Power confirmed as ambassador to the UN
WASHINGTON - Samantha Power easily won Senate confirmation as President Barack Obama's next ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday, August 1.The Senate voted 87-10, in favor of Power, a former White House national security staffer and former journalist, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem from Hell," a study of U.S....Russia grants Snowden asylum
MOSCOW - Russia granted American fugitive Edward Snowden one year's asylum on Thursday, Aug. 1, allowing the former U.S. spy agency contractor to slip quietly out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, after more than five weeks in limbo, and angering the United States.The White House, which wants Snowden sent home to face trial for...Iraqi refugee repays Australian government for welfare assistance
AUSTRALIA — Sam Eisho, an Assyrian Iraqi refugee, who first settled in Australia in 1999, after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime, repaid the country’s government over $18,000, after becoming a successful businessman. Sam EishoEisho says that he felt it was his obligation to pay the government back the money in welfare assistance he...Young Yemen multiplies without economic growth
SANAA - Yemen’s population is increasing at a rapid rate, straining the country’s dwindling natural resources and setting up its youth for a grim future, with few jobs and scant means to get by.Visiting a family planning clinic in downtown Sanaa, Layla waits for a routine birth control checkup. She believes she was 14 when she got...Misreading Iranian politics
This year’s Iranian presidential election is likely to produce a strong political figure who will have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s foreign and domestic policies, helping to ensure Iran’s continued internal development and bolstering its regional importance.Yet every four years, a combustible mix of pro-Israel...
Israel fears war of attrition in Golan
May 24th, 20130 Recent incidents in the Golan Heights continue to cast a shadow on the attitudes of Israeli leaders amid reports that Israel plans to carry out new strikes in Syria. These future attacks would be in fulfillment of Israel’s declared policy of preventing strategic weapons from being transferred through Syria to Hizbullah.The Israeli...UN asks Israel to stop violating Lebanon’s airspace
NEW YORK - The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has protested to Israel after it observed increased violations of Lebanese air space by Israel, which carried out raids in Syria to target what it claimed were Iranian missiles bound for Hizbullah.Intelligence sources said Israel on Friday and Sunday attacked Iranian-supplied...
Chemical Lie brings America closer to war in Syria
April 26th, 20130 WASHINGTON - Growing speculation that the Syrian regime is using chemical weapons is turning up the heat on President Barack Obama, who has warned such a move would be a game changer.The U.S. administration, both in public and in private, says it has not concluded that such arms -- of which President Bashar al-Assad's regime has a large...
Israeli army prepares for war on northern front
March 29th, 20130 TEL AVIV - An Israeli decision to transfer its military brigades from the Syrian border to the Lebanese suggests that Israel is preparing for a new war in the north.Israeli military sources told Haaretz that war exercises are currently focused on its northern front. With a Syrian army weakened, claimed Haaretz, the Lebanese border...
Past Netanyahu, Obama looks at Israeli people
March 19th, 20130 JERUSALEM - U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Israel on Wednesday, his first destination abroad of his second term, to pay a visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose own second consecutive term will have started only 48 hours beforehand. No wonder that the true purpose of the U.S. President’s visit is defined as...New pope widely known as an advocate for the poor
The first Latin American pope, Argentina's Jorge Bergoglio, is a theological conservative with a strong social conscience, and a modest man who declined the archbishop's luxurious residence to live in a simple apartment and travel by bus.He was also the runner-up in the 2005 conclave that elected German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to...
Sea of Venezuelans bid farewell to ‘El Comandante’
March 8th, 20130 CARACAS - Countless Venezuelans filed past the remains of President Hugo Chavez on Thursday, crying, making the sign of the cross and giving military salutes as an era ended and elections loomed in the oil-rich nation. Chavez.Chavez lay in state in a half-open casket in the Caracas military academy, with eyes closed behind a glass,...Carlos Slim holds top spot as billionaire numbers swell
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Zara fashion house boss Amancio Ortega of Spain topped the Forbes list of the world's billionaires.But Forbes cut a Mexican drug lord from the list, saying it could not contact him, and a Saudi prince blasted the magazine for under-reporting his fortune.Slim who is from Lebanese...Pope Benedict bids farewell to supporters, pledges to obey successor
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict ended his difficult reign on Thursday pledging unconditional obedience to whoever succeeds him to guide the Roman Catholic Church at one of the most crisis-ridden periods in its 2,000-year history.The papacy became vacant at 8 p.m., marking the first time in six centuries a pope has resigned instead of ruling...Auchi on the list of top Arab philanthropists
LONDON — The financial magazine Nuqudy highlighted the importance of philanthropy in the acts of the most influential Arab businessmen, through publishing a list of the few Arab philanthropists that have selflessly given the most, relative to their net worth.Nuqudy focused on the role of the Anglo Arab Organization, founded by British......
Weighing a possible war on Iran
One of the most oft-repeated, widely accepted and habitually unquestioned beliefs about the Iranian nuclear issue is that if Iran got a nuclear weapon then Tehran would — merely by possessing such a weapon, even if it never detonated one — throw its weight around in the region in ways that it wouldn’t or couldn’t do without a...The fate of the world: Two storms on collision course
GENEVA — With rising economic strains on one side and ever more environmental concerns on the other, the world could soon find itself in "the perfect global storm", the World Economic Forum warned in a report on Tuesday."The world is more at risk as persistent economic weakness saps our ability to tackle environmental challenges,"......
Al Jazeera buys U.S. channel Current TV
Al Jazeera buys U.S. channel Current TVQatar-based network to launch Al Jazeera America, reaching 40 million US homes, up from 4.7 million before the dealDOHA — The Qatar-based network said on Thursday that with the acquisition it plans to create Al Jazeera America, a US-based news channel. Al Jazeera’s coverage will soon be...Developing world to overshadow the west by 2030, study says
WASHINGTON - A major new long-range report by the U.S. intelligence community suggests that the U.S. economy, currently the world’s largest, could be eclipsed by China’s by 2030.While the study, the result of four years of analysis by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), forecasts that the United States will remain a central...United Nations asks for control over the world’s Internet
Telecom companies across the world may be given the opportunity to dig through data passed across the Internet more easily following a move to allow the United Nations new authority to regulate the Web.At a conference in Dubai this week, Members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) agreed to work towards...UN Resolution calls for Israel to disclose nuclear arsenal
NEW YORK - The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to approve a resolution calling on Israel to open up its nuclear weapons program to international inspectors and to end its refusal to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treary, or NPT.A vote by the United Nations general assembly has called on Israel to open its nuclear......
Iran war on the ballot
A deal to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute, based on face-to-face negotiations between Iranian and U.S. officials, could follow quickly upon President Barack Obama’s reelection on Nov. 6, but those bilateral relations would likely veer toward confrontation if Mitt Romney wins and his neocon advisers retake control of U.S. foreign...Israel strikes Sudan military facility
Sudan's information minister has accused Israel of striking a Sudanese military factory Wednesday causing it to explode and burst into flames.An AFP reporter several kilometres (miles) away saw two or three fires flaring across a wide area, with heavy smoke and intermittent flashes of white light bursting above the state-owned Yarmouk......
Report: French secret serviceman killed Gaddafi on Sarkozy’s orders
October 5th, 20120 LONDON - A French secret serviceman acting on the express orders of Nicolas Sarkozy is suspected of murdering Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, it was sensationally claimed this week. He is said to have infiltrated a violent mob mutilating the captured Libyan dictator last year and shot him in the head.The motive, according to well-placed...
Strained East-West relations dominate General Assembly opening
September 28th, 20120 UNITED NATIONS – Addressing the 67th General Assembly at the United Nations in New York Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama accused the Iranian government of propping up the dictatorship in Syria and supporting terrorist groups abroad. U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N.......
