Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to help women juggle work and family are hitting a roadblock: opposition to building new daycare centers from residents who fear noise from children playing will spoil their quiet neighborhoods.
Four opposition groups including the largest, Al Wefaq, will boycott a parliamentary election scheduled for November in Bahrain to protest what they described as a vote where the results would be "fully controlled by the ruling authority".
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew to Tripoli on Saturday to urge the warring factions fighting for control of Libya to make peace, in the highest-level visit since an armed faction took the capital in August.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Saturday that the embattled Syrian city of Kobani was a very difficult problem but added that air strikes had made some progress in driving back Islamic State militants.
