World - Reuters

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran could consider sending its low-enriched uranium abroad, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, apparently softening its opposition to a U.N. plan aimed at keeping a check on its nuclear ambitions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.