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The United States said on Saturday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges. Legal sources say Snowden, who is believed to be hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance activities to news media.   "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" to bring Snowden back to America to face trial and expected Hong Kong to comply with its extradition treaty. "We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of S

The governor of Egypt's Luxor province, controversially appointed despite belonging to a hardline Islamist group that massacred 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997, will step down on Sunday "for the sake of Egypt", the group said. President Mohamed Mursi of the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood infuriated many last Monday with his appointment of Adel Mohamed al-Khayat, reaching out for a political alliance with the more radical al-Gamaa al-Islamiya ahead of a big wave of opposition-led protests expected to start on June 30.   But al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, which has renounced violence, appeared to want to show that it could put Egypt's needs first - especially the tourist industry, a mainstay of the economy that has suffered badly in two years of unrest. Safwat Abdel Ghani, one of the group's leaders, was quoted by the state-owned Al-Ahram news website as saying the governor would announce his resignation on Sunday. Sources in the cabinet and the presidency said they

The United States said on Saturday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges. Legal sources say Snowden, who is believed to be hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance activities to news media.   "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" to bring Snowden back to America to face trial and expected Hong Kong to comply with its extradition treaty. "We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of S

There is ample liquidity in China and the latest spike in money market rates was a result of market distortions caused by widespread speculative trading and shadow financing, state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary on Sunday. China's central bank faced down the country's cash-hungry banks on Friday, letting interest rates again spike to extraordinary levels of some 25 percent for some banks as it stepped up the pressure to contain rampant informal lending.   Comments from Xinhua confirm analysts' suspicions that the central bank's funding squeeze is aimed at reducing non-bank lending, or shadow banking, which has boomed in recent years. The cash crunch engineered by the central bank was intended as a warning to over-extended banks but has also fed fears that a miscalculation could trigger a full-blown crisis. Xinhua said there was sufficient liquidity in the market, with data showing broad M2 money supply rose 15.8 percent in May from a year earlier, and th

At least 15 people were killed in a grenade attack on Sunday in a remote village in northern Kenya where low-key clan clashes have displaced hundreds of people in the past week, the Kenya Red Cross and local officials said. Pastoralist communities in northern Kenya have long wrangled over the control of highly valuable grazing land.   But the fighting, in which more than 20 villagers have been killed in the past two days in Mandera county, near the east African nation's frontier with Ethiopia and Somalia, has marked an escalation in tension. Residents say the political class in the area are using clan militia to jostle for top positions in the local administration and to settle old scores. The epicenter of the fighting is located about 800 km from the capital Nairobi. "The attackers fled towards Ethiopia but they are being pursued," said Mandera county commissioner Michael Tailel, of the militia who attacked Joroqo village in Mandera county. The Kenya Red Cross sa

Scattered protests took place in dozens of Brazilian cities on Saturday, although fewer people took to the streets in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, where vandalism and clashes with police have rocked the country in recent days. Demonstrators, a mainstay outside stadiums as Brazil hosts an international soccer tournament, largely steered clear of a Brazil- Italy match in the northeastern city of Salvador - a relief for fans who have had to dodge clashes between protesters and police at several games over the past week.   But tensions flared outside another game between Mexico and Japan in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, where riot police fired tear gas at protesters after they overstepped a perimeter and moved toward the stadium. The game proceeded without further incidents. Other gatherings around the country unfolded mostly peacefully, with an estimated 30,000 protesters marching on Sao Paulo's main avenue against a bill in Congress that would limit the p

Police have removed a flagpole from the Taliban's office in Qatar, an official said on Sunday, expunging the last visible sign of official decoration that riled the Afghan government and derailed nascent peace talks. The Taliban was due to hold discussions with U.S. officials in Qatar last Thursday - originally raising hopes the meeting could develop into full-blown negotiations to end Afghanistan's 12-year-old war.   But the session was cancelled when the Afghan government objected to the fanfare surrounding the militants' opening of an office in the Gulf state, complete with flag and official plaques. Kabul said the regalia gave the mistaken impression the militants - who ruled Afghanistan until they were ousted by the U.S. offensive starting in 2001 - had achieved some measure of global recognition. The flag and a plaque were removed late last week amid frantic diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute. The flagpole was no longer visible at the building on Sunday.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan piled ridicule on activists behind weeks of protests against his government during a rally on Sunday and defended riot police who fired water cannon at crowds in Istanbul a day earlier. Looking out of over a sea of Turkish flags waved by his AK Party faithful in the eastern city of Erzurum, Erdogan praised his supporters and the general public for opposing what he called a plot against his country. "The people saw this game from the start and frustrated it. They (the protesters) thought the people would say nothing. They said we will burn and destroy and do what we want but the people will do nothing," he said. Sunday's mass rally was the fifth which Erdogan has called since protests began in Istanbul in an unprecedented challenge to his 10-year rule. The unrest was triggered when police used force against campaigners opposed to plans to develop Istanbul's Gezi Park, but they quickly turned into a broader show of anger at wh

Gunmen stormed a mountaineering base camp in northern Pakistan on Sunday and shot dead nine foreign trekkers and a Pakistani guide as they rested during an arduous climb up one of the world's tallest peaks, police said. The night-time raid - which killed five Ukrainians, three Chinese and a Russian - was among the worst attacks on foreigners in Pakistan in a decade and underscored the growing reach of militants in a highland region once considered secure.   One of the victims also held a U.S. passport, a U.S. official said, without giving further details. Police said a 15-strong gang of attackers wearing uniforms used by a local paramilitary force arrived at about 1 a.m. at a group of tents and ramshackle huts used by hikers scaling the flanks of the snow-covered 8,125-metre Nanga Parbat peak. The assailants shot dead a Pakistani guard and held other workers at gunpoint, a senior official from the northern Gilgit-Baltistan province said. A Chinese climber managed to escape.

Albania's ruling party and opposition traded claims of victory on Sunday in a parliamentary election watched closely by Western allies worried about the state of democracy in the NATO country. After a vote marred by a fatal shootout, opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama called on Prime Minister Sali Berisha to "prepare the transition" after two consecutive terms at the helm of the ex-communist Adriatic nation. "Our data says we won over the forces of destruction," Rama told cheering supporters at his party headquarters. He gave no figures and Berisha's Democratic Party swiftly disputed the claim. Two exit polls gave conflicting results and such surveys have not proved accurate in the past.   "I assure you it is our full belief that Albanians voted convincingly for our alliance," senior Democrat lawmaker Majlinda Bregu told supporters. The claim and counter-claim, in the absence of any official word from the Central Election Commission,

Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama's foreign policy has rested on outreach: resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela. But the global travels on Sunday of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden highlight the limits of that approach. Leaders Obama has wooed - and met recently - were willing to snub the American president.   The cocky defiance by so-called "non-state actors" - Snowden himself and the anti-secrecy group, WikiLeaks, completes the picture of a world less willing than ever to bend to U.S. prescriptions of right and wrong. Snowden flew out of Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, early on Sunday after Hong Kong authorities rebuffed a U.S. request to detain him pending extradition to the United States for trial. Snowden has acknowledged leaking details of highly classified NSA surveillance programs. Beijing may m

Former South African president Nelson Mandela's condition deteriorated to "critical" on Sunday, the government said, two weeks after the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader was admitted to hospital with a lung infection. The worsening of his condition is bound to concern South Africa's 53 million people, for whom Mandela remains the architect of a peaceful transition to democracy in 1994 after three centuries of white domination.   A government statement said President Jacob Zuma and the deputy leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Cyril Ramaphosa, visited Mandela in his Pretoria hospital, where doctors said his condition had gone downhill in the last 24 hours. "The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well looked after and is comfortable," it said, referring to him by his clan name. Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president after historic all-race electio

Syrian rebels battled President Bashar al-Assad's forces in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, seeking to reverse gains made by loyalist forces in the commercial hub over the last two months, activists said. The fighting, by a variety of insurgent groups, happened as France urged moderate rebels to wrest territory back from radical Islamists whose role in the fight to topple Assad poses a dilemma for Western countries concerned that arms shipments could fall into the hands of people it considers terrorists.   The 11 Western and Arab countries known as the "Friends of Syria " agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to the rebels, channeled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council in a bid to prevent arms getting to Islamist radicals. But radical forces showed they remained formidable on Sunday when the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham brigade detonated a car bomb at a roadblock at an entrance to Aleppo killing at least 12 loyalist soldiers,

Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges. In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."   Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: "The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden." It was a blow to Obama's foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China . The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama. The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned

Police have removed a flagpole from the Taliban's office in Qatar, an official said on Sunday, expunging the last visible sign of official decoration that riled the Afghan government and derailed nascent peace talks. The Taliban was due to hold discussions with U.S. officials in Qatar last Thursday - originally raising hopes the meeting could develop into full-blown negotiations to end Afghanistan's 12-year-old war.   But the session was canceled when the Afghan government objected to the fanfare surrounding the militants' opening of an office in the Gulf state, complete with flag and official plaques. Kabul said the regalia gave the mistaken impression the militants - who ruled Afghanistan until they were ousted by the U.S. offensive starting in 2001 - had achieved some measure of global recognition. The flag and a plaque were removed late last week amid frantic diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute. The flagpole was no longer visible at the building on Sunday.

Since his first day in office, President Barack Obama's foreign policy has rested on outreach: resetting ties with Russia, building a partnership with China and offering a fresh start with antagonistic leaders from Iran to Venezuela. But the global travels on Sunday of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden highlight the limits of that approach. Leaders Obama has wooed - and met recently - were willing to snub the American president.   The cocky defiance by so-called "non-state actors" - Snowden himself and the anti-secrecy group, WikiLeaks, completes the picture of a world less willing than ever to bend to U.S. prescriptions of right and wrong. Snowden flew out of Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, early on Sunday after Hong Kong authorities rebuffed a U.S. request to detain him pending extradition to the United States for trial. Snowden has acknowledged leaking details of highly classified NSA surveillance programs. Beijing may m

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan piled ridicule on activists behind weeks of protests against his government during a rally on Sunday and defended riot police who fired water cannon at crowds in Istanbul a day earlier. Looking out of over a sea of Turkish flags waved by his AK Party faithful in the eastern city of Erzurum, Erdogan praised his supporters and the general public for opposing what he called a plot against his country.   "The people saw this game from the start and frustrated it. They (the protesters) thought the people would say nothing. They said we will burn and destroy and do what we want but the people will do nothing," he said. Sunday's mass rally was the fifth which Erdogan has called since protests began in Istanbul in an unprecedented challenge to his 10-year rule. The unrest was triggered when police used force against campaigners opposed to plans to develop Istanbul's Gezi Park, but they quickly turned into a broader show of anger at

Syrian rebels battled President Bashar al-Assad's forces in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, seeking to reverse gains made by loyalist forces in the commercial hub over the last two months, activists said. The fighting, by a variety of insurgent groups, happened as France urged moderate rebels to wrest territory back from radical Islamists whose role in the fight to topple Assad poses a dilemma for Western countries concerned that arms shipments could fall into the hands of people it considers terrorists.   The 11 Western and Arab countries known as the "Friends of Syria " agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to the rebels, channeled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council in a bid to prevent arms getting to Islamist radicals. But radical forces showed they remained formidable on Sunday when the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham brigade detonated a car bomb at a roadblock at an entrance to Aleppo killing at least 12 loyalist soldiers,