Daily News Channel
Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday visited two towns hit hard by the recent earthquake in central Italy, meeting with survivors and offering prayers. The pope flew by helicopter from Vatican City to a tent camp near the village of Onna, where he led a prayer for the hundreds killed in the April 6 quake. The camp houses hundreds of families left homeless when the magnitude-6.3 quake destroyed their homes
As introductions go, it has been a fast-paced, fascinating first 100 days: an ambitious domestic agenda aimed at reinvigorating the economy and the government’s reach into its workings, and several provocative steps on the world stage that, like at home, signal a clear break from the previous administration.
Adam Wilson posted two messages on Twitter on April 15. The first one, "GO BADGERS," might have been sent by any University of Wisconsin-Madison student cheering for the school team. His second post, 20 minutes later, was a little more unusual: “SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN.” Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, was confirming an announcement he had made two weeks earlier — his lab had developed a way to post messages on Twitter using electrical impulses generated by thought
The ruling African National Congress is expected to win Wednesday’s elections in South Africa by a landslide, but polls predict it might lose its two-thirds parliamentary majority. The ANC has gained votes in every election since 1994, but a new player that threatens the party’s grip on power has entered the fray. The ANC is also dogged by corruption and is accused of failing to deliver services to the poor.
The FBI and the Department of Justice unveiled Operation Malicious Mortgage last week, a nationwide bust that produced more than 400 arrests over the past three months for fraudulent home-loan schemes. In South Florida alone, more than 100 people have been arrested since last September, including 19 just last week
Nearly two years after the arrest of Abdul Aziz on multiple charges of inciting violence against the state of Pakistan, the firebrand cleric of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque has returned to the pulpit with a promise that he will continue with his struggle to establish Shari’a, or Islamic law, throughout the country. Just a day after he was released on bail, Aziz, wearing his trademark spectacles and graying beard, returned to the Red Mosque, the site of a weeklong siege in 2007 between the mosque’s seminary students and the Pakistani military, to deliver a sermon ahead of Friday prayers. Thousands of worshipers flocked to the centrally located mosque, spilling into the surrounding streets and kneeling on makeshift prayer rugs while Aziz’s voice boomed out over loudspeakers
As the Defense Department weighs options to prevent a repeat of the drama that unfolded on the seas this weekend, those who patrol the waters say pirates must be rooted out before they leave land. Pentagon planners are preparing a variety of options for dealing with Somali pirates, and a United Nations resolution gives them the authority to conduct operations inside Somalia. “The ultimate solution for piracy is on land,” said Vice Adm.
The fires had engulfed so many miles of turf, and flying embers had sparked in so many different places, that hours after the first blazes were reported Thursday morning, safety officials still weren’t sure how many fires they were facing. In Texas, the 100-person town of Stoneburg was “burned over,” by a 25,000-acre fire said Texas Forest Service spokeswoman Misty Wilburn. The town, northwest of Dallas near the Oklahoma state line, had been evacuated, she said
The White House Press Office accidentally e-mailed a draft version of President Obama’s Thursday schedule on Wednesday night that included the back-and-forth between White House staffers. The e-mail, sent on a daily basis to inform the media of the next day’s events, at first appeared to be like any other press schedule.
"In Afghanistan, the sacrifice in the political game is women and children," female Afghan parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi said.