Monday, Nov 03rd
Last update09:24:44 AM GMT
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said US private security firms, including Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater, are being behind terrorism in the country.
At a press conference in Kabul, Karzai said that US security companies have been behind explosions that have claimed the lives of women and children.
An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan.
Escalated airstrikes and special operations raids have disrupted Taliban movements and damaged local cells. But officials said that insurgents have been adept at absorbing the blows and that they appear confident that they can outlast an American troop buildup set to subside beginning next July.
Scientists who compiled the Red List of Threatened Species say the proportion of species facing wipeout is rising. But they say intensive conservation work has already pulled some species back from the brink of oblivion.
The report is being launched at the UN Biodiversity Summit in Japan, where governments are discussing how to better protect the natural world. Launched at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting, the report says that amphibians remain the most threatened category of animals, with 41% of species at risk, while only 13% of birds qualify for Red-Listing.
The Food and Drug Administration has been eying the safety of caffeinated alcoholic drinks like Four Loko, which reportedly sent nine students at Central Washington University to the hospital. The FDA warned manufacturers last November about the safety and legality of the drinks.
"The increasing popularity of consumption of caffeinated alcoholic beverages by college students and reports of potential health and safety issues necessitates that we look seriously at the scientific evidence as soon as possible," Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said in a statement at the time.
A tsunami that pounded remote islands in western Indonesia following an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra killed more than 100 people, officials said on Tuesday, and hundreds more were missing.
The 7.5 magnitude quake hit 78 km west of South Pagai, one of the Mentawai islands, late on Monday. Local legislator Hendri Dori Satoko told Metro TV the latest toll was 108 dead and 502 missing. Most buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga were destroyed, said Hardimansyah, an official with the regional branch of the Department of Fisheries.
Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts say British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC will pay $750 million to settle allegations that its subsidiary manufactured and sold adulterated drugs, including the popular antidepressant Paxil.
U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz on Tuesday announced that GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to settle civil and criminal charges related to the subsidiary in Puerto Rico. Ortiz said the London-based company will pay $150 million in criminal fines and $600 million in civil penalties.
A senior UN official condemned attacks by Jewish "settler extremists" on Palestinians' olive trees in the occupied West Bank and called on Israel to "combat violence and terror by Israelis."
Robert Serry, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, also said he was alarmed that work had started on hundreds of new homes for settlers in the occupied territory since the end of Israel's settlement freeze last month.
The National Tracing Center is the only place in the nation authorized to trace gun sales. Here, researchers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives make phone calls and pore over handwritten records from across the country to track down gun owners. I
n contrast with such state-of-the-art, 21st-century crime-fighting techniques as DNA matching and digital fingerprint analysis, gun tracing is an antiquated, laborious process done mostly by hand. The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.
It started with a fingerprint of a 25-year-old college professor who opposed the Vietnam War and ended with a search for his remains, 32 years later, in a wooded area near Eveleth, Minn.
The FBI's files on Paul and Sheila Wellstone, many of which are being made public for the first time, shed new light on the extent of the relationship between the FBI and the political activist who would go on to become a U.S. senator from Minnesota.
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