World - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Belgian man pleaded guilty on Monday to charges of conspiring to illegally export F-5 fighter jet engines and parts from the United States to Iran, the Justice Department said.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran is not opposed to sending its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad but wants 100 percent guarantees of receiving higher-enriched fuel in return for a medical research reactor, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The world's first permanent war crimes court opens its second trial on Tuesday when two Congolese warlords face charges they ordered subordinates to attack civilians, rape women and enlist child soldiers.

ALMATY (Reuters) - The government of the Central Asian state of Tajikistan is failing to protect women from violence and abuse, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Tuesday executed two people for their role in a tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and further sullied the made-in-China brand.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand passed a tough security law on Tuesday, giving the military broad powers to control a street rally that begins this weekend by supporters of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A popular conservative newspaper critical of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been closed down for carrying a photograph of a temple of the banned Baha'i faith, media reported on Tuesday.

ZURICH (Reuters) -- Scientists have smashed together proton beams for the first time in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the French-Swiss border in an initial step toward discovering how the universe came into existence, they said on Monday.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus, according to a statement issued by the World Health Organization and the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament on Monday approved an amended law needed to hold an election next year, but the new text risks being vetoed a second time -- which could delay both the vote and next year's partial U.S. troop withdrawal.

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines declared a state of emergency in two southern provinces and in a nearby city on Tuesday, a day after at least 24 people were killed in election-related violence.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Israel has softened its terms for a prisoner swap with Hamas and the two are nearing a deal to exchange hundreds of jailed Palestinians for an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip, officials said on Monday.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan's King Abdullah has dissolved parliament halfway through its four-year term and called for early elections, state television reported Monday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Khartoum's U.N. envoy, rejecting a bleak U.N. assessment of the situation in Sudan's conflict-torn western Darfur region, said on Monday it was time for international peacekeepers to prepare to leave.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A forensics team has found the remains of a British journalist kidnapped by Palestinian militants in Lebanon 24 years ago, the British embassy said on Monday.

HEGANG, China (Reuters) - Relatives of victims of a gas blast at a mine in northeastern China scuffled with police and demanded answers from the owners on Monday as state media put the toll from the country's latest mine disaster at 104.

RIYADH (Reuters) - More than two million Muslims gather this week for the annual haj pilgrimage to Islam's holy city of Mecca, where Saudi authorities hope to minimize spread of the H1N1 virus and prevent any political demonstration.

KABUL (Reuters) - Two Afghan cabinet ministers are being investigated under suspicion of embezzlement, a deputy attorney general said on Monday, at a time when President Hamid Karzai faces tough Western pressure to clean up his government.

HANGU, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces, backed by tanks and artillery, attacked Taliban positions in the northwest of the country, killing 22 militants, a senior police official on Monday.