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Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would work with the new Ukrainian administration formed after a presidential election on Sunday that the Kiev government said on Saturday would anchor the ex-Soviet state to the West. In the eastern region where at least 20 people were killed in recent days, there was less violence, though in fighting near Slaviansk between pro-Moscow rebels and Ukrainian paratroopers, unconfirmed local media reports spoke of up to four deaths. The separatists reject an election run by a fascist "junta" in Kiev and national electoral officials said few ballot papers had yet been issued in two eastern regions with over 12 percent of the electorate, implying most there will be denied a vote.   true       Denouncing an "atmosphere of terror" directed against local electoral officials in the east, Europe's OSCE democracy agency pulled out most of the dozens of international monitors it had posted to Donetsk region out of fears for their secur

European elections reach their culmination on "Super Sunday" when the remaining 20 of the EU's 28 countries go to the polls, with the vote expected to confirm the dominance of pro-European centrists despite a rise in support for the far-right and left. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Germany , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> France , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Spain and Poland are among the major EU member states voting on Sunday, representing the bulk of the 388 million Europeans eligible to cast ballots and elect the 751 deputies to sit in the European Parliament from 2014-2019. After years of economic crisis, rising unemployment and poor growth, many Europeans have come to question the wisdom of ever-closer EU integration and are expected to vote for Eurosceptic parties on the right or left promising radical changes. Opinion polls suggest at least a quarter of seats in the parliament will go to anti-EU or protest groups, but at lea

Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was in a "safe place" on Saturday after being held by the army following a coup, an aide said, as opposition to the takeover grew among her supporters and pro-democracy activists. The army moved on Thursday after failing to forge a compromise in a power struggle between Yingluck's populist government and the royalist establishment, which brought months of sometimes violent unrest to Bangkok's streets. Consolidating its grip, the military dissolved the Senate on Saturday, the only legislative assembly still functioning in class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Thailand . It also sacked three senior security officials who were seen as close to the ousted government. The military detained Yingluck on Friday when she and about 150 other people, most of them political associates, were summoned to an army facility in Bangkok. More people were summoned over the weekend, including some outspoken academics and journalists.

Two women and a man were killed and one person seriously injured during a shooting at the Jewish Museum in central Brussels on Saturday, with Belgian officials saying anti-Semitic motives could not be ruled out. A spokeswoman for Brussels prosecutors office said there was no clear information about the perpetrator, although a fire brigade official said earlier that the shooter had driven up to the museum, gone inside and fired shots. "Regarding the motive, we have little information. Everything is possible," Ine Van Wymersch told a news conference. "We know that the location, the Jewish Museum in Brussels, makes one think of it being an anti-Semitic attack, but we do not have enough to confirm this is the case." Belgium's interior minister, Joëlle Milquet, was quoted by the RTBF Belgian television station, saying: "It's a shooting ... at the Jewish Museum ... All of this can lead to suspicions of an act of anti-Semitism." Israeli Prime Minis

A gunman killed six people and wounded seven others in a drive-by shooting in a Southern California college town, spraying bullets from his car until it crashed and he was found dead inside, authorities said on Saturday. Authorities were investigating a possible link between the Friday night shooting in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara and a threatening video posted online. In the YouTube video, which Santa Barbara Sheriff Bill Brown said appears to have been made by the suspected gunman, a young man bitterly complains of loneliness and rejection by women and says he plans to kill people. Witnesses to the violence reported seeing someone driving a black BMW through the streets and shooting at people in Isla Vista, a beachside community where many college students live. "It's obviously the work of a madman," Brown told a news conference. "There's going to be a lot more information that will come out that

Suspected Islamist Boko Haram gunmen rampaged through three villages in northern Nigeria, killing 28 people and burning houses to the ground in a pattern of violence that has become almost a daily occurrence, according to police and witnesses. All three attacks happened on Thursday in remote parts of Borno state, the epicenter of Boko Haram's increasingly bloody struggle for an Islamic kingdom in religiously mixed Nigeria. One took place right next to Chibok, by the Cameroon border, from where more than 200 school girls were abducted last month. The most deadly was in the town of Kerenua, near the Niger border. Scores of militants opened fire on residents, killing 20 of them, and burned houses, a police source said. Since the girls' abduction on April 14, at least 450 civilians have been killed by the group, according to a Reuters count. A spate of bombings across north and central Nigeria has killed hundreds, including two in the capital Abuja and one in the central cit

A crackdown on corruption and pricing in China's fast-growing pharmaceutical market has squeezed profits and margins, raising a red flag to global Big Pharma that the days of easy growth in the country may be over. A Reuters' analysis of more than 60 listed Chinese healthcare firms shows average profit margins declined to around 10 percent last year from 15 percent in 2012. Average net profits fell 2.1 percent, down from close to 20 percent growth in previous years. China has been a magnet for the big global pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare firms as growth slows in Europe and the United States. It is the largest emerging drugs market and is set to be the global number two overall within three years, according to consultancy IMS Health. While global drugmakers withhold their China profit figures, the analysis suggests profit growth is harder to come by - a concern as many global firms look to China as a future growth driver. "Most companies, local and for