JERUSALEM - Activities in Israel came to a halt Tuesday as the wail of sirens pierced the air in remembrance of the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust.
Cars stopped and people stood still during a two-minute silence across the Jewish state. Israeli leaders and Holocaust survivors later attended a wreath-laying ceremony at […]
ISTANBUL - News reports from Turkey said police have detained at least 37 people with suspected links to the al-Qaida terror network.
The state-run Anatolia news agency said police raided suspected al-Qaida safe houses in five provinces early Tuesday.
Anatolia reported that several of the people apprehended in the south-central province of Gaziantep had received training […]
ROME - Agriculture ministers from the major industrialized nations called on Monday for increased agriculture production as a way to combat world hunger. At the end of a 3-day meeting in northern Italy, G-8 ministers also took a first step toward fighting speculators who have helped push up the price of basic foods, sparking riots […]
JERUSALEM - Israel has recalled its ambassador to Switzerland after Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz met with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The meeting happened on the sidelines of a U.N. racism conference that Israel says had an anti-Israeli agenda.
Israel’s government saw the meeting between the Swiss leader and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as an insult and recalled […]
CAIRO - Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have arrested a Syrian suspect in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.Reports from the region on Sunday said Emirati police recently detained a former Syrian intelligence officer, identified as Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, in connection with the 2005 attack. The reports say Syrian authorities have requested […]
WASHINGTON - The White House says the United States hopes to make progress with Colombia on a stalled free trade agreement between the two countries.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Saturday that President Barack Obama has asked Trade Representative Ron Kirk to work with Colombian officials to discuss remaining U.S. concerns on issues such as violence against […]
CAIRO - A team of archaeologists from Egypt and the Dominican Republic believe that they are on the verge of locating the burial site of legendary Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and her illustrious Roman consort, Marc Antony. The team, doing excavations near the famous Egyptian port city of Alexandria, uncovered a number of coins, funerary masks […]
WASHINGTON - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he expects to send an ambassador back to the United States soon, in a move that would come months after both nations expelled the other’s envoys.
President Chavez said Saturday at the Summit of the Americas that he has spoken to former foreign minister Roy Chaderton and designated him […]
ROME - Agriculture ministers from the Group of 8 most industrialized countries are meeting near Treviso in in northern Italy this weekend for the first time to discuss food security and measures to boost farming output. Talks will focus on efforts to avert a permanent world food crisis. A report prepared for the meeting warns […]
SEOUL - South Korea says it will soon announce its full participation in a U.S. - led group of nations cooperating to prevent the global traffic of weapons of mass destruction. The move may raise tension with the North, even as diplomacy to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons unravels.
South Korea is expected to make public, […]
WASHINGTON - Four U.S. nuclear experts left North Korea Friday, after Pyongyang ordered the expulsion of inspectors monitoring nuclear disarmament measures.
United Nations inspectors departed the country Thursday after removing seals and disabling surveillance cameras at the Yongbyon atomic facility.
The North Korean government expelled the inspectors after the United Nations adopted a statement condemning Pyongyang for […]
STATE DEPARTMENT - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday said U.S. policy toward Cuba’s communist government, which features a decades-old economic blockade, has failed and she is calling Raul Castro’s offer of talks with Washington on the full range issues between the two adversaries “a very welcome overture.”
Clinton spoke at an Internet “town hall meeting” […]
ISTANBUL - State prosecutors in Turkey have ordered the excavation of several sites around Turkey that they say may hold Kurdish victims of state death squads from the 1980s and 1990s, a step ahead in efforts to force the country’s security establishment to come clean about past abuses. Local human rights groups accuse the security […]
MOSCOW - Russia has ended its decade-long counterterrorism operation in Chechnya, an undertaking that led to broad restrictions on civil liberties in the war-torn Caucasus republic. The move could lead to the withdrawal of 20,000 Russian police and servicemen from Chechnya.
Russia’s National Counterterrorism Committee issued a statement saying Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov canceled […]
HAVANA - Cuban President Raul Castro says he is ready to enter into negotiations with the United States, following U.S. President Barack Obama’s call for the island nation to reciprocate to his recent overtures.
Speaking late Thursday at summit of Latin American leftist leaders in Venezuela, Mr. Castro said Havana is prepared to discuss any issue […]
STATE DEPARTMENT - The United States said Thursday that it is pushing for U.N. sanctions against North Korea for its long-range missile test and subsequent expulsion of international monitors from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex. U.S. officials want to curb North Korea’s import of goods that could be used to advance its nuclear and missile […]
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Wednesday a multi-pronged U.S. effort to curb Somali-based maritime piracy. Among other things, the United States will move to track and freeze assets of pirate gangs, and press Somali authorities to shut down pirate land bases.
Clinton says she hopes the surge of piracy in recent days, […]
STATE DEPARTMENT - The State Department confirms North Korea is expelling U.S. monitors from its Yongbyon nuclear complex along with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. The Obama administration says North Korea’s announced decision to leave nuclear talks and restart the nuclear facility is a step backwards.
U.S. officials say the expulsion notice was delivered to the […]
CAIRO - Egyptian security forces have detained three Palestinians on suspicion of illegally crossing into Egypt, and authorities say they also found almost a ton of explosives.Egyptian police Wednesday said the three were detained in the North Sinai town of Sheikh Zweid, which is about 15 kilometers from the Egyptian border with Gaza and Israel. […]
STATE DEPARTMENT - The United States Tuesday called North Korea’s threat to withdraw from negotiations and restart its nuclear program a serious step in the wrong direction. Pyongyang has reacted harshly to a U.N. Security Council statement condemning its April 5 missile launch.
Obama administration officials said they don’t want to get involved in verbal […]
TEHRAN - Iran says a U.S.-Iranian journalist who has been held at Tehran’s Evin prison since January, has been put on trial on charges of spying for the United States. The charges carry a possible death penalty.
A spokesman for Iran’s judiciary says American journalist Roxana Saberi, went on trial Monday and a verdict is expected […]
WASHINGTON - The UN nuclear agency says North Korea has ordered international monitors at its main nuclear facility to remove seals from its equipment and leave the country. Pyongyang has also said it will drop out of six-party nuclear disarmament talks in reaction to a United Nations rebuke over its rocket launch earlier this month.
The […]
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama is making it easier for Cuban-Americans to travel and send remittances to relatives in Cuba. Monday’s announcement came just days before a summit of hemispheric leaders in Trinidad and Tobago.The move does not lift the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. But it does provide an opening.
The estimated 1.5 […]
WASHINGTON - North Korea has responded angrily to a United Nations denouncement of its recent long range rocket launch. Calling multinational disarmament talks “useless,” the North’s government says it will restart nuclear facilities and boost its nuclear arsenal.
North Korea vowed to get back into the nuclear weapons business Tuesday, in response to what it called […]
