Friday, August 21, 2009 WASHINGTON: U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday "we took out" Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief believed to have been killed this month in a missile strike by a U.S. drone.Obama's comments seemed to go further than other U.S. officials who had said there was a "90 percent certainty" that Mehsud had been killed on Aug. 5, although there was no confirmation."You've got the Pakistan army for the first time fighting in a very aggressive way and that's how we took out Mehsud, the top Taliban leader in Pakistan who was also one of Osama bin Laden's key allies," Obama told a radio talk show host in a live broadcast from the White House.Mehsud was blamed for a wave of bombings across Pakistan, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
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...
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