World News
May 15, 2008LUOSHUI TOWN, China - Troops dug burial pits in this quake-shattered town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere as priorities began shifting Thursday in China from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead. Officials said the final death toll could more than double to 50,000.
As the massive military-led recovery operation inched farther into regions cut off by Monday's quake, the government sought to enlist the public's help with an appeal for everything from hammers to cranes and, in a turnabout, began accepting foreign aid missions, the first from Japan.
WASHINGTON - It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Barack Obama picked up more heavyweight support Thursday after a key endorsement this week delivered another blow to Hillary Clinton's longshot campaign for the Democratic nomination. Obama drew at least five delegates from former candidate John Edwards, who jumped off the fence Wednesday to support the front-runner.
BEIJING - After days of refusing foreign relief workers, China has accepted offers from four countries to send in rescue teams.
Hours after saying it will accept a Japanese rescue team, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement that specialist crews from Russia, South Korea, and Singapore are welcome as well.
YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's junta warned Thursday that legal action would be taken against people who trade or hoard international aid as the cyclone's death toll soared above 43,000.
It was the first acknowledgment by the military government, albeit indirectly, of problems with relief operations in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis.
UNITED NATIONS - The UN secretary general has decided to dispatch his top emergency relief co-ordinator to Myanmar, if he can get a visa from the country's military rulers.
Ban Ki-moon has been frustrated by the government's obstacles to foreign assistance for victims of the May 3 cyclone.
NEW YORK - A terrorism monitoring group says Osama bin Laden will be releasing a new Internet message dealing with Israel and the Palestinians.
The site Intelligence Group says the announcement of the impending comments by the head of al-Qaida was posted on websites often used by terror groups.
JERUSALEM - U.S. President George W. Bush gently urged Mideast leaders to "make the hard choices necessary for peace," leaving it to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to stand before a divided parliament Thursday and forcefully declare that this war-weary country is ready for a historic agreement with Palestinians.
On a day mourned by Palestinians as the 60th anniversary of their uprooting by Israel's independence, Bush mentioned the Palestinians only once in a 23-minute speech to the Knesset, and then only in the context of what a Palestinian state would look like six decades from now.
WASHINGTON - Democratic front-runner Barack Obama accused President George W. Bush of launching a "sad" and "false" political attack on him Thursday by saying those in favour of negotiating with terrorists and radicals are like Nazi appeasers.
The White House denied Bush's words in a speech to Israel's parliament were directed at Obama, who has argued in favour of meeting with leaders of U.S. adversaries like Iran, Cuba and North Korea.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican John McCain declared for the first time Thursday he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013, but he rejected suggestions his talk of a timetable put him on the same side as Democrats clamouring for fullscale troop withdrawals.
The Republican presidential contender, in a mystical speech that also envisioned Osama bin Laden dead or captured, said only a small number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq by the end of a prospective first term.
NEW YORK - A landlord has been indicted after prosecutors say he planted a homemade bomb to try to kill a tenant he wanted to evict from a commercial building in Brooklyn.
The tenant lost a leg in the blast.
JAIPUR, India - A previously unknown Islamic militant group claimed Thursday to have carried out deadly bombings in the historic Indian city of Jaipur by planting bicycles packed with explosives on the city's crowded streets, police said.
The claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, which killed 61 people, was reportedly made in videos and an e-mail sent to Indian television stations and a Hindu nationalist political party, said Pankaj Singh, the city's inspector-general of police.
BEIRUT - The Hezbollah-led opposition and U.S.-backed government reached a deal Thursday to end Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war, now that the cabinet has reversed measures aimed at reining in the Iranian-backed militants.
The feuding factions agreed to hold political talks in Qatar on Friday that will lead to the election of Lebanon's army chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, as a compromise president, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, who headed an Arab League team that mediated the agreement.
SAN FRANCISCO - California's Supreme Court declared gay couples in the biggest U.S. state can marry, a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory for the gay rights movement Thursday that was greeted with tears, hugs, kisses and at least one instant proposal of matrimony.
Same-sex couples could tie the knot in as little as a month. But the window could close soon after since religious and social conservatives are pressing to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would undo the Supreme Court ruling and ban gay marriage.
BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi troops moved against al-Qaida on two separate fronts Thursday, with house-to-house searches in Mosul and an operation in the desert to stanch the flow of insurgents and weapons to that northern city.
With the new sweep, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is aiming to put down Sunni extremists after launching two other major offensives elsewhere in as many months targeting Shiite militants. Mosul, a key transport crossroads between Baghdad, Syria and other points, is considered the last major urban base of "al-Qaida in Iraq" after the group lost strongholds in western Anbar province.
NEW ORLEANS - Severe storms with damaging winds and possible tornadoes pounded the South, killing at least one person in Louisiana and shattering windows at the Texas state capitol.
In the southern Louisiana town of Grosse Tete, a pecan tree fell onto a camper Thursday, killing a 77-year-old man alone inside it. In nearby St. Martin Parish, a minor injury was reported in a house knocked off its blocks.
PALM BAY, Fla. - A man accused of lobbing a Molotov cocktail into one small part of a large area of woods that burned along Florida's Atlantic coast conceded Thursday that he may have accidentally sparked a fire.
But Brian Crowder, 31, said he tossed a cigarette, not a bottle full of flammable liquid, out of his car.
VIENNA, Austria - Iran's new offer for international talks touches on a broad range of topics, but fails to address UN Security Council calls for Tehran to give up uranium enrichment, according to a copy of the offer obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
The Islamic Republic also sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon complaining that it was "illegal" for the Security Council to impose sanctions against the country for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.
KHARTOUM, Sudan - The United Nations said Thursday it had evacuated 250 civilian staff from the town of Abyei following three days of clashes in the oil-rich region between Sudan's army and former southern rebels.
Abyei lies just north of the disputed boundary line between north and south Sudan, which fought a civil war for more than two decades before a 2005 peace agreement. It is a volatile region that remains contested between northerners and southerners despite the accord.
