Baghdad: A wave of attacks killed at least 86 people in Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq on Monday, officials said, pushing the death toll over the past week to more than 230 and extending one of the most sustained bouts of sectarian violence the country has seen in years. The bloodshed is still far shy of the pace, scale and brutality of the dark days of 2006-2007, when Sunni...
10:32:12 PM May 20, 2013
Seoul: North Korea fired two short-range missiles on Monday, making six launches in three days, and it condemned South Korea for criticising what it said were its legitimate military drills. South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea had fired one missile on Monday morning and a second one in the afternoon. Both were fired into the sea off North Korea's east coast, a ministry official said. The launches come hard...
03:17:28 PM May 20, 2013
Dubai: India on Monday started verification and issuance of Emergency Certificates allowing its citizens to leave Saudi Arabia following concerns over a new labour policy in the Gulf Kingdom. The schedule currently announced is for the delivery of the first batch of 12,000 Emergency Certificate applications received at Indian Embassy in Riyadh and nearly 3,000 in Saudi's Eastern Province. The schedule for verification and delivery of subsequent batches for all...
03:07:33 PM May 20, 2013
Baghdad: At least 20 people were killed by a series of car bombs in mainly Shiite districts of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Monday and 11 others were killed by attacks in the southern city of Basra, police and medics said. Scores of people have been killed in attacks over the past week as tensions between minority Sunni Muslims and Shiites who now lead Iraq have reached their highest level...
02:59:38 PM May 20, 2013
Washington: US President Barack Obama has asked Americans to be more competitive as millions of young people from countries like India, China and Brazil are joining the global workforce. "In today's hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil - many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did - all of them entering the global workforce alongside you,...
12:16:12 PM May 20, 2013
"Tensions along the Line of Actual Control don't give leverage unless you stay there," said a senior diplomat with long experience of China. And China didn't stay on at Raki Nulla in eastern Ladakh during the face off last month, raising the question as to why it happened in the first place. "I don't buy the theory of discord between the civil and military establishment. That's a Western argument," said...
11:50:36 AM May 20, 2013
Washington: A US-based Sikh group on Monday said that it will challenge the decision of an American district court last week to dismiss alleged human rights violations case against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The Sikh for Justice (SFJ) had filed the case of alleged human rights violations against Badal in 2012, but it was dismissed by a US district court in Wisconsin last Friday. The group said it...
11:40:39 AM May 20, 2013
Washington: Tornadoes tore through three central American states of Kansas, Oklahoma and Iowa with baseball-sized hail and wind blasts ripping roofs off homes and turning trees to matchsticks, as severe weather swept the region. A large "violent and extremely dangerous" tornado was spotted on Sunday night on the southwest side of Wichita, Kansas and a second confirmed one was seen near Edmond, Oklahoma, the National Weather Service said. Another tornado...
11:17:33 AM May 20, 2013
New Delhi: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will arrive in India on Monday. Karzai is set to receive an honorary doctorate from a Chandigarh university, after which he will visit the national capital. Hamid Karzai, who is not on an official visit to India, may seek increased military aid from India during and discuss recent cross-border clashes with Pakistan, an aide said. The comments follow a weekend report by the Times...
09:59:10 AM May 20, 2013
Washington: NASA's Mars rover, Opportunity, has finished examining a fractured rock on the red planet intensely altered by water, providing evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favourable for life. Opportunity is now driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York." The fractured rock, called "Esperance," provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favourable for life, mission's principal investigator, Steve Squyres...
09:41:13 AM May 20, 2013
Abuja: At least 14 Islamist insurgents and three soldiers have been killed in Nigerian military crackdown on terrorists, as the restive Maiduguri city in northern state of Borno was placed under a 24-hour curfew. "After a mop up of scenes of battle (since Saturday), 14 terrorists were confirmed dead... Altogether three soldiers died, while seven are wounded and are being treated in a military medical facility," the defence ministry said...
08:07:20 AM May 20, 2013
Zagreb: Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined. Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees. Croatian researchers are training them to find unexploded mines littering their country and the rest of...
07:40:23 AM May 20, 2013
Edmond: One of several tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system rumbling through the Plains and Midwest has leveled several mobile homes in an area southeast of Oklahoma City. Reports of injuries in the mobile home park near Shawnee about 35 miles southeast of Oklahoma City couldn't immediately be confirmed. A storm spotter has told the National Weather Service that the tornado "scoured" the landscape in the park and an...
07:03:00 AM May 20, 2013
Boston: With a bullet still in his body, the police officer who survived a showdown with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said on Sunday he's determined to return to duty. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Officer Richard Donahue has been recovering alongside victims injured in the April 15, 2013 attack by the marathon's finish line since his transfer to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston on Friday. The 33-year-old uses crutches to...
06:46:41 AM May 20, 2013
Amman: Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a Syrian rebel-held town alongside Syrian troops on Sunday and Israel threatened more attacks on Syria to rein the militia in, highlighting the risks of a wider regional conflict if planned peace talks fail. Activists said it was the fiercest fighting in Syria's two year-old civil war involving Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group backed by Iran which they said appeared to be helping President Bashar al-Assad...
06:23:05 AM May 20, 2013
