CARACAS (Reuters) - Hugo Chavez is upbeat about recovering from cancer and confident in his medical team, his No. 2 said on Tuesday in the latest message from the Venezuelan leader's sickbed in Cuba. "He told us with great strength: 'I am very optimistic, I trust completely in the treatments I am undergoing, I will beat this again. I'm holding onto Christ and life,'" Vice President Nicolas Maduro said of Chavez's words to him on a recent visit. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top National Rifle Association official says proposing more gun control laws without better enforcement of those already on the books is not a serious solution to crime.
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran presidential candidate Xiomara Castro, the wife of deposed former President Manuel Zelaya, is leading the race to become the next head of the Central American country, according to a poll released on Tuesday. Political newcomer Castro, the Liberty and Refoundation Party candidate who established her reputation while fighting for her husband's right to rule after his 2009 military-led ouster, leads with 25 percent of those questioned saying they would vote for her, according to the CID Gallup poll. ...
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union planners are looking at ways to help stabilize Syria when the civil war is over, and sending an EU military force to keep the peace could be an option, the bloc's top military officer said on Tuesday. The EU has a 2,000-strong rapid reaction force, known as a battle group, on standby at all times, ready for peace keeping or humanitarian action in an emergency, but it has never yet been deployed. ...
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Latin American policymakers are manning their defenses ahead of what could be a new battle in the "currency wars" as flows of hot money put unwelcome upward pressure on their currencies. Economists and investors predict that an easing in the euro zone's debt crisis, new economic stimulus measures in Japan and a return of risk appetite will fuel bumper investment flows into Latin America and other emerging markets in 2013. Some policymakers are already at the barricades. Colombia cut interest rates on Monday and said it would ramp up dollar purchases. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Masked Russian police searched the office of a liberal regional governor who has connections with opponents of Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in what Kremlin critics said was part of a campaign to put pressure on foes of the president. The federal Investigative Committee said law enforcement officers searched the office of Kirov region governor Nikita Belykh as part of a criminal investigation into the alleged theft of 90 million roubles ($3 million). Belykh denied any wrongdoing and said he was cooperating with the investigation. ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. diplomat charged with closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is taking up a new post and will not be replaced, with most of his duties being turned over to the State Department's top lawyer, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. The fact that Ambassador Dan Fried will not be replaced may raise questions about the Obama administration's plan to close the prison, though the officials denied any erosion in their commitment to shutter the detention center. There are now 166 prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chuck Hagel, the likely next secretary of defense, would be the first to enter the Pentagon as a public advocate for sharply reducing the number of U.S. nuclear weapons, possibly without equivalent cuts by Russia. He supports an international movement called Global Zero that favors eliminating all nuclear weapons.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea's missile tests and menacing rhetoric have disappointed U.S. expectations that young leader Kim Jong-un would be different than his father but Washington still hopes to persuade Pyongyang to change course, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday. "With a new young leader we all expected something different," Clinton said in a town hall-style session put together by the State Department and broadcast worldwide. "We expected him to focus on improving the lives of the North Korea people, not just the elite, but everyone. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department reports progress in settlement talks over a lawsuit by a House committee to get records involving the bungled gun-tracking program known as Operation Fast and Furious.
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Syria's advanced conventional weapons would represent as much of a threat to Israel as its chemical arms should they fall into the hands of Syrian rebel forces or Hezbollah guerrillas, Israeli sources said on Tuesday. Such concerns suggest that Israel, which has signaled heightened readiness over the last week to react militarily if it thinks Damascus is losing control of its chemical arsenal, could also intervene over Syria's Russian-supplied missiles. "It's clear that unconventional weaponry is a very grave matter. ...
MADRID (Reuters) - Global tourism is proving resilient in the face of an economic slowdown, with tourist numbers growing at close to pre-crisis levels in 2012 and expected to increase by almost as much this year, the UN World Tourism Organisation said on Tuesday. Europe held onto its position as the world's most-visited region in 2012 but the Asia-Pacific is catching up, recording the biggest increase in tourists in 2012 and expecting another strong performance this year. ...
BOSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security urged computer users on Tuesday to disable a common networking technology feature, after researchers warned that hackers could exploit flaws to gain access to tens of millions of vulnerable devices. The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team advised consumers and businesses to disable a feature known as Universal Plug and Play or UPnP, and some other related features that make devices from computers to printers accessible over the open Internet. ...
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's openly gay foreign minister has told Moscow's envoy to Berlin a Russian draft law banning "homosexual propaganda" contravenes human rights and could harm the country's ties with Europe, Spiegel online said on Tuesday. The German foreign ministry confirmed the meeting on Monday evening between Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Russia's ambassador in Berlin, Vladimir Grinin, but declined to comment on what they discussed. Westerwelle had made clear that in Germany's view the law violated the European human rights convention, the report said. ...
ROME (Reuters) - Support for Italy's election frontrunners, the center-left Democratic Party, has dropped since a scandal erupted at Tuscan bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena , with which it has long-standing links, according to opinion polls. But despite the setback, most polls show the center-left coalition led by the Democratic Party (PD) still well ahead of Silvio Berlusconi's center-right. Monte dei Paschi revealed last week that it had suffered nearly $1 billion of losses in complex derivatives deals entered to massage its accounts because of severe financing problems. ...
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A military intervention by France in Mali to combat Islamist rebels could exacerbate a "precarious" security situation in Libya, where armed groups have targeted security officials and diplomats, the United Nations said on Tuesday. U.N. special envoy Tarek Mitri, head of the U.N. mission in Libya, said that country's government faced a serious security challenge in the east, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in September. ...
