Friday, October 30, 2009 UNITED NATIONS: United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon Thursday said that attacks on UN staff in Afghanistan are carrying out to disrupt presidential elections.He warned that the world body was vulnerable to more attacks in the week leading up to the Afghan elections and pleaded for more help to protect his staff. "We cannot do it alone," the secretary general told a crisis meeting of the UN Security Council following Wednesday's suicide attack by Taliban fighters on a UN guesthouse in Kabul that killed five UN staffers and wounded nine."We need the support of the member states," he told diplomats from the world's most powerful countries. A little over a week before Afghanistan's November 7 run-off presidential election, Ban said UN staff faced a "dramatically escalated" threat and were seen as a "soft target." "Increasingly, the UN is being targeted, in this case precisely because of our support for the Afghan elections," Ban said. The Security Council issued a statement promising "strong support for the secretary general" and saying it "commends the determination of the United Nations not to be deterred by the tragic incident and to carry on its mission in Afghanistan."
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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