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Euro zone countries tried in vain to stop the IMF publishing a gloomy analysis of Greece's debt burden which the leftist government says vindicates its call to voters to reject bailout terms, sources familiar with the situation said on Friday. The document released in Washington on Thursday said Greece's public finances will not be sustainable without substantial debt relief, possibly including write-offs by European partners of loans guaranteed by taxpayers. It also said Greece will need at least 50 billion euros in additional aid over the next three years to keep itself afloat. Publication of the draft Debt Sustainability Analysis...

(From Video Transcript:) The World Health Organization says Cuba has reached one of the greatest public health milestones possible. It has ended the mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. At a news conference in Havana, WHO representative Jose Luis di Fabio praised Cuba’s health system. […] UNICEF Representative Anna Lucia d’Emilio says Cuba’s achievement shows that ending the AIDS epidemic is possible. …

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton promised on Saturday to fight for ordinary Americans who have been left behind as the economy recovers, appealing to working families at the first major rally of her 2016 White House campaign. Speaking on New York's Roosevelt Island, within sight of Manhattan's skyscrapers, Clinton promised would "make the economy work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top" if elected president. The gathering of several thousand people cheered as Clinton said working people are asking why wealth is reserved for chief executives and hedge fund managers. "You have to wonder, when...

(Reuters) - Appealing to working families in her first major campaign speech, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday she would rewrite the U.S. tax code if she is elected so that it rewards hard work, and not quick equities trades or money stashed away overseas. She also pledged to establish a national infrastructure bank financed by bonds, an idea championed by President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat.

It is hard to describe just how bad things are for the Republican Party. Each day it looks more and more like the Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho. More precisely, the GOP is actually most like the central character who owns the motel: Norman Bates and his alter ego, “Mother,” a.k.a. Norma. Norman appears to be a polite, sincere young man, if strongly dominated by Mother. But so what if he’s idiosyncratic, even eccentric, with a mother fixation? As a private individual, he has the right to be odd. Mother, meanwhile, wants absolute control over her son....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top Republicans predicted on Sunday that both chambers of Congress would muster the votes to pass the "fast-track" authority sought by President Barack Obama to negotiate major trade deals, despite opposition from Obama's fellow Democrats. "Yes, we’ll pass it. We'll pass it later this week," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview with ABC. Republican U.S. Representative Paul Ryan said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he was confident the measure would also pass the House of Representatives. "We will have the votes," said Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "We're...

Her campaign barely three weeks old, Hillary Clinton already has been attacked by Republicans on everything from donations to her family’s charitable foundation, to her tenure as secretary of state and her ties to Wall Street. But her rivals, and the political action committees that support them, are treading more carefully on one incendiary subject: her age . If elected in November 2016, Clinton would be, at 69, the second-oldest person to take the presidential oath for the first time, behind only Ronald Reagan, who turned 70 weeks after being sworn into office in 1981. Questions of health and fitness...

ISLAMABAD: Maria Golovnina, the Pakistan and Afghanistan bureau chief of Reuters who was based in Islamabad, was found dead at her office in the capital’s F-8 sector, sources in the police told Dawn. Golovnina had reportedly gone to the toilet, and had not stepped out for a long time when people who were present barged in. Maria Golovnina - Twitter. She was reportedly lying on the floor covered in vomit. The bureau chief was rushed to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) where she was pronounced dead. Doctors at Pims told Dawn Maria had passed away before she could be...

Turkey has lifted a ban on the Islamic-style headscarf in schools, allowing girls from the fifth grade and up to cover their hair in a further easing of generations-old restrictions on the public expression of faith. The government, whose roots are in political Islam, has already lifted a ban on religious garb for university students and female civil servants, scrapping curbs stemming from the founding of Turkey's secular republic in 1923 on the ashes of Islamic Ottoman Empire. "Our female students have yearned" for the end of the ban, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said late on Monday after a...

President Barack Obama's push to raise the minimum wage, which has largely found success in liberal-leaning coastal states to date, could make headway in the conservative heartland in the November elections. Voters in the Republican-controlled states of Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota will consider ballot initiatives in November that would raise the minimum wage above the national rate of $7.25 per hour. Activists on both sides of the issue say the proposals stand a good chance of passing.

(Reuters) - Israel has arrested six Jewish suspects in the abduction and killing of a Palestinian teenager whose death sparked violent protests in Jerusalem and Israeli Arab towns, a security source said on Sunday. With tensions high along the Gaza border, Israel said its aircraft attacked 10 sites in the Palestinian enclave in response to persistent rocket strikes on southern Israeli towns. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signalled that broader Israeli action was not imminent. The security source gave no details about the suspects arrested in the investigation into the abduction and killing of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, other than...

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The frantic search for Bowe Bergdahl began the moment his comrades discovered he was no longer inside the fragile outpost in a rock-strewn valley in one of the most hostile corners of Afghanistan. Exactly why Bergdahl left is subject to intense scrutiny. But accounts by two Taliban sources as well as several U.S. officials and fellow soldiers raise doubt over media reports that he had sought to join the Taliban, and over suggestions that the deaths later that year of six soldiers in his battalion were related to the search for him. His dramatic release on May...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Pope Francis delivered a powerful boost of support to the Palestinians during a Holy Land pilgrimage Sunday, repeatedly backing their statehood aspirations, praying solemnly at Israel's controversial separation barrier and calling the stalemate in peace efforts "unacceptable." -snip- Palestinian officials hailed Francis' decision to refer to the "state of Palestine." In its official program, the Vatican referred to President Mahmoud Abbas as the president of the "state of Palestine," and his Bethlehem office as the "presidential palace." He pointedly called Abbas a "man of peace." -snip-

The European Commission has approved new rules aimed at limiting the spread of a virus that has killed millions of piglets in the United States, highlighting the risk of animal feed products as a potential transmission agent. Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) has wiped out more than 10% of the US pig population since it appeared a year ago, and has also struck in Canada, Mexico and Japan. The European Union has not been affected by this strain. In the United States, the world’s biggest pork exporter, losses from PEDv could cut pork production as much as 7% in 2014,...

Among the roughly 300 killed during intense fighting in Aleppo was Molhem Barakat, a Reuters photographer. Barakat's death last Friday, in the indiscriminate barrage on Aleppo that the White House criticized Monday, has raised serious questions about Reuters' hiring practice. Hannah Lucinda Smith, a British freelance photojournalist and acquaintance of Barakat, writes that Barakat tried to join Al Qaeda. According to Smith, Barakat wanted to join the terrorist organization for the 11,000 Syrian lira monthly salary. "It is a pitiful wage for a potential suicide bomber, but enough to tempt an eighteen-year-old stuck in a war zone with no job."...

For the second year in a row, the Human Rights Campaign has awarded us the top rating of 100% on its Corporate Equality Index 2014. This score is based on the HRC’s evaluation of fair and inclusive workplace policies across large U.S. employers. Businesses that achieve this score are recognized as “Best Places to Work for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality.” Thomson Reuters is one of 303 companies (out of 934 evaluated) to earn this distinction. “We’re honored to be recognized again by the HRC for our continued efforts,” said Jane Moran, Chief Information Officer for Technology and executive...

Egypt to look beyond U.S. for arms: foreign minister Reuters By Samia Nakhoul and Michael Georgy CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said on Saturday that Egypt would look beyond the United States to meet its security needs and warned Washington that it could no longer ignore popular demands in a changed Arab world. Speaking ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Fahmy said the United States must take a long-term view of its relations with Egypt and understand that in the wake of the Arab Spring, "it would have to deal now with...

Reuters is carrying an editorial today on how the DC "government has failed us – again." Knowing Reuters's record on articles like this, you might wonder why I stopped to read it. It was the title of the article, "The Sanity Caucus," that caught my eye. Surprised by the title, I scanned down, wondering if the article would make the point that the Tea Party folks, despite their methods, had the right ideas: Stop the expansion of the US government by any means possible, at least long enough to make a serious point about a serious issue. This wasn't...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eager to exploit divisions among Republicans, Democrats have hammered the message that the U.S. government shutdown is the work of a small segment of House of Representatives Republicans on the far right. In fact, support for the tactic that led to the shutdown - now in its fourth day - has proven to be far more solid and widespread among House Republicans than the Democratic portrayal. That is because the far right, after the 2010 and 2012 congressional elections, is not a small segment at all - it represents probably 69 percent of the House Republican caucus....

The Reuters news agency is cutting some five percent of its editorial staff, a source close to the company said Wednesday, the latest layoffs in the troubled media industry. Parent company Thomson Reuters announced in a statement it would be making reductions, but offered no figures. -snip- A source familiar with the matter said the cuts would affect some five percent of the global staff of some 2,800.