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DHULUIYAH: Four people were killed and 13 others wounded on Wednesday when a suicide bomber targeted a US-allied militia leader at a mosque north of the Iraqi capital, security officials told media. The explosion happened in Dhuluiyah, 70 kilometres (45 miles) from Baghdad, said a police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, giving a final toll of four dead and 13 wounded."It's an action of Al-Qaeda because only this organisation is committing suicide attacks," he said. An interior ministry source earlier said that five people had been killed. The attacker detonated his explosives-filled vest during evening prayers at around 8 pm (1700 GMT) in the Sunni town, in an attempt to kill Mullah Nadhem, a local US-allied Sahwa "Awakening" leader, the colonel said. Nadhem was not present but his brother was wounded in the attack. A bomb at the mosque last year also failed to kill Nadhem although he was wounded. Violence has fallen sharply over the past two years a...

WASHINGTON: The United States is preparing for "very tough sanctions" against Iran if the new US approach to Iran fails, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told US lawmakers on Wednesday.Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that President Barack Obama's administration is pursuing a dual-track strategy with Iran, when asked about the risk that US dialogue fails to check Tehran's nuclear ambitions."We are more than willing to reach out to the Iranians to discuss a range of issues," if Tehran reciprocates, Clinton said."We are also laying the groundwork for the kind of very tough sanctions, I think you said crippling sanctions, that might be necessary in the event that our offers are either rejected or the process is inconclusive or unsuccessful," Clinton said.Clinton gave her testimony when she appeared in Congress for the first time since her confirmation hearings in January.Iran said on Wednesday it is ready for "constructive dialo...

ABU DHABI: CEO John Bullough issued a strong denial on Sunday that the Formula One racetrack on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island would be delayed. Aldar is the master developer on the $40bn Yas Island Project and is building the Yas Marina circuit for the first ever Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that takes place on Nov. 1. The island will also feature a Ferrari Theme Park, golf courses and a string of luxury hotels. “By Nov 1 when you go to Yas Island, you will see seven hotels, a Formula One race circuit, with a Formula One race happening on it, a lynx golf course, a Ferrari Theme Park, and a marina,” Bullough said. He added that the marina was being flooded on May 2.

SEOUL: North Korea's state news agency says Russia's foreign minister has arrived in Pyongyang. He is expected to try to persuade the North to return to talks about its nuclear programs. The visit by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Thursday comes after Pyongyang expelled all international monitors of its plutonium-producing facilities, vowed to restart them and quit six-nation disarmament talks last week.

UNITED NATIONS: Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka must surrender and allow civilians trapped in the battle zone to leave, the UN Security Council president said Wednesday."We demand that the LTTE immediately lay down arms, renounce terrorism, allow a UN-assisted evacuation of the remaining civilians in the conflict area, and join the political process," Claude Heller, from Mexico, told journalists after an informal Security Council meeting.

YALA: Two border policemen were killed in a roadside bomb and gun attack in Thailand's troubled Muslim-majority south, officials said on Thursday.The policemen were on patrol in Yala province on Wednesday when their pick-up truck was hit by a bomb hidden inside a fire extinguisher and then suspected militants opened fire, they said. One died on the way to hospital on Wednesday and the other died on Thursday morning. Separately, trains to the restive south resumed full services on Thursday after a 13-day suspension imposed after a railway worker was killed by insurgents on April 10, officials said.

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.

MOSCOW: Russia is able to "significantly" cut its nuclear arsenal if a deal is reached with the United States, the head of the Russian General Staff, Nikolai Makarov, said Thursday, local news agency reported.

TEHRAN: Iran has sent a letter of protest to the U.N. secretary-general for criticizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's diatribe against Israel at an anti-racism conference this week. The Iranian president "was subjected to unfair and unwarranted harsh criticism," Iran's Ambassador to the U.N. in New York, Mohammad Khazaee, said in the letter sent late Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The U.N. Office in Geneva was unable to immediately comment on the letter early Thursday because it had not received it. Ban said Monday he deplored "the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve." "It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian president," Ban said in a statement, adding that he met with Ahmadinejad before the U.N. conference stressing the importance of uniting in the fight against ra...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Taliban seized control of another district in the country's northwest just 70 miles from the capital after consolidating their hold on the Swat Valley, according to local government officials and residents, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.The WSJ in its report said that latest Taliban advance into the Buner district has spurred fears that a controversial peace accord, which allows the militants to enforce sharia law in Swat, has emboldened them to expand their influence.Militants have been moving into Buner since the Swat peace deal was signed with the government in February. But starting Tuesday night they seized control of the entire district, which has a population of more than one million people, local government officials and residents said. Heavily armed militants, streaming in from neighboring Swat, occupied government offices and set up their own checkposts. Terrified residents fled their homes.According to the US Journal, dozens of ho...

BAGHDAD: The head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Omar al-Baghdadi, was arrested in the capital on Thursday, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

NEW DELHI: Two polling officials died and two others fell ill due to sunstroke in Orissa's Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar Districts on Thursday.According to officials, the heat wave death toll in Orissa has now touched 30.The deceased were identified as Pabitra Mohan Muduli and Somnath Mohanty.Meanwhile, the officials who were taken ill were rushed to hospital. They were identified as Rahim Khilar and Dambarudhar Mahanta.

MUMBAI: Versatile Indian actor Anil Kapoor’s second daughter Rhea is also ready to enter into Bollywood as a film producer after first daughter Sonam Kapoor has began her acting career with a film ‘Saawariya’.Rhea will assist papa Kapoor with his home production starring her elder sister Sonam. This film titled ‘Ayesha’ is a remake of Jane Austen's novel Emma.Anil Kapoor was not happy with Sonam’s acting in Saawariya and therefore he has started the film ‘Ayesha’ especially for improving the image of his daughters in Bollywood.

TOKYO: Japan has earmarked 14 billion dollars in aid this fiscal year to help developing countries fight poverty, the global economic crisis and extremism, the government said Thursday.The budget includes record spending for Africa and Asia and also raises spending for the Middle East and Afghanistan, the foreign ministry said.Japan -- a pacifist nation which uses economic aid as a key foreign policy tool -- allocated 1,389.7 billion yen (14.22 billion dollars) for loans, grants and assistance for fiscal 2009, a foreign ministry official said.That's up from its donation of 1,112.0 billion yen the previous year.For the year to March 2010, Japan will especially focus on helping crisis-hit Asian economies and on supporting war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan in their fight against Islamic extremism, the official said.Japan earmarked a record 855.5 billion yen in official development assistance for Asia, which accounts for 61.6 percent of the total.Prime Minister Taro Aso previously pled...

NEW DELHI: Maoists struck with impunity triggering landmines and indiscriminate firing in Jharkhand as polling for the second phase of elections to Lok Sabha got underway on Thursday, even as moderate to brisk polling was reported from across 12 States. Two poll officials were injured when the ultras exploded a bomb striking an official vehicle in Jharkhand's Giridh District, 190 km from the capital Ranchi, while Left-wing extremists triggered bombs and a landmine in East and West Singhbhum districts. Another report quoting police sources said heavy firing between Maoists and security forces were reported at Basadera under Ghatsila police station bordering West Bengal. Voting began on moderate to brisk note in 140 constituencies spread across 12 States in the second round of the five-phase Lok Sabha elections.While Orissa registered 12 per cent of voting in the initial hours, Assam saw 20 per cent of turn out. Election to Andhra Pradesh and Orissa state Assemblies are being held si...

SINGAPORE: Oil prices fell in Asian trade Thursday after US crude reserves rose higher than expected, indicating demand remained weak in the recession-hit US economy, dealers said.New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for June delivery, dropped 17 cents to 48.68 dollars a barrel in afternoon trade.Brent North Sea crude for delivery in June eased 31 cents to 49.50 dollars.The US Department of Energy's weekly report, released Wednesday, showed crude the stockpile in the world's biggest energy consumer was at its highest level in almost 20 years."The inventory report coming out of the US is very bearish, showing stock gains across the board for crude oil," said Victor Shum, senior principal at Purvin and Gertz energy consultancy in Singapore.Reserves of gasoline and distilled products, such as diesel and heating fuel, also increased, confounding analyst expectations of declines.

BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces said today that they had arrested one of the most wanted al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, even as his suicide bombers killed more than 70 people in attacks in and around Baghdad. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, was held in the capital after a tip-off, said Major General Qasim Atta, Baghdad’s security spokesman. The Islamic State of Iraq is a shadowy, al-Qaeda-linked, Islamist umbrella group that in 2006 declared an independent caliphate in mainly Sunni West Baghdad, as well as in areas to the north and west. Modelled on the Taleban in Afghanistan, it murdered and intimidated anyone who did not adhere to its strict Islamist rulings. Iraqi security forces have reported al-Baghdadi’s death and capture on several different occasions in the past, as well as claiming to have captured the man believed to be al-Qaeda’s overall leader in the country, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Some intelligence sources have denied that either man even exists, claim...

JOHANNESBURG: Preliminary results are showing the ruling African National Congress (ANC) sweeping the general elections, which analysts believe will put the party in position to deliver on high expectations from voters. "This party is an elephant. You cannot actually topple an elephant," ANC leader and would-be president Jacob Zuma told a sea of cheering supporters in central Johannesburg.Dressed in the ANC trademark yellow, green and black colors, thousands of supporters celebrated the victory at the party's headquarters.After the counting of one-third of the votes, the ruling party is winning 66.7 percent of the vote.Final results are expected late on Friday, April 24, but the ANC has overcome the threat posed by its Congress of the People party (Cope) rival with eight percent.Zuma, 67, is expected to become the next president when parliament votes on a new head of state in early May.A record 80 percent of 23 million registered voters have reportedly turned out at nearl...

CAMP LEJEUNE: Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he approves of the Obama administration's release of Bush-era memos on harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects because he expects that the documents inevitably will become public.Gates says he was most concerned with the protection of CIA agents involved in the interrogations, which included harsh techniques that some in the Obama administration are calling torture. Gates says he wants the CIA personnel protected from prosecution.Gates responded Thursday to questions about the Bush-era memos during a trip to Camp Lejeune to talk with Marines heading to Afghanistan.

NEW DELHI: Suspected Maoist rebels killed five people, including four policemen, returning from election duty in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, police said Friday. The policemen and one election official had been guarding polling stations in the state when a landmine ripped through their jeep late Thursday night near the town of Muzaffarpur, 70km (43 miles) from the state capital Patna. Bihar, a hotbed of Maoist activity, was one of several parts of India to vote Thursday in the second stage of month-long general elections in which security forces have been on heightened alert for rebel attacks."Police have launched a combing operation in the area against the Maoists," said additional director general of police Neelmani, who goes by one name. Maoist attacks on polling stations during the first phase of voting last week claimed at least 19 lives, including 10 paramilitary troopers and five election workers. Polling in Bihar, which sends 40 members to India's 543-seat n...