BEIRUT (AFP) - The Lebanese army on Tuesday rescued a pair of Polish tourists who were kidnapped by two members of an influential clan, killing one of the abductors in the process, the military said.
"Two members of the Jaafar clan had abducted two Polish tourists from (the eastern Lebanon city of) Baalbek and were taking them to an unknown destination," the military statement said.
Soldiers o [...]
DUBAI (AFP) - America and its core principles are compatible with Islam, the US imam behind a controversial initiative to build an Islamic centre near the site of the 9/11 attacks said Tuesday in Dubai.
"The American way of thinking, the American construct, is extremely co-congruent with the Islamic worldview," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said at the Dubai School of Government.
His visit to the Uni [...]
OFRA SETTLEMENT, Palestinian Territories (AFP) - An Israeli settler in the West Bank who produces world-class kosher wine has welcomed the resumption of direct peace talks in Washington, even though he knows he must abandon his vines if they succeed.
"Dialogue is always better than bloodshed. If a peace deal is reached, I will inevitably be one of its victims. It will be painful, but I won't h [...]
CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian rights group on Tuesday scoffed at a government pledge to limit use of its emergency law as an "illusion," after the interior ministry ignored a court's request to release seven Shiite Muslims.
The Shiites, in detention since mid-2009, have been charged with "forming a group trying to spread Shiite ideology that harms the Islamic religion."
"Continuing the 'revolving [...]
AMMAN (AFP) - Outspoken Arab Israeli MP Haneen Zuabi on Tuesday told a UN human rights inquiry into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that its commandos had a "licence to kill."
"I told the UN investigators in Amman that the Israeli attack was violent from the start and that the Israelis had a clear licence to kill, and they did not even try to avoid the bloodshed," Zuabi told A [...]
HEBRON, Palestinian Territories (AFP) - Four Israelis, one of them a pregnant woman, were shot dead near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kyriat Arba on Tuesday, just ahead of renewed peace talks, in what police and the military said was a Palestinian ambush.
Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said a car in which the victims were travelling came under fire on a road between the settlement and [...]
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began talks Tuesday with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, the first in a flurry of contacts with key players in the runup to new direct Israeli-Palestinian talks.
A cloud immediately loomed over the talks as four Israelis were shot dead Tuesday near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kyriat Arba, a violent twist to Palestinian dem [...]
RIYADH (AFP) - A group of Saudis has launched a video plea to US President Barack Obama to free a Saudi man sentenced to 28 years in jail in Colorado for abusing an Indonesian housemaid.
The five-minute video, in Arabic with English subtitles, was made public on Monday.
It features conservative and liberal Saudi figures asking Obama to pardon Humaidan al-Turki, who was convicted by a Colorado [...]
AMSTERDAM (AFP) - Two Yemenis arrested at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport off a flight from the United States were being held on suspicion of conspiracy to prepare a terrorist act, a Dutch prosecution official said Tuesday.
"The men are held in custody on suspicion of a conspiracy to a terrorist criminal act," prosecution spokesman Theo d'Anjou told reporters at the airport, reading a brief statem [...]
BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday left Israel for Washington where he is due to restart direct peace talks with the Palestinians after a 20-month hiatus.
Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan have been invited by US President Barak Obama to attend a White House dinner o [...]
Passengers jump out of plane in India after bad landing
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