DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia pledged on Wednesday to provide $300 million to help fund humanitarian efforts for Syrians affected by nearly two years of conflict, al-Jazeera Mubasher television reported. The channel said the announcement was made by the kingdom's Finance Minister Ibrahim Alassaf at an aid donor conference chaired by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Kuwait. (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Pravin Char)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - International aid to Syria is not being distributed equally, with government-controlled areas receiving nearly all of it while opposition-held zones get only a tiny share, a medical charity said. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said rebel fighters had extended and consolidated their hold on large areas of Syria and it estimated at least a third of the country's population - about seven million people - lived in areas beyond government control. "The current aid system is unable to address the worsening living conditions facing people inside Syria," said MSF president Dr. ...

DAKAR (Reuters) - The vast majority of Timbuktu's ancient manuscripts in state and private collections appear to be unharmed after the city's 10-month occupation by Islamist rebel fighters, who did burn some of the scripts, experts said on Wednesday. "I can say that the vast majority of the collections appear from our reports not to have been destroyed, damaged or harmed in any way," Cape Town University's Professor Shamil Jeppie, an expert on the Saharan city's manuscripts, told Reuters. ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission criticized Romania on Wednesday for failing to fully meet demands on protecting democracy and the rule of law, and told the leftist government of Victor Ponta to speed up reforms. The EU executive said in a report the authorities had taken some steps in recent months to uphold constitutional law, after the Commission expressed concerns last year that political bickering was undermining democracy in the Black Sea state. ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court rules on Thursday whether to award damages to a man who spent a year in a labor camp for an online joke about now disgraced leader Bo Xilai, although experts say compensation, if given, is likely to be low to avoid a flood of new grievances. Fang Hong, a blogger and former forestry official, said he is demanding 367,000 yuan ($59,000) for psychological suffering after being sentenced in 2011 to a year of re-education in a labor camp at the height of Bo's campaign against organized crime in the city of Chongqing, where he was Communist Party boss. ...