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WASHINGTON: Federal judge Sonia Sotomayor has become the first Hispanic confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.The Senate approved her nomination Thursday in a vote of 68 to 31. Several Republicans joined majority Democrats in supporting Sotomayor. Shortly after the nomination was approved, President Barack Obama said he was "deeply gratified" by the outcome of the vote. He said the three principles of justice, equality, and opportunity are ones that made possible Sotomayor's journey to the Supreme Court.During debate on Sotomayor's nomination this week, many Republicans charged that the 55-year-old Sotomayor would rule according to her personal biases. But Democrats described her as an experienced, mainstream moderate judge.Sotomayor will be the third woman to sit on the nation's highest court. President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents, to replace retired Justice David Souter.The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-to-6 ...

Friday, August 07, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US budget deficit reached 1.3 trillion dollars for the current fiscal year in July, official data showed Thursday, news set to fuel opposition to US President Barack Obama's ambitious health care and climate change proposals. The deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2009, which began October 1, reached 1.3 trillion dollars, close to 880 billion dollars greater than the deficit recorded through July 2008, said the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Outlays rose by almost 530 billion dollars, or 21 percent, and revenues fell by more than 350 billion dollars, or 17 percent, compared with the amounts recorded during the same period last year, the non-partisan CBO said. The new data was likely to stoke Republican opposition to Obama's plans to remake the US health care system and enact sweeping legislation to battle climate change, as well as fuel criticism of his handling of the economy. Republicans have charged that the nearly ...

Friday, August 07, 2009 NAIROBI: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday pledged to "expand and extend" American support for Somalia's weak interim government as it struggles against Islamist extremists believed linked to al-Qaida.Accusing the extremists of trying to turn Somalia into a base to launch worldwide terrorist attacks, Clinton said the Obama administration would boost military supplies and other aid to the government and an African peacekeeping force supporting it. She did not detail the new aid."They see Somalia as a future haven for global terrorism," she said of the extremist Somali militia known as al-Shabab. To make her point, she noted the recent arrests of four men allegedly linked to the group who are suspected of plotting attacks there in Australia."Our information is that al-Shabab not only uses foreign fighters and foreign money but foreign ideas in its attack on the people of Somalia," she said."There is ...

Friday, August 07, 2009 RIYADH: A Saudi disabled girl has died from swine flu, pushing the kingdom's flu death toll up to seven, the healthy ministry said on Thursday.The 12-year-old girl, who died on Wednesday two days after being admitted to hospital in al-Hasa, in Eastern Province, was suffering from an underdeveloped central nervous system, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official news agency.On Tuesday, the ministry announced the death of a Sri Lankan man and a Saudi teenager from swine flu.The ministry said on Friday that total A(H1N1) flu infections in the kingdom were nearing 600.The government said it was doubling surveillance efforts as the peak season approaches for the umrah, or lesser pilgrimage, to the Muslim holy places of Mecca and Medina in the west of the country.Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are expected to undertake the umrah during the fasting month of Ramadan which starts later in August, heightening fears of the virus ...

Friday, August 07, 2009 KANDAHAR: Afghan violence left 17 people dead including wedding-goers and five US soldiers in new attacks ahead of elections as the NATO chief Thursday visited insurgent hotspots in the south. A wave of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan has raised fears that violence will mar presidential and provincial council elections on August 20 and damage the credibility of the polls. A bomb ripped through a trailer taking villagers to a wedding and towed by a farm tractor -- a common mode of transport in rural Afghanistan -- in the southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, authorities said. Several officials initially said 21 people were killed, including children and women, and five others wounded. But by evening provincial police chief Assadullah Shairzad had dropped the death toll to five, saying the first information was incorrect.

Thursday, August 06, 2009 TEL AVIV: Arab hackers broke into the Kadima Party’s website early Thursday.The hackers presented a sensational photo of a skeleton with the slogan, “This is the fate of Sharon.” Below the photo is a still of Kadima chair Tzipi Livni with the caption, “We guarantee that we’re coming.”The hackers also displayed a terrorist attack scene along with a child whose head was decapitated. Underneath the photo was the caption, “Israel will continue to defeat our women and children.”The website’s homepage displays the words “Gaza Hacker” in English and Arabic.

Thursday, August 06, 2009 NEW DELHI: Sachin Tendulkar has said he is not satisfied with his achievements and hopes to accumulate 15,000 runs and win the World Cup in 2011. "I am not pleased yet with what I have done," Tendulkar, who has scored a record 12773 Test runs at an average of 54.58 from 159 matches, said in an interview. "Sunil Gavaskar has told me that I have to get to 15,000 runs. He said he would be angry with me and would come and catch me if I didn't. I admire him so much and to score that many would be a terrific achievement, but that is not the only aim." His other big cricketing ambition is to "win the World Cup in 2011". Tendulkar said he was not thinking about retirement yet but he would know when to quit cricket. "I will know when it is the right time, I won't have to be dragged away. I am the person who will make the decision and I will know whether I still belong."

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A bus veered off a narrow mountain road and plunged into a river in northern Pakistan on Thursday, leaving about 34 people missing and feared dead, police said. The bus ran off the road near the scenic tourist destination of Gilgit, police official Mohammed Nasir said. He said rescue teams had been sent to the area, but so far no bodies had been recovered from the fast-flowing Indus River. The bus cleaner managed to jump off the vehicle before it fell into the water, and he told officials that soldiers were among the dozens of passengers on the vehicle, said Manzur Hussain, another police officer in the area. It was unclear how many people were on the bus, but the cleaner told police there were about 35 passengers. Such accidents are common in Pakistan, where roads are often poorly maintained and drivers regularly disregard traffic rules. Military officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Thursday, August 06, 2009 KABUL: An Afghan police chief says a roadside bomb hit a group of people traveling to a wedding in southern Afghanistan and, 21 civilians were killed. The Afghan Ministry of Defense confirmed the Wednesday attack and said at least 20 people were killed. Helmand provincial police chief Assadullah Sherzad says women and children were among the dead in Garmser district, where roadside bombs are frequently used to attack foreign and Afghan forces. Thousands of U.S. Marines and British soldiers are conducting offensives in Helmand, one of the centers of the Taliban insurgency.

Thursday, August 06, 2009 MUMBAI: An Indian court on Thursday sentenced to death three people, including a married couple, for planting bombs that killed 52 victims in the city of Mumbai in 2003. Judge M.R. Puranik, sitting at a special anti-terror court, ordered that Haneef Sayyed, his wife Fahmeeda Sayyed and Ashrat Ansari "should be hanged by the neck until dead" for murder, criminal conspiracy and terrorism.