CAIRO (Reuters) - Thousands of people turned out on the streets of Port Said on Monday to attend the funerals of the latest victims of violence in the Egyptian city where President Mohamed Mursi has declared a state of emergency, state television images showed. The mourners bore coffins above their heads and some waved teargas canisters at the camera. Seven people were killed on Sunday at funerals for the 33 who had died in riots a day earlier. ...
PARIS (Reuters) - France's foreign minister said on Monday Syria risks falling into the hands of Islamist militant groups if supporters of the Syrian opposition do not do more to help it in a 22-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. Addressing the opening of a conference in Paris with senior members of the Syrian National Coalition, Laurent Fabius said the meeting must focus on making the opposition politically and militarily cohesive to encourage international assistance. ...
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - African leaders failed on Monday to sign a U.N.-mediated peace deal aimed at ending two decades of conflict in eastern Congo, said a senior Congolese diplomat, who pointed to concerns over who would command a new regional military force. The agreement was to include the deployment of several thousand extra soldiers to tackle armed militias in the mineral-rich eastern region. The brigade would fight under the banner of the U.N.'s MONUSCO peacekeeping force. ...
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - France's carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen halted production in Slovakia for the day on Monday and will add another four stoppage days next month in response to weak demand across Europe, the Slovak unit said. Peugeot, which is cutting some 10,000 jobs and closing a domestic plant in France, is one of the key exporters in the central European country where growth is driven almost solely by the automotive production. ...
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's cabinet has approved a draft law giving the army the right to arrest civilians and assist the police in providing security, a cabinet source told Reuters on Monday after the death toll in five days of anti-government protests rose to 50. The source said the army would "behave like a police force" meaning that any detainees would go to a civilian and not military court. He did not say if the army's right to make arrests extended across Egypt or just applied to Suez Canal cities where the president has declared a state of emergency. ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are scheduled to meet with police chiefs from three U.S. communities scarred by mass shootings last year to talk about the administration's push to reduce gun violence, a White House official said. The meeting, at the White House, is the latest in a series of discussions that Obama is using to try to galvanize political support for tighter gun control after 20 young children and six adults were killed in December by a gunman at a school in Newtown, Connecticut. ...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will meet with police chiefs from three communities that have experienced mass shootings, part of his administration's push to address gun violence.
LONDON (Reuters) - As musicians from Mali took to a London stage on Saturday night, news was announced that back home French troops had captured the airport of the Islamist-controlled city of Gao. A cheer went up - and not surprisingly. Since Islamist militants seized control of Mali's north following a military coup in March 2012, the country has been convulsed by conflict. Its musical community, whose singers and players have won worldwide acclaim, has been targeted by the hardline Islamists bent on imposing sharia, or Islamic law. ...
CAIRO (Reuters) - A bystander was shot dead in Egypt's capital on Monday where clashes between police and protesters extended to a fifth day, a security source in the Interior Ministry said. The 46-year-old man was not taking part in the protest but was hit by a gunshot early on Monday on the edge of Tahrir Square, the source said. It was not clear who fired the shot. Police have been firing volleys of teargas against protesters throwing stones in streets around the square. (Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has agreed on a framework for immigration reform that would provide a "path to citizenship" for those in the United States illegally but only after measures are put in place to secure borders and track undocumented immigrants. The document, made available to news organizations early on Monday and first reported by Politico, comes a day before President Barack Obama is to outline his proposals for immigration reform. ...
DAKAR (Reuters) - Islamist fighters fleeing Mali's ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu as French and Malian troops closed in set fire to a South African-funded library there containing thousands of priceless manuscripts, the city's mayor said on Monday. "The rebels sit fire to the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute built by the South Africans ... this happened four days ago," Halle Ousmane told Reuters by telephone from Bamako. He said he had received the information from his chief of communications who had travelled south from the city a day ago. ...
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — An official says Kenya's March elections will be closely monitored by the international community and local groups to help identify potential problems that may lead to tensions in the electoral process.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have arrested more than a dozen journalists in the past two days over their links to "anti-revolutionary" media, Iranian media reported, in what appeared to be a coordinated crackdown on the press. With a presidential election five months away, Iran's clerical leadership appears to be tightening its grip on the media to avoid a repeat of the widespread protests that erupted after the disputed election in 2009. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Global powers and Iran should "stop behaving like little children" and agree a date and place for new talks on Tehran's nuclear program, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday. European officials have accused Tehran of stalling on arranging a meeting with the six nations, including Russia, that are trying to prevent Iran developing atomic weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Moscow court postponed a preliminary hearing on Monday in the posthumous trial of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in custody has damaged Russia's image and strained ties with the United States. The court appointed a legal team to defend Magnitsky during the trial after his family and lawyers refused to attend Monday's hearing because they say the case is politically motivated. Magnitsky was 37 when he died after 358 days in jail on suspicion of tax evasion and fraud, during which he said he was denied treatment as his health declined. ...
Compiled by ABC News’ Jayce Henderson, Amanda VanAllen and Jordan Mazza HILLARY CLINTON ABC News’ Mary Bruce and Dana Hughes: “President Obama, Hillary Clinton: From Bitter Rivals to Bosom Buddies” In something of a parting gift, President Obama is making abundantly clear his deep support...
PARIS (Reuters) - A French-led offensive in Mali that forced out al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents from the towns of Gao and Timbuktu at the weekend shows that Mali is slowly being freed, the French foreign minister said on Monday. "Little by little, Mali is being liberated," Laurent Fabius told France 2 television. But Fabius cautioned that armed fighters from the Islamist alliance in north Mali, who had sought to impose Islamic law in the vast desert area, were now hiding and could reappear. ...
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. ...
BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed concern on Monday after Japan unveiled plans to boost the number of its military personnel, as a bitter territorial dispute between the two countries drags on. Japan's Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Sunday the government would increase the number of personnel, now standing at about 225,000, by 287 in the next fiscal year starting in April, the biggest rise in two decades. The figure represents an expansion of about 0.1 percent. ...
