* Succession will not change foreign, domestic policy * Qatar's emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said on Tuesday he was transferring power to his son, Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim, taking the rare step for a Gulf Arab ruler of voluntarily ceding power to try to ensure a smooth succesion. In a seven-minute speech aired
More
A Milan court sentenced former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday to seven years in jail and banned him from public office after finding him guilty of paying for sex with a minor and abusing his powers of office to cover up the affair. The verdict adds to mounting complications facing Prime Minister Enrico
More
* Wants to dispose of Russia, Ukraine assets; To surprise with Q1 2014 results * New bank will be smaller; Focus on core business; Russia experiment failed ANALYSIS It was a briefing like no other: media spread out along a U-shaped panel with the new CEO and chairman in the middle, taking questions of all
More
Russia defied White House pressure on Monday to expel former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to the United States before he flees Moscow on the next stop of his globe-crossing escape from prosecution. Snowden, whose exposure of secret U.S. government surveillance raised questions about intrusions into private lives, was allowed to leave Hong Kong
More
The U.S. central bank's plans to scale back its money printing, combined with tighter financial conditions in China, lifted the dollar on Monday, but sent bonds, shares and commodities lower. U.S. stock futures pointed to Wall Street joining the falls, adding to the drop the major indexes have already suffered. The declines stem from Federal
More
Lebanese soldiers fought Sunni Islamist gunmen in the southern city of Sidon for a second day on Monday in one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence fuelled by sectarian rifts over the civil war in neighbouring Syria. The Lebanese army entered a mosque complex to the east of the ancient Mediterranean port city, where hardline
More
China's Tsinghua University, revealed by an American spy agency contractor to be a target of U.S. surveillance programmes, is home to the country's oldest Internet hub and routes traffic from tens of millions of users. The alma mater of many of China's top leaders including President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao, Tsinghua's campus
More
The European Union is on the verge of scrapping a new round of membership talks with Turkey, a move that would further undermine Ankara's already slim hopes of joining the bloc anytime soon and damage its relations with Brussels. Germany, the EU's biggest economic power, is blocking efforts to revive Turkey's EU membership bid, partly
More
Greece's recent government crisis and failure to meet privatisation targets will not derail an international bailout, said Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. His government saw its parliamentary majority sharply reduced on Friday after the small Democratic Left party left the ruling coalition to protest against an abrupt shutdown of the state broadcaster ERT. Samaras told the
More
European Union negotiators gathered on Monday for talks to finalise reforms of the bloc's 50 bln euro-a-year farm policy that could remove almost half of the subsidies now given to some of its largest grain and livestock producers. Many of the proposals are meant to make the 50-year-old common agricultural policy (CAP) more fair and
More