Damascus: Foreign Minister Walid Muallem insisted on Tuesday that only the Syrian people can choose their future, rejecting Western and Arab demands that President Bashar al-Assad step down. Muallem made the remarks to UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is visiting Damascus to muster support for launching peace talks in Geneva, the official news agency SANA reported. “Syria will attend Geneva II based on the exclusive right of the Syrian people to choose their political future, to choose their leaders and to reject all forms of external intervention,” Muallem said. “The dialogue will take place between Syrians,” he added, rejecting regional and international interference in any dialogue. He also said that all ...
October 30, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Washington: President Barack Obama is considering whether to ban US spy agencies from eavesdropping on allied leaders, a senior official said Tuesday, following outrage in Europe over National Security Agency snooping. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the step was under consideration, but that no policy decisions had yet been finalized, as Obama awaits results of several already announced reviews into US surveillance practices. The Obama administration was under increasing political heat at home and abroad, as revelations based on leaks from fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden threatened to sour ties with allies and complicate its foreign policy goals. The senior official, howev...
October 30, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Johannesburg: The mastermind behind a rightwing extremist plot to kill former South African president Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country was sentenced on Tuesday to 35 years in jail. Mike du Toit, the ringleader of a white supremacist militia called Boeremag, was given the heaviest sentence of 35 years along with four other defendants over a botched 2002 plot to overthrow the post-apartheid government, the prosecution said. The judge at the High Court in Pretoria sentenced the rest of the 20 militia members on trial to between 10 and 30 years depending on their degree of involvement in the plot, National Prosecution Authority spokesman Medupe Simasiku told AFP. Judge Eben Jordaan said Mandela would have been killed by a land...
October 30, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Google is celebrating the birth anniversary of American costume designer Edith Head with and attractive doodle. Edith Head, who was born on October 28, 1897 in San Bernardino California, went on to become probably the most famous costume designer in Hollywood history. Throughout her sparkling career she won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman. It was while working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932, after gaining a BA from Berkeley and an MA from Stanford, that Head bluffed her way into the costume department at Paramount. Despite having taken night classes to learn drawing her artistic skills were still at this point rudimentary. Head later admitted that she bluffed her way into Paramount by...
October 29, 2013 at 1:56 am | News Desk
London: The first trial in the phone-hacking scandal that sank Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World opened Monday with the tycoon’s key aide Rebekah Brooks in the dock alongside the British prime minister’s former media chief Andy Coulson. The two former editors of the tabloid are among eight defendants facing a jury for the first time over the scandal that sent shockwaves through British politics. Flame-haired Brooks, 45, arrived at the Old Bailey court in London to a storm of photographers’ flashes, accompanied by her racehorse trainer husband Charlie, who is also on trial. The defendants face charges ranging from illegally hacking the mobile phone voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl and celebrities such as Paul McCa...
October 29, 2013 at 1:29 am | News Desk
Damascus: UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Syria Monday to seek support for a peace conference, as Russia slammed rebels for threatening anyone who attends the proposed Geneva talks. Brahimi’s return to Damascus for the first time since December came as international experts said they had been prevented by war from reaching two inspection sites, the first setback in their mission to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal by mid-2014. Brahimi, who travelled overland to the Syrian capital after flying in to Beirut from Tehran, arrived at the Sheraton hotel accompanied by Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Moqdad. The envoy has been on a regional tour, to also include Turkey but not Saudi Arabia, which opposes the peace...
October 29, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
London: At least eight people died and more than 300,000 homes were left without power on Monday as a fierce storm swept across northern Europe.Four people were killed in Britain, two in Germany, one in The Netherlands and another in France as heavy rain and high winds battered the region overnight and into the morning. The rough conditions at sea also forced rescuers to abandon the search for a 14-year-old boy who disappeared while playing in the surf on a southern English beach on Sunday. British Prime Minister David Cameron described the loss of life as “hugely regrettable”. Winds reached 99 miles (159 kilometres) per hour on the Isle of Wight off the southern English coast, according to Britain’s Met Office national we...
October 29, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Madrid: Spain on Monday denounced newly reported mass US eavesdropping on its citizens’ telephone calls, calling it “inappropriate and unacceptable” as outrage spread over the worldwide espionage programme. The Spanish government delivered the message to US Ambassador James Costos, summoned to explain the latest revelations in a growing scandal over US snooping on telephone and online communications of ordinary citizens and world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The news emerged just as a European Parliament delegation began a three-day mission to Washington to probe the impact of the surveillance on EU citizens’ “fundamental rights” and to discuss a threat to suspend an EU-US agreement ...
October 29, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Damascus: Powerful armed groups in Syria said attending peace talks or negotiating with the regime would be an act of “treason,” as fighting raged on Sunday near Iraq and in Homs. An international watchdog meanwhile said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime handed over on time a detailed plan on destroying its chemical weapons stockpile. The move was in line with a US-Russian deal reached last month that headed off threatened military strikes on Syria and added momentum to an initiative for peace talks to be staged in Geneva next month. But the initiative’s backers have struggled to win the support of the warring parties in Syria, where more than 115,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 31-month c...
October 28, 2013 at 2:02 am | News Desk
Berlin: US President Barack Obama was personally informed of phone tapping against German Chancellor Angela Merkel which may have begun as early as 2002, according to media reports stoking anger over a spiralling espionage scandal. Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying that National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander had briefed Obama on the operation against Merkel in 2010. “Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue,” the newspaper quoted a high-ranking NSA official as saying. News weekly Der Spiegel reported that leaked NSA documents showed that Merkel’s phone had appeared on a list of spying targets since 2002, and was still under surveillance weeks before Obama visited ...
October 28, 2013 at 1:15 am | News Desk
Tbilisi: An ally of billionaire Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili claimed a crushing first-round victory in a presidential vote Sunday after his main opponent conceded defeat and exit polls pointed to an overwhelming win. Giorgi Margvelashvili, a little-known academic from the premier’s Georgian Dream coalition, had at least 66 percent of the vote in two television exit polls, well ahead of former parliament speaker David Bakradze of outgoing President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, in second place with around 20 percent in the ex-Soviet state. “I thank you all so much. It is our shared victory,” Margvelashvili told cheering supporters at a rally in Tbilisi. Fireworks let off by the c...
October 28, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Dubai: The Gulf emirate of Dubai on Sunday opened passenger operations at its second airport, Al-Maktoum International, touted to be the world’s largest once it is completed. A Wizz Air plane from Budapest was the first passenger aircraft to land at the sprawling new facility, and it was welcomed on the tarmac with a water cannon salute. Jazeera Airways, another low-cost carrier, will follow suit on Thursday with daily flights to and from Kuwait, while Bahrain’s national carrier, Gulf Air, will begin operations on December 8. No other airlines have announced intentions to use the new airport, which lies some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Dubai International, one of the world’s busiest hubs for air passengers. Paul Gri...
October 28, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
Ghazni (Afghanistan): A roadside bomb on Sunday killed at least 18 civilians, mostly women, as they travelled by minibus to a wedding party in a volatile area of central Afghanistan, officials said. The interior ministry said the blast occurred in Andar district of Ghazni province, where Taliban insurgents have a strong presence. “The bomb hit a minibus civilian vehicle today at 4:30pm that was heading to attend a wedding party,” a statement from the ministry said. “In the attack, 14 women, three men and a child were martyred and five others were wounded… the ministry strongly condemns this brutal attack of the enemies of Afghanistan.” “Enemies of Afghanistan” is phrase used by Afghan officials to ...
October 28, 2013 at 1:00 am | News Desk
London: Manchester United belatedly rediscovered their famous fighting spirit by roaring back from behind to beat Stoke City 3-2 on Saturday and re-energise their Premier League title defence. David Moyes’s side trailed 2-1 at half-time and looked on course for a third successive home game without victory in the league, only for goals from Wayne Rooney and Javier Hernandez to secure a much-needed win. United remain eight points behind Arsenal, who won 2-0 at Crystal Palace to consolidate their position at the head of the table, but they have closed to within three points of the top four. Stoke took a fortuitous lead in the fourth minute at Old Trafford when Jonny Evans’s attempted clearance from an Erik Pieters cross cannoned ag...
October 27, 2013 at 1:59 am | News Desk
Berlin: German spy chiefs will travel to the United States next week to demand answers following allegations that US intelligence has been tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, as a row over US snooping threatened to hurt transatlantic ties. Documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showing sweeping US surveillance on ordinary citizens’ Internet searches and telephone records have already sparked outrage worldwide. But the furore has intensified after allegations that world leaders including the presidents of Brazil and Mexico have been among spying targets. This week the scandal widened to Europe, with allegations that Merkel’s phone was being tapped, prompting Berlin to summon the US...
October 27, 2013 at 1:19 am | News Desk
CARDIFF (United Kingdom): Australia beat arch-rivals England 28-20 to get their bid for a 10th World Cup crown off to the perfect start on Saturday. The victory importantly means the Kangaroos will likely top Pool A and avoid defending champions New Zealand in the knock-out phases of the October 26-November 30 tournament. England jumped out to a 10-0 lead through tries from Ryan Hall and Leroy Cudjoe, but Australia hit back in a purple patch with three tries from Johnathan Thurston, Greg Bird and Billy Slater, all converted by Thurston. Wingers Brett Morris and Darius Boyd scored for the Kangaroos in the second-half, Thurston also nailing a penalty. England replied with a George Burgess try converted by Kevin Sinfield, and a late consolatio...
October 27, 2013 at 1:08 am | News Desk
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