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October 19, 2012 - Updated 1531 PKT From Web Edition       New   0   0   0 BAGHDAD: Gunmen blew up a bomb and opened fire at a bus packed with south Asian pilgrims, killing four worshippers and wounding 11 others north of Baghdad, officials said on Friday. The coordinated attacks took place late Thursday near the town of Balad, with security officials and medics identifying the victims as Pakistani Shiites. There was no immediate confirmation from the Pakistani embassy. An initial roadside bomb exploded near the bus carrying at one of the main entrances to Balad, followed by gunmen opening fire on the vehicle before fleeing the scene. A police lieutenant colonel in the town and a doctor at Balad's main hospital said four pilgrims, whom they identified as Pakistan citizens, were killed and 11 people were wounded. All of the victims were men.  

By Reuters October 19, 2012 - Updated 1829 PKT From Web Edition       2   0   2   0 BEIRUT: At least eight people were killed and 78 wounded by a bomb that exploded in central Beirut on Friday, the state news agency said. Security sources said the explosion was caused by a huge car bomb. The bomb exploded in the street where the office of the anti-Assad Christian Phalange Party is located. Ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast near Sassine Square in Ashafriyeh, a mostly Christian area, as smoke rose from the area. It occurred during rush hour, when many parents were picking up children from school. Several cars were destroyed by the explosion and the front of a multi-storey building was badly damaged, with tangled wires and metal railings crashing to the ground. Residents ran about in panic looking for relatives while others helped carry the wounded to ambulances. Security forces blanketed the area...

Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez fired 700 police officers Sunday and forced the retirement of 31 military and police generals, two days after he promised in a state-of-the-nation speech to cleanse the government of corruption. While Fernandez, who was on a state visit to Cuba on Monday, didn't state a reason, the dismissals came as the government has announced that more than 535 members of the nation's 24,000-strong military have been forced out in the past six months due to their suspected involvement in the drug trade. Among the generals forced to retire was the former head of the nation's top anti-drug agency, the Dominican National Drug Control, known by its Spanish acronym DNCD. In his speech Friday, Fernandez said, "In the Dominican Republic -- listen well -- narcotrafficking will not pass." Despite the president's strong words, many Dominican citizens and outside analysts say narcotrafficking has already taken hold. "The situat...

(CNN) -- The United States has offered more than $900 million to help the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attends Gaza donors conference in Egypt on Monday. ...

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- When China's legislature opens its annual session this week, the focus will be on jobs, the economy and social stability. Delegates have begun to gather for China's annual meeting of its National People's Congress. Every year, over 3,000 delegates to the National People's Congress meet in Beijing to review draft laws and vote on government budget and policies. Delegates come from central and local governments, the military and police, including ethnic minority representatives, who typically show up in their traditional costumes. In the past, the NPC has been dismissed as...

Climate protesters demonstrating against Donald Trump's plans for a sports resort broke into a Scottish airport Tuesday, setting up a small golf course and scaling the roof of a terminal building. Climate protesters broke into Aberdeen Airport in the early hours of Tuesda...

Updated at: 0403 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 GENEVA Twenty-six journalists have been killed on assignment since the start of this year, a sharp rise on the same period last year, an international journalists defence group said Monday. The Press Emblem Campaign, a non-governmental organisation seeking better protection for journalists in conflict areas, said the toll compared with 16 deaths recorded in January and February 2008. "The killing of journalists is clearly linked with situations of internal conflict," said the group's secretary general Blaise Lempen in a statement. The toll included four killed in the Gaza Strip and four in Pakistan. Two deaths were reported each in Iraq, Mexico, Nepal, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, while the other deaths occurred in Colombia, Kenya, Madagascar and Philippines. The Press Emblem Campaign - which recorded a total of 81 deaths among journalists worldwide in 2008 - called upon the UN Human Rights Council to tackle wha...

Tehran dismisses Mullen’s allegations Updated at: 0412 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 TEHRAN: Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi on Monday dismissed claims about Iran’s nuclear program by a U.S. military official, insisting that “atomic bomb has no place in Iran’s defense approach.” U.S. Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told media on Sunday that he believed Iran had enough fissile nuclear material for an atomic bomb. "All these statements regarding the production of a nuclear bomb are very baseless," Qashqavi told a regular news briefing. The spokesman said anyone who has the most rudimentary knowledge of nuclear technology understands that Iran’s nuclear activities are intended for civilian uses. "It is baseless from a technical point of view and has propaganda connotations," he explained. He said Iran is a signatory to Non-Proliferation Treaty and all its nuclear activities are monitored by the IAEA cameras and that...

Iran will not agree to talks on nuke program: Hillary Updated at: 0410 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 CAIRO: Even as the Obama administration pledges to engage Iran over its nuclear program, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is telling key Arab leaders that she’s “doubtful” Tehran will actually respond. Clinton met Monday with her counterpart from the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on the sidelines of an international aid conference for the Palestinian territories. According to a senior U.S. official, Sheikh Abdullah raised his concerns with Clinton that the U.S. could reach some agreement with Iran on key strategic issues without Washington consulting its Arab allies. Clinton, however, assured the Emirati royal that this wouldn’t be the case. “Our eyes are wide open” when it comes to Iran, Clinton told Sheikh Abdullah, the U.S. official said. She added that the U.S. “was doubtful Iran would respond” to calls for an international dialogue, despite repeated...

Clinton arrives Jerusalem Updated at: 0625 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets Israeli leaders on her first official Middle East visit on Tuesday aiming to focus on hobbled peace talks while her hosts hope to switch attention to Iran. Clinton arrived in key ally Israel from Egypt, where she told a conference on Gaza reconstruction that rebuilding the Palestinian enclave after Israel's deadly war could not be separated from the Middle East peace process. "Our response to today's crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace," she said in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh at a conference attended by delegates from more than 70 countries and organisations. "By providing humanitarian assistance to Gaza, we also aim to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised," she said. Clinton later told a news conference she was troubled by continu...

NATO secretary general terms Swat deal as Pakistan’s internal issue Updated at: 1228 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 BRUSSELS: NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop has said that the Swat peace deal is Pakistan’s internal matter. Talking to media in Brussels, Hoop said NATO forces had no intention to enter Pakistani borders. He said Pakistani routes for NATO supplies still carried importance despite the start of NATO supply to Afghanistan through Russia. Hoop said cultivation of opium and smuggling were becoming major reasons for terrorism in Afghanistan.

Updated at: 1744 PST, Tuesday, March 03, 2009 ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has advised President Asif Ali Zardari to withdraw the mobile courts ordinance promulgated on Monday. Speaking at the National Assembly session here, Prime Minister said that the ordinance should not have been promulgated. “Now I advise President Zardari under article 89 of the constitution to withdraw the ordinance,” he said, adding that it has violated the sanctity of the assembly.

WASHINGTON -- The "most worrisome" part of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has become the havens the Taliban and other insurgents have carved out in neighboring Pakistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. Afghan and U.S. soldiers walk at the site of a suicide attack outside Jalalabad in Nangarhar province Sunday. Gates said the United States had a similar perch in Pakistan when U.S. and Pakistani officials supported Afghanistan's mujahedeen rebels against the Soviet Union in the 1980s -- "and let me tell you, it made a big difference." "I think as long as they have a safe haven to operate t...

Zhao Jiuhe sweeps the floors at his dad's restaurant, chats with customers and waitresses whom he calls "older sisters," and clears the tables. Jiuhe, who can speak some English, says he likes coming to the restaurant with his father. But he is no ordinary 19-year-old. Jiuhe, who suffers from cerebral palsy, could not walk until he was four or talk until he was five. His father started the Beijing eatery, "Hand in Hand," to give his son a chance to improve his life after Jiuhe finished his education at a school for the disabled. "It seems I am running a business, but I am actually taking care of him. His growth at the restaur...

The Bangladeshi army fanned out across the country Monday, hunting down paramilitary troops who fled their barracks in the capital, Dhaka, after a deadly uprising that killed dozens of their superiors. A Bangladeshi woman waits for news of a missing relative at the Bangaldesh Rifles heaquarters in Dhaka. Search crews have now recovered at least 73 bodies from a river, sewers and three mass graves inside the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) paramilitary headquarters, where the rebellion occurred Wednesday. Fifty-one of the dead were confirmed as army officers, the home ministry sai...

Updated at: 1804 PST, Monday, March 02, 2009 NAROWAL: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has said that people are not willing to accept judges appointed by former president Pervez Musharraf. Addressing a public rally here on Monday, he said that massive public turn out was a prelude to change. He said Shahbaz Sharif still enjoys the majority support in Punjab. “Asif Zardari has embraced Musharraf judges,” he said, adding that change is indispensable. The former prime minister said that country’s socio-economic turn around depends upon political change. “PPP can not succeed in its bid to form Punjab government,” he added.

Diplomatic sources claim that US was apprehensive about the decision and wanted it to be delayed on the grounds that political instability in the country would divert focus from the war on terror. - File photo. ISLAMABAD: Islamabad had indicated to Washington about the possibility of a Supreme Court decision to disqualify former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from holding any elected office. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who is currently in Washington, leading a team of senior officials for participating in the review of US policy for the region, hinted at this during his bilateral talks with some of his interlocutors there, well placed diplomatic sources said. Although the report was confirmed from multiple sources, but one of them was so categor...

WASHINGTON DC : Companies that defrauded the United States and jeopardized American lives received new government work despite rulings designed to stop them from receiving federal contracts, government investigators report. Payments went to a German company whose president tried to sell nuclear bomb parts to North Korea , a company that jeopardized lives on the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and a seller of body armor that the Air Force said was defective. The companies were on a government database of 70,000 individuals and businesses suspended or barred by various U.S. agencies from receiving government contract work. The Government Accountability Office blamed some of the mistakes on faulty computer searches by officials who left out commas or periods. But it also said the search engine for the database often failed to identify any of the entries on the exclusion list. A hypothetical suspended company named XYZ Corp., Inc. — with a comma — would escape detection if one sear...

Updated at: 0716 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States has no desire for a "long-term" military presence in Afghanistan despite plans to send more troops to the war-torn country, President Barack Obama said Friday. "One of the things that I think we have to communicate in Afghanistan is that we have no interest or aspiration to be there over the long term," Obama said in an interview with PBS public television. "There's a long history, as you know, in Afghanistan of rebuffing what is seen as an occupying force and we have to be mindful of that history as we think about our strategy," he said. Obama, who earlier Friday announced an end to US combat operations in Iraq within 18 months, has vowed a new focus on fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The new president has ordered another 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan and is conducting a review of policy in the region. Obama, who opposed his predec...

OSLO: President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy are believed to be among a record 205 nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The secretive five-member awards committee, which released its final nominations count on Friday, keeps the names of candidates secret for 50 years. But some of the thousands of people with nominating rights do announce their nominees. ‘It is very easy to be nominated for the peace prize, but that is in no way an endorsement by the committee,’ said Geir Lundestad, the Norwegian awards committee’s nonvoting secretary. The committee said 172 individuals and 33 organisations were on the list by this week’s deadline. The previous record was 199, in 2005. ‘There was a very good geographical spread,’ Lundestad said. The nominations included those postmarked by a Feb 1 deadline, and those added by the committee itself at its first meeting of the year, which was Thursday, he said. This year, the name of the US president has been put forward b...