WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday he would pardon a “very, very important” person on Tuesday, but added it would not be leaker Edward Snowden or former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“Doing a pardon tomorrow on someone who is very, very important,” Trump told

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) - A U.N.-backed court on Tuesday convicted a member of the Hezbollah group of conspiring to kill former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in a 2005 bombing that set the stage for years of confrontation between Lebanon’s political forces.

Hariri, a Sunni Muslim billionaire, had close ties with the West and Sunni Gulf Arab allies, and was seen as a threat to Iranian and Syrian influence in Lebanon. He led efforts to rebuild Beirut following the 1

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equities rose on Tuesday as strong corporate results and accelerating U.S. homebuilding lifted the S&P 500 past highs set before the coronavirus crushed world economies, in a stimulus-fueled rally that has also pushed the dollar to two-year lows.

SYDNEY, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Australia’s second most populous state of Victoria on Tuesday reported 17 deaths from the new coronavirus in the last 24 hours, a day after recording its deadliest day of the pandemic with 25 casualties.

The state reported 222 new daily coronavirus cases compared with 282 on Monday.

MELBOURNE/BENGALURU (Reuters) - BHP Group on Tuesday said it expects most major world economies except China to bear the brunt of a coronavirus-led downturn this year, reporting a 4% drop in annual profit that missed analysts’ estimates.

While miners have seen green shoots emerge from an economic pickup in the world’s top metals user, as well as a boost in infrastructure spending, the risk of new virus outbreaks around the world threatens to undermine growth, BHP said.

The warning came as BHP reported underlying

CAIRO (Reuters) - Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stressed the need for an immediate end to the blockade of oil facilities in

TOKYO (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp ( 9984.T ) has built a stake worth around $1.2 billion in e-commerce firm Amazon ( AMZN.O ), regulatory filings showed on Monday, as the tech conglomerate expands its investing activities beyond its recent focus on unlisted startups.

Chief

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is in preliminary talks to invest in U.S. cloud services provider Rackspace Technology Inc, people familiar with the discussion said on Monday.

The deal would involve Amazon acquiring a minority stake in Rackspace, the sources said. Rackspace helps companies migrate their data to Amazon Web Services, and