Monday, December 31, 2012

Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 07:03 PM PST

Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro talks to the media during a news conference in HavanaCARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering more complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday. Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grew for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks. Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area. ...

Explosions across Iraq kill at least 10, wound 46

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 01:14 AM PST

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions across Iraq killed at least 10 people and wounded 46 on Monday, police said, amid a growing political crisis that is inflaming sectarian tensions. Seven people from the same family were killed by bomb blasts near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad. In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla in the north, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing another person, police said. ...

No end to Syria war if sides refuse to talk: envoy

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 08:56 AM PST

International peace envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi attends a meeting with Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby at the Arab League's headquarters in CairoAZAZ, Syria/CAIRO (Reuters) - The international peace negotiator for Syria pleaded with outside countries on Sunday to push the warring parties to the table for talks, warning that the country would become a failed state ruled by warlords unless diplomacy is given a chance. Lakhdar Brahimi, who inherited the seemingly impossible task of bringing an end to the war after his predecessor Kofi Annan resigned in frustration in July, has launched an intensified diplomatic campaign to win backing for a peace plan. He spent five days this week in Damascus, where he met President Bashar al-Assad. ...

Al Qaeda in Yemen offers bounty for U.S. ambassador

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 10:10 PM PST

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda has offered a bounty for anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador to Yemen or an American soldier in the impoverished Arab state, a group that monitors Islamist websites said. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said it was offering three kilograms of gold for the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa, Gerald Feierstein, the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said, citing an audio released by militants. AQAP will also pay 5 million rials ($23,350) to whoever kills any American soldier in Yemen, it said. ...

In Indian student's gang rape, murder, two worlds collide

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 10:35 PM PST

Policemen stand guard outside the cremation ground during the funeral of a rape victim after her body arrived from Singapore, in New DelhiNEW DELHI (Reuters) - One of hundreds of attacks reported in New Delhi each year, the brutal gang rape and murder of a young medical student in a private bus this month caught authorities and political parties flat-footed, slow to appreciate it had become symbolic of all the others. ...

Japan PM Abe wants to replace landmark war apology: paper

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 11:53 PM PST

Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe inspects the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima PrefectureTOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to replace a landmark 1995 apology for suffering caused in Asia during World War Two with an unspecified "forward-looking statement", a newspaper reported on Monday. Abe, a hawkish conservative who is known to want to recast Japan's position on its wartime militarism in less apologetic tones, led his party to a landslide victory in a December 16 election. He outlined his intention to restate Japan's position in an interview with the conservative Sankei newspaper, but he did not give details. ...

Monti's reform path faces test beyond Italy elections

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 07:46 AM PST

Italy's outgoing Prime Minister Monti looks on during a news conference in RomeROME (Reuters) - Mario Monti declared "mission accomplished" when he resigned as Italy's prime minister, having seen off the debt crisis that loomed as he took office just over a year ago but 2013 will test whether he has laid the foundations for lasting economic change. Elections on February 24-25 will give Italian voters their first chance to decide whether they want to stick to the broad course he has set or turn to a growing chorus of politicians who have attacked his austerity medicine. ...

Obama: U.S. has good leads on who carried out Benghazi attacks

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 06:06 AM PST

U.S. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton participate in a transfer ceremony of the remains of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed this week in Benghazi, at Andrews Air Force Base near WashingtonWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has some "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in September, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the United States would carry out all of the recommendations put forward in an independent review of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. "We're not going to pretend that this was not a problem. This was a huge problem. ...

AP IMPACT: Al-Qaida carves out own country in Mali

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 01:13 AM PST

FILE - In this Sept. 16, 2012 file photo, fighters from Islamist group Ansar Dine leave after performing a public amputation, severing the hand of a young man found guilty of stealing rice, in Timbuktu, Mali. In recent months, al-Qaida and its allies have taken advantage of political instability within Mali to push out of their hiding place and into the towns, taking over an enormous territory which they are using to stock arms, train forces and prepare for global jihad. And as 2012 draws to a close and the world hesitates, delaying a military intervention, the extremists who seized control of the area earlier this year are preparing for a war they boast will be worse than the decade-old struggle in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/File)MOPTI, Mali (AP) — Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the earth, erecting a formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially become al-Qaida's new country.

Asian nations giving enthusiastic welcome to 2013

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 01:08 AM PST

Workers set up a stage as preparations are underway for the country's first ever public New Year's countdown celebration, at Myoma grounds in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, Dec. 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win)CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Fiscal cliff? Recession? Not in Asia, where the first countries to see 2013 dawn will enthusiastically welcome the new year.

Iraq: Car bomb explosion kills 3 south of Baghdad

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 12:38 AM PST

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi officials say a parked car bomb has killed three people and wounded 21 south of Baghdad.

Chavez suffers new complications in cancer fight

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 10:50 PM PST

FILE - In this Dec. 8, 2012, file photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, holds up a copy of the Venezuelan national constitution as his Vice President Nicolas Maduro looks on during a televised speech at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela. Chavez has suffered "new complications" following his cancer surgery in Cuba, Maduro said Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, describing the Venezuelan leader's condition as delicate. (AP Photo/Miraflores Press Office, Marcelo Garcia, file)CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is confronting "new complications" due to a respiratory infection nearly three weeks after undergoing cancer surgery, his vice president said in Cuba as he visited the ailing leader for the first time since his operation.

Afghan violence falls in 2012, insider attacks up

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 08:20 PM PST

Internally displaced Afghans wait in line to receive firewood donated by Welt Hunger Hilfe 'German Agro Action' in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Around 240 internally displaced families received firewood. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Violence in Afghanistan fell in 2012, but more Afghan troops and police who now shoulder most of the combat were killed, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.

North African nations take different reform routes

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 12:25 AM PST

FILE - In this April 30, 2012 file photo, Algerians walk by posters for election lists displayed in front of the main post office in downtown Algiers. Two years after an itinerant Tunisian fruitseller set himself on fire to protest government injustice and ignited uprisings across the Middle East, the three nations of the Maghreb _ Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco_ have taken wildly different paths, from wholesale political change in Tunisia, to business as usual in oil-rich Algeria. (AP Photo/Paul Schemm, File)RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Two years after an itinerant Tunisian fruit-seller set himself on fire to protest government injustice and ignited uprisings across the Middle East, the three nations of the Maghreb — the former French colonies of North Africa — have taken vastly different paths. Tunisia has seen wholesale political change. In oil-rich Algeria, it's business as usual. Somewhere in the middle is Morocco, which has trumpeted what it describes as a third way of controlled change as a model for the region.

UK Catholics urged to lobby against gay marriage

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 01:16 AM PST

LONDON (AP) — The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has urged followers to write to their representatives in Parliament to oppose the government's plans to allow gay marriage.

Myanmar to fete 2013 with first public countdown

Posted: 31 Dec 2012 12:03 AM PST

Workers prepare to set up a stage as preparations are underway for the country's first ever public New Year's countdown celebration, at Myoma grounds in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, Dec. 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win)YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar will ring in the new year with its first public countdown and a grand fireworks display Monday night in a celebration unprecedented in the former military-ruled country.

US family pleas for couple missing in Afghanistan

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 03:21 PM PST

In this undated photo provided by James Coleman, Caitlan Coleman, right, sits with her husband, Josh. Caitlan Coleman's family has broken months of silence over her mysterious disappearance. According to her family, Coleman, an ailing, pregnant American woman missing in Afghanistan with her Canadian husband, was due to deliver in January and needed urgent medical attention for a liver ailment that required regular checkups. The family is making public appeals for the couple's safe return. The Colemans have asked that Josh be identified by his first name only to protect his privacy. (AP Photo)KABUL (AP) — The family of an ailing, pregnant American woman missing in Afghanistan with her Canadian husband has broken months of silence over the mysterious case, making public appeals for the couple's safe return.

Car bombing targeting Shiites in Pakistan kills 19

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 04:51 PM PST

Pakistani tribal policeman Amanullah Khan, receives treatment at a local hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012. Twenty-one tribal policemen who were shot dead were found by officials shortly after midnight Sunday in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, said Khan. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A car bomb targeting a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims killed 19 people in southwest Pakistan, officials and eyewitnesses said.

Secret cremation for gang-rape victim sparks anger against Indian government

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 11:23 AM PST

Protests became violent today in Delhi as the youth wing of the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) pelted stones at police and tried to climb over barricades following news of the secret cremation of the body of the Delhi gang rape victim.

Progress watch 2012: Smart phones, jobs returning to America, and war crimes trials

Posted: 30 Dec 2012 08:49 AM PST

Good news is hard to find. That's partly because, no matter what the topic, there's so much distracting bad news: ongoing violence in Syria, America's allegedly imminent fiscal demise, the National Hockey League lockout. From the front page to the sports page, so little looks good.
Posted by Harshad at 1:40 AM

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