COPENHAGEN: A Danish politician of Palestinian origin became the first woman to attend a local council meeting wearing a hijab, the Muslim veil.Asmaa Abdul Hamid, 27, took part in a meeting in the city of Odense as a substitute for a member of the Unity List, a left-wing grouping.Abdul Hamid has attracted attention because of the fact that she chooses to wear the hijab and refuses to shake hands with men. She led the voting list for her party at the 2005 local elections."I would like to be judge on what I have in my head, not on it, for the politics that I defend, my opinions and not what I wear or how I greet people," she told the large media pack that had turned out for the occasion.Asmaa Abdul HamidAbdul Hamid is also on her party's parliamentary list and is already down as a stand-in for their existing deputy, Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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