Tag: Weekend News Digest

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday that CIA Director Leon Panetta disclosed Cheney’s involvement when he briefed members of Congress two weeks ago. She said Panetta told them he had canceled the program.

President Barack Obama appointed Panetta to head the agency early this year. The still-secret program, which The New York Times said never became operational, began after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic seized Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, and slaughtered more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995.

Every year thousands of Bosnians gather on the July 11 anniversary of the attack for burials, family reunions, and to remember their relatives and friends lying beneath the thousands of white tombstones in the special memorial cemetery.

Obama is expected to clinch summit deals on the outlines of a new nuclear arms pact and improved cooperation in the Afghan war effort, but deep divisions will remain over U.S. missile defense, NATO expansion and the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Traveling to Moscow for the first time since taking office, he hopes to keep building pragmatic ties with President Dmitry Medvedev but is likely to have a more strained introduction to Vladimir Putin, who still dominates Russian politics.

Biden, on a three-day visit, offered U.S. help in what he said was a long road ahead in uniting a country deeply split by years of sectarian war and riven by violence.

But Iraq has been forcefully asserting a newfound sovereignty in the week U.S. combat troops pulled out of city centers, a milestone that was feted by flowers and dancing.

A day after reshuffling his cabinet to try to secure the loyalty of ministers after several walked out of his government, Brown said: “I think it is important to recognize that in these unprecedented times you are bound to have up and downs in politics.

“You are bound to have difficulties because the public are waiting to see the results, but you have got to stick with the policies and make sure that they come through,” he told reporters after attending a cathedral service in France to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

The shuttle touched down under clear blue skies at 8:39 a.m. PDT (11:39 a.m. EDT/1539 GMT) after foul weather stymied two days of landing attempts at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“Welcome home Atlantis, congratulations on a very successful mission giving Hubble a new set of eyes that will continue to expand our knowledge of the universe,” radioed astronaut Greg H. Johnson from Mission Control in Houston.

Bolden, 62, a retired Marine general, flew on four shuttle missions before leaving the U.S. space agency in 1994 to return to the military.

Bolden, who would become the 12th administrator in NASA’s 51-year history and its first black head, is seen as a strong advocate for human space flight.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition defied predictions of a tight election and was only about 12 seats short of an outright majority from the 543 seats at stake, according to election commission data.

In a country where unwieldy coalitions were becoming the order of the day and hobbling policy, the electoral verdict this time means Congress will call the shots in coalition building rather than being dependent on the goodwill of regional parties.

Singh’s Congress-led coalition, riding on the back of years of economic growth, did better than expected and will probably be only just short of an outright majority, according to data from the election commission and projections by TV channels.

“The people of India have spoken, and spoken with great clarity,” Singh told reporters.

Army General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said Pakistan’s fierce campaign against the Taliban in the Swat valley was a sign its political leaders, people and military were united against the Islamist fighters.

“The actions of the Pakistani Taliban … seem to have galvanized all of Pakistan,” he told the “Fox News Sunday” program.

The struggle in the northwestern valley 130 km (80 miles) from Islamabad has become a test of Pakistan’s resolve to fight a growing insurgency that has alarmed the West.

The military said up to 55 militants were killed in the day’s clashes in Swat and four soldiers wounded, and that several militants had died in separate clashes close to the Afghan border. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

Gates told CNN that he has been surprised by the limited scope of criticism aimed so far at his recommendations for the Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2010, which begins October 1, and had heard some “important voices raised in support.”

“I’m relatively optimistic, actually,” he said in the interview, which was taped last week. “I think we’ve presented, as one news magazine referred to it, a radically sane set of proposals. They don’t represent a cut, and where we have eliminated one program, you have added to others.”