KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan peace council to pursue talks with the Taliban has been set up, President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday, the latest step in a gradual move toward reconciliation with the Islamist insurgents. The idea for a peace council was discussed at a traditional gathering, or jirga, attended ...More
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican judge ordered Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez, believed to be one of the country's top drug bosses, held for 40 more days of investigation, the federal prosecutor's office said on Saturday. Valdez, a 37-year-old Texan who was arrested outside Mexico City late last month ...More
MEHMOOD KOT, Pakistan (Reuters) - Crime and the sale of donated aid supplies are undermining the aid effort for Pakistan's flood victims. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's provincial capital Peshawar, flour bags and tins of cooking oil bearing the logos of international aid agencies like the World Food Prgramme and USAID are ...More
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors in Gabriel Capital LP, a so-called feeder fund that funneled money to imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff, were awarded $12.74 million by a panel of three arbitrators, court records show. The award to two New Jersey investment funds was disclosed in a filing Thursday with the ...More
OAXACA, Mexico (Reuters) - Two members of Mexico's Congress and two local politicians were killed on Friday when their private plane crashed near a popular Mexican Pacific beach resort, officials said. Guillermo Zavaleta and Juan Huerta, both members of President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party (PAN), died in the ...More
HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. government inspectors found no leaking oil at Mariner Energy Inc's burned platform in the Gulf of Mexico, officials said late on Friday, allaying fears about more environmental damage after BP's massive spill. "Inspectors have reported no sign of pollution," the Interior Department said after ...More
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Talks to form a right-leaning minority Dutch government collapsed Friday when a populist anti-Islam party pulled out of talks, dashing attempts to form an administration seven months after the last one collapsed. The talks folded when Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders, whose party wants to end all non-Western ...More
