Abducted Canadian journalist appears in video

OTTAWA: A Canadian journalist abducted last year in Pakistan has surfaced, telling of her ordeal in a videotape obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the public broadcaster reported Monday.

Beverly Giesbrecht, 52, also known as Khadija Abdul Qahaar, was seized at gunpoint in November while travelling in the Bannu district.

She was reportedly gathering materials for a documentary for her website, which offers alternative news on the Islamic world.

In the four-minute-and-43-second video, Giesbrecht says she was kidnapped by the Taliban on her second trip to the region to meet a man with a rare coin collection whom she wished to interview.

"I have been in captivity now for almost three months," she said. "I wake up in the dark and I go to sleep in the dark. There is nothing but a wood furnace and not enough wood.

"I am not sure exactly my location. I am some place in the Afghan border area. There are air raids. This is the war zone."

Canada's foreign affairs department has said it is engaged with Pakistani authorities to try to free her. It has not commented on the video tape.

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India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Snake bite deaths

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Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

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