By Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration will strive to step up cooperation with China to halt the flow of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States, a U.S. counter-narcotics official said ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing. Efforts could include negotiations with China over…
By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Republican on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday he was blocking a $735 million arms sale to Hungary because its government has refused to approve Sweden’s bid to join NATO. “Given promises that were made to me and others last year that this vote…
By Stephanie van den Berg THE HAGUE (Reuters) – A lawyer for Russia on Wednesday dismissed Ukraine’s account of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in World Court hearings earlier this week as “fiction”. Ukraine accuses Russia before the U.N.’s top court of violating a U.N. anti-terrorism treaty by equipping and funding pro-Russian forces,…
By Leah Douglas (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture will take steps to better verify antibiotic-free labels on meat and poultry products after receiving petitions challenging its existing process for not being rigorous enough, the agency announced Wednesday. Consumer, food safety and environmental groups have long warned that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock…
MILAN (Reuters) – The body of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will be cremated and his ashes taken to the family mausoleum in the grounds of his villa in the northern town of Arcore, a source close to the family told Reuters. After a state funeral on Wednesday, the coffin will be returned to…
ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland’s parliament announced on Wednesday the 14 members of a special commission that will look into Credit Suisse’s collapse and its subsequent rescue engineered by Swiss authorities. The appointments, decided by the offices of the Swiss lower and upper houses of parliament, marked one of the final steps needed for the panel…
(Refiles with correct dateline spelling) By Vitalii Hnidyi STOROZHEVE, Ukraine (Reuters) -The road into the newly liberated Ukrainian village of Storozheve is lined with the corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armoured vehicles. The grisly scenes bear witness to the ferocity of fighting as Ukrainian troops recaptured Storozheve and several other villages in the past…
By Aidan Lewis and Khalid Abdelaziz CAIRO (Reuters) – Shooting their way through truces, Sudan’s warring factions have shown the limited leverage the United States, Saudi Arabia and other foreign powers have in ending a two-month conflict that is driving the nation deeper into disaster. Neither the army nor the paramilitary Rapid Response Forces (RSF)…
(Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo’s M23 rebels allegedly executed scores of villagers and militia members between November and April and buried their bodies in mass graves, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday, accusing Rwanda of backing the group. The Tutsi-led M23 staged a major offensive in Congo’s restive east last year, triggering an…
(Reuters) -China’s foreign minister Qin Gang urged the United States to stop meddling in its affairs and harming its security in a phone call with his U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, a tense preview to Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing expected in coming days. Qin told Blinken to respect China’s core concerns, such as the Taiwan…
