(Updates with dead, other collapses, colour)

By Stephen Jewkes

BOLOGNA, Italy, May 20 (Reuters) - A strong earthquake rocked a large swathe of northern Italy early on Sunday morning, causing at least three deaths and collapsing rural factories and ancient bell towers in towns.

The epicentre of the quake, which struck at 4:04 a.m. (0204 GMT) and had a magnitude of 5.9, was in the plains near Modena. But it was felt in nearby regions.

One person working a night shift died in the collapse of a factory and two others were killed in the collapse of another building. Rescue officials were checking reports that other people were buried under rubble.

First television pictures taken after dawn showed serious damage to historic buildings and rural structures. Parts of a historic fortress in one town collapsed.

Thousands of people in the area rushed into the streets after the quake, felt in the major towns of Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Rovigo, Verona and Mantua.

A series of strong aftershocks hit the area and local mayors ordered residents to stay out of their homes.

The quake was centered 22 miles (35 km) north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 6.3 miles (10 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The last major earthquake to hit Italy was a 6.3 magnitude quake in the central Italian city of L'Aquila in 2009, killing nearly 300 people. (Reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and Doina Chiacu, writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Peter Cooney and Ron Popeski)

* White House/Treasury step up talks

* Discussions signal political impact of big loss

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - The White House, following a trading loss of more than $2 billion by JPMorgan, wants to ensure a tough interpretation of a regulation aimed at preventing banks from making bets with their own money, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said White House officials have stepped up talks with the Treasury Department in the several days since the staggering loss was disclosed by the bank.

The discussions, according to the report, represent the first tangible political impact from the trading debacle. Obama said this week the huge loss illustrated the need for Wall Street reform and warned that the same kind of error at a less stable bank may have required government intervention.

The issue was one of Obama's signature domestic policy achievements, but he has faced opposition in trying to implement and enforce it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday the rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law would strengthen the ability of banks to absorb losses like those disclosed by JPMorgan last week.

A key provision of the law, the Volcker rule, bans banks from making speculative bets with firm money, but includes an exemption for trades done to hedge risk.

"It is because of the president that the Volcker rule is a part of the law, and our administration has worked since the day it passed to ensure it and the entire law is implemented in a tough and effective way so that taxpayers never again have to bear the burden of risky behavior on Wall Street," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said when asked about the Journal report.

Regulators are crafting the final language of that rule.

BEIRUT, May 10 (Reuters) - Dozens of people were killed or wounded in two "terrorist explosions" which struck a southern district of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, state television said.

Television footage showed dozens of mangled, burnt and smouldering vehicles, some containing incinerated human remains. A large crater could be seen in the road and at least one lorry had been overturned.

Damascus residents said the two explosions, which happened almost simultaneously shortly before 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), struck a district of Damascus which houses a military intelligence complex involved in President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on 14 months of protests. (Reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

* Nonfarm jobs increase 115,000 in April
* Unemployment rate edges down to 8.1 percent
* Private sector payrolls grow 130,000

By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut back on
hiring in April and more people stopped looking for work,
troubling signs for President Barack Obama whose re-election
prospects could hinge on his handling of the economy.
Employers added 115,000 workers to payrolls last month, the
Labor Department said on Friday. It was the third straight month
in which hiring had slowed, intensifying fears the U.S. recovery
is losing momentum.
Even a slight drop in the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent
had a dark tone because the fall was due entirely to people
dropping out of the workforce.
"The bottom line is you don't have evidence that this
economy has reached escape velocity," said Robert Tipp, an
investment strategist at Prudential Fixed Income.
Analysts had expected 170,000 new jobs in April, and the
shortfall could open the door a bit wider for the Federal
Reserve to step up efforts to help the economy.
Major U.S. stock indexes tumbled, with the broad S&P
index ending down more than 1.5 percent and yields on benchmark
U.S. government bonds sliding to lows not seen in
months.
Still, the report was not all negative. The government
revised upward earlier estimates for payroll growth in February
and March by a combined 53,000 jobs.



POLITICAL ECONOMY
The report could rattle nerves at the White House. Weak U.S.
growth and high unemployment create a formidable headwind for
Obama, who entered office during the darkest days of the 2007-09
recession.
Obama, who will hold his first campaign rallies on Saturday,
said he would urge Congress next week to implement "common-sense
ideas" to accelerate job growth.
"We've got to do more if we're going to recover all the jobs
lost in the recession," he told a group of students in the
Washington suburb of Arlington, Virginia.
His Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, repeated accusations
that Obama has not done enough to help Americans get back to
work. "We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up. This is not
progress. This is very, very disappointing," he told Fox News.
The unemployment rate, which soared to as high as 10 percent
during Obama's first year in office, held near 9 percent for
most of last year before falling sharply over the winter.
The decline had raised hopes that the economy had turned a
corner. Those hopes dimmed on Friday.
Even with the latest decline, the jobless rate remains about
2 percentage points higher than its average over the last 50
years, and the Fed thinks the labor market probably won't be at
full health until at least after 2014.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said last month the U.S. central
bank is providing enough support for the economy but kept open
the possibility of a fresh round of bond purchases to lower
borrowing costs should the economy weaken.
"They obviously are going to be on guard now that employment
growth is not picking up," said Sean Incremona, an economist at
4Cast.

UNDER PRESSURE
Many economists think the weakness evident in the labor
market over the last few months is largely payback for stronger
hiring during a mild winter. That would temper fears the economy
is losing steam.
Still, the employment report included several ominous
numbers. The participation rate, a measure of how many Americans
are looking for work, fell to a 30-year low at 63.6 percent of
the population.
The retirement of baby boomers has helped push that rate
lower but many people also have stopped looking for work because
they are discouraged by a sour jobs market. People must be
actively seeking work to count as part of the labor force.
The report also showed government payrolls contracted by
15,000, the biggest loss since November. Public payrolls have
been under pressure as politicians worry about heavy debt loads
and lackluster tax revenues.
The private sector added 130,000 new positions, with
manufacturing adding a strong 16,000 jobs. Jobs in
transportation and warehousing shrank by almost 17,000.

Felix Salmon, Reuters

* SWAT team fired beanbag round at ex Marine - report

* Outside monitor of OPD "dismayed" by police actions

* Sees "military-type" response to anti-Wall St demos

By Mary Slosson

April 30 (Reuters) - Oakland police used "an overwhelming military-type response" to disperse Occupy Oakland demonstrators and fired at a former Marine and Iraq war veteran who was critically injured in the clashes in October, according to a report issued on Monday.

The report by an outside monitor of the Oakland Police Department came one day before anti-Wall Street protesters plan nationwide rallies on May 1, with Occupy Oakland demonstrators vowing to take over San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

Oakland's police practices came under intense scrutiny last year when former Marine Scott Olsen was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister.

The report concludes, for the first time from an official source, that police did fire at and hit Olsen that evening. An Oakland Police Department SWAT team member fired a beanbag round at Olsen, striking him in the head, according to the report.

"We have viewed many official and unofficial video clips of the Occupy Oakland-related incidents," the report said. "These recordings lead us to ask additional questions as the level of force that was used by OPD officers, and whether that use of force was in compliance with the Department's use of force policies."

The beanbag rounds fired that night leave a green residue, which was found on the hat Olsen was wearing that night, later retrieved by police, according to the report.

Olsen's case reinvigorated the Occupy movement against economic inequality, and the confrontations with police in subsequent protests turned Oakland into a focal point for the movement as demonstrators rallied against what they described as police brutality.

The Oakland Police Department has been subject to court-ordered external monitoring and review since the 2003 settlement of what was known as the Riders case, in which four officers were accused of planting evidence, fabricating police reports and using unlawful force, according to the Oakland police.

Monday's report was the latest in a series designed to monitor and enforce compliance with the court-ordered reforms, known as the Negotiated Settlement Agreement.

"We were, in some instances, satisfied with the performance of the Department; yet in others, we were thoroughly dismayed by what we observed," police monitor Robert Warshaw wrote in his quarterly report.

The police department announced last week that it was making significant changes to how it trains officers to control large crowds following criticism over its practices during Occupy Oakland protests that sometimes turned violent. It received more than 1,000 misconduct complaints during those protests.

"OPD has turned the corner," Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said in a statement upon the report's release. "My vision is to make Oakland one of the safer major cities in California." (Editing by Edith Honan and Anthony Boadle)

By Rob Taylor

KABUL, April 27 (Reuters) - Hackers have for the third time in less than a year crippled the main website of the Afghan Taliban, with a Taliban spokesman on Friday blaming Western intelligence agencies amid an intensifying cyber war with the insurgents.

The unidentified hackers broke into the Taliban's El Emara website twice on Thursday, replacing usual insurgent victory messages with images of executions and support for the Afghan government and security forces in English, Arabic and Pashto.

Some of the photographs showed women being shot in the head or hanged by former Taliban executioners, while another showed two women in head-to-toe burkas being beaten.

"Violence is wrong in all its forms, especially the encouragement by the Taliban of cowardly betrayal and the senseless murder of innocent civilians," a screenshot from Afghan Pajhwok News showed the message as saying in English.

"The Afghan Security Forces are accountable to Allah and the Afghan people, and seek to restore peace as the foreigners leave the land," it said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters that the website was hacked around 12:30 am on Thursday and fixed in three hours, before being breached again at midday and put out of commission again. It was still being repaired on Friday

"It was hacked again by enemies and foreign intelligence services," Zabihullah said. "The enemy tries to push its propaganda. The enemy is worried by what gets published in our webpage. It's confusing for them, so they try to react."

A NATO spokesman declined comment on the claim.

The Taliban have in recent months waged an intensifying information war with NATO forces in the country, distributing anti-government messages on mobile phone networks and using Twitter to claim largely improbable successes as most foreign combat troops look to leave the country by 2014.

A day rarely passes without a Taliban spokesman using Twitter to claim the destruction of numerous NATO armoured vehicles and the deaths of scores of Western or Afghan security forces, with NATO quickly countering in its own Twitter feeds.

The Taliban also employ a sophisticated network of spokesmen to distribute messages and even have their own mobile radio broadcast service, which frequently moves location to avoid the threat of retaliatory airstrikes by NATO warplanes.

Unknown hackers brought down the main Taliban website earlier this month, when El Emara's English language page was replaced temporarily with images of Taliban atrocities and photographs of roadside bombs, according to the Long War Journal website, which tracks progress in the war, now dragging into its eleventh year.

Another cyber attack took place on June 20 last year, when false messages were distributed about the death of the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, from both the website and the phones of Taliban spokesman.

Thursday's hacking attack came as a man wearing an Afghan security forces uniform shot and killed a U.S. soldier in the country's south, in the latest incident of so-called green-on-blue killings by local police and soldiers of Western mentors.

Three soldiers were killed by an improvised bomb in the east, where NATO recently launched one of the last large offensives of the war to try to clear insurgent strongholds near the Pakistan border and around Kabul. (Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Nick Macfie)

ISLAMABAD, April 25 (Reuters) - Pakistan successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Wednesday, the military said, less than a week after rival India tested a missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads as far as Beijing and Eastern Europe.

Pakistan's Shaheen-1A is an intermediate range ballistic missile, capable of reaching targets in India. Military officials declined to specify the range of the missile.

The missile's impact point was in the Indian Ocean.

India and Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars since they were carved out of British India in 1947. They conduct missile tests regularly and inform each other in advance. (Reporting by Sheree Sardar and Qasim Nauman; Editing by Rebecca Conway and Robert Birsel)

By Brendan O'Brien

MILWAUKEE, April 21 (Reuters) - Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has suspended non-surgical abortions in response to a new state law that makes it harder for women to have the procedure, a move that followed anti-abortion measures in several Republican-controlled states.

The law, which took affect on Friday, requires women visit a doctor at least three times before having a drug-induced abortion, forces physicians to determine whether women are being coerced into having an abortion and prohibits women and doctors from using web cams during the procedure.

The Coercive and Web Cam Abortion Prevention Act, which was signed by Republican Governor Scott Walker earlier this month, imposes criminal penalties, including a possible prison sentence, for physicians who violate the law.

Teri Huyck, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said the law was "ambiguous and difficult to interpret," interfered with the doctor-patient relationship and posed significant risks to doctors.

"The added risks of felony penalties for physicians who provide medication abortion are unnecessary and intended to threaten a physician's ability to provide women with medication abortion," Huyck said in a statement from the family planning and reproductive health organization on Friday.

About a quarter of abortions in Wisconsin are induced using medication, which can be prescribed by a doctor during the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, however, will continue to provide surgical abortions.

Wisconsin Right To Life, an anti-abortion group, said it supported Planned Parenthood's decision, adding that it would likely reduce the number of abortions.

"This common-sense law protects women at a time when it is most needed and provides help if she is a potential or real victim of domestic abuse," said Barbara Lyons, Wisconsin Right to Life's executive director.

The Wisconsin Medical Society, the largest association of doctors in the state, had called on Walker to veto the bill, saying it "directly infringes on the special and private relationship between the patient and physician."

The Wisconsin law is the latest in a number of anti-abortion measures pressed by conservative lawmakers in the nation.

In Oklahoma, a Republican-led effort to enact a "personhood" law that would have granted embryos full rights as people from the moment of conception failed on Thursday in the state legislature.

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a law on Monday that may force the state's only abortion clinic out of business, and earlier this month Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a controversial measure banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. (Editing by David Bailey and Paul Simao)

March 21 (Reuters) - A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the north coast of Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The quake struck at a depth of 125.5 miles (202 km) and was centred 137 km north of Lae, Papua New Guinea's second-largest city,

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive Pacific-wide tsunami was expected.

Papua New Guinea is on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire and suffers many earthquakes but often avoids major damage and casualties because most of its people live in light and flexible housing.

However, more than 2,000 people were killed in 1998 when a 7.0 magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea's north coast, causing a tsunami that smashed into isolated villages.

(Reporting y Maggie Lu YueYang; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan, April 15 (Reuters) - Around 300 prisoners escaped from a jail in northwest Pakistan early on Sunday after it was attacked by Islamist militants armed with guns and rocket propelled grenades, a senior police official told Reuters.

Some of those who escaped were militants, an intelligence official said. (Reporting by Saud Mehsud; writing by Michael Georgy)

* 68 pct of Americans have favorable view of NRA

* Americans want to be able to defend themselves

* Back curbs on automatic weapons and guns in churches

By Deborah Charles

WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) - Most Americans support the right to use deadly force to protect themselves - even in public places - and have a favorable view of the National Rifle Association, the main gun-lobby group, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

The online survey showed that 68 percent, or two out of three respondents, had a favorable opinion of the NRA, which starts its annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, on Friday.

Eighty-two percent of Republicans saw the gun lobbying group in a positive light as well as 55 percent of Democrats -- findings running counter to the image of supporters of the latter party being anti-NRA.

Most of the 1,922 people surveyed nationwide from April 9-12 said they supported laws that allow Americans to use deadly force to protect themselves from danger in their own home, or in a public place.

"Americans do hold to this idea that people should be allowed to defend themselves and using deadly force is fine, in those circumstances," said pollster Chris Jackson. "In the theoretical ... there's a certain tolerance of vigilantism."

The poll was conducted amid a nationwide debate over gun rights and race following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood crime watch volunteer who is white and Hispanic.

(Link to poll: http:// www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5586)

The poll results will be welcomed by the NRA, which hosts Republican presidential candidate M itt Romney a nd likely nominee as a speaker at its convention on Friday.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents - with high numbers among b oth R epublicans and Democrats - supported the use of deadly force to protect themselves from danger in their home.

Two-thirds said they backed laws permitting the use of deadly force to protect themselves in public.


STEP UP TO PREVENT CRIME

Nearly half of those surveyed felt crime rates were rising where they lived - even though Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that violent crime has declined for the past 4-1/2 years.

"People's perception of crime always over-represents reality," said Jackson. "I think that indicates the mind frame that the American public is in - there's always a constant low-level worrying about street crime."

As a result, 85 percent of those polled said they did not believe police could stop all crime and 77 percent felt regular people had to "step up" to help prevent crime from happening.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, nearly 100,000 people are shot every year in the United States in murders, suicides, accidents or police intervention.

Government statistics show that 31,347 people died in the United States in 2009 as a result of gunshots, including 11,493 in homicides.

Ninety-one percent of those who responded to the survey agreed on the need for background checks before a firearm can be sold. Only six percent said they thought gun ownership should require no, or very few restrictions.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they supported limiting the sale of automatic weapons, and 62 percent oppose bringing firearms into churches, workplaces or stores.

"A fairly large number of Americans support strong regulation, or at least moderate regulation of gun ownership," said Jackson. "Which is sort of counter to the narrative you often hear that legislators can't touch our guns or you'll have to pay."

The survey included 650 Republicans, 752 Democrats and 520 independents. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online poll is measured using a credibility interval and this poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points for all respondents. (Editing by David Brunnstrom)

* 20 militants, four soldiers and one tribesman killed

* Fighting erupts when militants attack military camp

* Warplanes bomb checkpoint held by al Qaeda militants (Adds more security developments)

ADEN, April 9 (Reuters) - At least 25 people were killed on Monday when fighters from an al Qaeda-linked group attacked a military camp near the southern Yemen city of Lawdar, residents and local officials said.

The fighting erupted when fighters from Ansar al-Sharia launched a dawn attack on the camp, which is in Abyan province, about 120 km (75 miles) from the southern port city of Aden.

The group seized control of a significant amount of territory in Abyan during the turmoil that led to the replacement of President Ali Abdullah Saleh by his deputy, a deal that Saudi Arabia and Washington hope will prevent al Qaeda from getting a foothold near key oil shipping routes.

The conflict with Islamists in the south is only one of several challenges facing the new president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who took office vowing to fight al Qaeda, only to have more than 100 soldiers killed in a series of attacks in his first days in power.

Fifteen fighters were killed in Monday's clash with the army and five when warplanes bombed a checkpoint they were holding, officials and residents said. Four soldiers and one tribesman fighting alongside them were also killed.

A military official said the army drove the fighters away from the area around the camp. The militants said in an emailed statement that none of their fighters was killed in the clash, and threatened to attack Lawdar.

Mohammed Nasser, a resident of Lawdar, speaking by telephone with the sound of artillery and small arms fire audible, said the fighting lasted three hours.

"It is not the first attempt (by the group) to take control, but it's the biggest attack yet," he said. A local official said tribal militiamen joined the fighting alongside the military, and that at least 10 soldiers and tribesmen were wounded.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against alleged al Qaeda targets in Yemen, wants Hadi to reunify a military that split between Saleh's foes and allies last year, and focus it on "counter-terrorism".

Yemen's main airport in the capital, Sanaa, was paralysed for a day after Hadi sacked the air force commander, a relative of Saleh, on Friday, and pro-Saleh officers responded by blockading the airport with vehicles.

A government official said they backed down only after warnings from the United States and the Gulf countries which crafted the deal that made Hadi president. (Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Writing by Joseph Logan and Mahmoud Habboush; editing by Tim Pearce)

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, March 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike killed four suspected militants and wounded three others on Friday in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, intelligence officials and militants said.

The remotely piloted aircraft targeted a residential compound used by foreign militants in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a Pakistan Taliban commander told Reuters.

"All of those killed and injured in this attack were Arab, they belonged to some Arab country," the commander said.

Intelligence officials, however, said they did not have details on the identities or nationalities of the suspected militants.

The controversial drone program, a key element in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, is highly unpopular in Pakistan, where it is considered a violation of sovereignty with many civilian casualties.

The United States says the strikes in Pakistan's unruly northwestern tribal regions along Afghanistan border are very accurate and there is minimal collateral damage.

Several militant groups have strongholds in the area, and often take advantage of the porous frontier to launch cross-border attacks on NATO and Afghan forces.

A Pakistani parliamentary committee recently demanded an end to drone strikes on Pakistani territory as part of its recommendations for a new direction of ties with Washington. (Reporting by Haji Mujtaba in MIRANSHAH and Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN; Writing by Mahawish Rezvi and Qasim Nauman; Editing by Chris Allbritton & Kim Coghill)

Jonah Goldberg, National Review
White Hispanic." That's how the New York Times, Reuters, and other media outlets have opted to describe George Zimmerman, a man who would simply be Hispanic if he hadn't shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The term, rarely if ever used before this tragedy, is necessary in telling the Martin story in a more comfortable way.What's the comfortable way? It's the way the blame for Martin's death belongs squarely at the feet of "the system." And "the system" is a white thing, don't you know?For instance, in a...

(Reuters) - The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.

BAMAKO, March 22 (Reuters) - Renegade Malian soldiers went on state television on Thursday to declare they had seized power and would look to hand over to a new, democratically elected government.

"The CNRDR ... has decided to assume its responsibilities by putting an end to the incompetent regime of Amadou Toumani Toure," Amadou Konare, spokesman for the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR) said, accusing Toure's government of failing to end rebellion in the north. (Reporting by David Lewis; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Louise Ireland)

MANAMA (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia wants Bahrain's government and opposition to resolve a political crisis that it fears could worsen because of the sectarian fallout of fighting in Syria and destabilize its Eastern Province, a diplomat and opposition politician said. Bahrain has been in turmoil since the Arab Spring protest movement first erupted a year ago. Clashes have become a daily occurrence, usually in districts populated by majority Shi'ite Muslims who have dominated the protests. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo are set to be nominated to lead the World Bank, sources with knowledge of emerging market efforts to find candidates said on Tuesday. The candidacies of Okonjo-Iweala and Ocampo, who have credentials as both economists and diplomats and according to sources the respective backing of Brazil and South Africa, pose a challenge to the United States, whose hold on the top post has never been contested. ...

AMMAN (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council, including Russia and China, threw its weight on Wednesday behind efforts by Kofi Annan to end the bloody conflict in Syria, providing a rare moment of global unity in the face of the year-long crisis. In a statement approved by all its 15 members, the council threatened Syria with unspecified "further steps" if it failed to comply with Annan's peace plan, which calls for a ceasefire and demands swift access for aid agencies. ...

(Reuters) - A school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents' blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates. After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "We're on our way right now," said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister George Osborne cut the top rate of income tax while imposing new levies on the wealthy, in a political high wire act designed to rejig the burden of austerity without wavering on plans to erase a huge budget deficit. Britain should avoid a renewed recession and while the recovery was set to remain modest this year, growth should pick up thereafter, Osborne told parliament in his annual budget statement on Wednesday. ...

(Reuters) - Quebec's government said on Wednesday it was considering legal action against both Air Canada and the federal government to keep operations going at the Montreal facility that services the airline's planes. The facility was once part of Air Canada's in-house maintenance unit and is now owned by private company Aveos Fleet Performance Inc. Aveos obtained bankruptcy protection on Monday and on Tuesday it ceased Canadian operations and laid off all of its Canadian employees. It had about 2,600 employees across the country, including 1,700 workers in Montreal. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. government scientist Stewart Nozette was once on the cutting edge of space exploration, but instead of resting on those laurels he will spend 13 years in prison for trying to sell some of his country's most closely guarded secrets. He once sketched on a napkin a concept for satellite technology that eventually helped confirm that there was water on the moon, but in 2009 Nozette sought to sell classified information to someone he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer but was an FBI agent in an undercover sting operation. ...