Pakistan premier defends country in bin Laden case

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's prime minister says the army will investigate how al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden hid for years on his country's soil without being detected.

Yousuf Raza Gilani made the comments during an address to Parliament on Monday, a week after a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad killed the terrorist mastermind.

Read more »

How to Stop the Fiscal Bleeding

With the budget debate firing up again this week, Michael Tomasky says there’s just one serious way to cut our deficit—by focusing on tax expenditures, the tax loopholes and deductions that are bleeding federal coffers dry.

The budget is likely to revert to Topic A in Washington this week, as Vice President Joe Biden’s bipartisan negotiations resume at Blair House and the Senate Gang of Six (maybe) finally releases its report. The key to making sense of this latest round of wrangling is to keep an ear out for the phrase “tax expenditures,” because how that issue is handled will largely determine whether we end up with a serious and equitable solution to our financial problems—or an ideological one that extracts flesh from the targets (poor people, domestic programs) that are running out of flesh to extract.

Read more »

Quake shifted Japan; towns now flood at high tide

ISHINOMAKI, Japan – When water begins to trickle down the streets of her coastal neighborhood, Yoshiko Takahashi knows it is time to hurry home.

Twice a day, the flow steadily increases until it is knee-deep, carrying fish and debris by her front door and trapping people in their homes. Those still

Read more »

NATO planes pound Libyan government weapons depot

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – NATO planes pounded Libyan government weapons depots southeast of the town of Zintan on Monday, in a sign of widening conflict in the Western Mountains region as rebels battle to unseat Muammar Gaddafi.

Read more »

Military arrests 190 people in Egypt church attack

CAIRO – Egypt's military rulers have reacted swiftly to attempts to burn down a pair of churches in a Cairo slum during sectarian riots that killed 10 people by referring 190 people to military trial.

Mobs of ultraconservative Muslims from the Salafi religious trend converged on a church in the Cairo slum of Imbaba late Saturday following rumors of an interfaith romance.

Read more »

Source: Bin Laden directing al-Qaida figures

WASHINGTON – The wealth of information pulled from Osama bin Laden's compound has reinforced the belief that he played a strong role in planning and directing attacks by al-Qaida and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

And the data further demonstrates to the U.S. that top al-Qaida commanders and other key insurgents are scattered throughout Pakistan, not just in the rugged border areas, and are being supported and given sanctuary by Pakistanis, a senior defense official said.

U.S. counterterrorism officials have debated how big a role bin Laden and core al-Qaida leaders were playing in the attacks launched by affiliated terror groups, particularly al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, and al-Shabab in Somalia.

Read more »

Bin Laden home videos expected to be released

WASHINGTON – Americans are expected to get a glimpse of Osama bin Laden's daily life with the disclosure of home videos that show him strolling around his secret compound, along with propaganda tapes that have never been made public.

The footage shot at the terror leader's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the propaganda tapes are expected to be released to the news media Saturday, U.S. officials said.

They are among the wealth of information collected during the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden and four others. The information suggests bin Laden played a strong role in planning and directing attacks by al-Qaida and its affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, two senior officials said.

Read more »

Spanish golf great Seve Ballesteros dies at 54

MADRID – Seve Ballesteros, a five-time major champion whose passion and gift for imaginative shot-making invigorated European golf and the Ryder Cup, has died from complications of a cancerous brain tumor. He was 54.

A statement on Ballesteros' website early Saturday said the golf great died peacefully at 2:10 a.m. local time, surrounded by his family at his home in Pedrena, in northern Spain.

Ballesteros, a two-time Masters champion and three-time winner of the British Open, was as inspirational in Europe as Arnold Palmer was in America, a handsome figure who feared no shot and often played from where no golfer had ever been.

Read more »

US targeted Awlaqi in Yemen drone strike: media

A US drone attack in Yemen targeted but failed to kill US-Yemeni cleric and terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaqi, who is linked to Al-Qaeda and considered a major threat to the United States, US media reported Friday.

The drone attack Thursday killed two local members of the militant network, a security source and witnesses told AFP in Yemen.

The Wall Street Journal and CBS reported the attack was targeting Awlaqi, the US-born radical cleric who is suspected of orchestrating terrorist attacks on the US.

Both reports cited US officials who declined to be identified.

Read more »

Morocco Bomber Was Dressed As A Hippie

The chief suspect in the cafe bombing in Morocco that killed 16 people is believed to have disguised himself as a hippie.

Adel al Othmani reportedly entered the cafe in Marrakesh - Morocco's top tourist destination - heavily disguised and carrying a guitar.

"He walked into the cafe wearing a wig and carrying a guitar and the two bags where he hid the explosive devices," an unnamed source told Reuters news agency.

Read more »

Who is the world’s most wanted man now?

Technically, Osama bin Laden may not have been the world’s ‘most wanted man’ - there’s no such official list – but he was without doubt the most well-known and notorious criminal on the planet. 

After he masterminded the September 11 attacks he became the subject of a ten-year manhunt by American military and intelligence forces that undoubtedly cost billions of dollars. It’s highly unlikely that in all human history that so many resources have gone into capturing (or in this case killing) one person.

Read more »

Osama bin Laden: Al-Qaeda leader was unarmed when US special forces shot him dead, White House reveals

Blood on the floor of one of the rooms at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan


OSAMA BIN LADEN was unarmed when commandos burst into his room and shot him dead, the White House has revealed, raising questions about whether the US ever planned to capture the terrorist leader alive.


The Obama administration, meanwhile, was still debating whether to release gruesome images of bin Laden's corpse, balancing efforts to demonstrate to the world that he was dead against the risk that the images could provoke further anti-US sentiment.

Read more »