CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police angered by the kidnapping of seven colleagues by Islamist gunmen kept a crossing into the Gaza Strip closed again on Saturday, stranding hundreds of Palestinian travelers, witnesses said.

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Fighting has broken out in northern Mali between Tuareg separatists and local Arab-led gunmen, only days after the African country won a $4.2 billion aid pledge to help it recover from a conflict with Islamists affiliated to al Qaeda.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings.

ROME (Reuters) - Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc said on Saturday that rockfalls were hampering rescue efforts after a tunnel collapse four days ago at its giant Indonesian copper mine, with hopes fading of finding alive any of the 23 still missing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on Friday defended her government's record on good governance and transparency, following an independent audit that cast doubt on her anti-corruption efforts.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday appointed former Dutch development minister Albert Gerard Koenders as U.N. special envoy for Mali and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the West African country.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Several government websites in Saudi Arabia were sabotaged in a series of heavy cyber attacks from abroad in recent days, disabling them briefly until the attacks were repelled, the government said.

PARIS (Reuters) - Turkey's achievement of investment-grade status crowns a decade of rapid growth, financial stability and political reform by a "tiger" economy on the seam of Europe and Asia, but the rising power still faces pitfalls in a dangerous neighborhood.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - After a 25-year legal battle, Canada has finally deported a Palestinian convicted of an attack on an Israeli airliner in 1968, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said on Monday.

DHAKA (Reuters) - Major U.S. retailers, including Gap Inc, declined to endorse an accord on Bangladesh building and fire safety backed by Europe's two biggest fashion chains, a trans-Atlantic divide that may dilute garment industry reform efforts.

LONDON (Reuters) - If anyone saw last week's U.S.-Russian agreement to convene a peace conference on Syria as a potential breakthrough, Western leaders have been going out of their way to disabuse them.

BISHKEK (Reuters) - An emotional Kyrgyzstan president on Tuesday said "mob rule" had wrecked the sale of a gold field, blaming local clans for tripling the asking price and scaring off investors.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek state workers walked off the job on Tuesday to protest a government decision to ban a strike by high-school teachers, shutting down schools and reducing staff at hospitals to a minimum.
