Sunday 20 May 2012
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The bloody conflict in Syria spilled across two tense borders Monday when gunfire from government forces killed a cameraman in Lebanon and wounded at least 23 people in a refugee camp in Turkey, two of whom later died. The violence came as a UN-brokered truce plan set to take effect on Tuesday all but...
Pakistani authorities were unable to trace the reports of two commissions that investigated the funding of politicians by the ISI in 1990, the government’s top law officer informed the Supreme Court today. When a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry resumed hearing on a petition filed by ex-air force chief Asghar Khan...
Japan’s defence minister on Friday ordered missile units to intercept a rocket expected to be launched by North Korea next month if it or its fragments threaten to hit Japan. The order from Defence Minister Naoki Tanaka came at a meeting of Japan’s national security council. It followed instructions issued earlier in the week...
An Afghan policeman today shot dead nine of his colleagues, including his brother, as they slept and fled with their weapons in a truck to join Taliban ranks in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province, police said. “The incident happened while the shooter was guarding the check point and all other policemen were sleeping,” said Paktika...
A US City Council has passed a resolution condemning the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat and expressed concern over the “denial” of justice for the victims. The resolution, passed this week by the City Council of Harvey, Illinois, expressed solidarity with the victims, including those who died in the Godhra train fire on February...
Pakistan has an “addiction” of “playing around” with militant groups against India, a top Pentagon official has said. “They have an addiction to playing around with militia groups to achieve certain interests, particularly vis-a-vis India. That gets them in all kinds of trouble,” Michael Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict, told...
Passengers aboard an early morning flight bound from New York to Las Vegas first noticed something wrong when the plane’s top pilot came out of the cockpit, didn’t close the door and tried to force his way into an occupied bathroom. The JetBlue captain’s co-workers tried to calm him as he became more jittery,...
For Afghan women, the act of fleeing domestic abuse, forced prostitution or even being stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver by an abusive husband, may land them in jail while their abusers walk free, Human Rights Watch said. Running away is considered a moral crime for women in Afghanistan while some rape victims are also...
Pakistan’s army chief held talks Wednesday with top US commanders for the first time since US airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year and triggered a near collapse in the nations’ already troubled ties. The meeting between Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the top US commander in the region, Gen. James Mattis, and the...
US Vice President Joe Biden has accused Mitt Romney, the front-runner Republican presidential candidate, of outsourcing jobs to India when he was the Massachusetts Governor. “When he (Romney) was Governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill passed by the Massachusetts legislature that would have stopped the state from outsourcing contracts overseas. That resulted in...
Syrian forces pounded the battered city of Homs with tank and mortar fire and troops pummelled several rebel strongholds in the north on Saturday, leaving at least 24 dead, opposition activists said. At least 10 people were killed by explosions and sniper fire in Homs, the epicentre of the revolt against the regime of...
Israeli officials on Friday rejected any prospect of cooperation with an inquiry called for a day earlier by the UN Human Rights Council into how Israeli settlements affect the rights of Palestinians. Israeli officials called the council resolution seeking the inquiry a new source of friction between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, but the...
A United Nations commission on rights abuses in the Syria conflict offered grim new details on Friday of the government’s repression, including the uprooting of extended clans and villages forced to flee into neighboring countries by security forces bent on crushing armed resistance. The three-member commission told a news conference at the UN that...
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has become a wedding crasher. The monarch dropped on Friday in moments after the nuptials of John and Frances Canning at Manchester Town Hall in northern England. The newlyweds said yesterday the queen chatted and posed for wedding photographs. The queen and her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh,...
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he’s flying to Cuba to begin radiation therapy today, one month after undergoing surgery that removed a cancerous tumor. That will put him in Cuba at the same time as Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives on the communist-governed island on Monday after a visit to Mexico. Chavez has been...