KABUL — President Hamid Karzai’s US-backed government is under fire this International Women’s Day, accused of selling out on Afghan women’s rights as it tries to woo the Taliban into peace talks. Lawmakers, rights organisations and analysts say that the Afghan leader, by endorsing an edict calling women second-class citizens,…
WASHINGTON — The United States Wednesday rebuffed an Iranian warning that new nuclear talks would fail if they were used to exert pressure, demanding assurances Tehran was not building an atomic bomb. “We will demand that Iran live up to its international obligations — that it provide verifiable assurances it…
WASHINGTON — The US State Department for the first time listed the Vatican as potentially vulnerable to money laundering, along with 67 other countries. The department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy report listed the Vatican as a “jurisdiction of concern” along with countries like Albania, the Czech Republic, Egypt, South…
WASHINGTON — A campaign to bring accused war criminal Joseph Kony, the fugitive head of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, to justice has gone viral on the Internet. The hashtag “#stopkony” was among top trending topics on Twitter on Wednesday, vying for the top spot with tweets about the new…
WASHINGTON — A ground-breaking reality TV show about Arab Americans is being canceled after one season in the face of flagging ratings, cast members and the cable channel behind the program said Wednesday. TLC’s “All-American Muslim,” the first series of its kind on US television, followed the lives of five…
WASHINGTON — Married adults are more than three times more likely to survive the critical first three months after heart surgery than their single counterparts, according to a US study released Wednesday. “That’s a dramatic difference in survival rates for single people, during the most critical post-operative recovery period,” said…
OTTAWA — A Canadian woman has launched a human rights complaint against the city of Ottawa for refusing to let her to park in front of her home in a historic district, a court spokeswoman said Wednesday. Pamela Howson has alleged discrimination in a case before the Ontario Human Rights…
WASHINGTON — The United States is looking at delivering non-lethal aid to Syria’s rebels, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, hinting at the first direct US assistance to forces seeking President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall. While the United States is outraged at the killing of civilians it does not believe in…
The hacking group Anonymous took down several Vatican websites on Wednesday, saying it was targeting the “corrupt” Catholic Church, a day after a high-profile bust of the group’s alleged leaders. “Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic…