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Nadal continues win streak at French Open to record 30 straight PARIS: Rafael Nadal seeking a record fifth straight title, beat Teimuraz Gabashvili of Russia 6-1, 6-4, 6-2. It was his 30th consecutive win on the clay courts of Roland Garros in Paris, besting the record set by Chris Evert from 1974 and 1981. Safina won 6-1, 6-1 over Vitalia Diatchenko, an 18-year-old Russian ranked 150 places below her countrywoman. Safina next faces another Russian, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who defeated Julie Coin of France today. Ivanovic beat Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasugarn 6-1, 6-2. The Serb next meets No. 32-seeded Iveta Benesova. Sharapova beat 11th-seeded Nadia Petrova 6-2, 1-6, 8-6 in another Russian match up to reach the third round at her first Grand Slam tournament since last year’s Wimbledon. No. 9 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus also advanced, while No. 15 Jie Zheng of China lost 6-4, 6-3 to Michelle Larcher De Brito from Portugal. Men’s third seed Andy Murray struggled to beat Potito Starace ...

WASHINGTON: The United States has detected no major troop movements in North Korea or renewed work at a plutonium reprocessing plant despite rising tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear test, a US defense official said on Thursday. "We haven't seen any (movement of troops)," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told media. But he added that tracking North Korea was always difficult as it remained "one of the most closed societies in the world." Seoul's defense ministry earlier said air and ground forces were keeping a closer watch on the land and sea border with the communist North after Pyongyang announced it was abandoning the armistice signed to end the Korean War in 1953. Tensions have mounted since the North on Monday tested a nuclear bomb and than test-fired five short-range missiles. Raising the "Watch Conditions" alert level for US and South Korean forces meant stepped up intelligence and surveillance efforts but no redeployme...

TEGUCIGALPA: A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Honduras on Thursday, killing at least six people, knocking down flimsy homes and causing damage in neighboring Guatemala.The offshore quake destroyed some 60 houses and damaged scores of other buildings across the north of Honduras, a poor country of 7 million people, and briefly triggered a tsunami alert for Central America's Caribbean coast. Emergency services officials said six people died and at least 25 were injured in the earthquake but the toll could rise as reports come in from poor villages in the mountainous area along the coast."It is not alarming, it is not a calamity. For the type ofearthquake it was, the damage is minor," Honduran PresidentManuel Zelaya told local radio.

COLOMBO: The Commander of the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF), Air Chief Marshal Roshan Goonetilleke, has said that the bombing missions in the just concluded war against the Tamil Tiger rebels were carried out by Sri Lankan and not foreign pilots.This remark in the Sinhalese language programme ‘Thulawa’ of the state-owned ITN TV is significant in the context of rumours persistently spread by the Tamil Tigers that the Sri Lankan air force was bombing accurately this time only because its planes were flown by Pakistan Air Force pilots. Air Marshal Goonetilleke said that the SLAF had attacked 1,900 LTTE hideouts and meeting points, and destroyed 52 large Sea Tiger vessels and several Sea Tiger hideouts in the just concluded Eelam War IV. The commander clarified that the battle against the LTTE fought by Sri Lankan, and not foreign pilots, countering the LTTE propaganda that Pakistani pilots were doing the sorties as the bombing was remarkably accurate.

WASHINGTON: The United States is pressing China to consider taking a variety of severe sanctions against North Korea, including the inspection of suspect ships and planes, as it tries to ratchet up the global response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, administration officials said Thursday.But it is not clear that the Chinese government has the stomach for a heightened showdown with North Korea, these officials said, even though its criticism of the underground test on Monday was unusually vehement.The White House has not said publicly whether it supports enforcing a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, that permits the inspection of ships suspected of carrying missile parts or nuclear technology.Those operations could be tricky: North Korea has said it will regard such an action as an act of war, and American intelligence about North Korean shipments has been poor. The North’s involvement in the construction of a Syrian nuclea...

WASHINGTON: Releasing images of the alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody could damage Pakistan's efforts to battle militants as well as increase the risks to American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the top U.S. commander in the region has told a federal judge.Gen. David Petraeus says, "Militant and extremist groups would use these images."The court documents urging a judge to keep the pictures under wraps, Gen. David Petraeus argued they would have a "destabilizing effect" on Pakistan and other U.S. partners in the battle against the al Qaeda terrorist network. "Newly released photos depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody in Afghanistan and Iraq would negatively affect the ongoing efforts by Pakistan to counter its internal extremist threat," wrote Petraeus, the chief of U.S. Central command.

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare, the New York Times said on Friday.The military command will complement a civilian effort President Barack Obama plans to announce on Friday that will overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks, the newspaper said on its website.Citing Obama administration sources, the Times said the president will detail on Friday the creation of a White House office that will coordinate a multi-billion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers, protect systems that run U.S. stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system. The Times said the civilian office would be responsible for coordinating private sector and government defenses against thousands of cyber-attacks mounted every day against the United States, largely by hackers but somet...

WASHINGTON: A video of air strikes in early May in western Afghanistan supports the U.S. military's assertion that most of the casualties were Taliban fighters, the top U.S. commander for the Afghan war said in an interview airing on Friday."What the video will prove is that the targets of these different strikes were the Taliban," Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, said in excerpts from a National Public Radio interview. He does not dispute that civilians were killed. Petraeus told NPR that the Pentagon plans to release the video in a media briefing in coming days. Afghan officials have put the death toll in the controversial strikes as high as 140 and say bombs hit houses in two villages in western Farah province in which mostly women and children were hiding. The U.S. military acknowledges 20-35 civilians were among 80-95 mostly Taliban fighters killed in the strikes during a May 3 battle in which U.S. Marines and Afghan security forces were at...

EHRAN:A top Iranian official has accused the United States of hiring the bombers who carried out a devastating attack on a Shiite mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan, local news agency said on Friday.

GENEVA: Thirty-one countries still hold stockpiles of cluster munitions despite signing a treaty to ban them, according to a report by anti-arms lobby groups published on Friday. Britain, Germany and the Netherlands hold the largest stocks, said the report by Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action. Britain has 38.7 million sub-munitions, which are used in cluster bombs, Germany holds 33 million and the Netherlands has 26 million, the report said The three count among 96 countries that have inked the Convention on Cluster Munitions since it opened for signing last December. Seven countries have since ratified the treaty, which needs 30 ratifications to come into force. But while the signatory states of the treaty have committed to destroying the stockpiles, other countries holding significant stockpiles have not, according to campaign groups. The biggest volume of 730 million sub-munitions is held by the United States, which has not joined the treaty and is therefore not obliged to elim...