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Ukrainian government forces on Wednesday warned separatists in the eastern town of Donetsk that a plan was now in place to take back the territory they occupy, but defiant rebels reported a steady flow of new recruits who were ready to fight. The Ukrainian military pushed the rebels out of their best-fortified stronghold in the town of Slaviansk on Saturday, but they have regrouped for a stand in Donetsk, a city of nearly a million people. Rebels also still control strategic buildings in Luhansk near the Russian border. Separatists said on Tuesday that Igor Strelkov, a Russian military officer from Moscow who until the weekend led rebels in Slaviansk, had assumed command of the "defense of Donetsk". President Petro Poroshenko has ruled out using air strikes and artillery that might endanger civilians and said on Tuesday night: "There will be no street fighting in Donetsk." But the government says it has a plan to retake Donetsk and Luhansk and deliver a "

Iraqi security forces found 53 corpses, blindfolded and handcuffed, south of Baghdad on Wednesday as Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders traded accusations over an Islamist insurgency raging in the country's Sunni provinces. Officials said dozens of bodies were discovered near the mainly Shi'ite Muslim village of Khamissiya, with bullets to the chest and head, the latest mass killing since Sunni insurgents swept through northern Iraq. "Fifty-three unidentified corpses were found, all of them blindfolded and handcuffed," Sadeq Madloul, governor of the mainly Shi'ite southern province of Babil, told reporters. He said the victims appeared to have been killed overnight after being brought by car to an area near the main highway running from Baghdad to the southern provinces, about 25 km (15 miles) southeast of the city of Hilla. The identity and sectarian affiliation of the dead people was not immediately clear, he said. Sunni militants have been carrying out att

Russia's economy is stagnating as data showed on Wednesday that capital worth $75 billion has left the country so far this year following sanctions on Moscow over its involvement in Ukraine. "We have for now a period of stagnation, or a pause in growth," Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach was quoted as saying in an interview where he also said that GDP was flat from April to June after shrinking 0.5 percent in the first quarter. Klepach, speaking to Interfax news agency, noted that the second-quarter figure of zero growth over the three months, previously unpublished, indicated that Russia had avoided a "technical recession" - two successive quarters of GDP decline. But central bank data on capital flight showed investors are concerned about the state of the $2 trillion a year economy. Though the outflow slowed in the second quarter, the $75 billion that left in the six months to June already surpassed the $62.7 billion capital flight seen for the whole

The U.S. dollar weakened against the euro and the yen on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve's June meeting minutes kept a dovish tone in a statement that was devoid of any large surprises. The Fed has begun detailing how it plans to ease the U.S. economy out of an era of loose monetary policy, indicating it will end its asset purchases in October and appearing near agreement on a plan to manage interest rates, according to the minutes. "A lot of what was said in the FOMC minutes we already knew, and we knew quite well," said John Kicklighter, senior currency strategist at DailyFX in New York. The dollar fell to $1.3643 against the euro, from $1.3624 before the minutes were released. The greenback dropped to 101.57 yen against the Japanese currency, from 101.75 before the minutes. The dollar has struggled to break above relatively tight ranges against the euro and the yen as Treasuries yields stay relatively low, with investors looking for stronger signals that the e

BNP Paribas SA : * Formally pleads guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions -- court _0"> hearing * Plea is accepted by U.S. district judge lorna schofield in Manhattan * Bnp paribas' plea is entered by the bank's general counsel

BNP Paribas, for the second time in nine days, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions, as part of a nearly $9 billion settlement in which the French bank admitted to breaking embargoes against Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Prosecutors had accused the bank of processing billions of dollars of transactions through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Sudanese and others barred from doing so because of their countries' human rights abuses, support for terrorists and other national security concerns. U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield accepted the plea at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. The plea was entered by the bank's general counsel, Georges Dirani. BNP Paribas admitted to having conspired from 2004 to 2012 to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act. The U.S. Justice Department unveiled the record settlement on July 1, when the bank pleaded guilty in New York state court to charges of falsify

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected PricewaterhouseCoopers' request to dismiss a $1 billion lawsuit accusing the auditor of providing bad accounting advice that contributed to the October 2011 collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd, a brokerage run by former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero rejected PwC's argument that the MF Global's bankruptcy plan administrator, which brought the lawsuit, "stands in the shoes" of the company under the "in pari delicto" legal doctrine, and cannot recover because Corzine and other officials were also to blame for the collapse. Marrero has yet to review other PwC arguments for dismissal, including that the administrator had no authority to sue and did not show that the accounting advice was a "proximate" cause of MF Global's bankruptcy. A PwC spokesman had no immediate comment. The auditor's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The March 28