WASHINGTON: A coalition of interfaith and civil rights groups will hold a noon news conference in Nashville, Tenn. on Tuesday (March 1), to urge lawmakers to drop an anti-Islam bill drafted by the head of an anti-Muslim hate group and introduced recently in that state's legislature.
WASHINGTON: J Street held its second annual conference in Washington DC this weekend. The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization sparked enormous controversy and was solidly criticized by lawmakers and other pro-Israel groups when it announced its support of a proposed UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli housing development on the West Bank.
PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy shuffled his Cabinet’s top diplomatic and security posts, jettisoning his foreign minister who has been roundly criticized for her ties to Tunisia’s ousted regime.
MILAN: Premier Silvio Berlusconi went back on trial Monday for alleged tax fraud, the first of several court cases to resume after Italy’s Constitutional Court watered down an immunity bill sparing the premier from trial.
LONDON: A jury convicted a former British Airways computer specialist on Monday of plotting with US-born extremist cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki to blow up an airplane in an attack intended to kill hundreds of people.
MINSK, Belarus: A former Belarusian presidential candidate said Monday he was beaten, stripped naked and hung by his hands while in the custody of secret police.
BANGKOK: A Japanese journalist killed during protests in Bangkok last year does not appear to have been shot by security forces, Thai investigators said Monday, reversing their preliminary findings and raising immediate questions about the inquiry.
MOGADISHU, Somalia: A government offensive against Al-Qaeda-linked militants largely subsided Sunday as officials said that at least 115 people had been killed since the violence started several days ago.
LONDON: A jury has convicted a former British Airways computer specialist of plotting with US -born extremist cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki to blow up an airplane.
SEOUL: North Korea threatened Sunday to enlarge its nuclear arsenal and “mercilessly” attack South Korea and the United States, as the allies prepared for joint military drills which the North considers a rehearsal for invasion.
PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has shuffled his Cabinet, jettisoning his foreign minister who had been roundly criticized for her closeness to Tunisia’s ousted regime.
MADISON, Wisconsin: Rallies were held across the US to support thousands of protesters holding steady at the Wisconsin Capitol in their fight against Republican-backed legislation aimed at weakening unions.
BERLIN: The German air force evacuated 132 people from the Libya desert in a secret military mission, the country’s foreign minister said Sunday.
ZAGREB, Croatia: Croatian police say 52 protesters remain in custody after they were detained during a weekend clash at an anti-government rally.
WASHINGTON: Mideast watchers believe that the recent political and social upheaval affecting many countries in the region — particularly Libya — may mark a turning point in the West’s decades-old global war on terrorism.
VALLETTA, Malta: Britain says its military aircraft have evacuated another 150 civilians from the eastern Libyan desert.
YANGON: Government security officials say a bomb exploded in a suburb of the capital Yangon, wounding four people.
JAITAPUR: Hitting out at the opposition parties, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithivraj Chavan alleged that some external forces were attempting to sabotage the Jaitapur nuclear plant project in Konkan region, which is meant to solve the energy problem in the state.
KABUL: Afghanistan's Parliament elected a former Uzbek warlord as speaker on Sunday, ending a month of squabbling over the position that has further undermined the credibility of an assembly tainted by electoral fraud.
KINSHASA, Congo: Assailants armed with machetes attacked Congo’s presidential residence, and at least nine people were killed. The president, who was home at the time, was not harmed in the attack, a government spokesman said Sunday.
GAMU, Philippines: Communist rebels killed three soldiers and wounded four others in an ambush in the mountainous northern Philippines, officials said Sunday, despite the recent resumption of peace talks.
NEW YORK, Feb 26 : Thousands of people rallied in cities across the United States on Saturday against a Wisconsin plan to curb the power of public sector unions that has sparked similar government efforts in other states.
KABUL: Amid screams of “Suicide bomber! Suicide bomber!” an insurgent detonated his vest of explosives Saturday, killing at least four people at a sports field in northwest Afghanistan. It was the latest in a spate of attacks that have hit nearly every corner of the country in recent weeks. A roadside bomb also killed nine people Saturday near the eastern city of Khost.
NEW DELHI: India’s federal police has arrested the chairman of state-run National Aluminium Co Ltd (NALCO) for bribery, adding headache to a government already under fire for corruption scandals.
NALCHIK, Russia: Militants simultaneously attacked several strategic points on Friday in Russia’s North Caucasus but killed no one, security sources said.
KAMPALA: Ugandan police said Saturday they will not allow the opposition to protest the re-election of longtime President Yoweri Museveni, saying such demonstrations would cause violence and destabilize the country.
DUBLIN: Ireland’s government prepared for a whopping defeat and the country for more uncertainty as angry voters turned out for a historic election triggered by the humiliating collapse of the “Celtic Tiger” economy.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: A youth leader who backs the president clinging to power in Ivory Coast has called on people to chase out foreigners from their neighborhoods, while the UN expressed alarm about a “disturbing escalation” in violence in recent days.
ISLAMABAD: America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) head Leon Panetta called the Inter-Services Intelligence Director General Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha on Saturday, in what sources said to “discuss bilateral issues.”
MUMBAI: Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil endorsed state Director General of Police D. Shivanandan’s statement that the police did not have powers to take action against the oil and sand mafia and that all the raids against the mafia was a farce.
TOKYO: A Japanese ruling party elder suggested on Saturday that Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s resignation was an option to win opposition support for bills to enact a workable budget, adding to pressure on the unpopular leader as he struggles with a divided parliament.
MOSCOW: Russia launched on Saturday one of the final satellites needed to complete a space-based navigation system, which Moscow hopes will challenge the dominant US Global Positioning System (GPS).
KABUL, Afghanistan: Sixty-five civilians, including 40 children, were killed in a NATO assault on insurgents in eastern Afghanistan earlier this month, according to findings of an Afghan government investigation released Sunday.
DUBLIN: Opposition leader Enda Kenny has already shattered Ireland’s 80-year-old political monopoly.
QUETTA, Pakistan: A police official says gunmen have torched two NATO oil tankers in southwestern Pakistan.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A Pakistani court on Saturday sent another American national to jail, a day after he was detained in the northwestern city of Peshawar for overstaying his visa, a government lawyer said. The arrest of the man identified as Aaron Mark DeHaven came as ties between the US and its nuclear-armed ally Pakistan are already strained over the detention of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, charged with killing two Pakistanis in what he says was self-defense on Jan. 27.
CHRISTCHURCH: Violent aftershocks hampered desperate efforts to find survivors in quake-hit Christchurch on Saturday as the death toll climbed to 145 and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key called for a two-minute silence for the nation to grieve.
DUBLIN: Ireland’s ruling Fianna Fail party faced its worst defeat in nearly 80 years as a tidal wave of voter anger about the country being pushed nearly to bankruptcy swept an opposition party to the brink of power Saturday.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand: Fresh aftershocks sent masonry tumbling among rescuers in New Zealand’s quake zone and a cat sparked false alarms of a possible survivor Saturday, as the disaster’s death toll rose to 145 with more than 200 missing.
MANILA: Philippine President Benigno Aquino used the 25th anniversary of the people power revolution that drove dictator Ferdinand Marcos into exile by calling for an end to graft in one of the world’s most corrupt countries.
ABIDJAN: Rebels controlling northern Ivory Coast have seized a town in government territory and said on Friday they were still advancing, raising the prospects of a return to open war.
WASHINGTON: Khalid Ali M. Aldawsari, the college student from Saudi Arabia accused of buying chemicals online as part of a plan to blow up key US targets, including the home of former President George W. Bush, appeared in federal court in Texas on Friday. Aldawsari was arrested late Thursday by FBI agents in Texas on a federal charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
ISLAMABAD: US national Raymond Davis, charged with double murder after shooting dead two Pakistani nationals in Lahore on Jan. 27, refused to sign the charge sheet prepared by Lahore Police on Friday.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand: Distraught relatives desperate for news of loved ones missing in New Zealand’s quake-devastated city of Christchurch asked officials Friday why it was taking so long to identify bodies pulled from the debris.
From NZ rubble, haunting texts to Mom beg for help
