Daily News Channel
The Pakistani military and the Taliban clashed in the country’s Swat Valley Wednesday as thousands of civilians fled the area, a local official said. An estimated 40,000 people fled the city of Mingora in northwestern Pakistan, as military clashes raged on, said Khushhal Khan, district coordination officer in the area
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday insisted that his country’s nuclear arsenal is "definitely safe," despite growing concerns about recent gains by the Taliban along the country’s border with Afghanistan.
Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called "a persistent high school dropout crisis." The total represents 16 percent of all people in the United States in that age range in 2007. Most of the dropouts were Latino or black, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois. “Because of the widespread, pressing nature of the crisis and the large numbers of young people who have already dropped out, a national re-enrollment strategy should be a fundamental part of America’s national education agenda,” the report says.
It’s supposed to be one of the most popular days in the Mexican calendar.
Pakistani forces were continuing their assault on the Taliban on Tuesday as the country’s leader flew to Washington to discuss strategy against the militant group with U.S. President Barack Obama
A British woman facing possible execution in Laos will escape the death sentence because she is pregnant, a spokesman for the Laotian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. The country’s criminal law prohibits courts from sentencing pregnant women to death, spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing told CNN. The woman’s trial hasn’t been scheduled yet, he said, but is likely to happen next week.
Amid the global swine flu outbreak, an airplane is headed to China to pick up dozens of Mexican citizens who want to return home after being held by Chinese officials for "health reasons," Mexico’s Foreign Ministry announced Monday.
As Pakistani forces continue to battle an advancing Taliban, the leading senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Monday tripling aid to the country. The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, introduced by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Dick Lugar, R-Indiana, authorizes $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years to foster economic growth and development, and another $7.5 billion for the following five years.
Bloggers in Burma, Iran and Syria work under some of the most repressive conditions in the world, facing tactics such as regulation, intimidation and even imprisonment, according to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The organization released a list of the “10 worst countries to be a blogger” to call attention to online oppression in connection with World Press Freedom Day, which was observed Sunday. “Bloggers are at the vanguard of the information revolution, and their numbers are expanding rapidly,” the group’s executive director, Joel Simon, said in a report posted on the organization’s Web site.
As swine flu spreads around the world, China has acted with an aggressiveness that can only come from unpleasant firsthand experience with epidemics. Official cover-ups allowed SARS to spread in 2002 and 2003, eventually killing 349 on the mainland and leading to the sacking of both the Health Minister and the mayor of Beijing. In recent years, the country has waged a steady battle against avian influenza, which has killed two dozen people in China and prompted fears that it could mutate into a deadlier plague