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Qaddafi Forces Kill 22 Rebels in Misrata Shelling

2011-06-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

a hospital physician said, Libyan government forces have pounded the outskirts of the rebel-held city of Misrata, killing at least 22 people, .

The doctor at Hikma Hospital,who only give his first name, Ayman, said Moammar Qaddafi's forces used tanks, artillery and incendiary rockets on Friday in the bombardment of Dafniya, about 30 kilometers west of Misrata. He said at least 61 people were wounded in the attacks which began about 10 a.m. local time.

Qaddafi forces had renewed their shelling near Misrata on Wednesday. The city is one of the few footholds rebels have in western Libya and controls the country's largest port.

The doctor said residents had reported no sign of NATO aircraft in the Misrata region. There also were no reports NATO strikes in Tripoli, the capital. NATO had been pounding Tripoli and environs in recent days, stepping up backing for the four-month-old rebel uprising that seeks to oust Qaddafi from power after four decades.

Rebels have taken control of swaths of eastern Libya, although fighting has since come to a stalemate even with NATO support. Misrata remained one of the most important rebel footholds in the Qaddafi controlled west.

Government forces are surrounding Misrata on all sides but the north, where the city has access to the Mediterranean Sea for supplies and food through Libya's major port. Rebels have beaten back several government attempts to retake the city.

The Qaddafi forces are pushing back on rebel forces trying to break out of Misrata to the west toward Tripoli, where Qaddafi is increasingly cornered under NATO bombardment in the capital.

A rebel fighter in Misrata who identifies himself only as Abdel-Salem said Qaddafi's sons, Khamis and al-Moatassem, and top aid Abdullah al-Senoussi are in command of the operation in Zlitan, about nine miles (15 kilometers) from Dafinya. They are dug in trying to stop the rebel advance out of Misrata.

"The situation is very bad there. Qaddafi sent huge forces to Zlitan to fortify the city because he knows that if Zlitan falls in the hands of the rebels, the way to Tripoli will be wide open," Abdel-Salam said. "Now the ball is in the court of NATO, but we have not seen any NATO planes flying over despite the fierce battle."

According to Abdel-Salam, a bulk of Zlitan residents are Ghadafi loyalists.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin spoke of the degradation of Qaddafi's forces Friday after a classified briefing by senior Pentagon officials in Washington. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Qaddafi's military and political standing had been weakened by NATO air attacks.

Levin said administration officials offered no predictions on how long the war would last or when Qaddafi might go. He said NATO helicopters, likely British and French, have been taking out tanks without collateral damage.

Turkey's prime minister said in a TV interview broadcast Friday that his country has offered Qaddafi guarantees if he were to leave Libya but has received no response. He did not detail what sort of guarantees.

"He has no other option but to leave Libya, with the condition that he is given certain guarantees. That's the picture," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in the interview with the NTV channel.

"We have given him these guarantees; we said we will help you leave for wherever you would like."

Suicide Bomber Kills Four KABUL, Afghanistan.

2011-06-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

Saturday A suicide bomber blew himself up outside of a police station in eastern Afghanistan, killing three policemen and a civilian.

the bomber approached the local police headquarters in the Shai Kali area of restive ,st province on foot early Saturday and detonated his explosives laden vest, Provincial police chief Sadar Mohammad Zazai said.

Among the four people killed in the blast was a local police chief, Mohammad Zahir Khan, Zazai said. It was not immediately clear whether Khan was target.

Provincial health director Hedayatullah Hamidi said three people were killed and 25 wounded in the bombing. Differing death tolls from officials are common immediately following a bombing in Afghanistan.

In the eastern province of Laghman, police investigating an explosion late Friday at a satellite television network office in Mehterlam city were hit by a second bomb which killed two policemen and wounded nine others, said Faizelullah Patan, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

The Taliban announced its spring offensive several weeks ago and has been stepping up its attacks around the country.

A NATO service member died as a result of a noncombat related injury Friday in eastern Afghanistan, according to the international alliance. NATO did not release any other details about the death.

The insurgency has focused on Afghan security forces in a bid to undermine training and recruitment efforts of the international coalition, which hopes to transition security to the nascent Afghan force in targeted areas.

Security along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan has been fraught, however, with Taliban fighters filtering in from Pakistan to stage spectacular attacks in the eastern part of the country.

Obama tours neighborhood in Joplin twister-devastate

2011-05-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama on Sunday toured the dissipation wrought by a monster tornado,
express sympathy the bereaved and committed the government to helping Joplin rebuild until the job is done.

Obama said "This is not just your tragedy. This is a national tragedy, and that means there will be a national response,"

Air Force One flew over a massive swath of brown as far as the eye could see a landscape of flattened houses and stripped trees on its approach.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and others greeted him on the tarmac before they set out for their first stop, a walking tour of a destroyed neighborhood.
A memorial service later was punctuating a day of remembrance one week after the disaster.

Obama's parade pulled into a neighborhood where downed trees cleaved open houses, roofs were stripped or blown off, cars were cratered and splintered
wood was everywhere. He saw nothing whole, but rather small domestic sights — a view into a room with a TV still in place, a recliner sitting amid rubble,
a washer-dryer standing next to a decimated house. American flags were planted here and there in the mess.

"Sorry for your loss," Obama told an anguished woman, hugging her twice as they talked. Another woman told him that her uncle lives up the road — he survived but his house did not. "Tell your uncle we're praying for him," the president said.

To those working at the scene, the president said: "We appreciate everything you guys are doing. God bless you." One volunteer told him that people were streaming in from other states to help any way they could.

Obama vowed: "We are going to be here long after the cameras leave. We're not going to stop `til Joplin's back on its feet."

Obama returned to the U.S. on Saturday from a six-day European tour of Ireland, Britain, France and Poland. After days of focusing on the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world, he turned to an even more critical connection: his own, with the American people. He was visiting survivors and the bereaved from the worst tornado in decades, which tore through Joplin a week ago leaving more than 120 dead and hundreds more injured. At least 40 remain unaccounted for, and
the damage is massive.

Bangladesh Parliament House

2011-05-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

Parliament House of Bangladesh is one of the twentieth century’s utmost architectural structures. It was made of mostly concrete and marble showing a rich blend of ancient and modern architecture. Use of different geometrical shape and floating outlook are some unique attractions of this glorious creation.
This stunning building was designed by famous architect Louis Kahn.Local people called it “Sangshod Vaban”. Its better if you can hire a "Rickshaw" and go around it. The best
time to visit is Obviously in the day time.

world largest becach cox's bazar

2011-05-25T02:06:00.000-07:00

cox's bazar beach, it is the world largest and longest beach. it is 140 k.m. long beach. it situated in bnagladesh
many visitor come here for see natural beauty of beach. there have lot of hotel for visitor in cheap rate. visitor can come
come cox's bazar beach easily by bus or air. for that visitor need to first come chittagong. and than which one
like to go air they will go chittagong air port and other person go to ......

Pakistan naval base siege close to an end

2011-05-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

Troops agitate Taliban marksman holed up in Pakistan's naval air force headquarters on Monday after the most audacious attack in the unstable, nuclear-armed country since the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Blasts be gird out and helicopters hovered above in the city of Karachi, nearly 12 hours after more than 20 Pakistani Taliban militants stormed the building with guns and grenades, blowing up at least one aircraft.

However, security officials and a senior minister said the operation appeared to be coming to an end.

"A major area has been cleared," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told "The sweeping process is continuing."

The bushwhack casts fresh doubt on the Pakistan military's ability to protect its bases following an attack on the army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi in 2009, and is a further embarrassment following the surprise raid by US special forces on bin Laden's hideout north of Islamabad on May 2.

The Pakistan Taliban, which is cognate with al Qaeda, said the attack was to avenge the al Qaeda leader's killing.

"It was the revenge of crucifixion of Osama bin Laden. It was the proof that we are still united and powerful," Taliban agent Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Sporadic bouts of heavy gunfire erupted from the base as security forces battled to end the siege. Twelve military personnel were killed and 14 wounded in the assault that started at 10.30 p.m. on Sunday a navy agent said.
The operation is still on but resistance from militants has reduced significantly. A security source said at least threemilitants had been killed.

Obama departs for Europe trip, explores Irish roots

2011-05-23T04:24:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama kicked off a multi-nation European tour on Sunday, departing for Ireland, where he will explore his Irish roots in a town that once was home to a distant relative.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, took off from Andrews Air Force Base late on Sunday for a weeklong trip that will include stops in Britain, France and Poland.
Obama is expected to press US allies to help advance the movement for democratic change offered by the "Arab spring" uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa during the tour.
But he starts off on a nostalgic note, visiting a country where 37 million Americans claim ancestry and going to Moneygall, a sleepy village that was the birthplace of his great-great-great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, a shoemaker.
Town residents lined up for up to six hours last week to get a ticket to see the president, who has been affectionately renamed "O'Bama" for his Irish sojourn. An exclusion zone will be in place around the town on Monday and only people with tickets will be let in.
Obama, the first African-American US president, is the son of a Kenyan father and Irish-American mother.
After Ireland Obama heads to Britain, where he will be feted by Queen Elizabeth at a formal state dinner. He then attends the Group of Eight summit in France before concluding his trip in Poland, where he will meet with leaders from eastern Europe.

Furious US lawmaker blocks Afghan aid

2011-05-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

A senior US assembly member on Monday June 29 angrily blocked billions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan, vowing not to give "one more dime" until Afghan President Hamid Karzai acts against corruption. Representative Nita Lowey, who sits on the powerful committee in charge of the budget, said she would hold hearings into allegations that top Afghan officials flew suitcases full of cash from US aid to foreign safe havens.
"I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that US taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords and terrorists," she said.
An aide to Lowey said that President Barack Obama''s administration requested 3.9 billion dollars in aid for Afghanistan in the 2011 fiscal year, which starts in October. A member of Obama''s Democratic Party from New York, said she would refuse to consider any assistance for Afghanistan other than "life-saving humanitarian aid" when her subcommittee meets on the budget on Wednesday.
"Too many Americans are suffering in this economy for us to put their hard-earned tax dollars into the hands of criminals overseas," Lowey said in a statement.
"We will not commit billions more in taxpayer money for Afghanistan until there are assurances that such funds will be used for their intended purposes and that the government of Afghanistan is willing and able to root out corruption within its ranks," she said.
Lowey heads the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations. Her decision would not affect military appropriations, which are handled by a separate subcommittee.
Lowey was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that US investigators suspect that Afghan officials stuffed suitcases full of cash siphoned from Western aid projects and flew them out of Kabul airport.
The report said more than three billion dollars has been legally declared to leave Kabul International Airport over the past three years, a figure so large for such a poor country that it triggered concerns.
Separately, The Washington Post ran a front-page story Monday saying that top officials in Karzai''s government have often blocked corruption investigations.
Transparency International, a watchdog, has ranked
Afghanistan as the world''s most corrupt nation-worse even than Somalia which has no effective government.

Thousands stage protest in Greece as strike cripples life

2011-05-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Thousands demonstrated in Athens and major cities today and travellers faced fresh travel misery as the country was gripped by the fifth general strike this year against tough austerity policies.
Over 15,000 people according to police estimates took part in street protests in the capital and the main northern city of Thessaloniki to force the government to abandon an EU and IMF-mandated pay and pension cuts.
The main demonstration in Athens called by the country''s largest labour unions and leftist parties attracted around 5,000 participants, police said.
Some 4,000 people of all ages, down to babies in prams, had marched in the capital earlier under another protest called by Communist-affiliated workers.
A giant banner on a crane hung over the protesters, calling on the ruling Socialists to scrap an accord with Brussels and the IMF that secured a huge bailout loan for Greece in return for sweeping pay and pension cuts.
"When injustice becomes law, resistance is a duty," read another banner.
Another 7,000 people marched in two separate demonstrations in the main northern city of Thessaloniki according to the police.
The general strike put travellers through a gauntlet for the second time in a week as it disrupted departures from the capital.
Thousands of travellers to the Greek islands were prevented from sailing as at least four scheduled ferry services to the Aegean were cancelled.
Some 500 Communist-affiliated strikers at the harbour also blocked the departure of smaller vessels to islands closer to Athens.
The authorities managed to keep the lanes open in the early morning and got a handful of ferries through by dispatching around 1,000 coastguards and police to keep unionists at bay.
Greece''s main airlines grounded nearly 50 of Tuesday''s domestic flights because of the strike while rail access to Athens airport was also impeded.
Intercity trains also ran a reduced service along with hospitals while state offices shut down altogether.
No news was broadcast as journalists joined the action.
On June 23, another one-day protest had stranded thousands of travellers at Piraeus, one of the Mediterranean Sea''s busiest ports, for hours.
The recurring labour unrest has cost Greece booking cancellations and millions of euros in damages at a time when the debt-hit nation is struggling to maximise its revenues and revive its flagging economy.
"Greek islanders are counting on the next month for funds," Manolis Galanakis, deputy chairman of Greek coastal shipping associations, told Mega television.
He added that some 18,000 people were originally scheduled to sail from Piraeus on Tuesday.
A court late on Monday declared the ferry strike illegal but the Communist party and its related syndicates dismissed the ruling.
"permissibility is relative. How can someone losing their job be considered legal?" the head of the Piraeus labour centre Nikos Xourafis told the television station.
Tourism contributes 17 percent of Greece''s gross domestic product.
Lawmakers on Tuesday were to begin discussing a disputed pension reform tabled by the government that raises the general retirement age to 65 years for both men and women for the first time.
It also increases the mandatory period in the workforce from 37 to 40 years and cracks down on early retirement.

Tensions Ahead of U.S. - Israel Talks

2011-05-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to hold discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House today. The talks come amid sharp disagreement between the two leaders on the best way to move forward in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (BBC)--with Obama advocating a Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders, and Netanyahu claiming such boundaries are "indefensible." According to the New York Times, Netanyahu was incensed by the president's decision to endorse the 1967 borders in his highly touted Mideast speech yesterday. Obama has said he does not believe Netanyahu has the political will to offer the type of concessions necessary for a peace deal.
Obama's address on the democratic uprisings in the Mideast and North Africa was the first outright declaration of his policy on the contested issue of borders (al-Jazeera)--essentially endorsing the Palestinian desire to revert to the status before the 1967 war, in which Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Analysts suggest that while this has long been the tacit U.S. position, Obama's public comments signal a bolder U.S. policy.
Hopes for success in U.S-Israeli talks have diminished in recent weeks (WSJ) with announcements of a unity government between the main Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas--an Islamic militant group--and the campaign for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

NASA delays shuttle launch at least until weekend

2011-05-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

NASA on Sunday delayed the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour at least until the end of the week as work continues to resolve an electronics problem that scuttled Friday's launch attempt, officials said.

NASA tried to launch Endeavour on Friday on its 25th and final flight to deliver the $2 billion (1 billion pounds) Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector to the International Space Station.

A problem with a heating system on one of the ship's hydraulic power generators prompted managers to stop the countdown. The heaters keep fuel from freezing in the line, preventing it from rupturing in the cold vacuum of space.

NASA was hopeful that the problem would have an easy solution and retargeted Endeavour's launch for Monday, but said another attempt would not happen before the end of the week, at the earliest.

"The trouble-shooting that was done overnight doesn't seem to indicate that it's one of the simple things," NASA spokesman Mike Curie said.

Replacing and retesting an electronics box in the shuttle's engine compartment would take several days. The flight would not be rescheduled until after Friday's planned launch of an Atlas 5 rocket with a Defence Department missile-warning satellite from nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Endeavour's six astronauts were headed back to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston for a few days of additional training before they return for the next launch attempt, NASA said.

The mission is the next-to-last for the 30-year-old shuttle program, which is ending after sister ship Atlantis completes its final voyage this summer.

51pc Pakistanis sad over Laden

2011-05-17T01:29:00.000-07:00

A majority of Pakistanis surveyed in a poll appeared to be aggrieved over the death of Osama bin Laden, with 51 per cent describing their emotions as 'grief'.
However, one-third said they were unconcerned by the incident, reports NDTV.
The nationwide poll was conducted by Gallup Pakistan between May 7 and May 10, less than a week after bin Laden was killed in a raid by US special forces in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.
Only 11 per cent of respondents said they were glad or relieved to know about the death of the al-Qaeda leader.
Forty-four per cent said they considered bin Laden a martyr while 28 per cent said they believed he was killed because he was an outlaw.
Forty-nine per cent considered the raid against bin Laden an activity which was staged by the Americans.
Only 26 per cent believed the story being told is true and 25 per cent were unsure.
A majority said they believed Pakistani authorities acted in connivance with American forces to conduct the operation.
The belief about connivance is slightly higher for the civilian government (57 percent) than for the army (48 percent).
Only 30 percent said they believed that having eliminated bin Laden, the US forces will withdraw from Afghanistan.
A larger number (51 percent) believed the US will continue to engage in the war in Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis feared that terrorist acts in their country might rise (42 percent) or remain as they are (34 percent).
Only a few (14 percent) were hopeful that terrorism might decline after bin Laden's removal from the scene.
More than two thirds (68 percent) believed the country's sovereignty was severely compromised by the US operation while 28 percent disagreed.
The study was released by Gilani Foundation and carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International. The poll covered 2,530 men and women in the rural and urban areas.

Special panel exploring 'ways'

2011-05-17T01:15:00.000-07:00

The special parliamentary committee is looking for practical ways to add to the constitution the Supreme Court order that rescinded the caretaker government but kept provision for caretakers overseeing the next two general elections.

Several members of the committee on constitution amendment on Monday hinted they were on the lookout after the top court said parliament may amend the charter deleting provisions requiring former chief justices or the judges of the Appellate Division at the helm.
The apex court on May 10 repealed the 13th Amendment to the constitution that introduced the caretaker government.
Committee member Rashed Khan Menon told that prime minister Sheikh Hasina wants the system to be retained in 'any form'.
"But the issues in this regard need discussion," he said.
During the talks with the committee on Apr 27, Hasina suggested if the caretaker government fails to ensure elections in three months, the previous elected government will do the job.

The committee on Friday briefed the prime minister on the Supreme Court verdict.