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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A judge investigating 10 Americans charged with child abduction in earthquake-ravaged Haiti recommended Thursday that they be released from jail and allowed to leave the country but keep a representative in Haiti to answer any further questions in the case. The Americans must now wait for Haitian prosecutors to decide whether to accept the recommendation. It was not immediately clear when that decision would be made. It remained unclear when the judge, Bernard Saint-Vil, would make a broader ruling on the merits of the charges against the Americans. Earlier, one of the lawyers involved in the case, Louis Gary Lissade, urged their unconditional release. “All 10 Americans need to be freed,” he said in an interview. “They came to help and there was a misunderstanding. They need to go home.” The Americans, most of them members of a Baptist congregation in Idaho, flew here in the chaotic aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake, saying they wanted to rescue childre...

Thursday, February 11, 2010 TEHRAN: Hundreds of thousands of Iranians gathered Thursday at a Tehran square to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution amid tight security and reports of opposition protesters massing on the streets. Ahmadinejad in his address was reportedly expected to reveal more details about Iran's controversial nuclear programme. The elite Revolutionary Guards and police have warned they will crack down heavily on any protests which, since they first erupted last June, have threatened the very pillars of the Islamic regime and split the senior clergy.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 NEW DELHI: Indian President Pratibha Patil's husband has been accused of illegally procuring land belonging to a farmer in western India, reports said Thursday. The allegations came to light when a court in the president's home state of Maharashtra ordered the names of Patil's husband Devisingh Shekhawat, and five other family members, to be struck off the local land records, the India news agency reported. The order came in response to a petition filed by farmer Kishore Bansod, who said the Shekhawats had fraudulently added their names to the title deed of a 3.2 acre (1.3 hectare) site he had refused to sell them. “The Shekhawats own almost 200 acres in the village and were interested in owning this land too,” Bansod's lawyer was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “My client wasn't willing to sell the land. So the Shekhawats got it fraudulently transferred in their names.” But Shekhawat rubbished the charges of fraud saying: ...

Thursday, February 11, 2010 LONDON: Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has met Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández to discuss the country’s efforts to help the people in its earthquake-ravaged neighbour Haiti. A website reported that the actress flew to Santo Domingo earlier this week to visit patients at Dario Contrera Hospital, where dozens of survivors of the disaster are receiving medical treatment. Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, turned her charity trip into a power meeting when she sat down for talks with President Leonel Fernandez Monday.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 BANGKOK: Thailand said on Thursday its attorney general decided to drop a case against the five member crew of a plane carrying sanctions-busting weapons from North Korea. "The trial here will not benefit Thailand so we have decided to drop the charges," said Thanapich Mulapruk, spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General, in a statement. "Their countries of origin want to try the men in their home countries," he said.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 KABUL: French Prime Minister Francois Fillon flew into Kabul on a previously unannounced visit Thursday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and to meet French soldiers fighting the Taliban. Fillon attended a repatriation ceremony on the tarmac of Kabul airport for the remains of a 20-year-old French soldier killed in combat in Afghanistan this week, his aides said. He is scheduled to meet Karzai at the heavily guarded presidential palace in the Afghan capital and hold talks with General Stanley McChrystal, the overall commander of the estimated 113,00 NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. France has lost 40 soldiers in action since the 2001 US-led invasion to bring down the Taliban regime. France has 3,750 soldiers assigned to the NATO operation, 3,500 of them on Afghan soil.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 WASHINGTON: Haitian President Rene Preval said Wednesday that his government has buried 270,000 bodies since the Jan. 12 earthquake - many more than the 2004 Asian tsunami killed in a dozen nations - but it remains unclear who's doing the counting. The new death toll, which Preval's office said he announced at a meeting with South American presidents in Ecuador, is 40,000 higher than one released by Preval's communications minister the previous day, even though a gravedigger at the mass graves just north of Port-au-Prince said only two bodies have been buried there this week.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 NEW YORK: A trove of aerial photographs of the collapsing World Trade Center was widely released this week, offering a rare and chilling view from the heavens of the burning twin towers and the apocalyptic shroud of smoke and dust that settled over the city. The images were taken from a police helicopter -- the only photographers allowed in the airspace near the skyscrapers on Sept. 11, 2001. They were obtained by media after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency that investigated the collapse. The chief curator of the planned Sept. 11 museum pronounced the pictures "a phenomenal body of work." The photos are "absolutely core to understanding the visual phenomena of what was happening," said Jan Ramirez of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. They are "some of the most exceptional images in the world, I think, of this eve...

Thursday, February 11, 2010 BEIRUT: Pilot error caused the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane off the coast of Lebanon last month which killed all 90 people on board, a source familiar with the investigation into the accident said Tuesday. "The investigation team has reached an early conclusion that it was pilot error, based on the information from the black box," the source told media. An investigation team involving Lebanese, French and Ethiopian officials had headed to France Monday with the flight recorders, commonly known as "black boxes," for analysis. The Boeing 737-800 plane crashed minutes after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather on January 25, plunging in a ball of fire into the sea. The pilot had failed to respond to the control tower's request to change direction even though he acknowledged their demands. The plane made a sharp turn before disappearing off the radar, the Lebanese transport minister said at the time. The eight-year...

Thursday, February 11, 2010 WASHINGTON: Haiti's government raised the death toll from last month's killer quake to over 217,000 on Thursday, up from the previous tally of 212,000. Interior Minister Paul Bien-Aime provided the updated figure to media, discounting reports that the toll had reached as high as 230,000. "There are people who put forth the figure of 230,000 but we have counted a bit more than 217,000. These are verified figures," Bien-Aime said.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 NEW DELHI: India will test a nuclear-capable missile with a range over 5,000 kilometres (3,000 miles) within a year, the country's top military scientist said Wednesday, which could stoke regional tensions. "The next series of missiles is Agni-V, which has left the drawing board and is moving toward the first flight trial within the year," the country's chief military scientist V.K. Saraswat told a news conference in New Delhi. India's current longest-range nuclear-capable missile Agni-III can travel a maximum of 3,500 kilometres and Saraswat announced the system was now ready for use by the military. "It is the full deterrence that the country needs," he said.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 KARACHI: Naseem Hameed received a hero’s welcome on Thursday, as she became South Asia’s fastest woman by winning the 100-metre race in the South Asian Games played in Dhaka. The 22-year-old clocked 11.81 seconds to clinch gold medal in the race in the South Asian Federation (SAF) Games Sunday, becoming Pakistan’s first female athlete to win the sprint in the competition’s 26-year history. Naseem was accorded a warm reception by hundreds of jubilant fans and relatives at the Karachi airport and was then taken to a formal reception hosted by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad. The governor lauded Naseem and announced a cash price of Rs5000, 000 for the feat. She has also been awarded prizes of 500,000 rupees from sports ministry, 200,000 rupees from Karachi Nazim Mustafa Kamal and 100,000 rupees from the Pakistan Athletics Federation. In an exclusive chat with Geo News, Naseem said: “Allah blessed me with more than I had ever expected.” “The prayers...