A declaration Sunday by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to pull his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets may help bring an end to the wave of violence that swept Baghdad and Shiite areas after the government launched a crackdown against militias in Basra. That will ease the violence which has claimed more than 300 lives. And it could leave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki politically weakened because he put his prestige on the line with promises to crush Basra’s “criminal gangs,” some of which he said were “worse than al-Qaida.”
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party claimed an early lead in national elections, but the government did not release results Sunday and sent riot police into the streets, raising fears of a violent dispute. No results were officially announced by evening, 24 hours after the end of voting. Independent election monitors said riot police and other security forces were deployed in densely populated suburbs of the capital, Harare, a traditional base of opposition to President Robert Mugabe, 84. Discontent with Mugabe has grown nationwide as inflation has soared beyond 100,000 percent, and the election was seen as the toughest challenge to his 28-year rule.\nNorth Korea threatened South Korea with destruction Sunday after Seoul’s top military officer said his country would consider attacking the communist nation if it tried to carry out a nuclear attack. The statement from North Korea’s official news agency marked the third consecutive day of bellicose rhetoric from the North, which is angry over the harsher line the South’s conservative new president has taken against the country since assuming office last month. “Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike,” said an unidentified KCNA military commentator. “Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins.”
Greek officials handed over the Olympic flame to organizers of the Beijing Games on Sunday amid small protests by a pro-Tibetan group. The ceremony was held at the marble Panathenian Stadium, where the first modern Olympics were staged in 1896. Outside the stadium, police scuffled with pro-Tibet demonstrators and prevented others from unfurling protest banners. Twenty-one demonstrators were detained – seven Indians, one Nepalese and 13 Greeks – and were all due to be released without charge, police said.
Israel pledged to remove some West Bank roadblocks as a start to “concrete steps” in an agreement Sunday with the Palestinians that is aimed at paving the way for a final peace deal this year. “This is a program that will improve the daily lives of Palestinians and help make Israel secure,” the U.S. said. Under the plan that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced, Israel will remove about 50 roadblocks and upgrade checkpoints to speed up the movement of Palestinians through the West Bank.
The situation in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where al-Qaida has established a safe haven presents a “clear and present danger” to the West, the CIA director said Sunday. Michael Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region. If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region. “It’s very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they’re bringing in operatives into the region for training,” he said.
Scientists are scanning human DNA with a precision and scope once unthinkable and rapidly finding genes linked to cancer, arthritis, diabetes and other diseases. It’s a payoff from a landmark achievement completed five years ago – the identification of all the building blocks in the human DNA. Follow-up research and leaps in DNA-scanning technology have opened the door to a flood of new reports about genetic links to disease.
