DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh and India on Monday signed an extradition treaty and struck a deal to relax business visa restrictions between the neighboring countries. The extradition treaty could pave the way for Bangladesh to put on trial several crime bosses who crossed the border into India but are still running their gangs by telephone, a senior official at Bangladesh's Home Affairs Ministry told Reuters. It could also help India bring back fugitive separatists who have fled to Bangladesh including Ulfa leader Anup Chetia. ...
PARIS (Reuters) - France needs more robust local policing, better intelligence sharing and the ability to infiltrate small radical Islamist groups if it hopes to fight new security threats at home, France's top anti-terrorism judge told Reuters. Paris' centralized intelligence system - which for nearly two decades helped protect France from a major terrorist attack until a radical Islamist killed seven people last year - is designed to target organized groups like al Qaeda but not the new breed of individuals posing a threat, Marc Trevidic said. ...
By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) NOTABLES: IMMIGRATION REFORM TAKES CENTER STAGE: A bipartisan group of senators has agreed to an immigration reform framework that includes a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, a significant step toward a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, ABC News-Univision’s...
SANTA MARIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Relatives of the 231 people who died in a Brazilian nightclub fire demanded answers on Monday as to how it could have killed so many people, while police questioned the club's owner and members of the band whose pyrotechnics show allegedly caused the tragedy. Several coffins, many draped with flags of the victims' favorite soccer teams, lined a gymnasium that has become a makeshift morgue since the fire in the early hours on Sunday, one of the world's deadliest such incidents in a decade. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the head of Russia's southerly Dagestan province, the Kremlin said on Monday, signaling concern over mounting Islamist violence, corruption and political rivalries in the Caucasus. Putin appointed Magomedsalam Magomedov, 49, to a role in the presidential administration, the Kremlin statement said, removing him from a post that he had held since 2010. Ramzan Abdulatipov, 67, a veteran politician elected last year as deputy head of the ruling United Russia party in the lower house of parliament, was named acting head of Dagestan. ...
JUBA (Reuters) - Two thousand people were forced to flee to a U.N. base after a battle between South Sudanese soldiers and the guards of a former rebel commander laid waste to a small town, the United Nations and witnesses said on Monday. South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011 but the government has been struggling to assert control over an impoverished country the size of France that is full of weapons after decades of civil war with the north. ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gauge of business confidence improved in December, a sign that business worries over tighter fiscal policy may not have held back investment plans as much as feared at the end of 2012. The Commerce Department said on Monday that non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans, edged 0.2 percent higher. Many economists believe businesses held back on capital spending late last year because of uncertainty over government spending cuts and tax increases that had been scheduled to kick in this month. ...
DAKAR (Reuters) - Secular Malian Tuareg MNLA rebels said on Monday they were now in control of the northern town of Kidal after their former Islamist allies abandoned it. "Now it is us who are in control," Colonel Mohamed Ag Najim, the MNLA's military commander, told Reuters by satellite phone from the northeastern town, which was the last stronghold occupied by al Qaeda-allied Islamist fighters after Gao and Timbuktu were taken by French and Malian troops. Asked where fighters from the Islamist Ansar Dine group which held the town were, Ag Najim replied: "They are gone". ...
MAIDUGURI (Reuters) - Gunmen killed eight people in a town in remote northeastern Nigeria over the weekend, witnesses said, in an area plagued by an Islamist insurgency and armed banditry. A spokesman for joint military and police forces in Borno state, the epicenter of a campaign of violence by Islamist sect Boko Haram, Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, confirmed the attack on Gajigana town but did not have any further details. Modu Bukar, a trader in the town, saw the bodies after the attack, which sent panicked residents fleeing, adding that he had heard gunshots during the attack. ...
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's main opposition coalition will not join a national dialogue on Monday called by President Mohamed Mursi because the proposal was not genuine and the group will only attend future talks if a list of conditions are met, members said. Mursi invited his allies and rivals to talks at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday to try to resolve a political crisis and end violence on the streets that erupted during anti-government protests. Five days of unrest has led to 50 deaths. ...
POMEZIA, Italy (Reuters) - Comic Beppe Grillo calls four-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a "dwarf zombie", outgoing premier Mario Monti "rigor Montis" and Italy's political class "the walking dead". Grillo, founder of a movement that will rival even the biggest parties at elections next month, hopes to wipe out the old guard: "We will bring some exorcists to parliament," he said in an interview after a rain-drenched rally south of Rome. The 64-year-old Grillo is quick with wisecracks but the his 5-Star Movement is no joke. ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Irish band The Boomtown Rats, best known for No. 1 hits "Rat Trap" and "I Don't Like Mondays", will reunite for the first time since 1986 at the Isle of Wight Festival in June, organisers said in a statement on Monday. Active in the 1970s and 80s, the group led by charity campaigner Bob Geldof will take the main stage at the festival held off the south coast of England. Headline acts for the four-day event from June 13-16 are British bands The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and U.S. groups The Killers and Bon Jovi. Dozens of artists will join them, including Paul Weller, Fun. ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, threw his weight behind an immigration reform effort being unveiled on Monday by a bipartisan group of senators. Reid is "fully supportive of the group's efforts," said an aide. The bipartisan group of senators has drafted an outline of an effort to reform U.S. immigration laws this year in a way that could eventually provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million foreigners living in the United States illegally. The group still has a significant amount of work to do before putting the outline into legislation. ...
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Islamist militants are suspected of attacking an oil pipeline on Monday in the Algerian region of Djebahia, some 70 km (45 miles) east of the capital Algiers, killing two Algerian guards, a security source told Reuters. The region is a stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and is where its leader Abdelmalek Droukdel is believed to be based, the source said, adding seven people had been wounded in the attack. ...
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission will award a total of 2 billion euros for research into brain disease and into the "miracle material" graphene which could be used to make flexible electronic devices and could lead to superfast Internet speeds. The funding will be distributed over 10 years, with more than half of it coming from the Commission's research funds and the rest from EU member countries and the private sector, officials said on Monday. ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is offering France further assistance in its military operations against Islamist rebels in Mali, but will not take a combat role, Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said on Monday. Cameron spoke to French President Francois Hollande late on Sunday about the conflict in the West African state, where French and Malian government forces are battling Islamist insurgents. Britain has already provided two C-17 military transport aircraft and a Sentinel surveillance plane to the operation. ...
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - World powers have asked Iran to hold a new round of talks over its nuclear work in February, while expressing disappointment over Tehran's reluctance to schedule negotiations. A spokesman for the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Monday Iran had not agreed to her proposal, issued on behalf the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, to meet at the end of January. "Iran did not accept our offer to go to Istanbul on January 28 and 29 and so we have offered new dates in February," Michael Mann told a news briefing in Brussels. ...
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - When Nelson Mandela and his ANC party dreamed of South Africa's future after apartheid, they probably imagined someone like Fulufhelo Davhana, a young black who has seen the doors of opportunity opened wide and is destined for achievement. But Davhana, a 23-year-old accounting student at the University of Johannesburg's Soweto Campus, is dreaming of a future when the African National Congress elders who ended white minority rule no longer call the shots. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the head of Russia's southern Dagestan province, the Kremlin said on Monday, signaling concern over mounting insurgency violence and political rivalries in the mainly Muslim region. Putin appointed Magomedsalam Magomedov to a role in the presidential administration, the Kremlin statement said, removing him from the post of provincial head that he had held since being appointed in 2010. Ramzan Abdulatipov, a ruling United Russian party deputy from the region in Russia's lower house of parliament, was named to replace him as acting head. ...
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia warned on Monday it might soon bar imports of U.S. and Canadian beef and pork if producers do not certify them free of the feed additive ractopamine. The potential ban could jeopardize more than $500 million a year of exports to Russia and coincides with mounting U.S.-Russian tensions over trade and human rights. Alexey Alexeyenko, the spokesman for Russia's Veterinary and Phyto-Sanitary Surveillance Service (VPSS), said chilled products could be banned from February 4 and frozen meat by February 11. ...
