World News Archive

IRAN accused world powers yesterday of creating "a difficult atmosphere" hindering talks on its atomic energy programme, signalling a snag in diplomacy to ease a stand-off over fears of a covert Iranian effort to develop nuclear bombs.

US voters are nearly evenly divided between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, with five months to go before the election, polls show.

Egyptians queued patiently to vote yesterday, eager to pick their leader for the first time in a national history dating to the pharaohs, with Islamists and secular-minded rivals who served under deposed President Hosni Mubarak heading the field.

ONTARIO: A man survived a plunge of at least 180ft over Niagara Falls in an apparent suicide attempt – only the third person known to have lived after going over the falls without a safety device.

Yemeni leaders led a sombre ceremony yesterday to mark the country's National Day, scaling back celebrations a day after a suicide bombing killed nearly 100 soldiers in a rehearsal for a military parade.

SYRIAN police killed two people yesterday when they opened fire on a crowd that came out to welcome United Nations observers in the eastern province of Deir al Zor, a rebel official said.

Nationalist candidate Tomislav Nikolic has won the Serbian presidency, a result that adds to the political turmoil in the Balkan country and could slow down its attempts to join the European Union.

Sri Lanka's former army chief walked free from jail yesterday with a pardon from President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who appears to have bowed to growing international demands that he release his highest-profile rival.

MALAYSIAN opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim will be charged over his role in a street protest against the Government last month.

The only man convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has been buried with little fanfare near the Libyan capital.

A roadside bomb exploded yesterday about 500 feet from a United Nations convoy carrying the head of a Syria ceasefire monitoring mission and a senior UN official in the town of Douma.

DUBAI: A Bahraini court has granted bail to leading activist Nabeel Rajab, who is charged with insulting authorities in the Gulf Arab state, but he is still being held pending trial for another case.

ARBIL: Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region expects to start exporting its crude oil along a new pipeline to the Turkish border by August 2013, defying Baghdad in a long-running dispute over who controls the country's oil sales.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked access to Twitter in response to "blasphemous" material posted by users on the microblogging and social networking website, a senior government official said.