WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is cutting short his Hawaiian holiday to leave for Washington on Wednesday to address the unfinished “fiscal cliff” negotiations with Congress, the White House said on Tuesday. As the clock ticks toward a January 1 deadline, efforts to avert a sharp rise in taxes and deep spending cuts have stalled,…
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended a ban on Americans adopting Russian children, which has been proposed by the Russian parliament. He said the bill, a response to the US Magnitsky Act which bars entry to Russian alleged human rights violators, was “appropriate”. Russian officials, he said, were not allowed to sit in…
WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has met senior officials to discuss how to respond to Friday’s school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults died. The White House said curbing gun violence was a “complex” problem that required a comprehensive solution. On Sunday Mr Obama told Newtown residents he would…
DAMASCUS – A Russian official has said for the first time that the Syrian government may be defeated by opposition forces. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are “losing more and more control and territory”, deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Thursday. Russia was also making plans for a possible evacuation of thousands of its citizens…
HARARE – Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) says there is an improvement in the perception of Zimbabwe as a tourism destination, evidenced by renewed interests in the country by international tour operators. Givemore Chidzidzi, ZTA chief operating officer, said the country — whose image was seriously blemished by politics — was shaking off the “red flag”…
WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama has warned of a “Scrooge Christmas” if tax breaks are not renewed for working families in a deal to avert a so-called fiscal cliff. Mr Obama made the remarks as he tried to win public support for his plan on a visit to a toy-maker in Pennsylvania. But Republican…
DAMASCUS – Activists in Syria say a government jet has dropped a cluster bomb on a playground, leaving 10 children dead. Video posted on the internet showed children’s bodies on the ground with their mothers grieving over them. The children were killed when a MiG fighter bombed a playground in the village of Deir al-Asafir,…
DHAKA – More than 100 people are now known to have died in a fire that swept through a clothes factory in Bangladesh, local officials say. The blaze broke out late on Saturday in the multi-floor Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka. Some people died after jumping…
KABUL – A suicide bomber dressed as a security guard blew himself up Wednesday in a street near the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital, killing himself and two other people, authorities said. The attacker set off the explosives attached to his body around 8 a.m. after he was noticed by security guards in the…
WASHINGTON – The US has lifted a decade-old ban on most imports from Burma, ahead of a historic visit by President Obama. The move was intended to support political reform in Burma and to offer new bilateral business opportunities, said US officials. Mr Obama will on Monday be the first US president to visit Burma,…
