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Revived Afghan peace talks hit their first roadblock on Wednesday, a day after they were announced, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his government would not join U.S. talks with the Taliban and would halt negotiations with Washington on a post-2014 troop pact. The United States and the Taliban had announced on Tuesday that officials from both sides will meet in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in coming days, in a step forward for a stuttering peace process after 12 years of bloody and costly war between U.S.-led forces and the insurgents. But the precise timing of the negotiations was uncertain on Wednesday as U.S. officials worked furiously to keep the nascent peace talks on track. Officials of Karzai's government, angered by the opening of a Taliban political office in Doha on Tuesday, said the United States had violated assurances it would not give official status to the insurgents. "As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not par

North Carolina's governor, hoping to resume executions in his state, on Wednesday signed the repeal of a law that has allowed death row inmates to seek a reduced sentence if they could prove racial bias affected their punishment. The Racial Justice Act, the only law of its kind in the United States, had led to four inmates getting their sentences changed to life in prison without parole after taking effect in 2009. Supporters said the historic measure addressed the state's long record of racial injustice in its capital punishment system, while critics said it caused unnecessary costs and delays after nearly all death-row inmates, including whites, sought relief under the act. Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, said repealing the law would remove the "procedural roadblocks" that had kept North Carolina from executing anyone since 2006 despite there being 152 people on death row.   "The state's district attorneys are nearly unanimous in their bipartisan

A year after Facebook Inc's fumbled IPO, Wall Street remains slow to recognize what Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg argues has been an across-the-board improvement in its business. Facebook's ability to deliver ads to mobile phones, improvements in measuring the effectiveness of its ads and increasing user engagement have all put the world's largest social network in a better position than before the IPO, Sandberg told the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Wednesday.   "When I look back at the last year since we went public, I believe we are unequivocally a much stronger company today than we were on literally any metric I can think of," Sandberg said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Wednesday. Facebook became the first U.S. technology company to debut with a value of more than $100 billion, in May 2012. Its shares have lost almost 40 percent of their value since. "I can't speak to the stock price but I do feel strongly that we

Tropical Storm Barry, the second of the Atlantic hurricane season, strengthened as it churned toward Mexico on Wednesday, threatening to bring heavy rains to oil and power installations near the country's Gulf coast. The Minatitlan oil refinery of state oil monopoly Pemex and the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant, both in Veracruz state, are being monitored closely, said Noemi Zoila, head of the local government's emergency services. Mexico's three major Gulf coast oil export terminals - Coatzacoalcos, Cayo Arcas and Dos Bocas - closed on Wednesday because of heavy rain and reduced visibility.   Barry was about 40 miles (60 km) east-northeast of the port of Veracruz, moving at 6 miles per hour (9 kph) as it approached land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm's maximum sustained winds were 45 mph (75 kph), the center added, and a tropical storm warning was in effect along a costal stretch from Tuxpan to Punta El Lagarto. The biggest impact was expec

Courts in China's far western region of Xinjiang have sentenced 19 ethnic Uighurs to up to six years in jail for promoting racial hatred and religious extremism online, in the latest crackdown on what China sees as violent separatists. _0"> All but one of those jailed were from the heavily Uighur southern part of Xinjiang, including eight from the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, the official Legal Daily reported on its website.   Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who call energy-rich Xinjiang home, chafe at Chinese government restrictions on their culture, language and religion. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China says it grants them wide-ranging freedoms. In one of the cases, the suspect went on illegal websites to download material which "whipped up religious fervor and preached 'holy war'" and "whipped up ethnic enmity", the Legal Daily said in its report late on Wednesday. "This created a despicable effect o

A U.S. congressman who has been blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng's main champion in Washington said people working for New York University have tried to keep him from meeting Chen, barging into a meeting on Capitol Hill and pulling Chen out on one occasion. U.S. Representative Chris Smith, an outspoken supporter of Chinese dissidents since the 1980s, described repeated instances of various people he says were from NYU interfering in his attempts to meet with Chen. NYU spokesman John Beckman in an email vigorously disputed the assertion that its representatives may have been involved in improper interference or control of Chen during his meetings with lawmakers and others, stressing that anyone present was there to help Chen at his request.   The encounters took place both in Washington and at NYU. Chen has been a research fellow at NYU Law School since he flew to the United States in May 2012 after he escaped from house arrest in his village in Shandong province and too

The Syrian boys looked edgy and awkward. Three months ago their town, the eastern desert city of Raqqa, had fallen to rebel fighters trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's government. Now the four boys - clad in tight jeans and bright T-shirts - were whitewashing a wall to prepare it for revolutionary graffiti. "We'll make this painting about the role of children in the revolution," one of the boys told two journalists.   A white Mitsubishi pulled up and a man in camouflage trousers and a black balaclava jumped out and demanded that the journalists identify themselves. He was from the Islamic State of Iraq, he said, the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda linked to an Islamist group fighting in Syria called Jabhat al-Nusra. The boys kept quiet until the man pulled away, and then started talking about how life has changed in the city of around 250,000 people since the Islamists planted their flag at the former governor's nearby offices. "They want an Islamic