FDI in retail to safeguard international market mafias' interest: BJP

NEW DELHI: India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today said retail reform is a step taken by the Congress led-federal government to safeguard the interests of the international market mafias at the cost of national interest.BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Saturday that voting inside the parliament would decide as to who is in favour of national interest and who is working...

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South Africa makes progress in HIV, AIDS fight

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In the early '90s when South Africa's Themba Lethu clinic could only treat HIV/AIDS patients for opportunistic diseases, many would come in on wheelchairs and keep coming to the health center until they died.Two decades later the clinic is the biggest anti-retroviral, or ARV, treatment center in the country and sees between 600 to 800 patients a day from all over southern Africa....

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KC Chiefs Player Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide

A Kansas City Chiefs football player committed suicide today in front of his coaches and police outside of the team's stadium, just as officers investigating the shooting of the player's girlfriend arrived on the scene, police said.The name of the 25-year-old player has not yet been released.Kansas City Police were first alerted something was wrong by the girlfriend's mother."The...

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Islamists rally behind Mursi as Egypt's rifts widen

CAIRO (Reuters) - At least 200,000 Islamists demonstrated in Cairo on Saturday in support of President Mohamed Mursi, who is rushing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers. "The people want the implementation of God's law," chanted flag-waving demonstrators, many of them bused in from the countryside, who choked streets leading to Cairo...

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Football: Defoe double fires Spurs into fourth

LONDON: Jermain Defoe bagged a brace as Tottenham cruised to a 3-0 win against Fulham that lifted the north London club into fourth place in the Premier League on Saturday.Spurs boss Andre Villas-Boas this week claimed Defoe is as good as Colombia star Radamel Falcao, the Atletico Madrid striker regarded as one of the world's best forwards, and the England international repaid that compliment...

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Rajasthan referendum to recall corporator

JAIPUR: For the first time in Rajasthan, an election for recalling an elected chairman of a municipal body will be held in Baran district on December 12 in accordance with the amendment to the Rajasthan Municipalities Act passed by the state assembly in March last year. If more than half the total number of voters in the district's Manglore Nagar Palika (municipality) favours the recall, the elected...

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Kenya village pairs AIDS orphans with grandparents

NYUMBANI, Kenya (AP) — There are no middle-aged people in Nyumbani. They all died years ago, before this village of hope in Kenya began. Only the young and old live here.Nyumbani was born of the AIDS crisis. The 938 children here all saw their parents die. The 97 grandparents — eight grandfathers among them — saw their middle-aged children die. But put together, the bookend generations take care of...

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Mo. Couple Wins Half of Powerball Jackpot

The lucky winners of half of the record $587.5 million Powerball jackpot have been identified as Mark and Cindy Hill of Dearborn, Mo., their working-class lives suddenly taking a turn to the financial stratosphere.Cindy Hill, who with her husband has three adult sons and a 6-year-old daughter adopted from China, purchased the ticket at a Trex Mart gas station in Dearborn."I...

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Palestinians win de facto U.N. recognition of sovereign state

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the world body to issue its long overdue "birth certificate." The U.N. victory for the Palestinians was a diplomatic setback for the United States and Israel, which were joined...

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Football: Del Bosque says Brazil the team to beat

SAO PAULO: The coach of Spain's world champions on Friday insisted hosts Brazil are the team to beat at next year's Confederations Cup, the testbed for a World Cup also on Brazilian soil in 2014."They are the team to beat," said Vicente del Bosque, who masterminded Spain's World Cup success in 2010 in South Africa and then led the Furia Roja to glory at Euro 2012, making his star-studded...

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Govt will miss Tendulkar in retail FDI test

NEW DELHI: As Congress managers do their arithmetic — counting UPA's vote in the Rajya Sabha — they would dearly wish cricket maestro Sachin Tendulkar sits out the Kolkata test beginning next week. Having conceded a floor test on FDI in multi-brand retail, Congress strategists are aware the vote in the Rajya Sabha is set to go down to the wire and the ruling coalition will need to pull off a few...

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Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years."An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary...

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Petraeus Tells Friend He 'Screwed Up Royally'

One of David Petraeus' closest friends says the former CIA director admitted that he "screwed up royally" by having an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.Retired Brigadier Gen. James Shelton has been friends with Petraeus for more than three decades and reached to out to him after he resigned from the CIA. Shelton told ABC News that the former four-star general wrote...

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Palestinians turn to U.N. for state recognition

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly is set to approve an implicit recognition of Palestinian statehood on Thursday despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding funds for the West Bank government. A resolution that would lift the Palestinian Authority's U.N. observer status from "entity" to "non-member state," like...

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British inquiry urges new laws for "outrageous" press

LONDON: A British inquiry called Thursday for a tougher watchdog underpinned by new laws to curb the country's press in a damning verdict that sets up Prime Minister David Cameron for a political battle.Senior judge Brian Leveson, who led an eight-month inquiry sparked by the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid, said there should be an independent self-regulatory...

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Editors' arrests recall Emergency, Zee says

NEW DELHI: Even as the Zee group called it a move to gag the media "without an official declaration of emergency", the two arrested editors of the group were remanded to two days of police custody on Wednesday and chairman Subhas Chandra called by the police to join investigations. In a clear sign that the crime branch was ready to dig its heels in the case, top officials confirmed that they had...

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million.The measures included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery,...

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Obama Taps Twitter for Tax-Cut Push

President Obama today sought to inject a dose of public pressure into the "fiscal cliff" debate, urging Americans who face an across-the-board tax hike in 34 days to lobby lawmakers by phone, email and Twitter."If there's one thing I've learned; when the American people speak loudly enough, lo and behold, Congress listens," Obama said from a White House auditorium.He was flanked...

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Egypt assembly seeks to wrap up constitution

CAIRO (Reuters) - The assembly writing Egypt's constitution said it could wrap up a final draft later on Wednesday, a move the Muslim Brotherhood sees as a way out of a crisis over a decree by President Mohamed Mursi that protesters say gives him dictatorial powers. But as Mursi's opponents staged a sixth day of protests in Tahrir Square, critics said the Islamist-dominated assembly's...

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Indian minister in strong attack on microfinance

NEW DELHI: Microfinance is a "discredited model" and to believe that poverty alleviation in India is possible through such methods is "c**p", Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said Wednesday."Nothing can stop an idea whose time has gone," Ramesh told a microfinance conference in New Delhi, according to the Press Trust of India."It is a discredited model," he said, referring to the...

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Two Zee editors arrested for 'Rs 100-crore extortion bid'

NEW DELHI: The crime branch of Delhi Police on Tuesday arrested two editors of Zee group on charges of extortion based on a complaint filed by Congress MP Naveen Jindal. They are Sudhir Chaudhary, business head and editor of Zee News and Sameer Ahluwalia, head of Zee business, a senior police officer said.S B S Tyagi, DCP (Crime Branch), said: "Prima facie evidence of criminal conspiracy and extortion...

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual...

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GOP Senators More Troubled After Rice Meeting

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice's attempts to make nice with a trio of Republican senators who have criticized her response to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, seem to have backfired.The senators said they left their face-to-face meeting with Rice this morning "more concerned" and "significantly troubled."The three Republicans, Sens....

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