ATHENS: A caretaker government took office in Greece on Thursday to organise its second election in six weeks after an inconclusive May 6 vote as fears over a possible disorderly euro exit rocked Spain and Italy.
The May 6 election left Greece in limbo, pushing the financial markets and euro down sharply, and the new poll on June 17 offers no guarantee of a viable government able to implement an EU-IMF bailout which divided the country....
ATHENS: Greece's outgoing prime minister Lucas Papademos on Thursday warned that it would be disastrous for the country to heed mounting calls at home and unilaterally reject the tough terms of its EU-IMF bailout.
"Any modification...must be pursued in a spirit of consensus and with the full agreement of European peers," Papademos said in an open letter posted on the prime minister's website....
WASHINGTON: White births in the United States are no longer in the majority, according to US Census Bureau data made public Thursday, a newspaper reported.
Minority races -- Hispanics, blacks and Asians and other mixed races -- accounted for 50.4 per cent of births over the year to July, accounting for a majority for the first time in US history, the New York Times said.
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DAMASCUS: Syrian forces were accused Wednesday of summarily executing 15 civilians, as members of a UN team of observers were evacuated from a shelled town the day after a bomb blast hit their convoy.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, however, accused the West of ignoring violence by terrorists and said he would demand an explanation from Annan when he comes here later this month.
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KUALA LUMPUR: The recent conviction of former US President George W Bush and several members of his administration by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, while largely ignored by foreign media, drew a variety of reactions from bloggers and blog readers.
Bush and seven others – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo -- were...
SANTIAGO: A new gold rush is sweeping through Latin America with devastating consequences, ravaging tropical forests and dumping toxic chemicals as illegal miners fight against big international projects.
With international market prices for metals high, informal "wildcat" mining has been on the rise in recent years in countries like Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, itself one of the largest producers of silver, copper and gold....
THE HAGUE: The trial of wartime Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic opened before a UN court Wednesday, where he faces charges for some of the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II.
Mladic, 70, faces 11 overall counts for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity which include masterminding the massacre of almost 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995....
ATHENS: Debt-stricken Greece must prepare for its second elections in less than two months after failing to form a government, exacerbating the eurozone crisis which France and Germany vowed to resolve.
The election, expected on June 17, follows an inconclusive poll on May 6 when a majority of Greeks expressed their opposition to the austerity measures which Athens agreed to in return for a massive EU-IMF bailout late last year....
TBILISI: The weekend floods that killed five people in the Georgian capital exposed a side of the city not shown in the slick tourist ads -- the ramshackle slums that are home to the city's poorest.
A mother and her two young children were among those who died after heavy rains sent powerful torrents of water surging through the rundown Ortachala neighbourhood, causing dilapidated houses to collapse and leaving streets awash with mud and littered with debris....
ATHENS: Greece tries again Tuesday to form a government, hoping a technocrat solution to disputes over a tough EU-IMF bailout deal will avoid new polls and keep it in the eurozone as time runs down fast.
Leaders from all bar the far-right parties that won seats in inconclusive May 6 polls will meet at 1100 GMT Tuesday to try and get the country "out of a dead end," Socialist Pasok party head Evangelos Venizelos said Monday....
