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GENEVA | Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery. It’s essentially a ban on blasphemy that would put them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West.
MUMBAI, India | The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. The linoleum floors are pockmarked from grenades. One year after the terror attack that left 166 people dead, the Chabad House — a once-popular site with Jewish travelers where six foreigners were killed — remains scarred, still and quiet.
CAIRO, Egypt | The Yemeni-American imam who’s been under renewed scrutiny after the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, preaches against alcohol, birthday parties, black magic and extramarital sex. But he supports armed struggle against the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has encouraged extremist insurgents in Pakistan and Somalia.
TEHRAN, Iran | Iran will begin large-scale air defense war games today aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said Saturday. The drill comes as a top clerical official renewed his threat to target “the heart of Tel Aviv” should Israel attack Iran.
Elisabeth Soderstrom, a Swedish soprano who became an international opera star, died in Stockholm of complications from a stroke. She was 82. From 1949 to 1980, she performed at the Royal Swedish Opera and often appeared at some of the largest opera houses in the world. She also recorded frequently. Between 1959 and 1964, Soderstrom was contracted by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She returned for several years in the 1980s. Paul Wendkos, who directed more than 100 films and television shows during a 50-year career, including the 1959 surf movie “Gidget,” died in Malibu, Calif., of a lung infection that followed a stroke. He was 84. His films also included the 1957 drama “The Burglar,” starring Jayne Mansfield, and the 1969 adventure “Guns of the Magnificent Seven.” For television, he directed series such as “The Rifleman” and “Hawaii Five-O.”
Love that glove NEW YORK | The gleaming glove Michael Jackson wore when he premiered his trademark moonwalk dance in 1983 has been auctioned for $350,000.
LONDON | Hackers have broken into computers at a research center and posted private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists overstated the case for man-made climate change. The University of East Anglia in eastern England said Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change.
GENEVA | Scientists switched on the world’s largest atom smasher Friday night for the first time since the $10 billion machine suffered a spectacular failure more than a year ago. It took a year of repairs before beams of protons circulated late Friday in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time since it was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault.
ISLAMABAD | Pakistan expressed fear Friday that a large increase in foreign troops in Afghanistan could push militants across the border into its territory and called on President Barack Obama to factor in that concern as part of his new war strategy. Meanwhile, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed eight militants in northwestern Pakistan, officials said, the second attack this week in an area believed to hold many insurgents. American officials generally do not acknowledge the unpopular attacks.
KABUL | President Hamid Karzai was inaugurated Thursday for a second term, pledging that Afghanistan will prosecute corrupt officials and control its own security within five years. As Karzai vowed to make the country safe from an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency, two U.S. service members died in a bomb attack and a suicide bomber killed 10 civilians in the south. But his speech appeared to make strides toward appeasing the international allies he needs to fend off the Islamist militants.
BAGHDAD | Warid Badr Salim’s front-page satire in a recent edition of the newspaper al-Mada compared Iraq’s parliament to wolves stalking sheep — the Iraqi people — and cheekily suggested that its members need the diplomatic passports they’ve awarded themselves just to leave Baghdad’s fortresslike Green Zone. In the midst of parliament’s debate over Iraq’s pivotal January elections, a lawmaker held up the article and denounced it. More than 150 lawmakers signed up to sue the paper.
BAGHDAD | Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms abducted and killed 13 people whose bodies were found Monday with gunshot wounds to the head. The dead included a local leader of Iraq’s largest Sunni party, which once helped fight al-Qaida.
BEIJING | Seeking help with an array of global troubles, President Barack Obama said today that his closely watched talks with his Chinese counterpart are vital for their nations and for the world. Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao sent cooperative signals before they began closed-door meetings that were likely to touch on challenges ranging from nuclear proliferation, hurting economies, climate change and human rights.
SHANGHAI | President Barack Obama is walking a tightrope on his first trip to China, seeking to enlist help in tackling global problems while weighing when — or if — he should raise human rights concerns. Obama, who arrived in Shanghai late Sunday, held talks with local politicians today and conducted an American-style town hall discussion with Chinese university students.
SHANGHAI | Days before President Barack Obama’s Asia tour stopped in China, Tess Kirtz emerged from the new Barbie Shanghai worldwide flagship store with a gift for a child. “It was wild. It was big and pink. It’s beautiful in there,” said Kirtz, an Ohio mom who moved to Shanghai for her husband’s job.
CANBERRA, Australia | Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized today to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia in past centuries with the promise of a better life, who then suffered abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home. At a ceremony in the Australian capital of Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologized for his country’s role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the program who still live in Australia.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan | A pickup truck laden with explosives blew up in front of a police station in northwestern Pakistan today, killing at least three people in an area that has become the focal point for militant retaliation against a recent army offensive. Suspected militants have killed more than 300 civilians and security personnel in the last month in an attempt to weaken the country’s resolve to continue its military operation in the tribal area of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding.
PRISTINA, Kosovo | Kosovo’s first independent elections have ended peacefully, with the prime minister claiming his party won convincingly. Some minority Serbs ignored a call to boycott and cast ballots alongside ethnic Albanians.
For the birds LA MARQUE, Texas | Police say a low-flying pelican distracted a driver, causing him to veer off a road and drive his million-dollar sports car into a salt marsh.
SINGAPORE | A major pact within reach, President Barack Obama aims to nudge forward an arms control deal in talks with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. The 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum brought Obama to Singapore, but he is focusing on individual meetings today with Medvedev and with Indonesia’s Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the world’s largest Muslim nation. The U.S.-Russia meeting takes place as the nations seek a successor to a Cold War era agreement.
Three jailed suspects in Oct. 25 bombings that killed more than 150 people in Iraq said they filmed the targeted buildings before the attack and escorted the car bombs in a convoy into Baghdad, according to confessions shown on Iraqi television Sunday.
Leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war and show plans for the U.S.-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The Dalai Lama defended President Barack Obama from criticism that he has been too soft on China, saying Sunday that the U.S. leader just has a different approach to dealing with the Asian giant.
Pakistani troops killed nearly 40 suspected militants Sunday in a series of operations in northwestern tribal areas near the Afghan border, officials said.
An Algerian court on Sunday acquitted two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were returned home to face charges of links to terrorism, their defense lawyer said.
The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. Dozens of holes, blasted by grenades, pockmark the linoleum floors.
Romanians voted for a new president Sunday, hoping to end a leadership crisis that threatens a euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) IMF loan their country desperately needs to ease a painful recession.
The Pakistani government has some advice the Obama administration may not want to hear as it contemplates sending additional U.S. troops to neighboring Afghanistan: Negotiate with Taliban leaders and restrain India.
A top reformer has been sentenced to six years in jail after he stood trial on charges of fomenting unrest to topple the Iranian regime.
Hundreds of people jammed into a Monrovia church to mourn a Liberian United Nations worker killed in an October attack by Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan's capital.
Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting the country's nuclear facilities against any possible attack, state television reported.
Russian spaceship designer Konstantin Feoktistov, the only non-Communist space traveler in the history of the Soviet space program, has died at the age of 83.
Police and army experts say they're urgently checking the safety of about 1,800 bridges in northern England amid some of the worst storms ever recorded in Britain.
A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.
Rescuers saved more than 240 people aboard a crowded Indonesian passenger ferry that sank Sunday in rough waters off Sumatra island, but 29 people have died and at least 17 others were missing, officials said.
The Yemeni-American imam who's been under renewed scrutiny after the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, preaches against alcohol, birthday parties, black magic and extramarital sex. He also supports armed struggle - jihad - against the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has encouraged extremist insurgents in Pakistan and Somalia.
Ugandan officials were offended Sunday after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wondered out loud whether Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was truly as brutal as he was reputed to be.
Irish Republican Army dissidents left a 400-pound (180-kilogram) car bomb outside police reform headquarters in Belfast but the homemade device failed to detonate, Northern Ireland's police commander said Sunday.
Egypt's president on Sunday criticized Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, telling his Israeli counterpart that settlement activity in the disputed sector of the holy city threatens to anger the entire Muslim world.
A Palestinian nun who co-founded a charity dedicated to educating Arab girls has taken an important step toward sainthood.
