Yemeni al-Qaeda suspects 'killed'

Posted: 16 Jan 2010 09:09 AM PST

At least six suspected al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in a military air raid in the north of the country, a Yemeni security official said.

"Two cars carrying eight dangerous al-Qaeda members were hit in an area between Saada and al-Jouf," the security official told the Reuters news agency on Friday.

"Two may have survived and escaped", the officials said.

Afghan legislators vote on cabinet

Posted: 16 Jan 2010 01:11 AM PST

The Afghan parliament has voted on the president's new cabinet nominees after most of his choices were
rejected in a first round.

Results of the individual votes for each one of the nominees were expected to be released later on Saturday.

US identifies Fort Hood failings

Posted: 16 Jan 2010 12:10 AM PST

The shooting of 13 people at a US military base in Texas has prompted the defence department to overhaul measures to identify threats from inside the military.

Reacting to a review into the November attack that criticises failures in overseeing the soldier charged over the deaths, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said that his department did not focus enough on "internal threats".

Taliban denies Mehsud's death

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 10:38 PM PST

The Pakistani Taliban has released an audiotape which it says is proof that Hakimullah Mehsud, its leader, was not killed in a US missile attack earlier this week.

The tape, purportedly carrying the voice of Mehsud, condemned the rumours of his death, but made no reference to the raid which killed 18 people in North Waziristan.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 10:36 PM PST

Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Mohammad-Ali Jafari says Iran's enemies keep threatening the country because they have failed to achieve their goals.

"The enemies of the Islamic Revolution have come to the conclusion that they can not achieve their mischievous goals; therefore they do not abandon threats against the Islamic Republic," said Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari in the city of Shahrekord in western Iran.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 07:26 PM PST

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ITWI9nTWaek/Sbv4vZRYfXI/AAAAAAAAHYs/08ntcHebTnY/s400/franklin-lamb-martyrs-square-9-12-2008.jpg

John McCain dropped in on Beirut last weekend en route to Israel to join fellow US Senator Joe Lieberman in agreeing with their hosts that, a just as he told them during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama was real bad for Israel. McCain, fundraising for his 2010 reelection bid, emphasized that the Obama administration's hint that the US might just possibly consider withholding a few largely superfluous loan guarantees to pressure Israel on settlements was a joke. Their hosts were likely pleased with assurances that no way would John and Joe allow Congress or Obama to pressure Israel.

Obama proposes 'big bank fee'

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:12 AM PST

The US president has proposed imposing a fee on big Wall Street banks to reimburse taxpayers up to $117bn for the 2008 financial bailout.

Lambasting bankers for their "massive profits and obscene bonuses", Barack Obama vowed on Thursday to "recover every single dime" the government spent rescuing the financial sector from its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Deaths in India festival stampede

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:11 AM PST

At least seven people have been killed in a stampede at a river jetty in eastern India, police say.

Thursday's crush, which also left 20 people injured, came at the start of a three-month long Hindu festival.

Honduras to try 'coup generals'

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:10 AM PST

Senior Honduran military officers are set to stand trial for alleged abuse of power over the coup d'etat that sent Manuel Zelaya, the president, into exile.

Jorge Rivera, the president of the Honduran supreme court, on Thursday ordered all six members of the Honduran joint chiefs of staff to remain in the country and testify in court next week.

Obama silent on Google cyber attack

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:09 AM PST

The Obama administration is yet to take an official stance about a major cyber attack, that allegedly originated from China, against internet giant Google and some of the most prominent American companies.

A report by the New York Times said President Obama has not responded to the intrusion for the lack of evidence that the Chinese government, directly or indirectly, was behind the attack.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:09 AM PST

Amid fears of a vacuum of power in Nigeria, a court ruling said the constitution did not require President Umaru Yar'Adua to transfer executive powers while he is sick.

Four lawsuits were filed in court by Nigeria's National Bar Association and two other opposition groups demanding that President Yar'Adua relinquish his powers to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 09:09 AM PST

As the global economic crisis keeps battering world economies, China is extending its lead as the holder of the biggest foreign exchange reserves.

On Friday, the Chinese Central Bank announced that its reserves had improved by 453 billion dollars to nearly 2.4 trillion dollars reflecting an increase of 24 percent in 2009, the Associated Press reported.

Millions view solar eclipse

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:09 AM PST

Millions of people in Africa and Asia have viewed what is likely to prove the longest solar eclipse of the third millenium.

The path of the eclipse began in Africa on Friday, passing through Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya and Somalia before crossing the Indian Ocean, where it reached its peak.

Solar eclipse longest in 1,000 years

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST

A solar eclipse plunging millions of people in Africa and Asia into semi-darkness on Friday is believed to be the longest annular eclipse for 1,000 years.

The visible spectacle has been seen as a roughly 300 kilometer band running 12,900 kilometers across the globe, AFP reports.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST

Israeli forces Friday opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats at different locations in the Gaza Strip, where people find it increasingly difficult to escape Tel Aviv's crippling embargo.

Israeli patrol boats attacked Gazan fishing boats early in the day near the central Gaza shores. They also targeted the Palestinians further south near Khan Younis and in the Rafah coastal area, Ma'an News Agency reported.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST

Cuba opened its airspace to the United States to conduct aid and evacuation flights from quake-hit Haiti, the White House said Friday.

"We have coordinated with the Cuban government for authorization to fly medical evacuation flights from the US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Miami, Florida through Cuban airspace, cutting 90 minutes off one-way flight time," the White House said in a statement.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST

The trial of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who is charged with corruption and bribery has been postponed until February 27.

Prime Minister Berlusconi is accused of bribing British tax lawyer and offshore consultant, David Mills, with $600,000.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST

A leading Iranian cleric called on the Iranian nation on Friday to vigilantly confront enemy plots aimed at destabilizing the country.

"The enemy uses every possible means to harm the establishment and the country so we should, in a very real sense, remain vigilant," said Tehran's interim Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani.

Russia backs human rights reform

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 07:40 AM PST

Russia's parliament has ended years of resistance and ratified an international agreement intended to strengthen and speed up the work of the European Court of Human Rights.

The State Duma had refused to ratify Protocol 14, a key element of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, in 2006, but backed the measure by 392-56 votes on Friday.

Yemeni al-Qaeda suspects killed

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 07:39 AM PST

A Yemen army air strike has killed at least six suspected al-Qaeda fighters in the north of the country, a Yemeni security official said.

"Two cars carrying eight dangerous al-Qaeda members were hit in an area between Saada and al-Jouf," the security official told the Reuters news agency on Friday.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 07:12 AM PST

In recent weeks the UK has strongly criticized China for executing a British man who brought drugs into the country, even though he was mentally unstable. However, it seems it's a lot more reluctant to criticize the US when it comes to extraditions of British citizens and their treatment at American hands.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:36 AM PST

The unemployment gap between white Americans and the minorities has dramatically increased during the recent recession, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

According to official figures 9.7% of American adults were unemployed at the end of 2009. But the percentage of whites who were unemployed at year's end — 8.1% — was well below the national average, while African-Americans and Hispanics saw rates of 15.5% and 12.4%, respectively, the report said.

Dubai offers to host UN headquarters

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:36 AM PST

Dubai, the struggling UAE sheikhdom in the Persian Gulf, offered Thursday to host the headquarters of the United Nations should the global organization want to leave New York.

"Dubai is fully prepared to host the UN headquarters on its soil if UN officials decide to move the headquarters from New York," the emirate said in a statement.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:36 AM PST

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says the Islamic Republic and Libya will set up economic, political and cultural committees to promote bilateral ties.

"We hope that with the formation of these committees a new era of partnership will begin between the two countries," Mottaki said in a meeting with Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi in Tripoli, IRNA reported on Friday.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:36 AM PST

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Islamabad early on Saturday to attend a meeting with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts.

The Iranian minister is scheduled to meet Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmoud Qureshi on a tri-lateral meeting on security, foreign military presence and terrorism, IRNA reported.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:11 AM PST

Now, a row's broken out in the US over the measures to be introduced after Barack Obama called for an overhaul of airport security. The changes were a response to the bomb-plot on a US-bound plane last month. However, critics fear this could lead to racial and religious profiling, which, they say, would be a violation of human rights.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:11 AM PST

The recent tragedy in Haiti has focused the minds of scientists who are trying to find ways to predict when earthquakes might happen. But as Maria finoshina reports, the experts are still no closer to preventing disaster.

Defamation, Must be Seen!!!

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 05:53 AM PST

I urge every person on this planet to watch Yoav Shamir's Defamation, a documentary about anti Semitism.

The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being 'racially' chased, defamed or hated.

Haiti: Up to 200,000 feared dead

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 05:09 AM PST

Up to 200,000 people are feared to have been killed in the earthquake that devastated Haiti and three-quarters of the capital, Port-au-Prince, will need to be rebuilt, Reuters news agency quoted authorities in the Caribbean country as saying.

"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies. We anticipate there will be between 100,00 and 200,000 dead in total, altough we will never know the exact number," Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, the Caribbean country's interior minister, told Reuters on Friday.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 05:08 AM PST

Haitian Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime say the death toll from a devastating earthquake that hit the nation could reach 200,000.

"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies we anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number," he told Reuters on Friday.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 05:08 AM PST

A powerful explosion has gone off at Greece's Ministry of Press and Information in Athens, causing extensive damage but no injuries.

The explosion on Saturday, the second in one week, caused panicked residents to run onto the street in the residential area that houses the ministry near central Athens.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 05:08 AM PST

Investigators probing a funding scandal involving Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, have arrested a lawmaker over accounting irregularities.

Prosecutors on Friday arrested Tomohiro Ishikawa, 36, a lawmaker from Japan's ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), further damaging the troubled government and its political kingpin.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

"Four months after the martyrdom of my husband and two of my sons, my granddaughter Lina was born -- the daughter of my martyred son Basel," said Fathiya Abu Jbarah. Fathiya is the widow of Jihad Abu Jbarah and mother of Basil, 30, and Usama, 21 who were killed on 4 January 2009 by an Israeli missile that struck their home in al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Their home was hit during Israel's 22-day air and land attack that killed more than 1,400 persons and wounded thousands of others.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

On the afternoon of 28 December 2009, I was with several persons who accompanied CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans to the US Embassy in Cairo to present a letter from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in which he expressed "strong support" for citizens of his state who were traveling to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and requesting they be given "every courtesy." In fact, we were turned away at the first checkpoint at a side street off Corniche al-Nil leading up to the embassy, and told to come back the next morning.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

On International Human Rights Day in 2008, my husband Abdallah Abu Rahmah was in Berlin receiving a medal from the World Association for Human Rights. Last year on the same day, 10 December, Abdallah was taken away at 2am by Israeli soldiers who broke into our West Bank home. Abdallah was arrested for the same reasons he received the prize -- his nonviolent struggle for justice, equality and peace in Palestine/Israel.

Miss Palestine's mistaken rebellion

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

One of the travesties of living in a colonized environment is that the inferior, or oppressed, aspire to win admittance to the Western world. There seems to be an emerging trend of this type of appeasement, where submission has replaced the revolution. The introduction to spectacles, like the breaking of a Guinness record for the largest plate of kanafeh and the search for a national beauty queen, are just two examples of how absurd practices are coming to be seen as normal in Palestinian cities.

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:53 AM PST

Driving parallel to the borderline between Egypt and Gaza, one can spot the machinery behind the conspicuous wall construction project meant to stop ongoing smuggling through underground tunnels.

Some 80 meters away from the borderline, there were two cranes and a spiral driller. Four trucks loaded with sand and two with iron panels had just arrived on site. The usual silence of the borderland is broken by the sounds of this equipment and the few workers around them. People in the area say the wall will be dug between 18 and 25 meters deep and will extend all the way between the Egyptian-controlled Rafah and the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossings with Gaza.

The Israel Lobby

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:50 AM PST

For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so? In March 2006 the American political scientists John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Steve Walt (Harvard) published the controversial article 'The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy'. In it they state that it is not, or no longer, expedient for the US to support and protect present-day Israel. The documentary sheds light on both parties involved in the discussion: those who wish to maintain the strong tie between the US and Israel, and those who were critical of it and not infrequently became 'victims' of the lobby. The question arises to what extend the pro-Israel lobby ultimately determines the military and political importance of Israel itself. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell's former chief-of-staff) explains how the lobby's influence affects the decision-making structure in the White House.

Gaza Lives On

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:50 AM PST

One year later, it is very important to remember what happened in Gaza. But it is more important to realize the aspirations of the Palestinian people in Gaza. They deserve our solidarity, respect and reverence. They deserve justice. It is the duty of every person to contribute to break the unprecedented siege and bringing the criminals behind this atrocity to justice.