Monday, June 4, 2012

Egyptians threaten more protests after Mubarak verdict

Egyptians threaten more protests after Mubarak verdict

Egyptians threaten more protests after Mubarak verdict

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 01:34 AM PDT

Supporters of deposed president Hosni Mubarak hold a banner as they react after a court sentenced Mubarak to life in prison, in CairoCAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptians demonstrated throughout the night in Cairo's central Tahrir Square and other cities, enraged that a court had spared deposed leader Hosni Mubarak his life over the killing of protesters in the uprising that ended his three-decade rule. Many wanted death for Mubarak, who was handed a life prison sentence on Saturday. They saw the sentence and the acquittal of senior police officers as proof that the old regime still wields influence and feared Mubarak could now be acquitted on appeal. Some demanded that the country's presidential election be cancelled. ...

Plane crash in Nigeria kills all 147 on board

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 03:30 PM PDT

People help rescue workers lift a water hose to extinguish a fire after a plane crashed into a neighbourhood in Ishaga districtLAGOS (Reuters) - A passenger plane crashed into a densely populated part of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial hub, on Sunday, killing all 147 people on board, the airline said. President Goodluck Jonathan declared three days of national mourning and ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash which jolted residents of Lagos' Agege suburb where most live in tin-roofed buildings along unpaved streets. ...

Japan PM sacks five ministers to win tax-plan backing

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 11:13 PM PDT

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda speaks at a news conference to announce new cabinet members at his official residence in TokyoTOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda replaced five cabinet ministers on Monday hoping to smooth the way to a deal with the opposition on doubling sales tax in spite of a rift in the ruling party over the plan. By removing the ministers, who the opposition has criticized for not performing properly, Noda hopes to persuade the biggest opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to back a package of tax bills including the sales tax increase. He needs opposition support to bet bills through a divided parliament. ...

U.S. drone strike kills 15 in northwest Pakistan: officials

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:01 PM PDT

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Rockets fired from a U.S. drone killed 15 people in northwest Pakistan on Monday, intelligence officials said, an attack likely to add to tensions between Washington and Islamabad amid a standoff over NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. The strike, the third in three days, targeted a militant hideout in the Hesokhel village of the North Waziristan tribal region, officials said. It brought the death toll from drone attacks in Pakistan in the past three days to 27. Pilotless U.S. drones hit targets in the South Waziristan tribal region on Saturday and Sunday. ...

Israel "supportive" on future Iran sanctions: U.S.

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 11:31 PM PDT

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States is conferring with Israel about new sanctions planned against Iran should international negotiations this month fail to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, a U.S. official said on Monday. The comment offered a strong hint that Washington is continuing to apply the brakes on any plan by Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively. Israel has signaled increasing impatience with the lack of progress towards circumscribing the nuclear program during the negotiations, involving Iran, the United States and five other world powers. ...

Assad says Houla killings monstrous, crisis will end

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 10:06 AM PDT

Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in HabeetBEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad condemned on Sunday the "abominable" massacre of more than 100 people in Houla, saying even monsters could not carry out such acts, and promised a 15-month-old crisis would end soon if Syrians pulled together. Assad repeated earlier pledges to enforce a crackdown on opponents he says are terrorists carrying out a foreign conspiracy, while offering dialogue with opposition figures who had avoided armed conflict or outside backing. His remarks were at odds with those of U.N. ...

Attack on Mexican drug rehab center leaves 11 dead

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 12:24 AM PDT

Members of the Red Cross stand beside their ambulances outside a drug rehabilitation clinic which was attacked by gunmen in the outskirts of TorreonMEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Armed gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in northern Mexico late on Sunday, leaving 11 people dead and at least 8 wounded almost a year to the day after a similar fatal attack nearby. State police said the assault, part of a drug war widely estimated to have claimed more than 55,000 lives in less than six years, took place in the outskirts of Torreon, an industrial city in the border state of Coahuila. They could not immediately give more details. In June last year, 13 people were killed at a rehab center in the same city. ...

China blocks Tiananmen talk on crackdown anniversary

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 10:42 PM PDT

Paramilitary policemen stand guard as the Chinese national flag is raised on Beijing's Tiananmen SquareBEIJING (Reuters) - China's censors blocked internet access to the terms "six four", "23", "candle" and "never forget" on Monday, broadening extensive efforts to silence talk about the 23rd anniversary of China's bloody June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. For China's ruling Communist Party, the 1989 demonstrations that clogged Tiananmen Square in Beijing and spread to other cities remains taboo, all the more so this year as the government prepares for a tricky leadership handover. ...

Relatives cram Kazakh court for riot trial verdict

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev wears a national costumeAKTAU, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Relatives of 37 protesters accused of rioting in a Kazakh oil town crammed into a makeshift courtroom on Monday to await the verdicts in the largest trial relating to the deadly December clashes. The defendants stand accused of participating in riots that killed at least 14 people and saw police use live rounds. The violence posed the most serious challenge to President Nursultan Nazarbayev in more than two decades of power and shattered the Central Asian state's reputation for stability. ...

Pakistan and U.S.: allies without trust

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:15 PM PDT

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari in the Oval Office of the White House in WashingtonISLAMABAD (Reuters) - As Washington fumed over the jailing of a Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden, an educated Islamabad businesswoman voiced her own outrage - at the United States. "All we ever got from the Americans is instability and violence," she said, echoing what many Pakistanis believe is Washington's contribution to their country and region over three decades. "Didn't you know Osama bin Laden was a CIA agent?", she asked at a dinner attended by Western diplomats, referring to his role in U.S. ...

Hanoi opens 3 new sites for POW search

Posted: 04 Jun 2012 01:11 AM PDT

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, left, participates in an arrival ceremony with Vietnam Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh at the Ministry of Defense in Hanoi, Vietman, Monday, June 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Jim Watson, Pool)The Vietnamese government on Monday agreed to open three new sites in the country for excavation by the United States to search for troop remains from the war, the minister of defense told U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a meeting here.

Senior US official: Iran sanctions are biting

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 11:30 PM PDT

A senior U.S. official says sanctions on Iran are biting, but more will be done to pressure the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

Afghanistan: Aid workers saved after death threat

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:03 PM PDT

This undated family photo released by the family of British aid worker Helen Johnston Saturday June 2, 2012 shows British aid worker Helen Johnston in London. Two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues were rescued in a pre-dawn raid Saturday June 2, 2012 after being held by militants for 11 days in a cave in northern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said. The women, Helen Johnston and Moragwe Oirere, and the two Afghans were kidnapped on May 22 in Badakhshan province. The four work for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Family Handout via Foreign Office) .NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Taliban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said.

Officials: US drone strike in Pakistan kills 8

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 08:40 PM PDT

A drone strike in Pakistan's tribal areas killed eight suspected militants early Monday, Pakistani officials said, as the U.S. pushes ahead with the controversial drone program despite Pakistani demands to stop.

Car bombing at north Nigeria church kills 15

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 04:23 PM PDT

A suicide car bomber drove into a church compound in northern Nigeria Sunday and detonated his explosives as worshippers left an early morning service, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.

Victims of Egypt's old regime still await justice

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 04:17 PM PDT

FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 23, 2011 file photo, an Egyptian man chants slogans and holds a poster that reads, in Arabic, "Islamic Egypt," during a demonstration held by a Salafi group to protest the emergency law, in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt. Under Mubarak, there were no mass killings along the lines of South African or some Latin American dictatorships in the 1980s. But tens of thousands of political prisoners were detained under emergency laws that expired last week after 31 years in force. Torture was systematic, and often extreme, and corruption was completely endemic. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File)Tied to a bed, Nasr al-Sayed Hassan Nasr was tortured for days with electric shocks during his 2010 detention for membership in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood — one of tens of thousands of political prisoners under Hosni Mubarak's 29-year rule.

Nigerian airplane crashes, killing all 153 onboard

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 09:59 PM PDT

People gather at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Sunday, June 3, 2012. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials said. Firefighters pulled at least one body from a building that was damaged by the crash and searched for survivors as several charred corpses could be seen in the rubble.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)A commercial airliner crashed into a densely populated neighborhood in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, killing all 153 people on board and others on the ground in the worst air disaster in nearly two decades for the troubled nation.

Recent major airplane crashes in Nigeria

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 03:55 PM PDT

A look at recent major airline crashes in Nigeria:

Syrian leader likens bloody crackdown to surgery

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Armed Free Syrian Army soldiers ride a motorcycle on the outskirts of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, June 3, 2011. Free Syrian Army soldiers are determined to bring down the regime by force of arms, targeting military checkpoints and other government sites. A U.N. observer team with nearly 300 members has done little to quell the bloodshed. (AP Photo)Syrian President Bashar Assad defended his government's crackdown on opponents Sunday, saying a doctor performing messy emergency surgery does not have blood on his hands if he is trying to save a patient.

Old Egypt regime candidate attacks Islamist rival

Posted: 03 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq holds a clipping from an Arabic newspaper with a headline that reads, "The Muslim Brotherhood--not suited for presidency or government," during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, June 3, 2012. Shafiq, the last prime minister of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, will face the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi in a run-off on June 16-17. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)An Egyptian presidential candidate, who was the last prime minister in the regime deposed by last year's popular revolution, lashed out at his Islamist rival Sunday, warning he and his fundamentalist group would monopolize power and take Egypt back to "the dark ages."
Posted by Harshad at 1:32 AM

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