Category: News

The violence wounded dozens more and underscored the unrest that continues to plague a nation whose politicians are struggling to form a government almost seven weeks after a general election seen crucial to its long-term stability.

Two parked car bombs in the impoverished district of Sadr City killed 39 people and wounded 56, a security official said.

Five grenades were fired into a crowd in the capital’s business district, said army spokesman Sunsern Kaewkumnerd, where pro-government demonstrators were facing off with their rival “Red Shirts”.

One Thai woman died, according to a local hospital, after the grenades hit the mass of pro-government supporters. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva immediately called an emergency meeting with security officials.

Top leaders and thousands of other people paid a silent tribute to the victims of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that struck a remote area of northwestern China a week ago, leaving at least 2,064 people dead.

Another 175 people were still missing and more than 12,000 injured after the quake flattened thousands of mainly mudbrick and wood homes in the Yushu region of Qinghai province, a rugged area populated by ethnic Tibetans.

The shuttle and its seven-member crew finally touched down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:08 am (1308 GMT) after a series of earlier delays due to rain and fog.

“Welcome home. Congratulations on an outstanding mission,” Mission Control said after the Discovery put more women in orbit than ever before, with three female crew joining one woman already on the space station.

Ten days after 25 people were killed and 800 wounded in a failed attempt to dislodge the red-shirted demonstrators, the government said it was determined to end four weeks of rallies but would not give a date for the crackdown.

Confronted by the newly muscular approach and an intimidating military presence in Bangkok’s financial hub, the protesters were forced to cancel plans for a march to the strategic district.

The attacks take the number of people killed in bombings in northwest Pakistan to 73 in three days, after weekend suicide strikes bearing the hallmarks of Taliban militants left 49 people dead in the city of Kohat.

As dusk fell Monday at Peshawar’s busy Qissa Khawani Bazaar, a suicide bomber walked into the crowd and detonated explosives, scattering shoes and human limbs on the street and destroying cars, witnesses said.

US President Barack Obama and dozens of other dignitaries failed to come to the elaborate state funeral because of a cloud of volcanic ash covering the region but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived to show solidarity.

Medvedev called for the two nations, at loggerheads for decades, to unite in sorrow after the April 10 plane crash in Russia that killed the couple and 94 others, most of them figures from Poland’s military and political elite.

The bombers struck minutes apart in the Kacha Pukha camp on the outskirts of the garrison city of Kohat, a registration centre for people fleeing Taliban violence and Pakistani army operations close to the Afghan border.

The attacks underscored the grave threat posed by extremists despite stepped-up Pakistani offensives and a significant increase in US drone attacks targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in the nearby tribal belt.

The lawsuit is the biggest crisis in years for Goldman, which emerged from the global financial crisis as Wall Street’s most influential bank.

It is also a huge test for Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, who has faced a firestorm of criticism over the bank’s pay and business practices. It comes as lawmakers in Washington debate sweeping reform of financial industry regulation.

“Now under the attacks of the world which talk to us about our sins, let us see that we can do penance,” the pope said at a mass at the Vatican.

“I have to say that we Christians, even lately, have often avoided the word ‘penance’ that seemed to us too hard,” the pope said, speaking for the first time since he was directly named in allegations of helping to protect priests who have abused children.

The Vatican issued what spokesman Federico Lombardi called a “clarification” of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s assertion Monday that homosexuality — not celibacy — is the “problem” that causes Catholic priests to molest children.

In the highly unusual statement, the Vatican said Roman Catholic Church officials were not “competent” to speak on psychological issues concerning general society.