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class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China has told its state-owned enterprises to sever links with American consulting firms just days after the United States charged five Chinese military officers with hacking U.S. companies, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. _0"> China's action, which targets companies like McKinsey & Company and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), stems from fears the firms are providing trade secrets to the U.S. government, the FT reported, citing unnamed sources close to senior Chinese leaders. "We haven't received any notification of this kind," said Margaret Kashmir, a spokeswoman for Strategy& - formerly Booz & Company - in an email, adding that serving clients in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> China and globally continues to be the company's main priority. "We are unaware of any government mandates," added Bain & Company spokeswoman Cheryl Krauss. A McKinsey spokeswoman did not

A 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town said in a chilling manifesto that police who knocked on his door last month to check on his welfare nearly foiled his plot. Elliot Rodger, the son of a Hollywood director, stabbed three people to death in his apartment before gunning down three more victims on Friday night in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). Rodger, who posted a threatening video railing against women online shortly before his rampage, stalked Isla Vista in his car and on foot, firing on bystanders in a killing spree that ended when he killed himself after a shootout with sheriff's deputies, police said. But less than a month before his attacks, after he had planned the killings and obtained the guns he would use, the community college student opened his door to a knock to find about seven officers looking for him. "I had the stri

Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West. A veteran survivor of Ukraine's feuding political class who threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor three months ago, the burly 48-year-old won 55 percent in exit polls on a first-round ballot marred by the reality that millions were unable to vote in the troubled eastern regions. Results will not be announced until Monday but runner-up Yulia Tymoshenko, on 13 percent, made clear she would concede, sparing the country a tense three weeks until a runoff round. Poroshenko, known as the "Chocolate King", has no time to lose to make good on pledges to end "war" with separatists in the Russian-speaking east, negotiate a stable new relationship with Moscow and rescue an class

President class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Sunday to visit U.S. forces who are wrapping up a 13-year mission and signaled that he intends to keep a small number of troops in the country for training and counter-terrorism operations. Cheers erupted among the hundreds of U.S. troops gathered in a Bagram hangar when Obama said that at the end of this year, "America's war in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Afghanistan will come to a responsible end." With Afghanistan immersed in a runoff election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, Obama did not meet Afghan government officials nor travel to the capital Kabul. Karzai has long been out of favor with Washington over his refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement to allow U.S. troops to stay beyond 2014. Obama's fourth visit to Afghanistan came as he faces criticism at home over a foreign policy often derided as too passive in dealin

Marine Le Pen's far right National Front scored a stunning first victory in European Parliament elections in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> France on Sunday as critics of the European Union registered a continent-wide protest vote against austerity and mass unemployment. Without waiting for the final result, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls went on television to call the breakthrough by the anti-immigration, anti-euro party in one of the EU's founding nations "an earthquake" for class="mandelbrot_refrag"> France and Europe. Anti-establishment far right and hard left parties, their scores magnified by another low turnout, gained ground in many countries although in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Germany , the EU's biggest member state with the largest number of seats, the pro-European center ground held firm, according to exit polls. A jubilant Le Pen, whose party beat President Francois Hollande's ruling Socialists in

Libya's new Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq won a vote of confidence from parliament on Sunday in defiance of a renegade former army general who has challenged the assembly's legitimacy. Maiteeq, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, was initially elected two weeks ago after a chaotic parliamentary session that some lawmakers had rejected as illegal. Libya's legislature is at the center of a growing standoff between rogue former general, Khalifa Haftar, with a loose alliance of anti-Islamist militias, and pro-Islamist factions positioning for influence in the North African country. The Europe Union's special envoy on Sunday called the crisis Libya's worst since the 2011 war ousted Muammar Gaddafi, with the fragile government struggling to control brigades of former rebels and militias who are now key powerbrokers. Lawmakers met on Sunday under heavy security to vote to approve Maiteeq's government, a week after militia forces claiming loyalty to Haftar attacked t

Opposition candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga won most votes in Colombia's presidential election on Sunday but fell short of a first-round victory and will face President Juan Manuel Santos in a runoff that casts doubts over peace talks with Marxist rebels. Zuluaga had 29.3 percent support and Santos trailed on 25.6 percent with returns in from almost 99 percent of voting tables. They had needed more then 50 percent for victory so will now go to a runoff on June 15. The election was largely seen as a plebiscite on Santos' strategy of negotiating a peace deal with Marxist guerrillas to end a 50-year-old war that has killed some 200,000 people. Zuluaga, a right-wing former class="mandelbrot_refrag"> finance minister, accuses Santos of pandering to terrorists and has suggested he would scrap the peace talks in favor of U.S.-backed military campaigns similar to those led by his mentor, former President Alvaro Uribe. "Security is important to us; we are 100 perce