Reuters World News Highlights at 1745 GMT, Jan 29

Jan 29 (Reuters) - TOP STORIES

-----------

DOUENTZA/GAO, Mali - French-backed Malian troops searched house-to-house in Gao and Timbuktu on Tuesday, uncovering arms and explosives abandoned by Islamist fighters, and France said it would look to hand over longer-term security operations to African troops.

- - - -

BEIRUT - At least 65 people, apparently shot in the head, were found dead with their hands bound in a district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday, activists said.

- - - -

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt's army chief said political unrest was pushing the state to the brink of collapse - a stark warning from the institution that ran the country until last year as Cairo's first freely elected leader struggles to curb bloody street violence.

- - - -

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will move cautiously into the debate over U.S. immigration reform on Tuesday, seeking to build momentum for a new bipartisan plan to offer a pathway to citizenship for the country's 11 million illegal immigrants.

- - - -

SANAA - Hundreds of al Qaeda-linked militants arrived in south Yemen on Tuesday to reinforce Islamist fighters facing a major government offensive following the breakdown of talks to free three Western hostages, an official and residents said.

- - - -

ISTANBUL - Kurdish militants will halt hostilities with Turkey in February according to the timetable of a fledgling peace process aimed at ending 28 years of insurgency, a report in a mainstream newspaper said on Tuesday.

- - - -

WASHINGTON - Senator John Kerry won the unanimous support of the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday to replace Hillary Clinton as President Barack Obama's new secretary of state.

- - - -

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said on Tuesday he planned to resign, marking the latest departure from President Barack Obama's Cabinet.

- - - -

KYZYL TU, Kazakhstan - A passenger plane crashed in thick fog near Kazakhstan's commercial capital Almaty on Tuesday and broke into pieces when it hit the ground, killing all 21 people on board.

- - - -

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas is set to execute Kimberly McCarthy by lethal injection on Tuesday, the first woman to be put to death in the United States in more than two years.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/thomson-reuters/130129/reuters-world-news-highlights-at-1745-gmt-jan-29