Daily News Channel
The World Health Organization scheduled an emergency meeting for Thursday to decide whether to declare a global swine flu pandemic as confirmed cases of H1N1 virus continue to soar worldwide. By early Thursday morning, the U.N. health agency had recorded more than 27,700 cases in 74 countries, with 141 deaths.
English contains more words than any other language on the planet and added its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created. The site estimates the millionth English word, “Web 2.0” was added to the language Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. ET
The Navy is investigating how thousands of dollars went missing in the rescue of the captain of the Maersk Alabama in April, a Pentagon source told CNN. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service opened an investigation into how $30,000 disappeared after special forces snipers shot and killed three pirates, ending the multi-day siege and freeing the captain, who had been held hostage.
Today’s not only the first of the month or the start of the summer season meteorologically: It’s the first day of hurricane season 2009. On this day, forecasters often begin speculating about when the season’s first storm will form in the Atlantic. There’s no need to wonder about that this year, because there’s already been a tropical depression — before the official season even began
In his memoir recounting the days he spent as Kim Jong Il’s personal chef in Pyongyang, Kenji Fujimoto calls Kim Jong Un, the third son of the North Korea dictator, the “Prince.” “When Jong Un shook hands with me,” Fujimoto writes, “he stared at me with a vicious look.
The contentious debate over so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" took center stage on Capitol Hill on Wednesday as a former FBI agent involved in the questioning of terror suspects testified that such techniques — including waterboarding — are ineffective. Ali Soufan, an FBI special agent from 1997 to 2005, told members of a key Senate Judiciary subcommittee that such “techniques, from an operational perspective, are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda.” His remarks followed heated exchanges between committee members with sharply differing views on both the value of the techniques and the purpose of the hearing itself
A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.
In an unexpectedly swift move, a Tehran court reduced the sentence of Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi and released her from prison on Monday, only a day after she appealed her case in court. Last month, Saberi had been sentenced to eight years imprisonment on charges of spying for the United States, causing tension between the two countries at a time when President Barack Obama had declared his Administration’s intention to improve relations with Iran. Just before the official announcement came, Saberi’s parents and lawyers, as well as dozens of reporters, had gathered in front of Tehran’s Evin prison in anticipation of her release
Twenty well-behaved boys sit on the floor in two rows, quietly eating a humble lunch of flat bread, water and beans. Their hair is neatly combed and they are dressed in spotless Pakistani shalwar kamiz long shirts and baggy trousers
Pakistani security forces battling Taliban militants in the volatile Swat Valley killed between 45 and 55 of the fighters over the last 24 hours, the military said Saturday. An unknown number of civilian casualties also occurred as Pakistan’s military continues its offensive against Taliban militants in the country’s North West Frontier Province. The fighting is taking its toll across the province, where the U.N