| Latest crime news headlines from Yahoo India News. Find top stories, videos, pictures & in-depth coverage on crime news from national news section.
| Former NSA contractor Snowden expects to remain in Russia | |  Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who fled to Moscow last year after revealing details of massive U.S. intelligence-gathering programs, expects his asylum status in Russia to be renewed before it expires this summer, his lawyer said on Wednesday. Snowden and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who worked with Snowden to reveal NSA documents he took from his job, were given the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award to promote transparency and whistle-blowing, at a ceremony in Washington on Wednesday. Snowden appeared on a video link-up from Russia and Poitras appeared from Berlin. Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Snowden, said his temporary asylum in Russia will expire at the end of June but that "prospects are good" for it to be renewed.
|
| Iraqis vote as violence grips a divided country | |  By Ned Parker and Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq held a democratic vote to choose a leader with no foreign troops present for the first time on Wednesday, as Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought to hold power for a third term in a country again consumed by sectarian bloodshed. Since the last American soldiers pulled out in 2011, eight years after toppling dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq has descended back into extreme violence, with hundreds of civilians killed each month by al Qaeda-inspired Sunni insurgents, and with Shi'ite militia once more taking fearsome revenge. Voters chose from nearly 10,000 candidates for 328 seats in parliament, from political parties that range from zealous Islamists to liberals and communists. The commission hopes to declare final results by the end of May. Non-Shi'ite parties complained of obstacles to voting in the outer suburbs of Baghdad and saw in it a deliberate effort by Maliki to keep their numbers down in the next parliament.
|
| Ukraine's restive east slipping from government's grasp | |  By Marko Djurica HORLIVKA Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Moscow separatists seized government offices in more Ukrainian towns on Wednesday, in a further sign that authorities in Kiev are losing control of the country's eastern industrial heartland bordering Russia. Gunmen who turned up at dawn took control of official buildings in Horlivka, a town of almost 300,000 people, said a Reuters photographer. The heavily armed men wore the same military uniforms without insignia as other unidentified "green men" who have joined pro-Russian protesters with clubs and chains in seizing control of towns across Ukraine's Donbass coal and steel belt. Some 30 pro-Russian separatists also seized a city council building in Alchevsk, further east in Luhansk region, Interfax-Ukraine news agency said.
|
| Chile keeper cleared for World Cup after dodging jail | |  Goalkeeper Johnny Herrera will be eligible for Chile's World Cup squad after being given a suspended sentence for drink driving rather than a jail term, media reported on Wednesday. Herrera, a likely reserve for manager Jorge Sampaoli, was given a 150-day suspended sentence, a $740 fine and two year suspension from driving. He was caught driving over the alcohol limit during Chile's annual independence day celebrations in September 2012 despite an already existing suspension. The prosecution had pressed for the 33-year-old Universidad de Chile player to receive a two year jail sentence, newspaper La Tercera said.
|
| Modi in police trouble as election nears climax | |  By Aditi Shah AHMEDABAD India (Reuters) - Police opened an investigation against Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, tipped to be the next prime minister, after he flashed his party's symbol and made a speech in a violation of election rules after he cast his ballot. About 139 million people were registered to vote in the eighth round of a marathon contest pitting Modi against the ruling Congress party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Voting in his home state of Gujarat, the opposition leader, whose pro-business policies have delighted investors, brandished a white cutout of a lotus flower and made a scathing speech against Congress heavyweights - taunting them for shying away from the fight. The finance minister is not fighting the election.
|
| India among countries on U.S. piracy, patents blacklist | |  By Krista Hughes WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States named India and China on a watch list for countries that aren't doing enough to fight intellectual-property crimes, warning of trade-secret theft in China and the proliferation of generic drugs and counterfeiting in India. But the U.S. Trade Representative resisted lobbying by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and pharmaceutical industry to censure India with the 'worst offender' tag in its annual scorecard on how well countries protect U.S. patents, copyrights and other intellectual property (IP) rights. But the United States instead kept India on its Priority Watch List and urged the country, which is in the midst of elections, to take steps to address concerns and participate in a process of "constructive bilateral engagement." "The United States will redouble its efforts to seek opportunities for meaningful, sustained, and effective engagement on IP-related matters with the new government," the report said.
|
| Thai PM, Election Commission agree new vote in July, opposition defiant | |  By Amy Sawitta Lefevre BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's Election Commission and the prime minister agreed on Wednesday to hold a general election in July, but anti-government protesters who disrupted a vote in February said they still wanted to see electoral reforms before a new poll. The protesters have been trying to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra since November, part of a long-running crisis that broadly pits Bangkok's middle class and royalist establishment against the mainly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. "The prime minister and the Election Commission agree on a July 20 election," Puchong Nutrawong, secretary-general of the commission, told reporters after a meeting with Yingluck. He said the commission would ask the government to issue a royal decree and get the king's endorsement for the vote.
|
| Toppled 'mafia' president cost Ukraine up to $100 billion, prosecutor says | |  By Guy Faulconbridge, Anna Dabrowska and Stephen Grey LONDON (Reuters) - Ukraine's chief prosecutor has accused Viktor Yanukovich of heading a mafia-style syndicate whose crimes cost the former Soviet republic up to $100 billion and said some of the stolen money was now being used to fund Russian-backed separatists. Ex-President Yanukovich fled to Russia in late February after a revolt that prompted Vladimir Putin to annex Ukraine's Crimea province, triggering the biggest confrontation between the Kremlin and the West since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky said that while president from 2010, Yanukovich personally ran a multi-billion dollar criminal syndicate whose tentacles reached almost all walks of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian life. "Ex-President Viktor Yanukovich headed a mafia structure in Ukraine which spread across different state structures," Makhnitsky told Reuters in London on Tuesday after meeting U.S. and British officials about ways to recover stolen assets.
|
| Afghan govt says West holds prisoners illegally in south | | | By Hamid Shalizi and Jeremy Laurence KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan has accused British and U.S. forces of secretly holding Afghans in jail, saying one man had been held for more than two years while others had "disappeared", further souring ties between Kabul and its Western allies at a sensitive time. The latest dispute could complicate relations as Washington seeks to implement a security agreement allowing a small force to stay in the country for counter-terrorism and training purposes, a pact incumbent leader Hamid Karzai refuses to sign. The allegations, presented in a state-backed document obtained by Reuters, were made as Afghanistan prepares to induct a new president more than 12 years after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power. "This a clear violation of Afghanistan's sovereignty," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told Reuters. |
| Putin "walks the walk" over Ukraine but not as Obama wants | |  By Timothy Heritage MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin has "walked the walk" since the West imposed new sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, but not in the way Barack Obama intended. In a move that seemed designed to mock Obama's choice of words, state television lingered on Putin striding with knowing confidence across a vast hall to deliver his verdict on the sanctions to reporters during a visit to neighbouring Belarus. Completely unruffled, Putin denied U.S. charges that Russian troops are in Ukraine, blamed the crisis on the West and ratcheted up the war of words by warning that Moscow could bar some Western companies from involvement in Russia's economy. And Western Kremlin watchers remain deeply uneasy about forecasting just what the president might do next in Ukraine.
|
| Spanish police detain Alves banana thrower | |  Spanish police have detained the Villarreal supporter who threw a banana on the pitch near Barcelona defender Daniel Alves on Sunday and charged him with a "breach of fundamental rights and civil liberties". Images of Alves, a Brazil international, picking up the banana and taking a bite during the La Liga match were beamed around the world and he was widely backed by fellow players and other public figures who denounced the apparent racist taunt.
|
|
