World - Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli prisoner exchange with Hamas has not yet been agreed and may not happen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, after a senior cabinet colleague predicted a breakthrough within weeks.

COTONOU (Reuters) - Pirates attacked an oil tanker off Benin, killing a Ukrainian crew member and stealing the contents of the ship's safe, the head of the West African country's navy said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will be unable to hold a national election in January as planned, a poll official said on Tuesday, heaping more uncertainty on a vote meant to cement democracy and pave the way for a partial U.S. troop withdrawal.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Opposition parties and the Jewish community criticized a visit by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Venezuela, citing worries over his denial of the Holocaust, human rights violations and Iran's nuclear program.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank will start a trust fund to boost agriculture in poor countries with an initial $1.5 billion, its president Robert Zoellick said on Tuesday, warning of the risk of another food price crisis.

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.

LANDIKOTAL, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani soldiers killed 18 militants on Tuesday in a campaign to break a network orchestrating attacks on Western forces' supplies to Afghanistan and carrying out bombings, a security official said.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization is looking into reports in Britain and the United States that the H1N1 flu may have developed resistance to Tamiflu in people with severely suppressed immune systems, a spokesman said Tuesday.

ROME (Reuters) - The escort at the heart of a sex scandal involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave graphic details of their alleged lovemaking in a book published on Tuesday and said she had been attacked and threatened since.

AMPATUAN, Philippines (Reuters) - The Philippines placed two southern provinces and a city under emergency rule on Tuesday after gunmen killed 46 people in a brutal election-related massacre that has shocked the country.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Two Congolese militia leaders commanded forces that raped, killed and looted civilians in an attack that killed 200 people during the Congo war, a war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck northeast of the South Pacific island nation of Tonga on Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey said, but a destructive tsunami was not expected.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has accepted an Arab League request to calm tension between Egypt and Algeria sparked by their soccer World Cup play-off matches, Libyan state media reported Tuesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has built the world's biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - An estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus, up from 33 million in 2007, but more people are living longer due to the availability of drugs, according to a United Nations report.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A police investigator and a court bailiff were found beheaded in a car trunk in Russia's mainly Muslim region of Kabardino-Balkaria, Interfax said on Tuesday, underscoring spreading violence on Russia's southern flank.

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.

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.