South African police said Friday they had launched a series of murder inquiries after 23 males died while undergoing circumcision during traditional rites of passage into manhood. The 23 -- aged between 13 and 21 -- died in various places across the country's northeastern Mpumalanga province over the course of a week. "We have opened 22 cases of murder and one of inquest," regional police spokesman Leonard Hlathi told AFP. One of the deaths was labelled "inquest" because the boy reportedly had an existing health condition. There have been no arrests yet as police compil...
Published On: 2013-05-17

BEIRUT: A six-member U.N. team led by a former Syrian planning minister is drawing up a comprehensive postwar reconstruction plan even as the country's civil war rages on with no apparent end in sight. A joint U.S.-Russian push to bring together Syria's political opposition and representatives of President Bashar Assad's regime to negotiate a peaceful transition has given their work new urgency. In a rare interview, the U.S.-educated economist, Abdullah al-Dardari, told The Associated Press that more than two years of fighting have cost Syria at least $60 billion and caused the vital oil ind...
Published On: 2013-05-17

The woman alleged to have had sex for money with Silvio Berlusconi when she was just 17 and he was the prime minister testified in court for the first time on Friday at a trial of three people accused of pimping for the billionaire tycoon. Karima El-Mahroug described "sensual" soirees in a discotheque at Berlusconi's villa that invitees called the "bunga bunga", saying she was paid 2,000 or 3,000 euros ($2,600 or $3,900) a night. The woman, better known by her nickname Ruby the Heart Stealer, said she saw up to 20 girls stripping for the prime minister but had never seen ...
Published On: 2013-05-17

BEIRUT: Rights activists have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons in the first Syrian city to fall to the rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday. Raqqa, in eastern Syria, was overrun in late February by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. The rebels facilitated the New York-based group's access to facilities that had belonged to a security agency and military intelligence in late April. In a report Friday, the HRW said its researchers found physical evidence indicating Syrians were tortured in cells in detention facilities inspect...
Published On: 2013-05-17

PESHAWAR: Bombs exploded outside two mosques in a village in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 30, police said. Both of the Sunni Muslim mosques were badly damaged, and the roof of one of them collapsed, said tribal police officer Badshah Rehman. The mosques were located in Baz Darrah village in the Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Shahid Ali, who was in the first mosque that was attacked, said the explosion came just as worshippers were starting Friday prayers. "I rushed out with others and saw several people bleeding a...
Published On: 2013-05-17

GENEVA: The number of Syrian refugees registered or awaiting registration has surpassed 1.5 million, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday. "The fact that more than 1.5 million have registered or have appointments with UNHCR sadly means the actual number is much higher," UNHCR said in a statement issued in Geneva. "Refugees tell us the increased fighting and changing of control of towns and villages, in particular in conflict areas, results in more and more civilians deciding to leave," it said....
Published On: 2013-05-17

KABUL: Russia, predicting instability once NATO-led troops withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year, is considering deploying border guards on the Tajik-Afghan border, Moscow's envoy to Kabul told Reuters in an interview. Moscow, still sore from its disastrous, decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is increasingly concerned by what it describes as the combined threat of narcotics and terrorism reaching Russia through former Soviet Central Asian countries. "We prefer to tackle this problem on the Afghan border to stop these threats," Andrey Avetisyan said late on Thu...
Published On: 2013-05-17

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has pushed out a high-profile military figure who once played a key role under his late father -- the latest in a series of top-level personnel changes. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) identified a new figure, Jon Chang-Bok, as first vice-minister of the People's Armed Forces Ministry in a report Thursday which detailed Kim's trip to an army food-processing factory. The People's Armed Forces Ministry is essentially the defence ministry and comes under the control of the powerful National Defence Commission. KCNA did not say when Jon, a relatively...
Published On: 2013-05-17

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama said on Thursday he reserved the right to resort to both diplomatic and military options to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but insisted that U.S. action alone would not be enough to resolve the Syrian crisis. Taking a cautious line at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Obama voiced hope that the United States and Russia would succeed in arranging an international peace conference on Syria, despite signs of growing obstacles. Erdogan had been expected to push Obama, at least in private, for more assertive action on...
Published On: 2013-05-17

BAGHDAD: Bombs tore through markets in Baghdad and a suicide attacker blew himself up in a mosque in northern Iraq in violence across the country on Thursday that killed at least 25 people and extended a surge in sectarian-tinged bloodshed. Attacks on Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim mosques, security forces and tribal leaders have spread since security forces raided a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk a month ago, igniting clashes and fuelling fear of a slide back into all-out inter-communal war. Iraq has grown more volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains fragile relations between Sunni...
Published On: 2013-05-17