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Wife of Indian Minister Found Dead after Twitter Adultery Row

The wife of prominent Indian minister Shashi Tharoor was found dead Friday in a five-star hotel room in New Delhi after she exposed his alleged adultery with a Pakistani journalist on Twitter.

The body was discovered by human resources minister Shashi Tharoor after he returned from a party meeting on Thursday, his private secretary Abhinav Kumar said.

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Assange: Obama Surveillance Pledge Will Change Little

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday dismissed President Barack Obama's proposals to curb the reach of the National Security Agency (NSA), saying they would change very little.

In a speech intended to quell the furor over surveillance programs leaked by Edward Snowden, Obama said spy taps on friendly world leaders would be halted while foreigners caught in U.S. data mining would be given new protections.

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Massive Search for Missing British Three-Year-Old

Hundreds of volunteers searched around Edinburgh on Friday for a three-year-old boy who vanished from his bed.

Mikaeel Kular, who is of South Asian origin, was last seen on Wednesday evening when his mother Rosdeep put him to bed at their home to the north of the Scottish capital.

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Pakistan Attacks Kill Sunni Leader, News Channel Workers

Gunmen shot dead a senior sunni religious leader and two of his associates in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Friday, police said, while a separate attack killed three people who worked for a private television channel.

A spokesman for Karachi police said attackers sprayed bullets at the car of Usman Yar Khan, the provincial deputy chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a religious party headed by Sami Ul Haq known in the West as "father of the Taliban".

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California Declares Drought State of Emergency

California's worst drought in a century is devastating the state's agriculture and destroying its forestland, which is being consumed by wildfire, Governor Jerry Brown said Friday as he declared a state emergency.

The emergency declaration allows California to access federal help to battle the drought, which has left huge swathes of tinder-dry forest vulnerable to catching fire.

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U.S. Urges U.N. Force to Go after Rwandan Rebels in DR Congo

The United States on Friday urged the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo to "redouble its efforts" in the fight against Rwandan Hutu rebels in the restive east of the country.

U.S. special envoy to Africa's Great Lakes region, Russ Feingold, pointed to the success of Congolese troops backed by a U.N. intervention force in November in stopping the M23 rebel movement in eastern North Kivu province.

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Colombia's Santos Says Peace Deal Attainable this Year

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Friday he believes his government can reach a peace deal with leftist rebels this year, a day after a deadly bomb attack blamed on the guerrillas.

"I am convinced that if both parties continue to be willing, we are going to achieve peace -- a peace which will change this country," Santos said in a radio interview.

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EU May Revise Cuba Relations, Says Barroso

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said Friday the bloc may revise its relations with Cuba after a decade of friction over the communist island's human rights record.

The European Union suspended relations with Cuba in 2003 after the Cuban authorities threw 75 dissidents into jail, all of whom have since been released.

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Ukraine Protest Laws 'anti-Democratic,' Says Kerry

New laws "rammed through" the Ukraine parliament to curb protests are "anti-democratic," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday, adding that the legislation also violated EU norms.

"We believe deeply that the people of Ukraine want to affiliate, they want to be associated with Europe," Kerry said, noting the new laws "are anti-democratic, they're wrong, they are taking from the people of Ukraine, their choice and their opportunity for the future."

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Obama Clips NSA's Wings but Bulk Collection to Continue

President Barack Obama trimmed the powers of the secretive U.S. eavesdropping agency Friday by calling for new privacy safeguards, but allowed bulk phone data sweeps to continue as an anti-terror tool.

In a long-awaited speech outlining changes to programs exposed by Edward Snowden, Obama also said he had halted National Security Agency (NSA) spy taps targeting friendly world leaders.

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