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Washington, August 15: A lecture by the woman who became the public face of the Abu Ghraib scandal was canceled Friday at the Library of Congress after threats led to concerns about staff safety.

Former Army reservist Lynndie England had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum on Capitol Hill. The book by author Gary S. Winkler is called “Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World.”

Seoul, August 15: South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak Saturday called for talks with North Korea aimed at ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons as well as making cuts in conventional weapons.

“Nuclear weapons do not guarantee North Korea’s security. They only cloud its future,” Lee said in a speech to mark Korea’s 1945 liberation from Japanese rule.

“Together with the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, reduction of conventional weapons of the North and the South must be discussed,” he said, urging the North to enter talks.

–Agencies

New York, August 14: The conviction of Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is a violation of universal principles of human rights, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said on Thursday.

“The Burmese regime should immediately and unconditionally release her and the more than 2,100 other political prisoners currently being held,” she said.

Moscow, August 14: Suspected Muslim rebels killed 11 people in an attack on a police post in the Russian region of Dagestan on Thursday evening, local officials said.

Some 15 masked gunmen sprayed bullets at the building, killing four policemen and seven young women who were in an adjacent sauna, Dagestan’s Interior Ministry said in the capital, Makhachkala.

The attackers later fled, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Washington, August 14: The US voiced opposition to releasing a Libyan serving a life sentence in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.

“We have made our views clear to the UK government, to other authorities, that we believe that he should spend the rest of his time in jail,” State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, 57, was convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 2001 and received life imprisonment.

San Francisco, August 14: A wildfire in northern California on Thursday caused thousands of people to flee their homes near Santa Cruz.

More than 2,000 people were evacuated and more than a thousand buildings in the town of Bonny Doon were in danger, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported.

Hundreds of firefighters were battling to save homes from the flames that have destroyed 1,000 hectares since the fire broke out late Wednesday.

Last summer the rural area between Santa Cruz and San Francisco was also threatened by wildfires that destroyed three homes.

–IANS

Toronto, August 14: Canada will deploy ‘behaviour detection officers’ at its airports soon to spot terrorists and criminals.

These officers in plainclothes will watch air passengers for physiological or bodily hints of any hostile intent in their behaviour as they pass through concourses and departure lounges.

The officers will be trained to study air passengers’ facial expression, nervous foot-tapping and body movement to spot any hints of their intentions.

The Canadian Air Transport Authority is starting a pilot project this year to put this plan into action from next year.

Havana, August 14: Former Cuban president Fidel Castro marked his 83rd birthday on Thursday with a gloomy warning about the global economic crisis, which is hitting his country hard, and a vow to “carry on”.

Castro, the leader of Cuba’s 1959 revolution that brought communism to the Caribbean island, has remained out of public view for the last three years and in 2008 handed over the presidency to younger brother Raul Castro for health reasons.

Hanoi, August 14: North Korea is willing to hold talks with Washington, a senior diplomat for the state said on Friday in the first such comments since former president Bill Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang last week.

North Korea released two US journalists and a South Korean worker in recent days in conciliatory moves analysts said could mark a change in tone from Pyongyang after it raised tensions over the past few months with a nuclear test and missile launches.

Jakarta, August 14: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sent a message of defiance on Friday to Islamist extremists, saying Indonesia would not be defeated by terrorism after police uncovered a plot to assassinate him.

In an address to the nation ahead of Independence Day on Monday, the ex-general called on all Indonesians to remain vigilant against extremists blamed for a series of attacks including last month’s hotel blasts in Jakarta.