Reuters World News Highlights at 0650 GMT, Dec 24
Dec 24 (Reuters) - TOP STORIES
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BEIRUT - Dozens of people were killed and many more wounded in a Syrian government air strike that hit a bakery where a crowd was queuing for bread on Sunday, activists said.
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Haji Khairullah Barakzai is the ultimate Afghan success story: illiterate village boy makes a fortune thanks to a lifetime of hard work, unerring street smarts and God's favour. But to the U.S. Treasury Department, he is one of the biggest bankers to the Taliban.
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KABUL - Pakistan is genuine about backing the nascent Afghan peace process and shares the Kabul government's goal of transforming the Taliban insurgency into a political movement, a senior Afghan government official told Reuters.
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WASHINGTON - Some U.S. lawmakers voiced concern on Sunday that the country would go over the "fiscal cliff" in nine days, triggering harsh spending cuts and tax hikes, and some Republicans charged that was President Barack Obama's goal.
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ROME - Two days after stepping down, Mario Monti announced on Sunday he would consider seeking a second term as Italian prime minister if approached by allies committed to backing his austere brand of reforms.
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NEW DELHI - Sonia Gandhi, the usually reserved and poised leader of India's ruling Congress party, leapt from her front-bench seat in parliament last week to grab back a document that a lawmaker had snatched from a government minister's hands. It illustrated the vulnerability of a government now reduced to a minority in parliament.
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MOSCOW - Arms sales will be on the agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin visits India on Monday to court a country that has traditionally been a top client.
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NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed for calm on Monday as he sought to tamp down growing public outrage over the gang rape of a young woman that led to clashes between police and protesters in the heart of the capital at the weekend.
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CAIRO - An Islamist-backed Egyptian constitution won approval in a referendum, rival camps said on Sunday, after a vote the opposition said would sow deep social divisions in the Arab world's most populous nation.
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WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Friday nominated John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling the veteran U.S. senator the "perfect choice" for America's top diplomat as he began reshaping his national security team for a second term.
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ISLAMABAD - Pakistani health worker Bushra Bibi spent eight years trekking to remote villages, carefully dripping polio vaccine into toddlers' pursed mouths to protect them from the crippling disease. Now she is too scared to go to work after masked men on motorbikes gunned down nine of her fellow health workers in a string of attacks this week.
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HANOI - As tensions between Beijing and Hanoi escalate over the South China Sea, Vietnamese anti-China protesters who face repeated police crackdowns are finding a new form of political expression: soccer.