Wednesday, September 09, 2009 SAN'A: Four Yemenis carrying explosives and guns were arrested near the U.S. embassy in San'a, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday.The Ministry's statement didn't say when they were arrested. But senior security officials told media last week they were on the look out for possible attacks against foreign interests in San'a.The ministry said the four, aged between 20 and 33, had grenades, automatic weapons and ammunition in two separate vehicles. The men were residents of the northern town of Damag, home to one of the country's largest radical Sunni Islam teaching institutions, frequented by Yemeni, Arab and foreign clerics.Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen has targeted the U.S. Embassy in the past. In September 2008, gunmen backed by suicide bombers assaulted the walled compound in an attack that left 19 dead, including six attackers. Months before that, militants fired mortars at the embassy but missed, hitting a nearby school and killing one Yemeni.Washington has been pressuring Yemen to counter a rising al-Qaida threat more aggressively and improve intelligence sharing. U.S. officials said the government here has been preoccupied with fighting a Shiite rebellion in the north, at times at the expense of countering al-Qaida threats.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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