September 2, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO said an airstrike in northern Afghanistan on Thursday killed about a dozen insurgents, but President Hamid Karzai said the victims were campaign workers seeking votes in this month's parliamentary elections.
NATO said its airstrike on a car in northern Takhar province's normally quiet Rustaq district killed or wounded as many as 12 insurgents, including a Taliban commander and a local head of an allied insurgent group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, responsible for attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.
International
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday pleaded with Israelis and Palestinians not to let slip a fleeting opportunity for peace, as he launched a landmark Middle East diplomatic initiative.
"This moment of opportunity may not soon come again," Obama warned after holding separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan.
"They cannot afford to let it slip away. Now is the time for leaders of courage and vision to deliver the peace that their people deserve."
International
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON: At least 4,416 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war As of Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, since it began in March 2003, according to Washington Post.
The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,491 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 31,926 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department's weekly tally.
International
September 2, 2010
QUITO, Ecuador – One of two known survivors of a drug gang's massacre in northern Mexico of 72 undocumented Central and South American migrants urged others in an interview broadcast Thursday not to attempt the journey to the United States.
Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, 18, also described being seized by gunmen after entering Mexico from Guatemala and then taken to a house where the migrants were tied up and kept overnight before being shot in the head.
International
September 2, 2010
JOHANNESBURG – A few pennies' increase in the price of a loaf of bread can mean the difference between getting by and going hungry — and erupting in anger — in the world's poorest countries.
A spike in food prices has triggered deadly riots in Mozambique this week, and experts worry other countries that saw such unrest during the last global food crisis in 2008 could be hit again. Over the last two months alone, food prices worldwide have risen 5 percent.
International
September 2, 2010
JERUSALEM – A new book claims renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal worked for Israel's Mossad spy agency, providing information on war criminals and Germans working in Arab countries.
The assertions in "Wiesenthal - The Life and Legends" shed a different light on the Holocaust survivor previously believed to have conducted a lone quest to bring war criminals, such as top Nazi Adolf Eichmann, to justice.
International
September 2, 2010
GENEVA – A report detailing hundreds of gruesome attacks against civilians in Congo over a 10-year period won't be released until October, the U.N.'s top human rights official said Thursday, after Rwanda angrily protested the findings in a draft version.
Drafts of the report — circulated to governments earlier this year and leaked to the media last week — accused Rwandan troops and rebel allies tied to the current Congolese president of slaughtering tens of thousands of Hutus in Congo in the 1990s.
International
September 2, 2010
MOSCOW: A new wave of wildfires swept through villages in southern Russia on Thursday, killing at least two people and destroying hundreds of homes, officials and news reports said.
Fires driven by high winds destroyed nearly 500 buildings in the Volgograd and Saratov provinces, including 342 homes, Emergencies Ministry spokewoman Irina Andriyanova told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
The blazes in the provinces on the Volga River southeast of Moscow followed wildfires that killed at least 54 in central Russia in July and August amid Russia's worst heat wave ever recorded.
International
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON: An explosion ripped through an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday dumping 13 people into the water, one of whom was injured, the US Coast Guard said.
"All 13 are accounted for and they are all wearing some sort of an immersion suit that protects them from the water," Coast Guard chief petty officer John Edwards told MSNBC.
Nine helicopters had been dispatched to the rig 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Vermilion Bay in Louisiana, the spokesman said, adding the extent of any injuries suffered by the workers was not immediately clear.
International
September 2, 2010
WASHINGTON: The United States slapped Pakistani Taliban chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, with terrorism charges on Wednesday for his alleged role in the murder of seven Americans at a CIA base in Afghanistan.
The Justice Department move came as the State Department added the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to a blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations, which means members face asset freezes and travel bans.
International
