Reporting from Beirut— International jurists Wednesday released details of how an analysis of cellphone calls led investigators to conclude the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah was behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri six years ago. The unsealing of the 47-page indictment, which suggests a complicated three-month plot by at least 11 conspirators to trail Hariri for months, establish his travel patterns and then dispatch a suicide bomber with a van full of explosives to kill him, did not produce surprises for close observers of the investigation and was immediately criticized by Hezbollah. The inquiry of Hariri’s Feb. 14, 2005, slaying has been beset by…
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UNITED NATIONS – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that military and police operations against pro-democracy protesters had stopped, the United Nations said on Wednesday. In a phone call with Assad on Wednesday, Ban “expressed alarm at the latest reports of continued widespread violations of human rights and excessive use of force by Syrian security forces against civilians across Syria, including in the Al Ramel district of Latakia, home to…
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NEW DELHI – A popular Indian anti-graft campaigner won a bitter fight against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to hold a two-week public fast from Thursday, stepping up the pressure on the government to show a restive nation it can tackle rampant corruption. Anna Hazare, a 74-year-old Gandhian-style campaigner, was arrested on Tuesday, hours ahead of a planned fast until death for tougher laws against graft, sparking nationwide protests and putting the government on the backfoot as he stayed in jail. ‘None of us is looking at this as a victory,’ Kiran Bedi, a former police officer and widely respected figure for her anti-graft drive, told Times Now television after helping negotiate permission…
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The United Nations’ humanitarian chief says aid efforts in drought-stricken Somalia and the Horn of Africa need to be scaled up to save the lives of millions facing starvation. “There are still many lives that need to be saved in the Horn of Africa,” Valerie Amos, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told a news conference in New York on Wednesday. Amos, who had just returned from a three-day visit to Kenya and Somalia, called for “more food and nutritional supplies, water, sanitation and hygiene equipment, and medical care to those who are in…
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At least 53 people were killed and 123 injured when a teenage suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers on the third Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramzan in Pakistan’s restive tribal belt, the deadliest…
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Rebels closed in on Muammar Qadhafi, pushing back his fighters in a fierce battle in one key coastal city and seizing another town as they advanced toward his remaining bastion, the capital of Tripoli. The territory remaining under Mr. Qadhafi’s control has been shrinking dramatically in the past three weeks, with opposition fighters moving closer to Tripoli, a metropolis of 2 million people, from the west, south and east. At the nearest point, rebel fighters are just 30 miles (50 kilometres) west of Tripoli, in the coastal city of Zawiya, where battles raged Friday over control of the city centre. Mr. Qadhafi’s forces pounded rebel-held areas of the city with rockets, mortars…
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Explosions and gunfire rang out in Tripoli after dawn as opponents of Muammar Gaddafi rose up in the capital, declaring a final push to topple the Libyan leader after a six-month war reached the city’s outskirts. Gaddafi said in a message broadcast on state television that an assault by “rats” – his description of the rebels – had been repelled, while a senior rebel official said “zero hour” was approaching for the Libyan leader. At daybreak, more than 12 hours after the fighting first broke out, shooting could still be heard in the capital, though it was less heavy and sustained. A Reuters reporter at a hotel in the city centre said she could hear bursts of machine gun fire about every few…
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Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office formally moved on Monday to dismiss the three-month-old sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, filing a 25-page motion that serves as their intricate and devastating anatomy of a case collapsing. Related From a Meeting of Hours to One Lasting Only Seconds (August 23, 2011) Housekeeper’s Lawyer Asks to Remove District Attorney From Case (August 23, 2011) Follow for New York breaking news and headlines. Paul Taggart for The New York Times Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife, Anne Sinclair, in July. The document laid out how prosecutors went from characterizing Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser as a credible woman whose…
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Fasting Indian activist Anna Hazare is willing to talk to “responsible government mediators” about an anti-corruption bill, his aides have said. They said that Mr Hazare, who has been on a public hunger strike since last Tuesday, has lost more than 5kg. Thousands of supporters are at the Ram Lila ground in Delhi where Mr Hazare is…
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More than 1,400 people have appeared in court in connection with the riots that spread across England’s towns and cities two weeks ago, new figures show. The latest data from the Ministry of Justice show that, of these, 157 have been convicted, 327 bailed and almost 800 remanded in custody. This rate of 62% being held in custody compares with the usual rate of 10% of those appearing before a magistrate. During the riots,…
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