London, January 24: The bid to blow up a US plane marks a “new phase” in al-Qaeda’s campaign against the West, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Sunday, before this week’s London talks on Afghanistan and Yemen.
Miliband also said there remained a “very real” danger from violent extremists who will “stop at nothing” after Britain raised its terror threat assessment level from substantial to severe on Friday.
Port-au-Prince, January 24: The confirmed death toll from Haiti’s devastating earthquake has topped 150 000 in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, the communications minister said on Sunday, with many more thousands dead around the country or still buried under the rubble.
Cairo, Janaury 24: An audiotape purportedly from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden broadcast on al-Jazeera on Sunday warned the US will face fresh attacks if it does not change its foreign policy.
In the tape “Osama to Obama”, Bin Laden addressed US President Barack Obama, saying that the US would face further attacks if it did not stop its support for Israel.
Bin Laden praised a Nigerian man’s failed attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit Dec 25.
The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified.
—Agencies
London, January 24: Fears of a possible attempt by al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Pakistan to hijack an Indian passenger jet and crash it into a British city may have prompted the UK to raise its terror alert to its second-highest level, a media report claimed here on Sunday.
Chennai, January 24: South Korean President Lee Myung-bak arrived in Chennai on Sunday, beginning his four-day India visit. He inspected the Hyundai factory near the Tamil Nadu capital and spent some time there.
The South Korean president was received at the airport by Tamil Nadu Labour Minister T.N. Anbarasan. He drove straight to the Hyundai Motor India car plant at Irrungattukottai on the outskirts of the state capital and spent half an hour at the plant, officials said.
He is slated to meet South Korean businessmen living in the city before flying to New Delhi in the evening.
Dhaka, January 24: Millions of devotees prayed for global peace, prosperity and unity in Bangladesh as the world’s second-largest Muslim congregation concluded Sunday.
Indian scholar Moulana Jubayerul Hassan led the concluding prayers of the three-day Ijtema congregation on the banks of river Turag in Tongi, about 30 km north of Dhaka.
Organisers estimated more than 3 million devotees attended the mass prayer, which was aired live throughout the country.
Moscow, January 24: The modern communication tool Twitter made it into outer space when US astronaut Timothy Creamer sent a tweet from the International Space Station (ISS), Russian state television reported Saturday.
“Hello Twitterverse! we r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station – the 1st live tweet from Space!: ),” Creamer wrote to his Twitter following on earth.
Astronauts on the ISS have in recent weeks had direct access to the Internet.
Washington, January 24: Obesity in children has become a major problem as it can cause the heart disease later. With increasing number of children and teens becoming overweight or obese, the risk of developing health problems such as diabetes is also growing.
To counter the growing problem, Cindy Cunningham, a nutritionist at UT Southwestern Medical Centre, says it is essential to help babies avoid weight issues from the start of their lives.
“Even people with a genetic tendency to be overweight can avoid excessive weight gain with good nutrition and exercise,” said Cunningham.
New York, January 24: The Yemen-based terrorist group Al Qaeda has formed a women’s brigade of ‘non Arab’ suicide bombers as part of its new tactic to attack western targets, anti-terror experts said.
It was ‘inevitable’ that Al Qaeda would eventually turn to using women with a western appearance to carry out suicide attacks.
Airliners and all forms of transport could be targeted as well as sports stadium, ports and power stations, the Daily Telegraph reported quoting security Officials.
Ottawa, January 24: Canada’s former ambassador to Tehran, Kenneth Taylor, actively spied for the Central Intelligence Agency and helped the US plan a military incursion into the country during the Islamic Revolution, according to new reports.
An arrangement was set up by then-US President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, whereby Taylor would provide US intelligence with information from his position at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran, according to a report published in The Globe and Mail on Saturday.
London, January 24: Britain has banned the export of a hand-held machine marketed as a bomb-detection device in Iraq and Afghanistan because of allegations that it does not work.
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills halted the export of the ADE651 after a BBC Newsnight investigation Friday challenged the claims of the company, ATSC. The broadcaster took the key aspects of the device to a laboratory, which concluded that a component intended to detect explosives contained technology used to prevent theft in stores.
Tehran, January 24: Tbilisi’s secret extradition of an Iranian citizen to the United States was a major political blunder, a former Georgian intelligence official says.
Former Georgian minster for state security Anzor Maisuradze on Thursday criticized the government for arresting Amir Hossein Ardebili in 2007 and handing the 36-year-old Iranian over to American law enforcement officials.
Washington, January 24: The Democratic chairman and a Republican on the Senate banking committee said on Saturday they were confident Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would win confirmation for a second term.
“Based on our discussions with our colleagues, we are very confident that Chairman Bernanke will win confirmation by the Senate for a second term,” Senators Chris Dodd and Judd Gregg said in a joint statement.
Seoul, January 24: North Korea on Sunday accused the South of declaring war by warning earlier this month that it would launch a preemptive strike if it thought its impoverished neighbor was preparing a nuclear attack.
The angry retort from Pyongyang is the latest in what have become increasingly brittle relations between the two Koreas just as the international community tries to lure the North back to nuclear disarmament talks.
Baghdad, January 24: The United States will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, US Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday.
Biden’s announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later. A lawyer for one guard, noting that word of the intended appeal came in Iraq, accused the Obama administration of political expediency and said the US was pursuing an innocent man, rather than justice.
England, January 24: A British woman who collapsed after her drink was spiked was rescued by a real-life Superman.
Elizabeth Caulwell, 26, was out with her sister and friends in a bar when her drink was spiked, causing her to collapse, The Sun reports.
She was carried safely to an ambulance by a mystery hero who then vanished, leaving her wrapped in his red cape, the only clue to his identity.
After recovering from partial paralysis in the hospital, Caulwell tracked down her Superman using the local paper in her hometown of Wigan, England.
Rome, January 24: Two children died when a two-story dwelling collapsed at dawn today in a piazza in the centre of Favara, Sicily.
Marianna Bellavia, 14, died in the disaster. Her sister Chiara, three, was found seriously injured but alive. She was pronounced dead later in the day after attempts to resuscitate her failed.
Their brother Giovanni, 12, sustained non-life-threatening injuries and phoned rescuers for help.
Parents Giuseppe Bellavia and Josephine Bello also survived.
Florida, January 24: A Woman and two young children were found shot dead today at an exclusive gated community in southern Florida, after a man confessed the killings to paramedics when he crashed his car.
The Palm Beach Post reported Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at a house in the gated Isles community in Wellington, Florida, to find the bodies of a woman and two young children shot to death, according to the Post.
County records indicate the property is owned by Neal M. Jacobson, 49, and wife Franki Jacobson, 53.
Haiti, January 24: Experts predict Haiti will be hit again with another huge quake, despite two in recent weeks.
Seismologists say aftershocks have already rattled the impoverished Caribbean nation in the days following the January 12 quake that killed over 110,000 people, left nearly 610,000 homeless and injured scores more.
On Thursday, a magnitude 5.9 quake struck people already scrambling to rebuild their tattered lives.
London, January 23: Police evacuated part of a British airport and declared a “chemical incident” after a man tried to carry some non-identified white powder onto a plane.
A check-in area in Manchester Airport in northwest England was cleared overnight after the substance was discovered in a bag carried by an Asian man planning to fly to London Heathrow.
However, police Superintendent Leor Giladi said there was “no imminent danger”, and a source said it was unlikely the incident was terror-related.
Colorodo, January 23: A Newly released video shows the mother of the six-year-old boy purported to be in a runaway balloon finally acknowledging to authorities it was all a hoax – contrary to her husband’s repeated public denials just before reporting to jail.
The video interviews obtained by the Fort Collins Coloradoan on Friday show Mayumi Heene telling sheriff’s officials that the October 15 event was a hoax that she and her husband orchestrated to gain notoriety and land a reality TV show.
Washington, January 23: Two American men who were jailed for a week after police mistook their coconut candy for crack cocaine are planning to file a US$2 million ($2.21m) lawsuit, according to US reports.
José Pena, a 48-year-old plumber, and his longtime friend and colleague Cesar Rodriguez, 33, from the Bronx, New York, were arrested on January 15 after police found a bag of what they thought was cocaine, reports The New York Post.
The “drugs” were finally tested five days later and determined to be popular Coco (coconut) Candy. The charges were dropped.
Nigeria, January 23: At least 150 bodies have been recovered from wells following Muslim-Christian clashes in central Nigeria.
The estimated death toll from the clashes already stands at more than 300, a village head and volunteers say.
“So far we have picked 150 bodies from the wells. But 60 more people are still missing,” Umar Baza, head of Kuru Karama village near the city of Jos, said today.
“We took an inventory of the displaced people from this village, sheltering in three camps, and we realise that 60 people can still not be accounted for,” he added.
London, January 23: Haiti has ended the search and rescue phase of the quake relief effort after 132 people were found alive under rubble.
The United Nations says, “The government has declared the search and rescue phase over,” the UN’s Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest situation report on the relief effort.
“There were 132 lives rescued by international search and rescue teams,” it added.
London, January 23: The woman convicted of murdering her brain-damaged son by injecting him with a lethal dose of heroin insisted she had done no wrong.
The Times of London reported Francis Inglis saying, “I am not a murderer, and I do not regret what I did, not at all.”
In an emotional telephone conversation, Inglis’ family told her they supported her decision to end the suffering of her son Thomas, 22, who suffered severe head injuries after falling from an ambulance.
“You only did it because you knew we wouldn’t,” said Pat Kershaw, her sister.