Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Ethiopian strongman Meles dies abroad

Ethiopian strongman Meles dies abroad

Ethiopian strongman Meles dies abroad

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:49 PM PDT

File photo shows Ethiopia's Prime Minister Zenawi attending a session at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in DavosADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who led the Horn of Africa country for more than two decades, died of an infection while being treated abroad for an undisclosed illness, state-run television said on Tuesday. Speculation that Meles, 57, was seriously ill grew after he failed to attend an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa last month. "Prime Minister Zenawi suddenly passed away last night. Meles was recovering in a hospital overseas for the past two months but died of a sudden infection at 11:40 (on Monday night)," state television said. ...

Exclusive: Iran looks to Armenia to skirt bank sanctions

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 10:02 PM PDT

Armenian President Sargsyan walks with Iran's President Ahmadinejad during a welcoming ceremony in YerevanUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - With international sanctions squeezing Iran, the Islamic Republic is seeking to expand its banking foothold in the Caucasus nation of Armenia to make up for difficulties in countries it used to rely on to do business, according to diplomats and documents. Iran's growing interest in its neighbor Armenia, a mountainous, landlocked country of about 3. ...

Obama warns Assad U.S. could act

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 06:10 PM PDT

A man cries near the graves of his two children killed during a recent Syrian Air Force air strike in AzazWASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S. forces could move against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, President Barack Obama warned, notably if he deploys his chemical weapons against rebels trying to overthrow him. In some of his strongest language yet on Syria, on a day when U.N. observers pulled out after a fruitless bid for peace and Assad's forces mounted new attacks, the U.S. leader said Assad faced "enormous consequences" if he crossed a "red line" of even moving unconventional weapons in a threatening manner. ...

China's leftists dig in for fight over Bo Xilai

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 08:49 PM PDT

To match insight CHINA-BO/WANG LIJUNBEIJING (Reuters) - Leftist supporters of China's toppled politician Bo Xilai are digging in for an unusually defiant defense of their hero, arguing that he and his wife are victims of a plot that has opened a dangerous schism between them and the Communist Party. A Chinese court handed Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, a suspended death sentence on Monday after finding her guilty of murdering a British businessman, Neil Heywood. ...

Analysis: Afghanistan's peace hopes may rest on Taliban captive

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:00 PM PDT

Afghan policemen conduct a search on a motorcyclist at a check point in KabulKABUL (Reuters) - In the cloistered circles of the Taliban high command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar had no equal. As military chief of the hardline Islamic movement that once ruled Afghanistan and was ousted by a U.S.-led alliance, he oversaw the campaign of ambushes and roadside bombings that proved his fighters could threaten the most advanced armies. When the talismanic leader was caught in the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010, some Afghan officials hoped the magnetism he forged in war would persuade his former comrades to start talking peace. ...

Lonmin says sacking striking miners could lead to more violence

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:33 PM PDT

Police keep watch as women sing before the arrival of some of the 250 mine workers who were arrested last Thursday when they had a shoot out with police, at a Garankuwa court outside PretoriaJOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, on Tuesday conceded that sacking 3,000 striking workers at its Marikana mine near Johannesburg, South Africa, could lead to more violence. Police last week opened fire on strikers armed with machetes and sticks, killing 34 and raising the death toll from the week-long dispute to 44. "It won't help anyone if Lonmin goes out and dismisses a whole lot of people for not coming to work today. ...

Sixteen wounded in clashes in Lebanese port city

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 10:07 PM PDT

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Sixteen people were wounded in overnight clashes between Sunni Muslim and Alawite neighborhoods in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli, local security and medical sources said on Tuesday. Gunmen in the two districts exchanged gunfire and launched rocket-propelled grenades, residents said, in fighting which continued sporadically through the night despite the deployment of troops in the port city. ...

Japan hints at economic action in South Korea island feud

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:42 PM PDT

Japan's Finance Minister Jun Azumi gestures during news conference in ManilaTOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Tuesday it was considering taking measures beyond diplomatic action in its feud with South Korea over a group of disputed islands, suggesting Tokyo may take the unusual step of extending the stand-off into the economic arena. Finance Minister Jun Azumi suggested last Friday that Japan could roll back an emergency currency swap arrangement agreed last year and expiring in October. ...

Kyrgyz forces kill fugitive border guard after attack

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 10:24 PM PDT

BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyz security forces on Tuesday killed a fugitive border guard suspected of shooting dead five people at a remote frontier post, the border guard service of the former Soviet republic said. Border guards and police found the lone gunman, named as Balbai Kulbarak uulu, in a mountain gorge near the Kyrgyz border with Kazakhstan a day after he fled the scene of the attack in a stolen vehicle. The border guard service said in a statement that Kulbarak uulu was killed after putting up "armed resistance" to arrest. ...

Britain's best bet to handle Assange: sit and wait

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:42 AM PDT

Supporters of Ecuador President Rafael Correa gather to show their support for the government's decision to give political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in the main square of QuitoLONDON (Reuters) - Britain's options in dealing with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are limited and British lawyers and diplomats reckon its best course of action is simply to sit tight and wait. Assange took refuge at Ecuador's London embassy in June to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faces questioning over rape allegations. It triggered a diplomatic standoff that turned heated last week when Britain threatened to raid the diplomatic mission and Ecuador granted Assange political asylum. ...

Circassians flee Syria strife for Russia homeland

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:13 AM PDT

In this Monday, July 23, 2012 photo Farida Rauf Husen, an ethnic Circassian refugee from Syria reads a Russian text during a lesson in Nalchik, Russia, Monday, July 23, 2012. Some 340 ethnic Circassians from Syria have come to Russia's Caucasus region this year. Czarist troops and Cossacks expelled hundreds of thousands of Circassians in the 1860s in what some historians call a genocide and an ethnic cleansing. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)Natai Al Sharkas' great-grandfather killed his Russian commanding officer and defected to the enemy.

Israeli clowns pioneer new medical treatments

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:12 AM PDT

In a Tuesday, July 24, 2012 photo, Borekkas, a Dream Doctors medical clown, center, helps Majed, a child patient, while he is prepared for surgery in the Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, central Israel. Most hospital clowns around the world step aside when a child gets a shot or goes under the surgical knife, but Israeli clowns are in the operating room and intensive care unit, teaming up with doctors to develop laughter therapies.(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)Doctors in Israel are beginning to believe in the power of clowning around.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi dead at 57

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:44 AM PDT

FILE - In this May 6, 2010 photo, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi speaks during the 20th World Economic Forum on Africa at Mlimanin City Conference Centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Meles died Monday, Aug. 20, 2012 following weeks of illness, Ethiopian State media reported. He was 57. (AP Photo/Khalfan Said, File)Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's long-time ruler who held tight control over this East African country but was a major U.S counter-terrorism ally, died of an undisclosed illness after not being seen in public for weeks, Ethiopian authorities announced Tuesday. He was 57.

Syria war empowers long-oppressed Kurdish minority

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 12:32 PM PDT

FILE - This Friday, June 15, 2012 file citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN purports to show anti-Syrian regime Kurdish protesters holding an effigy of Syrian President Bashar Assad as they wave their Kurdish flag during a demonstration called the "Friday of Russia is the enemy of Syrian people," at the northeastern town of Amouda, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network, SNN, File )THE ASSOCIATED PRESS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS HANDOUT PHOTOLast month, while the world's attention was focused on battles raging in Syria's two largest cities, a quiet transformation was taking place in the country's oil-rich northeast where about 2 million minority Kurds live.

Syria airstrikes, shelling kill 100 during holiday

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 01:05 PM PDT

Syrians Bassem Kharfani, left, and Mahmoud Jikar sit at the door of Jikar's house, one of more than a dozen homes destroyed in a Syrian government bombing last week that killed more than 40 people, in Azaz, Syria, Monday, Aug. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Ben Hubbard)Government forces pummeled the battered city of Aleppo with airstrikes and tanks and shelled parts of Damascus and southern Syria Monday, killing at least 100 people during a major Muslim holiday, rights groups and activists said.

Japanese journalist killed covering Syria fighting

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 07:52 PM PDT

In this May 7, 2004 photo, Mika Yamamoto speaks in Tokyo. The Japanese journalist was killed in Syria while covering the civil war there, the Japanese government said Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCEA Japanese journalist has been killed in Syria while covering the civil war there, Japan's government said Tuesday.

Iran unveils upgraded short-range missile

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:21 AM PDT

Iran's president on Tuesday unveiled an upgraded version of a short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile just weeks after it was test-fired, the country's state-media reported.

Gate to Palestinian home in West Bank set ablaze

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 11:11 PM PDT

The Israeli military says a gate to a Palestinian home in the West Bank has been set on fire.

Belarus dissident fighting extradition by Ecuador

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 10:57 PM PDT

This undated photo provided by Mabel Andrade, the wife of former police officer Aliaksandr Barankov, from Belarus, shows Barankov in Minsk, Belarus. Belarus. Barankov, 30, faces an Ecuadorean judge's ruling as early as Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012, on an extradition request from Belarus, where prosecutors accuse him of fraud and extortion. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Mabel Andrade)Less than a year ago, an Ecuadorean judge denied a request to extradite Aliaksandr Barankov to Belarus, the former Soviet bloc nation whose president has been nicknamed "Europe's last dictator."

Cholera emergency declared in Sierra Leone

Posted: 20 Aug 2012 02:17 PM PDT

An outbreak of cholera in West Africa has infected more than 13,000 people and killed at least 258 people in Sierra Leone and Guinea, authorities said as they appealed for international assistance.
Posted by Harshad at 1:09 AM

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