One dead, dozens hurt in Egypt Nile Delta clashes

CAIRO: One person was killed and dozens injured in overnight clashes between police and protesters in Egypt's Nile Delta city of Mansura, a security official told AFP on Saturday.A week of demonstrations in Mansura turned violent late on Friday when police fired tear gas at protesters outside the governorate headquarters, witnesses said."One protester died while 30 protesters and 10 policemen...

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Tihar officials refuse RTI query on Afzal Guru

LUCKNOW: Can disclosure of certain details on Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, hanged at New Delhi's Tihar Jail "affect relations with a foreign state"? The prison department certainly thinks so. It would "pre-judicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state, relation with foreign state or lead to incitement of an...

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Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday...

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Cardinals begin long process of picking new pope

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - With Pope Benedict XVI now officially in retirement, Catholic cardinals from around the world begin on Friday the complex, cryptic and uncertain process of picking the next leader of the world's largest church. Some details are still unclear, owing to Benedict's break with the tradition that papacies end with a pope's death, so these "princes of the Church" will...

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Football: Giggs signs new one-year deal at Man Utd - club

LONDON: Ryan Giggs, who is set to make his 1,000th appearance in senior football this weekend, has signed a new one-year contract at Manchester United, the club announced on Friday.The English Premier League leaders said the deal keeps the 39-year-old Wales winger at Old Trafford until June 2014 and sees him complete a 23rd season as a first-team player.Coach Alex Ferguson told manutd.com:...

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Sushilkumar Shinde identifies Bhandara rape victims, names expunged

NEW DELHI: The names of the three minor girls who were raped and murdered in Maharashtra's Bhandara district had to be expunged on Friday after home minister Sushilkumar Shinde identified them in the Rajya Sabha, attracting the ire of the opposition BJP.Shinde read out a statement on the gruesome incident in Maharashtra where three minor sisters were kidnapped, raped and murdered last month. Their...

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WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk."The additional risk is quite small...

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Sequestration: Surrender is in the Air

The budget ax is about to fall, and there's little lawmakers in Washington are doing to stop it.Despite a parade of dire warnings from the White House, an $85 billion package of deep automatic spending cuts appears poised to take effect at the stroke of midnight on Friday.The cuts – known in Washington-speak as the sequester – will hit every federal budget, from defense to education,...

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Low-key departure as pope steps down and hides away

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict slips quietly from the world stage on Thursday after a private last goodbye to his cardinals and a short flight to a country palace to enter the final phase of his life "hidden from the world". In keeping with his shy and modest ways, there will be no public ceremony to mark the first papal resignation in six centuries and no solemn declaration ending...

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Japan scrambles fighters to meet China plane

TOKYO: Japan scrambled fighter jets on Thursday to head off a Chinese government plane flying towards disputed islands in the East China Sea, the defence ministry said.It said the Y-12 propeller plane did not enter airspace around the Tokyo-controlled islands known as the Senkakus, which Beijing claims as the Diaoyus.The aircraft headed back towards China after Japan's military planes...

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