Tag: Weekend News Digest

“It would still be imprudent to say that we’re past the worst of it but I do think…we are in a stage of stabilization,” Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told reporters.

In Geneva, a World Health Organization official said the virus had not spread in a sustained way outside North America, as would be required before the global pandemic alert level is raised to its highest level — but he added he still expected this to happen.

Hundreds of Iraqis protested in the southern city of Kut against U.S. forces and the provincial governor also condemned the military operation.

The U.S. military had any immediate comment on the Iraqi stance but said the raid was carried out with the full approval of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government.

Hospitals tested patients with flu symptoms for the never-before-seen virus, which has also infected eight people in the United States. There have been no further deaths in Mexico City since Friday, but 24 new suspected cases were being tested and officials warned the strain was spreading fast between people, meaning there was a risk of a major outbreak.

“It has pandemic potential because it is infecting people,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said in Geneva.

The tomb of the Egyptian queen has never been found but archaeologists are discovering more evidence that Cleopatra’s priests carried her body to the temple after her suicide, where it could lie with her lover Marc Antony.

“This could be the most important discovery of the 21st century,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told reporters on a tour of the temple on Sunday. “This is the perfect place for them to be hidden.”

But even with U.S. economy now in its sixth quarter of recession, Donald Kohn, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, said the central bank’s attempts to heal ailing credit markets and spur an economic recovery have been working, in ways that include lowering mortgage interest rates.

“The situation in financial markets and the economy would have been far worse if the Federal Reserve hadn’t taken the actions we did,” Kohn told a conference at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Demonstrators attacked Abhisit’s convoy, captured armoured vehicles and roamed the streets of the capital — a day after forcing the cancellation of a summit of Asian leaders in a major humiliation for the government.

The red-shirted supporters of fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra massed outside Abhisit’s offices as night fell Sunday despite the premier’s threats to use force to restore order.

The Shi’ite Afghan Personal Status Law was an idea of Ayatollah Mohammad Asef Mohseni, who led the council of leading Muslim clerics which helped draft the legislation.

The law, meant to formalize minority Shi’ite family law which differs from the majority Sunni population, contains articles that some lawmakers have said would legalize marital rape and U.S. President Barack Obama called “abhorrent.”

The violence came as a senior Pakistani Taliban commander said his group was behind a deadly suicide bombing Saturday night in Islamabad and promised two more attacks per week in the country if the U.S. does not stop missile strikes on Pakistani territory.

Sunday’s suicide bomber set off his explosives at the entrance to a mosque in Chakwal city in Punjab province, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Islamabad, said Nadeem Hasan Asif, a top security official in the province. The blast killed 22 and wounded dozens, he said.

Pakistan is crucial to U.S. efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan and U.S. President Barack Obama has said the release of additional U.S. aid to the nuclear-armed country depends on how it tackles terrorism.

The attack in the central city of Chakwal came a day after a pilotless U.S. drone aircraft killed 13 people including militants in the northwest and a suicide bomber killed eight soldiers in Islamabad.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

At least four people were killed and 21 wounded in the two days of fighting between government troops and the Awakening Council in Fadhil, a ramshackle warren of narrow, fetid streets on the east side of the Tigris River where al-Qaida once held sway.

Members of the Fadhil council said Sunday they decided to give up the fight and hand over their weapons to spare the neighborhood, whose bullet-pocked buildings bore witness to intense combat there two years ago.

In London, more than 150 groups threw their backing behind the “Put People First” march. Police said around 35,000 attended the demonstration, snaking their way across the city toward Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. Protest organizers said they wanted leaders from the world’s top 20 economies to adopt a more transparent and democratic economic recovery plan.

Brendan Barber, who heads an umbrella group for Britain’s unions, told assembled protesters in London’s Hyde Park that the G20 needed to “take actions to lay the foundation for a better world.”

The plan that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner intends to announce Monday aims to use the resources of the $700 billion bank bailout fund, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The initiative will seek to entice private investors, including big hedge funds, to participate by offering billions of dollars in low-interest loans to finance the purchases and also sharing risks if the assets fall further in value.