WikiLeaks: Manning says he wanted "public debate" on war

WASHINGTON: US Army private Bradley Manning told a military tribunal on Thursday that he leaked incident logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks in order to start a "public debate.""For me they represent the underground realities of the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan," Manning told the court, after his lawyer said he plans to plead guilty to some of the charges leveled...

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18-month-old stuck in US for 7 months finally returns home

KOLKATA: Indrashis Saha, the 18-month old baby who spent seven months in custody of the US child protection agency in New Jersey returned to Kolkata on Wednesday. Initially zapped by the reception after a 10-hour flight, he clung onto his grandmother's arms as if he had missed all that attention for months. Indrashis' software engineer father Debasish Saha had gone there to work on a project in...

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Vt. lye victim gets new face at Boston hospital

BOSTON (AP) — A Vermont nurse disfigured in a 2007 lye attack has received a new face at a Boston hospital.Carmen Blandin Tarleton's full facial transplant at Brigham & Women's Hospital included transplanting a female donor's facial skin to Tarleton's neck, nose and lips, along with facial muscles, arteries and nerves.Hospital officials say the 44-year-old Thetford, Vt., woman suffered burns on...

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Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester

Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions."There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among...

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Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West still wary

ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears of a secret weapons program. The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered to ease sanctions slightly in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive...

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US "can't dictate" to the world: Pentagon's new chief

WASHINGTON: America cannot "dictate to the world" and must work with allies and build relationships with other nations, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said shortly after being sworn in Wednesday as the new Pentagon chief.On his first day at the job, Hagel reinforced his reputation as a reluctant warrior as he told an auditorium of civilian officials and military officers that America...

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Thomas’s remark can erode faith in judiciary, say jurists

NEW DELHI: More than 12 years after he presided over a 3-judge Supreme Court bench that unanimously upheld death penalty to Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts Murugan, Perarivalan and Santhan, Justice K T Thomas raised many eyebrows by advocating a review of capital punishment awarded to them. Former Chief Justice of India V N Khare said it was not open for a retired judge to comment on...

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C. Everett Koop, 'rock star' surgeon general, dies

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. C. Everett Koop has long been regarded as the nation's doctor— even though it has been nearly a quarter-century since he was surgeon general.Koop, who died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96, was by far the best known and most influential person to carry that title. Koop, a 6-foot-1 evangelical Presbyterian with a biblical prophet's beard, donned a public health uniform...

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Boehner Pressures Dems to Get 'Off Their...'

Feb 26, 2013 12:48pm House Speaker John Boehner used some choice words to pressure Senate Democrats to avert the looming sequester — $85 billion of arbitrary across-the-board cuts — insisting that “the House has done its job” and the burden to offer an alternative before the cuts strike Friday is on the president’s party.“We have moved the bill in the House twice,”...

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World powers, Iran exchange offers at "useful" talks

ALMATY, Kazakhstan: World powers and Iran on Tuesday exchanged offers at "useful" talks in Kazakhstan aimed at breaking a decade of deadlock over Tehran's disputed nuclear drive.The meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty comes as sanctions bite against the Islamic republic and Israel still refuses to rule out air strikes to knock out Iran's suspected nuclear weapons drive.There was no hint...

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