Reuters World News Highlights at 0710 GMT, Apr 01
April 1 (Reuters) - TOP STORIES
-----------
SEOUL - South Korea will strike back if the North stages any attack on its territory, the new president warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighters.
- - - -
NICOSIA - Major depositors in Cyprus's biggest bank will lose around 60 percent of savings over 100,000 euros, its central bank confirmed on Saturday, sharpening the terms of a bailout that has shaken European banks but saved the island from bankruptcy.
- - - -
ROME - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano ruled out standing down early to make way for new parliamentary elections, after the failure of attempts to form a government this week, saying he would keep trying to find a way out of the deadlock.
- - - -
Exxon Mobil on Sunday continued cleanup of a pipeline spill that spewed thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian crude in Arkansas as opponents of oil sands development latched on to the incident to attack plans to build the Keystone XL line.
- - - -
CAIRO - An IMF delegation will arrive in Egypt on Wednesday for talks with the government on a $4.8 billion loan, a government spokesman said on Sunday, as Cairo seeks to conclude a deal vital to easing a deep economic crisis.
- - - -
BEIJING/SHANGHAI - Twenty minutes' drive from Shanghai's glitzy financial district, dozens of migrant workers are preparing to abandon homes in old shipping containers, as one of the more unusual solutions to China's housing shortage faces the wrecking ball.
- - - -
JOGAR, Pakistan - Some of the contraband is spirited across the mountains in Pepsi bottles carried by child smugglers. Yet more is loaded into pick-up trucks or siphoned into barrels and strapped onto mules. So lucrative are the returns that even seasoned opium traffickers are abandoning their traditional cargo to grab a share of Pakistan's closest thing to an oil boom: a roaring trade in illicit Iranian diesel.
- - - -
BERLIN - Germany's two main opposition parties traded warnings on Sunday against joining forces with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives after September's election if they fail to win their own left-of-centre majority.
- - - -
WASHINGTON - With U.S. business and labor now in agreement, a bipartisan group of senators has resolved all major issues in a pending deal to overhaul the U.S. immigration system and aims to unveil it after Congress reconvenes in the second week of April, key lawmakers said on Sunday.
- - - -
SHANGHANG COUNTY, China - When Zijin Mining Group threatened to move its headquarters some 270 kms from its home county of Shanghang to Xiamen on China's southeast coast, a local Communist Party boss rushed to confront the company's chairman Chen Jinghe. The exchange reflects the anxieties felt by regional governments as they consider the prospect of losing their biggest cash-cows.
- - - -
KABUL - One of Afghanistan's most surprising success stories lies tucked away on a potholed street notorious for suicide bombings and lined with rusting construction equipment. The work of the country's top tax collector is more inspiring than the view from his office in Kabul. Taxes and customs raised $1.64 billion last financial year, a 14-fold increase on 10 years ago.
- - - -
BAMAKO - Malian soldiers backed by French fighter jets battled Islamist rebels in Timbuktu on Sunday after insurgents used a car bomb as cover to infiltrate the northern desert town, sources said.
- - - -
JOHANNESBURG - The condition of South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela has improved further, the government said on Sunday, as the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero spent a fourth day in hospital receiving treatment for pneumonia.
- - - -
NAIROBI - Kenya's Supreme Court upheld Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential election victory on Saturday and his defeated rival accepted the ruling, helping douse tensions after tribal violence blighted the election five years ago.