BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - The separatist flag of Catalonia - with its yellow and red stripes, blue triangle and white star - was a rare sight on the streets of Barcelona a decade ago. Now, it is almost ubiquitous. Two thousand km to the north in Scotland, the blue-and-white saltire has always been popular. But that flag too increasingly symbolizes something new, that after more than 400 years within the United Kingdom Scotland may be on the verge of demanding a divorce. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's governor is betting the wealthy will grow wealthier still to help right his state's finances, a wager that is expected to help the budget in the short term, but leaves it at risk of a revenue slump if assets such as stocks lose value. Democratic Governor Jerry Brown sees a budget surplus within reach, in contrast to the deficits that have bedeviled the state for the past decade, in part due to new revenue from increases in income tax rates on the wealthy approved by voters in November. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday on President Barack Obama's nomination of Sen. John Kerry to be the next secretary of state.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels in Syria including al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters captured a security agency in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor after days of heavy fighting, an activists' video and a pro-opposition monitoring group said on Tuesday. A video posted online showed men armed with assault rifles cheering as they stood outside a building they said was the local intelligence agency branch. Some of the fighters carried a black flag with the Islamic declaration of faith and the name of the al-Nusra Front unit, which has ties to al Qaeda in neighboring Iraq. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain on Tuesday boosted its offer of aid to help France fight Islamist rebels in Mali, and pledged troops to help other African governments in the region counter a rising tide of Islamist radicalism. Up to 240 British troops could be deployed as part of two missions to train African troops, 40 in Mali as part of a European Union mission, and a further 200 in anglophone West African countries, Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said. At least 70 more British personnel could be involved in logistical and support missions. ...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Oscar-nominated documentary "5 Broken Cameras" screened for Palestinians for the first time on Monday, leaving locals hopeful that their struggle with Israel for land and statehood will gain a global audience. The low-cost film is based on five years of amateur camera work by journalist Emad Burnat as he documented weekly protests against land seizures by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers in his village of Bil'in in the occupied West Bank. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's withdrawal from the European Union "within a few years" is a certainty as no government will be able to resist demands for an exit from a population incensed by the arrival of low-wage migrants, the leader of the UK Independence Party said. Nigel Farage, who is siphoning off voters from Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives by attacking EU bureaucracy and immigration from eastern Europe, said it was the dramatic rise of his own party that had pressured the premier into promising last week what would be a historic EU referendum. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday he was open to a meeting with Chinese leaders to rebuild ties damaged by a territorial dispute but said there was no room for negotiations on their row over a group of small islands. The remarks came after China's Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping, told a Japanese envoy sent to Beijing last week that he was committed to developing bilateral ties and would consider holding a summit meeting. ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China appointed a new governor for remote and restive Tibet on Tuesday, naming a hardline ethnic Tibetan in a signal that the government has no plans to ease up on its tight control on the Himalayan region. Losang Gyaltsen, 55, was elected at the end of the annual meeting of Tibet's largely rubber stamp regional assembly, and replaces previous governor Padma Choling, according to an announcement by the official Xinhua news agency. Losang Gyaltsen is a former mayor of Tibetan capital Lhasa and once taught Marxist theory, according to his official biography. ...

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas is set to execute Kimberly McCarthy by lethal injection on Tuesday, the first woman to be put to death in the United States in more than two years. The execution is scheduled to be carried out at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas after 6 p.m. local time. Women are rarely executed in the United States. Only 12 female inmates were put to death since capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. ...

NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger has given permission for U.S. surveillance drones to be stationed on its territory to improve intelligence on al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters in northern Mali and the wider Sahara, a senior government source said. The U.S. ambassador to Niger, Bisa Williams, made the request at a meeting on Monday with President Mahamadou Issoufou, who immediately accepted it, the source said. ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on Iran on Tuesday to halt the execution of five members of the country's Arab minority. Ashton, who is in charge of negotiations between six world powers and Iran over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, said she was concerned about reports the five men had not received a fair trial and had been forced to confess. "Reports that the executions of these men are imminent are very worrying, and I urge the Iranian authorities to commute the sentences," she said in a statement. ...