shameen

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and international envoy Kofi Annan have expressed disappointment over the failure of the Security Council to adopt a resolution aimed at addressing the worsening crisis in Syria.

The 15-nation Council failed to adopt yesterday a draft resolution, which would have threatened President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime with sanctions, after permanent members Russia and China vetoed it.

The head of the UN intellectual property agency says it has asked UN sanctions officials to review computer equipment it provided to Iran and North Korea.

Today’s statement from Francis Gurry comes days after the US House Foreign Affairs Committee demanded “unfettered access” to UN documents about the deal and the US State Department said it was reviewing the aid.

A military judge is barring the United Nations’ torture investigator from testifying about the pre-trial detention of a US Army private charged with the biggest leak of classified information in the country’s history.

Col Denise Lind’s ruling in a pre-trial hearing today said Juan Mendez’ testimony is irrelevant to whether Pfc Bradley Manning’s nine months in maximum security confinement at a Marine Corps brig amounted to illegal punishment.

A US Navy helicopter crashed near Oman Thursday with five crew members on board.

The chopper was conducting “heavy lift support operations” at the time of the crash, some 90 km from Muscat, Xinhua reported. The fate of the crew was not immediately known.

IANS

Seventeen suspects have been arrested for a brutal attack on a Mexican summer camp in which two young women and three girls were raped.

The attorney general of the central state of Mexico, Alfredo Castillo, said at a press conference that a police officer, a policeman in the central city of Chalco and a former soldier were among the 15 men and two women arrested.

All of the suspects were arrested Wednesday in the small central town of Santa Maria Huexoculco, part of the Chalco municipality, while authorities were still searching for four other members of the gang.

A copy of the complete works of Shakespeare — with Diwali cards displaying Hindu gods pasted on the two covers — has become the centre of attraction of a major exhibition here for its historic and inspiring link with Nelson Mandela’s time in jail.

One of the prized items of the exhibition titled ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’ at the British Museum, the copy is called the ‘Robben Island Bible’ because of the solace and inspiration it provided to prisoners during the apartheid era in South Africa.

Louisiana’s Indian American Governor Bobby Jindal, a likely running mate of Republican Presidential candidate, has hammered President Barack Obama for trying to distract voters from his record by distorting Mitt Romney’s experience.

The President “can’t run on his record. He can’t run on his policies, so all he can do is attack Governor Romney. All he can do is distort his policies. All he can do is make up allegations, try to distract our attention away from his failed performance and the economy today,” Jindal said speaking at a Romney’s campaign headquarters in Ohio.

The possibility of Moscow providing asylum for embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was not discussed during a conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama, a Kremlin official said on Thursday.

“They did not discuss any destination,” Putin aide Yury Ushakov said.

The two Presidents spoke on Wednesday, just hours after the death of Syria’s defence minister in a suicide bombing in Damascus.

Ushakov also said the issue was not touched on in a meeting on Wednesday between Putin and Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan.