Breaking News

By Ahmed Tolba and Mahmoud Mourad CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's parliamentary poll looks set to be delayed after a court ruled part of an election law was unconstitutional and the main election committee said it was working on a new timetable for the long-awaited vote. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi directed his government to amend the law within one month. Egypt has been without a parliament since June 2012 when a court dissolved the democratically elected main chamber, reversing a major accomplishment of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. "The committee will prepare a new timetable for (election) measures after the legislative amendments are issued," the Supreme Election Committee said.

Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said Sunday he expects the price of crude oil, which dropped to a six-year low in January, to continue recovering to reach $64 or $65 per barrel. Brent North Sea crude, the global benchmark, had tumbled to $45 per barrel at the beginning of the year, less than half the level reached six months earlier. Iraq, which is hugely dependent on oil exports for revenue and is fighting a costly war against the Islamic State jihadist group, also owes more than $20 billion to the oil companies operating in the south, Abdel Mahdi said. Abdel Mahdi said that besides a budget allocation of close to $12 billion to pay those dues he planned to ask the government to issue the same amount in treasury bonds.

Minnie Minoso, the Cuban-born White Sox star who was Major League Baseball's first black player in Chicago, has died, the team said Sunday. The White Sox didn't release details of Minoso's death, but said he passed away on Saturday night in Chicago. "Our organization and our city have suffered a heart-breaking loss today," White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said. Minoso began his major league career with Cleveland in 1949 and became the first black player based in Chicago when the White Sox acquired him from the Indians in 1951.