LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says in a new memoir that he did not sexually assault two women who have accused him of rape, and claims he was warned the US government was trying to entrap him.
NEW DELHI: Opposition leaders on Thursday called for India’s Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram to face a federal probe after a government memo suggests he failed to rectify the underpriced sale of telecoms licenses that lost the treasury up to $39 billion.
STOCKHOLM: Sweden is calling on Eritrea to release a Swedish-Eritrean reporter who have spent 10 years in jail there.
MAKHACHKALA, Russia: Two car bombs killed a Russian policeman and wounded 60 other people in the capital of the violence-plagued republic of Dagestan early Thursday, a spokesman for the interior ministry said.
NEW YORK: The New York Police Department has subjected American citizens to surveillance and scrutiny, not because of any wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity.
PARIS: A friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy was arrested and another placed under investigation on Wednesday over their possible role in a corruption case linked to arms sales and a deadly bombing in Pakistan, lawyers and police sources said.
ISLAMABAD: Police say the Pakistani government has placed under house detention an Islamist militant accused in dozens of killings but released from prison two months ago.
MITROVICA, Kosovo: Kosovo police have charged 13 Serb truck drivers with illegally crossing the border in the north of the country, a police official said.
BEIJING: China has won the support of the new Libyan government, state media reported on Thursday, which had been in doubt after Beijing’s frosty reaction to NATO-lead air strikes and attempts by Chinese firms to sell weapons to Muammar Qaddafi.
SEOUL: North Korea wants to hold a second round of dialogue with the United States, possibly next month, as part of renewed efforts to restart talks on disabling the North’s nuclear weapons program, a South Korean official said on Thursday.
BEIJING: China stepped up its condemnation of the United States on Thursday for selling arms to Taiwan saying they could disrupt military exchanges, a warning that is likely to unsettle, but not derail, ties with Washington.
PARIS: A French writer who says Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her wants to confront the former International Monetary Fund chief face to face.
MONS, Belgium: A Belgian court decided on Thursday not to release the former wife and accomplice of convicted child murderer Marc Dutroux because officials do not know where to send her.
LISBON, Portugal: Aristides Pereira, who fought Portugal’s colonial rule in the Cape Verde Islands and became the West African country’s first post-independence president, died Thursday. He was 87.
PARIS: The trial of former French president Jacques Chirac for misuse of public funds is heading for likely dismissal, with even the prosecution calling for the 78-year-old to be discharged, in a case which has provoked a row about judicial independence.
NEW DELHI: An 83-year-old veteran of India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Wednesday he did not want to run for prime minister again in elections due by 2014, a move that frees up younger candidates to challenge the government.
VIENNA: Myanmar does not have “enough economic strength” to develop nuclear weapons, a senior diplomat from the military-ruled country told the UN atomic agency on Wednesday, rejecting any such suspicions in the West.
GUWAHATI, India: Rescue workers with sensors and sniffer dogs searched through rubble on Wednesday for more survivors of an earthquake that has killed at least 100 people in a remote Himalayan region and left many, including 400 foreigners, stranded in far-flung areas.
WASHINGTON: After months of a Republican nomination race that struggled to catch fire, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are now locked in a fight they both predict will extend well into 2012.
MEXICO CITY: Suspected drug traffickers drove two trucks to a main avenue in a Mexican Gulf coast city and dumped 35 slaying victims during rush hour while gunmen stood guard and pointed their weapons at frightened motorists.
ISLAMABAD: Suspected militants have opened fire on an army helicopter flying in northwest Pakistan, wounding a regional commander inside the aircraft.
MANILA: Two suspects on a motorcycle lobbed a hand grenade into a karaoke bar in a northern Philippine town, killing five people and wounding seven. police say.
WASHINGTON: A US judge is expressing doubts about whether the government can force tobacco companies to post graphic images on their cigarette packages showing the health effects of smoking.
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that an upgrade package for its ageing F-16 fighter jets offered by the United States will contribute to regional peace by improving Taiwan’s defense capability in the face of a continued threat from mainland China.
MONROVIA: Liberia’s Supreme Court is considering whether incumbent leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, her main rival and four other candidates are eligible to stand in next month’s presidential elections, officials said.
MOSCOW: Russia’s envoy to NATO urged his supporters Wednesday to join up with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, giving the Kremlin a strong nationalist card heading into elections.
CHICAGO: Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett will help raise money for President Barack Obama’s re-election effort at a $35,800-a-ticket fundraiser next month in Chicago, an Obama campaign official said on Wednesday.
MIAMI: Tropical Storm Hilary has formed in the eastern Pacific south of Mexico.
Hilary has maximum sustained winds near 40 mph (65 kph). The US National Hurricane Center says Hilary is expected to strengthen and could become a hurricane in a couple days.
PALERMO, Sicily: Migrants clashed with residents on Wednesday on an Italian island off the coast of Sicily where tens of thousands of North Africans have landed since the start of the year.
LONDON: Manchester Airport’s main terminal has reopened after bomb disposal experts were called in to check a suspicious package on Wednesday, police said.
AMSTERDAM: An explosion at an Amsterdam district courthouse on Wednesday shattered windows across three floors and was probably caused by a projectile or explosive device, Dutch police said on Wednesday.
ROME: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi avoided a potentially embarrassing defeat in parliament on Thursday when deputies voted against allowing the arrest of a former aide to Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti on corruption charges.
WASHINGTON: The United States has accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of using the Haqqani Network to wage a “proxy war,” hardening its criticism of Islamabad’s ties with Taleban-allied factions fighting NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.
KABUL, Afghanistan: The suicide bomber who assassinated former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani insisted on meeting face-to-face with the ex-president and waited in Kabul for days to talk with him about brokering peace with the Taleban, an associate of Rabbani’s said Wednesday.
Mixed Taleban messages on killing may show divide
TOKYO: A powerful typhoon struck Japan on Wednesday, killing six people, disrupting public transportation and pummeling Tokyo and northeastern Japan including the tsunami-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant with heavy rain, officials and media said.
BEIJING: Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 70 people in eight provinces in China, with 32 still missing, the government and state media said.
LUSAKA: Opposition leader Michael Sata took a strong lead in Zambia’s presidential election on Wednesday, although with only 10 percent of votes counted it was unclear if he could achieve a historic transfer of power.
PARIS: If President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservatives have their way, French teenagers will one day swear their allegiance to the defense of France — a sort of muscular French take on the US Pledge of Allegiance.
ATHENS, Greece: Greece will suspend more civil servants than originally planned and impose new pension cuts as part of more austerity measures, the government said Wednesday, as it tried to persuade international creditors to continue bailout payments needed to avoid a chaotic default.
KABUL: World leaders reacted in shock and horror over the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani on Tuesday.
QUETTA, Pakistan: Gunmen opened fire on a bus in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan in a suspected sectarian attack on Tuesday, killing at least 26 Shiite Muslim pilgrims traveling to Iran, police said.
BERLIN: Nearly 50 people were injured when a regional train derailed after hitting a car in eastern Germany on Tuesday, police said.
GANGTOK, India: Helicopters airdropped emergency supplies Tuesday to Himalayan villages worst-hit by a quake that killed at least 81 people in India, Nepal and China, while earthmovers pushed through debris clogging precipitous valleys.
LUSAKA: Youths went on the rampage on Thursday in northern Zambia’s Copper Belt, a stronghold of opposition leader Michael Sata who is leading the race to become the next president of Africa’s biggest copper producer.
The latest tally from Tuesday’s election showed Sata with 639,787 votes against 542,362 for incumbent Rupiah Banda, leader of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD) party that has run the former British colony since one-party rule ended in 1991.
