Reuters World News Highlights 1000 GMT, April 3
PAJU - North Korea closed access to a joint factory zone with South Korea on Wednesday, officials said, putting at risk $2 billion a year in trade that is vital for an impoverished state with a huge army, nuclear ambitions and a hungry population.
- - - -
JERUSALEM - Israel pressed Hamas on Wednesday to rein in rocket-firing militants in the Gaza Strip after the most serious outbreak of cross-border hostilities since a ceasefire ended an eight-day war in November.
- - - -
BEIJING - Chinese authorities reported four new cases on Tuesday of a strain of bird flu previously unknown in humans that has already killed two people, taking the total of known cases to seven.
- - - -
CAIRO - A delegation from the International Monetary Fund has arrived in Egypt for talks on a $4.8 billion loan to ease an economic crisis in the most populous Arab country, state news agency MENA said on Wednesday.
- - - -
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will launch a fundraising drive for the 2014 U.S. mid-term elections on Wednesday with addresses to deep-pocketed donors in California, hoping the Democratic Party can defy the odds and gain congressional seats in the polls.
- - - -
KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak dissolved parliament on Wednesday, paving the way for a general election expected this month that could be the most closely contested his ruling coalition has faced in its 56-year rule.
- - - -
MOSCOW - Russian officials have until July 1 to get rid of financial assets abroad as part of President Vladimir Putin's campaign to stem corruption and capital flight, his chief of staff said on Tuesday.
- - - -
SABANETA, Venezuela - Venezuelan acting President Nicolas Maduro made a pilgrimage to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez's birthplace on Tuesday and pledged to win the April 14 election in his honor.
- - - -
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis, who has said he wants the Catholic Church to be a model of austerity and honesty, could restructure or even close the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of its troubled bureaucracy, Vatican sources say.
- - - -
BRUSSELS - Crunch talks aimed at ending the ethnic partition of Serbia's former Kosovo province broke up without result on Wednesday, in a major setback for Serbia's hopes of starting European Union membership negotiations this year.
- - - -
KAMPALA - Uganda has suspended the hunt for fugitive warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army fighters, blaming hostility towards foreign troops by Central African Republic rebels who seized power last month.
- - - -
SAO PAULO - Prosecutors charged four people with manslaughter on Tuesday for their roles in the Jan. 27 nightclub fire that killed 241 people in southern Brazil, saying they overlooked grave safety irregularities.