Reuters World News Highlights at 1715 GMT, Apr 05
April 5 (Reuters) - TOP STORIES
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LONDON/SEOUL - North Korea has asked embassies to consider moving staff out and warned it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats after April 10, Britain said, amid high tension and a war of words on the Korean peninsula.
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ALMATY - Iran appeared to side-step responding to proposals by world powers to defuse tensions over its nuclear programme at talks in Kazakhstan on Friday, diplomats said, and instead came up with its own plan - a measure of the gulf between the two sides.
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SHANGHAI/HONG KONG - Chinese authorities slaughtered over 20,000 birds at a poultry market in Shanghai on Friday as the death toll from a new strain of bird flu mounted to six, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off in airline shares in Europe and Hong Kong.
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WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama will offer cuts to Social Security and other benefits programs in a budget proposal next week aimed at winning over enough congressional Republicans to pass a broad deal to reduce the deficit.
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NEW YORK - A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make "morning-after" emergency contraception pills available without a prescription to all girls of reproductive age, while blasting top Obama administration officials for interfering with the process.
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BAMAKO - France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius laid out plans to start withdrawing French troops from Mali before elections in July on a visit to the West African nation on Friday, despite a recent spate of attacks by Islamist rebels.
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HARARE - A Zimbabwean judge who ordered police to free prominent human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa last month is being investigated for misconduct, state media reported on Friday.
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GAZA - Islamist group Hamas on Friday urged a United Nations agency to resume its operations in the Gaza Strip, accusing the world body of over-reacting by shutting down after its headquarters was stormed by demonstrators.
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GENEVA - The United Nations gave its starkest warning yet on Friday that it would soon run out of cash to cope with the vast influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and other neighbouring countries.