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The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said al-Qaeda is essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and on the defensive elsewhere.
Michael Hayden’s remarks, which correspondents describe as strikingly upbeat, come less than a year after the CIA warned of a resurgent al-Qaeda.
He told the Washington Post that US counter-terrorism successes extended to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
At least eight people have been killed after a gunman opened fire on worshippers at a mosque in Yemen, officials have said.
Many others were reported to have been injured in the attack in Amran province, north of the capital, Sanaa.
Following the shooting, the gunman was arrested and taken for questioning, officials said.
Yemen has seen renewed fighting between government forces and Shia rebels in the north of the country.
South African Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Thursday denounced what he called the international community’s silence and complicity over the situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all,” Tutu said at the end of a three-day UN fact-finding mission to the impoverished Palestinian territory.
“Gaza needs the engagement of the outside world, especially its peacemakers,” the Anglican archbishop said at a news conference.
Leaders of Israel’s governing Kadima party plan to meet in as little as a week to decide on an internal ballot that could replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, senior Kadima members said on Friday.
Olmert has so far defied a demand by his main coalition partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s left-leaning Labour Party, to leave office over a growing corruption scandal.
A poll by Israel’s mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper found Olmert’s deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, would win an internal vote to find a new leader for their centrist party.
A US marine in Iraq has been removed from duty following claims that he handed out coins inscribed with biblical verses in Arabic.
Residents in Falluja had complained that the coins were being distributed at a checkpoint, the US military said.
US troops are forbidden from proselytising any religion.
The human rights organisation, Amnesty International, says that about 18,000 people are being held in jail in Egypt without being charged or put on trial.
The organisation says they are being held under Egypt’s emergency law, and most endure conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The emergency law has been in force since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Bahrain’s king has appointed a woman believed to be the Arab world’s first Jewish ambassador as the country’s envoy to Washington.
Lawmaker Houda Nonoo said she was proud to serve her country “first of all as a Bahraini,” adding she was not chosen for the post because of her religion.
“It is a great honor to have been appointed as the first female ambassador to the United States of America and I am looking forward to meeting this new challenge,” Nonoo told The Associated Press by telephone.
“Notable progress” has been made in Iraq despite persistent problems, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at an international summit to promote peace in the violence-wracked country.
“If we were asked to use just one word to describe the situation in Iraq today, I would choose the word ‘hope,’ ” Ban said at the Stockholm, Sweden, conference. “Iraq is stepping back from the abyss that we feared most.”
Yet Iraqis continue to suffer from terrorism, sectarian violence and criminality, he said, and “essential services are still sorely lacking.”
Forced displacement and human-rights violations remain problems, particularly for women and minorities, he said, but the level of violence has declined from that of 2006 and part of 2007.
“There is new hope that the people and government of Iraq are overcoming daunting challenges and working together to rebuild their country after years of war, neglect and
A landmark international convention banning cluster munitions was formally adopted by some 111 countries here Friday, in a move supporters hope will stigmatise the lethal weapons as much as landmines.
Diplomats adopted the treaty without objection after 12 days of robust negotiations, outlawing the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions, helping victims and clearing contaminated areas.
The treaty requires the destruction of stockpiled munitions within eight years — though it leaves the door open for future, more precise generations of cluster bombs that pose less harm to civilians.
A US marine lied to cover up a squad’s killings of 24 civilians in Iraq’s city of Haditha in 2005, a US prosecutor has said at the officer’s court martial.
The prosecutor’s comments came during opening statements in the trial of Lt Andrew Grayson in California.
Lt Grayson is charged with obstructing justice and making false statements in connection with the case. He rejects the allegations.