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Syrian troops push into strategic rebel-held town

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:03:57 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops pushed into a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border on Sunday, fighting house-to-house and bombing from the air as President Bashar Assad tried to strengthen his grip on a strategic strip of land running from the capital to the Mediterranean coast.

Outlook dim as Syria diplomacy gathers force

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:28:09 -0400

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Peter Graff AMMAN/LONDON (Reuters) - The world's diplomats will make a major new push in the coming days for negotiations to end Syria's civil war, but their chances of achieving a peace deal look as remote as ever. President Bashar al-Assad poured scorn on new plans for peace talks announced unexpectedly by the United States and Russia two weeks ago and planned for Geneva in early June. ...

Report: Obama Administration Apologizes for Another National Security Leak

Sun, 19 May 2013 14:22:08 -0400

“Can you imagine if things were reversed and somebody did that to the U.S.?"

Chinese premier visits India to boost ties

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:48:57 -0400

Just weeks after a tense border standoff, China's new premier visited India on Sunday on his first foreign trip as the neighboring giants look to speed up efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute ...

Russian TV: American accused of spying flies out

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:52:31 -0400

MOSCOW (AP) — The U.S. Embassy employee accused of spying in Moscow flew out of Russia on Sunday, five days after he was ordered to leave the country, NTV television reported.

South Korea: The little dynamo that sneaked up on the world

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:28:34 -0400

For months the young emperor to the north has been threatening to turn this thriving metropolis into a "sea of fire." But it's not easy to ruffle the jaunty vibe of 75-year-old Kim Chong-shik as he strolls among young couples and shoppers along the boutiques of the Gangnam District.

Netanyahu takes aim at weapons leakage in Syria

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:02:59 -0400

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held out the prospect on Sunday of further Israeli strikes inside Syria, pledging to act to prevent advanced weapons from reaching Hezbollah and other militant groups. Although Israel has not publicly taken sides in the civil war between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebels trying to topple him, Western and Israeli sources say it has launched air strikes in Syria to destroy weapons it believed were destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah. ...

Syrian army pushes assault on rebel-held town

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:32:49 -0400

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Syrian troops backed by tanks and warplanes launched an assault Sunday on a strategic rebel-held town near the Lebanese border, pounding the area with airstrikes and artillery salvos that killed at least 30 people and forced residents to scramble for cover in basements and makeshift bunkers, activists said.

EU says worried by Russia's human rights record

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:13:37 -0400

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union criticized Russia's human rights record on Sunday, saying it was increasingly concerned at a wave of restrictive legislation and prosecutions against activists. The 27-nation bloc cited the cases of protesters arrested at a demonstration on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration last year who are still awaiting trial, and a new law requiring charities with funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents". ...

Syrian activists: Shelling near Lebanon kills 16

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:33:08 -0400

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The Syrian military on Sunday launched an offensive to retake a strategic rebel-held town near the Lebanese border, a government official said, as activists reported that regime airstrikes and shelling of the town have killed at least 16 people, including opposition fighters.

UN chief hopes for Syria conference in early June

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:31:56 -0400

MOSCOW (AP) — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is holding out hope that an international conference to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war will be held in early June.

U.N. chief Ban says worried over North Korea missile launch

Sun, 19 May 2013 05:59:07 -0400

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern on Sunday over North Korea's launch of short-range missiles, urging Pyonyang to refrain from further launches and return to stalled nuclear talks with world powers. Ban, who spoke to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti during a visit to Moscow, called North Korea's launch of three short-range missiles from its east coast on Saturday a "provocative action". "We are very worried over North Korea's provocative action," he told RIA in comments translated into Russian. ...

Chinese premier heads to India to boost ties

Sun, 19 May 2013 04:52:48 -0400

Just weeks after a tense border standoff, China's new premier headed to India on Sunday for his first foreign trip as the neighboring giants look to speed up efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute ...

CA-NEWS Summary

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:35:27 -0400

Rome protest turns up heat on new PM Letta ROME (Reuters) - Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession. "We hope that this government will finally start listening to us because we are losing our patience," said Enzo Bernardis, who joined the sea of protesters waving red flags and calling for more workers' rights and better contracts. ...

Syria's Assad: Little chance peace talks would succeed - newspaper

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:13:20 -0400

LIMA (Reuters) - Proposed peace talks for Syria would not curb "terrorism" in the country and it is unrealistic to think they would succeed, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Saturday. Speaking in Syria with the newspaper Clarin, Assad said he was doubtful that mediation the United States and Russia have proposed could settle a deadly conflict that has convulsed the country for two years. "There is confusion in the world between a political solution and terrorism. They think a political conference will halt terrorists in the country. ...

Assad: Syria transition talks are internal matter

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:55:00 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a newspaper interview Saturday he won't step down before elections and that the United States has no right to interfere in his country's politics, raising new doubts about a U.S-Russian effort to get Assad and his opponents to negotiate an end to the country's civil war.

Syria's Assad says he won't step down

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:22:35 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a newspaper interview Saturday he won't step down and will instead "face the storm," raising new doubts about a U.S-Russian effort to get Assad and his opponents to negotiate an end to the country's civil war.

Israel warns against Russian arms supply to Syria

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:58:55 -0400

By Maayan Lubell JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Saturday that advanced weapons supplied by Russia to war-torn Syria could end up in the wrong hands and be used against the Jewish state. A Russian shipment of Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria was condemned by the United States on Friday and Israel is also alarmed by the prospect of Russia supplying S-300 advanced air defense missile systems to Damascus. ...

Russia's Karjakin wins Norway chess tournament

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:54:26 -0400

STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Russia's Sergey Karjakin won the €100,000 ($130,000) Norway chess championship on Saturday after drawing against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

SKorea says NKorea fires 3 short-range missiles

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:38:30 -0400

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired three short-range guided missiles into its eastern waters on Saturday, a South Korean official said. It routinely tests such missiles, but the latest launches came during a period of tentative diplomacy aimed at easing tensions.

U.S. chides Russia over missiles as peace plans suffer

Sat, 18 May 2013 07:50:30 -0400

By Erika Solomon BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States chided Russia for sending missiles to the Syrian government as plans for a peace conference promoted by Washington and Moscow were hit by diplomatic rifts over its scope and purpose. Sectarian bloodshed in neighboring Iraq during Friday prayers, a hacking attack on a Western newspaper by sympathizers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and defiant comments by a rebel commander filmed eating a slain soldier's flesh were all reminders of how the two-year-old civil war is metastising. ...

Russian missiles to Syria could embolden Assad: U.S. general warns

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:19:57 -0400

By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. military officer on Friday condemned Russia's shipment of advanced anti-ship missiles to Syria, saying it could embolden President Bashar al-Assad's forces to keep fighting a bloody civil war. "It's at the very least an unfortunate decision that will embolden the regime and prolong the suffering," General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon when asked about the weapons shipment. "So it's ill-timed and very unfortunate," he said. ...

Kerry to attend Syria talks on May 22, visit Mideast, Africa

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:16:46 -0400

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend talks on Syria in Amman on Wednesday, the State Department said, as major powers try to bring the Syrian government and opposition to peace talks in June. Kerry's visit is part of a one-week trip that begins in Oman on Tuesday and includes talks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Jerusalem and Ramallah on Thursday and Friday as well as an African Union summit in Addis Ababa over the weekend. He then is scheduled to return to Jordan on Sunday to attend the World Economic Forum. ...

UK inquest into ex-Russian spy's death may be scrapped

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:54:38 -0400

By Peter Griffiths LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's long-delayed inquest into the death by radioactive poisoning of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko could be abandoned after the coroner partly upheld a British government request to withhold crucial evidence. Robert Owen, a senior judge acting as coroner, said on Friday keeping some of the evidence secret would make it impossible to hold a "full, fair and fearless inquiry" into the death of the vocal critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. ...

Crowds break up gay rights rallies in Georgia, Russia

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:28:24 -0400

By Margarita Antidze and Liza Dobkina TBILISI/ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Large crowds of anti-gay protesters broke up homosexual rights rallies in Georgia and Russia on Friday, underlining deep hostility in the former Soviet bloc. Priests and thousands of Georgians pushed their way through police barriers protecting around 50 people marking International Day Against Homophobia in a square in capital Tblisi. Waving banners marked with the slogans "Stop Homosexual Propaganda in Georgia" and "Not in our city", they forced the small groups of campaigners to flee in buses. ...

Turkey's Erdogan says U.N. must decide on any Syria no-fly zone

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:40:20 -0400

By Nick Tattersall WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it would be up to the U.N. Security Council to decide whether to establish a no-fly zone inside Syria and said he backed the involvement of Russia and China in planned peace talks. Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington a day after discussing Syria with President Barack Obama, Erdogan said a no-fly zone could be discussed at a planned international conference on Syria backed by Washington and Moscow. Turkey, a U.S. ...

Report: Torture evidence found in Syrian prisons

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:30:03 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — Rights activists visiting abandoned government prisons in the first Syrian city to come under rebel control have found torture devices and other evidence that detainees were abused there, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday.

Top Russian Diplomat Explains Reasons for Syrian Arms Sales

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:19:18 -0400

In the past two weeks, the U.S. and its allies have done just about everything short of getting down on their collective knees and begging Russia to stop delivering weapons to the Syrian government. President Vladimir Putin has received visits this month from three of the most powerful statesmen in the western world — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on May 7, British Prime Minister David Cameron three days later and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu three days after that. Along with U.S. ...

Russia sends Syria advanced anti-ship missiles: U.S. officials

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:08:30 -0400

By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia has sent Syria advanced anti-ship missiles, U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, bolstering Syrian defenses despite pleas from Washington and elsewhere to stop supplying President Bashar al-Assad's forces. One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the latest Yakhont surface-to-air missiles were delivered recently. The transfer of the missiles was first reported by the New York Times. There was no immediate comment from the Russian government. The disclosure comes just over a week after U.S. ...

Clash between Russian oil chiefs could undercut Putin ally

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:33:00 -0400

By Olesya Astakhova and Douglas Busvine MOSCOW (Reuters) - A rare public clash between two leading figures in Russia's state-dominated oil industry hints at a split in President Vladimir Putin's inner circle and could be intended to rein in one of his closest advisers. Igor Sechin, who has built oil company Rosneft into the world's largest with Putin's help, has pushed for an expansion of a pipeline "spur" to take more oil to China, a profitable alternative market to Europe where demand is falling. ...

Russia boosts its naval presence in Syria, sends regime new missiles

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:25:00 -0400

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CIA chief makes unannounced Israel visit

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:14:14 -0400

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli defense official says the head of the American CIA spy agency has made an unannounced visit to Israel.

U.N. chief Ban says must not lose momentum on Syria conference

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:03:45 -0400

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday a proposed international conference on Syria should be held as soon as possible, but that no date had yet been agreed. "We should not lose the momentum," Ban said of a U.S.-Russian proposal to bring the Syrian government and opposition representatives to a peace conference. "There is a high expectation that this meeting should be held as soon as possible," he said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov agreed. ...

Fearing Afghan instability, Russia mulls border troops

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:17:51 -0400

By Amie Ferris-Rotman KABUL (Reuters) - Russia, predicting instability once NATO-led troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year, is considering deploying border guards on the Tajik-Afghan border, Moscow's envoy to Kabul told Reuters in an interview. Moscow, still sore from its disastrous, decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is increasingly concerned by what it describes as the combined threat of narcotics and terrorism reaching Russia through former Soviet Central Asian countries. ...

Syria ex-minister leads rebuilding plan

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:17:05 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — A six-member U.N. team led by a former Syrian planning minister is drawing up a comprehensive postwar reconstruction plan even as the country's civil war rages on with no apparent end in sight.

Obama: U.S. preserves diplomatic, military options on Syria

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:32:47 -0400

By Nick Tattersall and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Thursday he reserved the right to resort to both diplomatic and military options to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but insisted that U.S. action alone would not be enough to resolve the Syrian crisis. Taking a cautious line at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Obama voiced hope that the United States and Russia would succeed in arranging an international peace conference on Syria, despite signs of growing obstacles. ...

Turkey’s Erdogan Visits the U.S.: 4 Problems That Won’t Be Solved

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:29:52 -0400

As domestic scandals clouded Washington, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived for a U.S. visit enveloped in his own fog. The Turkish Premier has been one of the most outspoken international statesmen on the need for intervention in the brutal Syrian civil war raging on his country’s border. The main agenda of his American sojourn was to seek support from an Obama Administration that has watched the conflict warily. ...

Syrian troops flush out rebels from prison

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:02:37 -0400

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government troops on Thursday flushed out rebels who had stormed a prison compound in the northern city of Aleppo in a bid to free hundreds of political prisoners inside.

US, Turkey project united front on Syria

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:43:39 -0400

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan projected a united front Thursday on Syria, keeping stark differences about how much the U.S. should intervene behind closed doors as they looked to Russia and the global community to close ranks behind efforts to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator: we're being asked to make all the sacrifices

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:41:20 -0400

Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and a presidential candidate, says that offers from six world powers demand far more short-term sacrifices of his government than the Islamic Republic considers reasonable or reciprocal.