TOP STORIES
-----------
NEW YORK - IMF chief and possible French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken into police custody and is expected to be charged on Sunday with an alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid in New York City, police said.
- - - -
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's parliament condemned on Saturday the U.S raid that killed Osama bin Laden, warning Pakistan might cut supply lines to U.S. forces in Afghanistan if there were further military incursions.
- - - -
TRIPOLI - Tears, chants and volleys of gunfire fired into the air punctuated the funeral for nine imams Libya said NATO killed in an air strike, but the alliance said the building it struck was a command-and-control centre.
- - - -
MORGANZA, Louisiana - U.S. Army engineers on Saturday opened a key spillway to allow the swollen Mississippi River to flood thousands of homes and crops but spare New Orleans and Louisiana's capital Baton Rouge.
- - - -
AMMAN - Three people were killed after Syrian troops and gunmen entered the town of Tel Kelakh on Saturday, a rights campaigner said, and hundreds fled what they said was fierce fighting into neighbouring Lebanon.
- - - -
SANAA - Gunmen in plain clothes opened fire repeatedly on protesters in Yemen's southern city of Taiz on Saturday, wounding 35 people, a doctor said, and a Gulf envoy arrived to try to revive a plan to end the crisis.
- - - -
ATHENS - EU and IMF inspectors are pushing Greece to fully privatise public utilities in exchange for the release of its next tranche of aid and a possible extra loan, Greek newspapers wrote on Saturday without naming sources.
- - - -
ROME - Local elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday will show whether a sex scandal, three corruption trials and a stagnating economy have seriously damaged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi two years before the end of his term.
- - - -
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the oil minister and two other ministers on Saturday, news agency ISNA reported.
- - - -
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama, under pressure from Republicans and the public to bring down gasoline prices, announced new measures on Saturday to expand domestic oil production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
- - - -
NEW YORK - North Korea and Iran appear to have been regularly exchanging ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Saturday.
- - - -
MINSK - One of President Alexander Lukashenko's main political opponents was sentenced on Saturday to five years in a high-security jail after being convicted of helping to organise a rally against the leader's re-election.
- - - -
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haiti's pop star-turned-president, Michel Martelly, asked his people on Saturday to join him in rebuilding their poor, earthquake-ravaged nation and said he would work to provide jobs, health and education.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.