ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry urged Egypt to act swiftly on economic reforms to secure a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan, saying the measures were needed to get further aid from the U.S. Congress, an American official said.

LONDON (Reuters) - British counter-terrorism police arrested three men on Saturday on suspicion of conspiracy to murder over the killing of a soldier near a barracks in London.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Syria's opposition resumed talks on Saturday aimed at closing their fractious ranks, as government forces launched a fierce onslaught on a rebel-held border town to try to gain the upper hand in the civil war.

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Two freight trains collided at a rail intersection in rural Missouri on Saturday, triggering the collapse of a highway overpass when at least a dozen rail cars derailed and struck a support pillar, authorities said.

PARIS (Reuters) - A French soldier patrolling a business neighborhood west of Paris was stabbed in the neck and injured on Saturday by a man who fled the scene and is being sought by police, President Francois Hollande said.

NACO, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican activist Maria Elena Borquez takes up a paintbrush and daubs a bright splotch of color on the rusted steel fence separating the small Mexican town of Naco from a neighboring town in the United States.

(Reuters) - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called sexual assault a "scourge" on Saturday as he addressed graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where a sergeant stands accused of videotaping female cadets in the showers.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian government forces and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah launched a fierce campaign to seize more rebel territory in the border town of Qusair on Saturday, sources on both sides of the conflict said.

(Reuters) - Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen is losing the financial support of Blackstone Group Inc, the largest outside investor in his embattled SAC Capital Advisors, which is yanking much of its client money, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Community patrols and a beefed-up police presence helped to calm violence around Stockholm overnight on Saturday but 20 to 30 cars were still torched in poor immigrant suburbs and serious incidents were reported outside the capital for the first time.

HONOLULU (Reuters) - The city of Detroit may be facing a deepening financial crisis but that hasn't stopped four trustees of its public pension funds from spending $22,000 of retirement system funds to attend a conference in Hawaii this week.

KIEV (Reuters) - About 100 Ukrainian gay rights activists held the country's first gay rally on Saturday, helped by police who arrested 13 people for trying to break up the march.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew herself up in car near a police building in Russia's Dagestan region on Saturday, injuring 11 policemen and passers-by, Russian media reported.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Seventeen Pakistani children burnt to death on Saturday when a gas cylinder on the bus taking them to school exploded, media said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddled with Middle East problems ranging from Iran to Syria and beyond, President Barack Obama now faces one that is both old and new: Iraq.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers in his crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge found on Friday, and ordered him to stop using race as a factor in law enforcement decisions.

ISTANBUL - Syrian opposition talks aimed at presenting a coherent front at an international peace conference to end the civil war faced the prospect of collapse after President Bashar al-Assad's foes failed to cut an internal deal, opposition sources said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods rose more than expected in April, a hopeful sign that a sharp slowdown in factory output could soon run its course.

MOUNT VERNON, Washington (Reuters) - A bridge that collapsed in Washington state and sent two cars plunging into the Skagit River, raising concerns about the safety of the nation's aging infrastructure, was knocked down by a truck that crashed into at least one girder, officials said on Friday.

MOUNT VERNON, Washington (Reuters) - A bridge collapse that sent cars and drivers plunging into the frigid Skagit River in Washington state, raising concerns about the safety of the nation's aging infrastructure, was caused when a truck crashed into at least one girder, officials said on Friday.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Syria's fractious opposition scrambled to agree a new leadership on Friday in a bid to present a coherent front at peace talks which the United States and Russia are convening to seek an end to more than two years of civil war.

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban militants launched a large-scale attack involving the United Nations in the center of the Afghan capital Kabul on Friday, sparking a five-hour battle with security forces.

LONDON (Reuters) - British fighter jets escorted a Pakistan International Airlines passenger plane to Stansted Airport near London on Friday, where police went on board and arrested two men on suspicion of endangering an aircraft.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - The United States on Friday called into question the credibility of Iran's presidential election next month, criticizing the disqualification of candidates and accusing Tehran of disrupting Internet access.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's security services faced questions on Friday over whether they could have done more to prevent the murder of a soldier hacked to death in a busy London street after it emerged that his suspected killers were known to intelligence officers.