Tag: Weekend News Digest

“History shows us that if you set dates for when you’re going to leave, the enemy waits until you leave,” US Senator John McCain said at the Halifax International Defense Forum in easternmost Canada.

“I think benchmarks are important,” he said. “But if we set a date for when we are going to withdraw, I don’t want to go, if we are going to set a date so that the Taliban and others can just sit back and wait until we leave.”

The government also reiterated it would complete the resettlement of civilians by the end of January.

“We will allow complete freedom of movement,” senior presidential adviser Basil Rajapakse told inmates of the Manik Farm complex, the main facility housing displaced civilians.

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the local election “is the most important since the proclamation of independence” as he voted in bright sunshine in Pristina, accompanied by his family.

According to the electoral commission, some 45 percent of the 1.5 million eligible voters voted for mayors and local representatives in what Serbia sees as a renegade southern province. Polls closed at 7:00 pm.

In the second suicide strike to hit the troubled city in two days, the bomber detonated when police asked him to stop for a search, Peshawar district administration chief Sahibzada Anis told AFP.

The latest in a spate of devastating attacks comes as 30,000 troops press their most ambitious assault yet against Taliban militants in their mountain strongholds on the Afghan border.

So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day.

Since we’re together we might as well say:

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won’t you be my neighbor?

Won’t you please,

Won’t you please?

Please won’t you be my neighbor?

Leaders from across the continent were due in the German capital to join around 100,000 revellers Monday at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of national unity since the peaceful revolution that tore down the Wall in 1989.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to give a speech late Sunday on the challenges facing the West two decades after the Cold War.

Finance ministers from leading developed and emerging economies also said they would keep economic policy support in place in the face of “uneven” recovery.

“We are not out of the woods yet and we need to maintain the measures we have taken,” said Alistair Darling, finance minister of host country Britain after the meeting in St Andrews.

Two-and-a-half months after Afghans went to the polls to elect a president for the second time in history, Abdullah’s move appeared to guarantee President Hamid Karzai a second term in office but flung his legitimacy into doubt.

After Karzai snubbed a series of demands promoted by his rival as a chance to avoid a repeat of massive first-round fraud, Abdullah said he saw no point in standing, but stopped short of calling for a boycott.

Officials in Abdullah’s campaign team said the former foreign minister would announce he was pulling out of the November 7 contest on Sunday in the absence of any U-turn by Karzai on measures to combat fraud.

“If by the end of today we do not receive a positive response to our conditions from the government, then Dr. Abdullah himself will announce his reaction to it tomorrow,” Sayed Aqa Fazel Sancharaki, a spokesman for Abdullah’s campaign, told AFP.

The two blasts shredded buildings and smoke billowed from the area near the Tigris River. The first bomb targeted the Justice Ministry and the second, minutes later, was aimed at the nearby provincial government building, police said.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office said that the bombs were meant to sow chaos in Iraq similar to attacks on August 19 against the finance and foreign ministries, and were aimed at stopping an election in January.

While Western military chiefs say they can ensure the November 7 poll is conducted in a peaceful atmosphere, the warning from the Taliban threatens to further deflate turnout, which was less than 40 percent first time round.

“The Islamic emirate (of Afghanistan) once again informs all the people that no one should participate in this American process and should boycott the process,” said a Taliban statement emailed to AFP.

Several tribal leaders at the meeting in Sistan-Baluchestan province — a hotbed of Sunni insurgency — also died in the blast while 28 people were injured.

The attacker set off his explosives belt as the meeting got underway around 8.00 am (0430 GMT) at a gymnasium in the city of Pisheen, near the border with Pakistan, the state broadcaster said.

The mountain district is part of a tribal belt on the Afghan border that US officials call the most dangerous place in the world and is home to thousands of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked fighters branded a major threat to the West.

Air strikes and heavy artillery pounded Taliban bases as troops advanced north, west and east after months spent planning an assault that is expected to pose a stern test for the military on terrain ideally suited to guerrillas.