Tag: Weekend News Digest

Australia became the latest member of the U.S.-led coalition to pull combat soldiers from Iraq, fulfilling an election promise that helped sweep Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to power in November.

Opposition has been growing in Iraq to the proposed security pact with the U.S., which will replace the current U.N. mandate and could provide for a long-term American military role in this country.

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

If all goes well, Phoenix will become the first spacecraft to land on the Martian arctic surface, digging into the polar ice in a new three-month mission searching for signs of life.

Mission specialists “decided early Sunday not to use the last possible time for a trajectory correction maneuver, eight hours before landing,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which controls the mission, said on its website.

The result of the landing is expected to be known at 4:53 pm Pacific time (2353 GMT), around 15 minutes after the probe makes contact with Mars’ surface, because radio signals take that much time to travel the 171 million miles (275 million kilometers) to Earth, NASA said.

The Sadrist Movement has heightened its rhetoric against the government in recent days, raising concerns over the cease-fires in the southern city of Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Still, the lawmakers and other al-Sadr officials said they are adhering to the truces. The cease-fires are crucial to Iraqi security forces’ sweeps in Basra and Sadr City, launched by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to show his government can spread its authority in areas long dominated by armed groups like al-Sadr’s.

Separately, mortar shells slammed into a residential area north of the Iraqi capital, killing at least four people and wounding 30, most children playing outside, officials said Sunday.

The shelling occurred as clashes broke out in Shiite areas late Saturday despite a truce reached last week by Shiite politicians and followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq’s leaders presented the crackdown as a success so far in depriving the terror network of what has been its most prominent urban stronghold since it lost hold of cities in Iraq’s western Anbar province.

But the flight of al-Qaida fighters raises the concern they can regroup elsewhere, as has often happened in the past.

The boat was carrying supplies for more than 1,000 people and was the first Red Cross shipment to the disaster area, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. All four relief workers on board were safe, it said.

“This is a great loss for the Myanmar Red Cross and for the people who need aid so urgently,” said Aung Kyaw Htut, the distribution team leader of the Myanmar Red Cross.

Human rights organizations and anti-government groups have bitterly accused the government of neglecting cyclone victims to advance its political agenda, and have criticized its proposed constitution as designed to perpetuate military rule.

Local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country.

No patients were wounded at the hospital in the Sadr City stronghold of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, but 20 people at the scene of the blasts had been hurt, said Dr. Wi’am al-Jawahiri, manager of the al-Sadr hospital.

Jawahiri said windows at the hospital were shattered when three missiles hit what the U.S. military in Iraq called a militant “command and control” centre around 10.00 a.m.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault that sent President Hamid Karzai and foreign ambassadors scurrying for cover, underscoring the fragile grip of his U.S.-backed government.

Gunmen opened fire as a 21-gun salute echoed over the capital at an anniversary ceremony to mark the mujahedeen victory over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The results in 18 of the 23 constituencies where ballots were being double-checked stayed the same after the recount of a March 29 vote, officials said, re-affirming victory for the Movement for Democratic Change.

The remaining five constituencies were not sufficient for the Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwean African National Union — Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which has controlled parliament uninterruptedly since 1980, to gain a majority of seats.

Rockets blasted the fortified Green Zone compound where Rice met Iraqi officials and praised their month-old campaign against Sadr’s followers.

She had harsh words for the reclusive cleric, who on the eve of Rice’s visit vowed “open war” if the crackdown continues. Sadr has not appeared in public in Iraq in nearly a year.