LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday he believed Britain would maintain its coveted top credit rating and announced a pay freeze for senior civil servants and military officers to help tame a record deficit. Setting out his economic plans weeks before an election, Brown ...

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - Sporadic shooting rang out overnight in the central Nigerian city of Jos and witnesses said at least one person was killed by soldiers enforcing a curfew days after attacks on three nearby Christian villages. Jos, which lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and ...

LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged Afghans on Wednesday to push energetically for a peace settlement with Taliban insurgents and said Afghanistan's neighbors must support such an agreement. Miliband's conciliatory comments, in a speech to be given in the United ...

Rationing and blackouts have afflicted the South American oil exporter since late 2009, due mainly to a drought that has cut water levels at hydroelectric installations normally supplying more than two-thirds of power needs. The crisis may cause a second year of economic contraction in Venezuela ...

OSLO (Reuters) - A record 237 people and organizations have been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, with interest boosted by last year's award to President Barack Obama, organizers said on Wednesday. The world's media focused on the Peace Prize after Obama was the unexpected choice for what ...

CANBERRA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - A suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings was killed in a police raid in Indonesia in the latest blow to an Islamist militant movement in the world's most populous Muslim country. Dulmatin, who once trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was one of three militants ...

KABUL (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Defense Secretary Robert Gates traded barbs on Wednesday during briefly overlapping visits to Afghanistan, where Washington has troops at war but Tehran has growing clout. Ahmadinejad, who arrived as Gates was wrapping up a three-day ...

OGHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants stormed an office of a U.S.-based, Christian aid agency in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani aid workers after singling them out and then blowing up the building. Nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan is battling al Qaeda-linked ...

The Libyan foreign ministry "states that it accepts the apology and strong regret shown by the State Department," it said in a statement obtained by Reuters. The ministry said it "... welcomes resuming the exchange of visits between officials of the two countries and insists on its ...

(Writing by Cynthia Johnston)