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Sunday, August 02, 2009 ::HAVANA: Cuba’s president, Raul Castro, has offered to discuss the future of Cuba with the US. In making the offer, he said dialogue was possible as long as the US did not try to change the island's communist government. Castro, speaking to the island's National Assembly, said he wanted to respond to recent overtures by Washington but the Cuban socialist system of government would remain non-negotiable. Castro said he had been pleased with the less aggressive, more respectful approaches to himself and his brother, former leader Fidel Castro, by the Obama administration. In his address he said he had not been elected President to return capitalism to Cuba or to surrender the revolution.

Sunday, August 02, 2009::JAKARTA: An Indonesian passenger plane carrying 16 people disappeared over eastern Indonesia on Sunday.The Twin Otter plane was on a commercial flight over the remote Papua region when it lost contact with ground officials, said Capt. Nikmatullah, the director of operations of airline Merpati Nusantara.No trace had been found of the plane more than four hours after it took off, said Nikmatullah, who goes by a single name. The aircraft was carrying enough fuel to keep it in the air for 3 hours, he told a TV channel.The plane was on a 50-minute journey from Sentani, a major airport in Papua, to the town of Oksibil, he said.Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains.In the past, crashed planes have never been found.Indonesia, a nation of more than 18,000 islands, has seen several major air crashes in recent years that have killed more than 220.In 2007, the European Union banned all Indonesian carriers from landing in the bloc. It recently li...

Sunday, August 02, 2009 AMSTERDAM: Five gay Dutch-American couples tied the knot aboard a boat Saturday during Amsterdam's gay pride festival, as thousands of revellers took to waterborne floats on the city's historic canals.Organisers said around 560,000 people turned out for the celebrations in the capital of the Netherlands, the first country to legalise gay marriage in April 2001.Applause rang out from a huge crowd of spectators as the couples were married on one of the 80 boats transformed into parade floats for the celebrations.Some of the newlyweds had travelled from New York, where gay marriage is not legal, to the Netherlands in order to say their wedding vows."Unfortunately, we have had to come all the way to Amsterdam to be able to get married legally," lamented 25-year-old Patrick Decker."The United States is the land of freedom, but homosexuals are still not free to get married," added another one of the newlyweds, 40-year-old Hans Heijnis from...

Sunday, August 02, 2009 RIYADH: The Ministry of Health has arranged four million doses of vaccine to treat swine flu during the Umrah and Haj pilgrimages, Health Minister Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah announced at a news conference at the ministry on Saturday.The minister said that the news conference was held to keep the public informed of all developments regarding the spread of swine flu in the Kingdom. “We want to be transparent in all our activities regarding the control, spread and treatment of the disease in the Kingdom.”He assured the families of those who have died of swine flu that full inquiries would be held into the deaths. The minister said that blood samples of the four people who have died in the Kingdom have been sent to Center For Disease Control (CDC) in the US for necessary analysis.Regarding the forthcoming Haj season, the Foreign Ministry has not yet stipulated quarantine requirements for Haj visas at its overseas missions. The Kingdom’s recommendations include the exc...

Sunday, August 02, 2009 MANILA: Thousands of mourners are gathering at Manila Cathedral to pay their last respects to their beloved leader former Philippine President Corazon Aquino Sunday. Aquino, who died at the age of 76 on Saturday after a long battle with colon cancer, led millions of Filipinos in protests against dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a popular revolt in 1986, before taking over as president.Popular as Aunt Cory, Aquino was to be buried on Wednesday after a family-led ceremony, in accordance with her wishes not to be given a state funeral, the presidential palace said. Schools across the country were to close for the day.She will be laid to rest beside her husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, who was assassinated in 1983 after flying home from exile to lead the anti-Marcos opposition.Hundreds of ordinary Filipinos filed past her coffin overnight Saturday as it was opened for public viewing.By Sunday morning, thousands more had lined up to see the former president ly...

Sunday, August 02, 2009 LONDON: The international military mission in Afghanistan has delivered "much less than it promised" due to the lack of a realistic strategy, an influential committee of British lawmakers said Sunday.In a report, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said without a clear strategy stabilising Afghanistan had become "considerably more difficult than might otherwise have been the case."Lawmakers criticised US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan and warned the "considerable cultural insensitivity" of some coalition troops had caused serious damage to Afghans' perceptions that will be "difficult to undo"."We conclude that the international effort in Afghanistan since 2001 has delivered much less than it promised and that its impact has been significantly diluted by the absence of a unified vision and strategy grounded in the realities of Afghanistan's history, culture and politics," the report said....

Sunday, August 02, 2009 WASHINGTON: The commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan is weighing advice that thousands of additional American forces are needed to prevail in the fight against insurgents.A number of analysts who helped draft an assessment for the new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, are publicly advocating a major increase in US troop numbers in Afghanistan -- a politically-sensitive proposal that could meet resistance in the White House and Congress.A prominent Washington military analyst who was part of the assessment effort, Anthony Cordesman, said it was crucial that more combat brigade teams -- which range from 3,000 to 5,000 troops -- be deployed as part of a shift in strategy.Cordesman and other analysts on the team said the mission had been neglected for years and that the target for Afghan security forces also needed to dramatically increase from current goals of 134,000 for the army and about 82,000 for the police.Cordesman was among a dozen analysts ...