Around the World
Lehaz Ali
Agence France-Presse
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:44 EST
Suicide car bombs tore through security offices in Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 11 people and heavily damaging the Peshawar headquarters of the country's top intelligence agency.
The deadly assaults on Pakistan's police and intelligence agents come with 30,000 troops pressing their most ambitious offensive to date against homegrown Taliban networks in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.
The three-storey Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) provincial headquarters in the northwestern city of Peshawar was heavily damaged, with huge clouds of smoke spewing into the sky and debris littering the ground, witnesses said.
Press TV
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:25 EST
Taliban have allegedly been found in possession of American-manufactured mines, amid reports of the Afghan militants stepping up their bombing campaigns.
On Tuesday, the Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera aired footages showing the Taliban sorting and transporting purported 'US military ammunition' including mines engraved with US markings.
The channel claimed the explosives had been taken during an October militant rampage through two distant US bases in the eastern province of Nuristan.
The militants are, meanwhile, reported to conduct explosions throughout the war-wrecked country on a daily basis.
Rowan Callick
The Australian
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:01 EST
Israel is sending a foreign ministry official to the Solomon Islands next week to seek an explanation as to why it was the only country in Oceania to vote at the UN for the Goldstone report condemning Israel's assault on Gaza.
Solomon Islands' Foreign Minister William Haomae a year ago flew to Iran, following a meeting at the UN in New York with counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki, to explore the prospect of formalising diplomatic relations, and of benefiting from Iranian aid.
Prime Minister Derek Sikua also held talks with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when both were attending the UN General Assembly in September last year.
Mr Haomae said at the time that Iran's assistance might be helpful in dam construction, training for the oil and gas industries -- for which the Solomons hopes to attract exploration -- and trade in general.
Raja Asghar
dawn.com
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00 EST
© APP
If a court issues any warrant we will not become an obstruction in its way. Rather we will execute it: Babar Awan.
The government assured the National Assembly on Tuesday it would execute any court warrants against ex-president Pervez Musharraf as the former military dictator came under fire from both sides of the house, though the treasury benches ignored an opposition call to reply to his latest criticism of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was cheered by desk-thumping from both opposition and treasury benches as he lambasted Mr Musharraf for 'using such (insulting) words against the elected president of Pakistan' and, while demanding a government response to it, repeated his Pakistan Muslim League-N's demand for a high treason trial of the former army chief for his violations of the Constitution.
Marcelo Soares
Wired
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:31 EST
© Dario Lopez-Mills/AP
Sao Paolo endures a power outage in 1999
A massive 2007 electrical blackout in Brazil has been newly blamed on computer hackers, but was actually the result of a utility company's negligent maintenance of high voltage insulators on two transmission lines. That's according to reports from government regulators and others who investigated the incident for more than a year.
Tom Chivers
The Telegraph
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:20 EST
© AP Photo/20th Century Fox
The Vatican has joined the search for alien life
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week.
For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.
Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God "made man in his own image".
Furthermore, Jesus Christ's role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal?
Comment: The following curious remark appears in the
conference report:
Ultimately, much of the fascination of astrobiology comes from the question of whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds, and whether forms of life alien to our own in fact coexist with us - today - on our own home world. Session 8, Intelligence Elsewhere and Shadow Life, explores both these issues. The search for intelligent life elsewhere is being conducted by listening to the cosmos with radio telescopes in an effort to pick up a signal of inarguably artificial origin. A search for life with a biochemistry different from that of all the known life on Earth - what has been termed 'shadow life' - on our own planet is a fascinating possibility but one fraught with daunting difficulties.
Felicity Caldwell
The Queensland Times
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:00 EST
A man lured two nine-year-old girls into his cubby house with the promise of chocolate cake before making them play spin the bottle.
Ipswich District Court was told the man, who was about 17 at the time, threatened he would shoot the girls with a nail gun if they did not play the game which involved removing pieces of clothing.
The man, who is now 19 years old, pleaded not guilty to two charges of indecent treatment of a child aged under 12 but was found guilty by a jury yesterday.
The man, who cannot be named, was sentenced to a 12-month intensive correction order.
Crown Prosecutor Sal Vasta said the man asked his neighbour's daughter and her two friends if they wanted to play at the house he shares with his grandmother in Lockrose - west of Lowood.
Press TV
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:52 EST
© Unknown
Pakistani local residents bury a victim of an April 16 blast in Charsadda.
A car bombing in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least 32 people and inflicted injuries on more than 100, local police say.
The Tuesday blast rocked a busy intersection in the town of Charsadda.
"The blast took place around 4:15 pm (1115 GMT)," said district police chief Mohammad Riaz Khan, the AFP news agency reported.
"This is a busy area. It is usually crowded in the evening time. It took place in the main bazaar.... There was no security lapse. I had just crossed this area one minute before the blast," the security official added.
Rescue operations are underway at the scene. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the blast.
Press TV
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:33 EST
© Unknown
Taliban have allegedly been found in possession of American-manufactured mines, amid reports of the Afghan militants stepping up their bombing campaigns.
On Tuesday, the Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera aired footages showing the Taliban sorting and transporting purported 'US military ammunition' including mines engraved with US markings.
The channel claimed the explosives had been taken during an October militant rampage through two distant US bases in the eastern province of Nuristan.
The militants are, meanwhile, reported to conduct explosions throughout the war-wrecked country on a daily basis.
The blasts have plighted both the civilian population and the US-led forces. Retaliatory attacks by the soldiers have regularly missed militant targets, killing thousands of the non-combatants instead.
Xinhua
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:41 EST
A Greek cargo ship was seized by Somali pirates on Wednesday in the Indian Ocean with at least 20 crew members on board, news agencies reported, citing the European Union Naval Force.
The Greek-owned Filitsa was captured hundreds of miles off the Seychelles with three Greeks and 19 Filipinos on board, the reports said.
The Marshall Islands-registered Filitsa adds to a dozen vessels being held by the Somali pirates, who demand huge sums of money in ransom for the release of the ships and more than 200 hostages.
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