top |
| Anger on streets as Bangladesh building toll passes 300 Friday, Apr 26, 2013 05:42 AM PDT  By Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands. Miraculously rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble - 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight - two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka. ... Full Story | Top |
| Froman, Pritzker in line for trade and commerce posts: sources Friday, Apr 26, 2013 04:22 PM PDT  By Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is close to choosing White House deputy national security adviser Mike Froman to be the next trade representative, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Friday. After a long vetting process, Chicago businesswoman and Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker is still in line to be nominated as commerce secretary, the sources said. The two trade jobs are among the final positions Obama has to fill in his second-term cabinet. Both require confirmation by the Senate. An announcement of their nominations is likely to be made next ... Full Story | Top |
| Boston bombing suspect in prison, brother's body unclaimed Friday, Apr 26, 2013 02:10 PM PDT  By Scott Malone and Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON (Reuters) - The surviving suspect in last week's Boston Marathon bombing was moved to a prison medical center outside Boston on Friday, while the body of his older brother who died in a shootout with police remained unclaimed, officials said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old ethnic Chechen charged with the bombing that killed three people and wounded 264, was moved from the hospital where he was kept under guard since he was arrested, badly wounded, a week ago, the U.S. Marshals Service said. ... Full Story | Top |
| Fire kills dozens in Russian psychiatric hospital Friday, Apr 26, 2013 08:15 AM PDT By Alexei Anishchuk RAMENSKY, Russia (Reuters) - Thirty-eight people were killed, most of them in their beds, in a fire that raged through a psychiatric hospital near Moscow on Friday, raising questions about the care of mentally ill patients in Russia. The fire, which broke out at around 2 a.m. (6 p.m. ET on Thursday), swept through a single-storey building at the hospital, a collection of wood and brick huts with bars on some windows that was home to people sent there on grounds of mental illness by Russian courts. By mid morning, a few blackened walls were left standing. ... Full Story | Top |
| Sudan police break up protest against land sale to Arab investors Friday, Apr 26, 2013 03:09 PM PDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese police used tear gas and batons to break up a protest of more than 250 people on Friday demanding that the government revoke the sale of farming land to Gulf Arab investors, witnesses said. Protesters blocked the main road of Um Dum outside the capital Khartoum to urge the government to give them land in the area instead of to investors planning an agricultural project there, the witnesses said. Police said it had been forced to act after protesters hurled rockets at officers and burned tires, the state-linked Sudanese Media Center (SMC) said on it website. ... Full Story | Top |
| Draft bill gives FDA authority over some pharmacies Friday, Apr 26, 2013 09:32 AM PDT  By Toni Clarke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Food and Drug Administration would gain greater authority over pharmacies that compound sterile drugs and ship them across state lines under proposed legislation announced on Friday. The proposal from a bipartisan group of U.S. senators comes in the wake of a meningitis outbreak last fall that killed 53 people and sickened more than 700. The outbreak was linked to a tainted steroid distributed by the New England Compounding Center. ... Full Story | Top |
| Israeli army breaks up Palestinian march on Jewish settlement Friday, Apr 26, 2013 08:31 AM PDT  By Noah Browning DEIR JAREER, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse about 500 Palestinian villagers marching toward a Jewish settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank on Friday. The procession, the largest of its kind for years, followed charges by Palestinians that the Israeli settlers, whose caravans abut village land, had attacked them twice this week. Around half a million settlers have moved to the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel captured the area, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East War. ... Full Story | Top |
| Congress passes plan to ease flight delays Friday, Apr 26, 2013 01:43 PM PDT By Richard Cowan and Doug Palmer WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Friday approved a plan to ease nationwide air-traffic delays caused by federal spending cuts, seeking to calm irritated travelers but sparking a backlash from groups still being hit by budget cuts. The Senate unanimously voted for the plan late Thursday and the House of Representatives approved it Friday by a 361-41 vote. White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama intends to sign the bill. ... Full Story | Top |
| Obama talks tough, shows no rush to act on Syria chemical arms evidence Friday, Apr 26, 2013 03:59 PM PDT By Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama warned Syria on Friday that its use of chemical weapons would be a "game changer" for the United States but made clear he was in no rush to intervene in the Syrian civil war on the basis of evidence he said was still preliminary. Speaking a day after the disclosure of U.S. intelligence that Syria had likely used chemical weapons against its own people, Obama mixed talked tough while calling for patience as he sought to fend off pressure for a swift response against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ... Full Story | Top |
| Syrian air strikes, shelling batter rebels in Damascus suburbs Friday, Apr 26, 2013 05:46 AM PDT  BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army attacked two rebel-held suburbs of Damascus with fierce air strikes and shelling on Friday, pursuing an offensive against President Bashar al-Assad's foes, residents and a monitoring group said. Assad's forces, which have been trying to dislodge rebels from several outlying districts south and east of the capital, focused their assault on Jobar, just inside central Damascus. The army seized the town of Otaiba on Wednesday, cutting a weapons supply route from the Jordanian border into the eastern fringes of Damascus that rebels had used for eight months. ... Full Story | Top |
| British Islamists jailed for al Qaeda suicide bomb plot Friday, Apr 26, 2013 05:58 AM PDT  LONDON (Reuters) - Three British Islamists were jailed on Friday for planning mass suicide attacks that had the blessing of al Qaeda and which prosecutors said could have been as deadly as the 2005 London bombings. A fourth man, their associate, was sentenced for terrorist financing. With the help of others, the three plotters had intended to detonate eight rucksack bombs in a mass attack and possibly use timers to set off other devices in crowded places. They had also considered welding knife blades to a truck and ramming it into a crowd of people, prosecutors said. ... Full Story | Top |
| Consumer sentiment wanes in April Friday, Apr 26, 2013 07:00 AM PDT  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumer sentiment eased in April as Americans remained concerned about their employment and financial prospects, a survey released on Friday showed. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's final reading on the overall index on consumer sentiment fell to 76.4 from 78.6 in March, although it topped economists' expectations for 73.2. It also was an improvement from April's preliminary reading of 72.3. The barometer of current economic conditions fell to 89.9 from 90.7, while the gauge of consumer expectations slipped to 67.8 from 70.8. ... Full Story | Top |
| Bombs kill eight at Friday prayers in Baghdad Friday, Apr 26, 2013 07:18 AM PDT By Kareem Raheem BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombs planted outside Baghdad mosques killed eight more people on Friday at the end of a week of bloodshed that prompted a United Nations envoy to warn Iraq was "at a crossroads". At least 150 people have been killed since Tuesday, when troops stormed a Sunni protest camp, triggering clashes that quickly spread to other Sunni areas in western and northern provinces. Although well below the heights of 2006-7, this week's violence was the most widespread since U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq in December 2011. ... Full Story | Top |
| Italian government could be settled on Saturday: sources Friday, Apr 26, 2013 05:18 AM PDT  By Paolo Biondi ROME (Reuters) - Italian prime minister-designate Enrico Letta could announce a new government on Saturday and go before parliament to spell out its program early next week, political sources said on Friday. Letta, deputy leader of the center-left Democratic Party, has been in discussions to iron out remaining differences with Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party following an initial round of talks on Thursday. ... Full Story | Top |
| U.S. suspects Syria used chemical weapons, wants proof Friday, Apr 26, 2013 07:37 AM PDT  By Phil Stewart and David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad had probably used chemical weapons on a small scale in the country's civil war, but insisted that President Barack Obama needed definitive proof before he would take action. The disclosure created a quandary for Obama, who has set the use of chemical weapons as a "red line" that Assad must not cross. It triggered calls from some hawkish Washington lawmakers for a U.S. military response, which the president has resisted. ... Full Story | Top |
| South Korea to pull all workers from industrial zone in North Friday, Apr 26, 2013 03:09 AM PDT  By Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will pull out all remaining workers from a jointly run industrial zone in North Korea, it said on Friday, after Pyongyang rejected a call for formal talks to end a standoff that led to operations being suspended. The decision to remove about 170 people from the Kaesong factory park located just north of the armed border deepens a conflict between the two Koreas and puts at risk their last remaining channel of exchange that resulted from their breakthrough 2000 summit and a bid to improve ties. ... Full Story | Top |
| Obama honors firefighters killed in Texas fertilizer plant blast Friday, Apr 26, 2013 01:42 AM PDT  By Steve Holland WACO, Texas (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, standing before a line of flag-draped coffins, consoled family and friends on Thursday at a memorial service for firefighters killed in a massive explosion last week at a Texas fertilizer plant. The deaths of 14 people, nearly all of them emergency responders, ripped a hole in the heart of the town of West, where farming is a way of life and where many people volunteer for the fire department in their spare time. "To the families, the neighbors grappling with unbearable loss, we are here to say you are not alone. ... Full Story | Top |
| Senate passes bill to end air traffic control furloughs Friday, Apr 26, 2013 12:48 AM PDT  By Richard Cowan and Doug Palmer WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved quickly late on Thursday to end air traffic controller furloughs that were causing widespread airline flight delays related to last month's automatic federal spending cuts. Without any debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation giving the Department of Transportation flexibility to use unspent funds to cover the costs of air traffic controllers and other essential employees at the Federal Aviation Administration. ... Full Story | Top |
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