Today's World News is a site for the people to know what is exactly going on in the news and the world today. Being there is so much hype and propaganda going on these days. This site will add several links so the viewer can research and see the actual news for themselves. Lord knows main stream won't do that for us. Check the links for yourselves. If you find more. By all means. Please share them so they can be added here.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gkcTS4Itj8rPnVhRMLQOql5qTEVg?docId=CNG.4f8ccccd2e38de074f4c1305131c47e4.121
BAGHDAD — A spate of attacks in Iraq on Monday killed six people including a Christian whose body was mutilated while two Norwegians hurt in a Baghdad bomb blast were among at least 16 injured, officials said.
The Christian construction worker's mutilated corpse was found in the ethnically mixed northern oil hub of Kirkuk after he was kidnapped at the weekend. A young boy was also among the dead.
An Iraqi guard was killed in the morning explosion in the eastern neighbourhood of Baghdad Jadidah that wounded the Norwegians, who were working as consultants for the water resources ministry, an interior ministry official said.
A doctor at Al-Kindi hospital in central Baghdad confirmed one person had died and four others, including two foreigners, suffered wounds from a bomb blast but were in stable condition.
Hospital officials did not allow journalists access to the building where the wounded were being treated.
But a spokesperson for the Norwegian embassy in Baghdad confirmed two of the wounded were Norwegians who were working as advisers to the water resources ministry.
"They are both getting medical help and will eventually be fine," the spokesperson said. "One will need an operation on his leg, but will be OK."
In a separate attack, a traffic policeman was killed by gunmen using silenced weapons in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Utayfiyah, the interior ministry official said.
Also on Monday, a roadside bomb targeting Baghdad provincial council chief Kamil al-Zaidi blew up as the politician's convoy was on the edge of the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, according to the official.
Eight people were wounded in the attack, including three policemen, but Zaidi was unharmed.
DARAA, Syria (KABC) -- The State Department is advising American citizens to leave Syria as soon as they can.
It's also ordering personnel at the U.S. embassy in the capital city of Damascus to leave the country.
The precautions are being ordered after a brutal crackdown on anti-government forces.
On Monday, at least 11 people were killed in Daraa, the city at the center of the uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Meantime, hundreds of people have reportedly been detained across Syria. Human rights activists say many of the arrests occurred in Damascus.
A relentless crackdown since mid-March has killed more than 400 people across Syria, with 120 dead over the weekend, rights groups said.
Bashar Assad has launched all-out war on his people. Tanks firing artillery, APCs, infantry units, commandoes and snipers were deployed for the first time at daybreak Monday, April 25 in cities across Syria for the most brutal assault on any Arab anti-government protest in the four-month uprising.
In the first few hours, hundreds are estimated to have been massacred (over and above the 350 shot dead in the last three days) and thousands injured. Denied medical attention, they are left in the streets to die. debkafile's military sources report that protest centers in cities with populations of 2-3 million have been stormed by Syrian troops backed by tanks firing automatic 120-mm guns at random, commandoes dropped by helicopter and snipers.
The military offensive to break the back of the uprising (which debkafile Saturday, April 23 first disclosed Assad had decided to launch) is led by his younger brother Maher Assad at the head of the Republican Guard and the 4th Division which is made up mostly of the Assad's Alawite clan. Its first target Sunday night was the southern town of Deraa where the protest movement began and the Mediterranean coastal town of Jableh.
Monday, Syria shut its land borders to Jordan to conceal the scale of the carnage inflicted on the border town of Deraa from outside eyes. Foreign correspondents have been banned from the country since the uprising began.
Monday, indiscriminate fire was also reported in Duma, a dissident suburb of the capital Damascus. By Monday afternoon, thousands of soldiers had spread out across the North, South and Center of the country, apparently preparing to storm the large cities and protest centers of Hama, Homs, Latakiya and the Kurdish north.
While times may have changed, Bashar is his father's son. In 1982, President Hafez Assad turned his artillery on a district of Hama and slaughtered 25-30,000 civilians to smash a Muslim Brotherhood revolt. The operation was commanded by Rifat Assad, Bashar's uncle, today an opposition leader in exile.
The incumbent president's killing fields extend not to one but to a score of Syrian cities with unimaginable consequences.
And yet no Western power is rushing to help the pro-democracy protesters of Syria who are dying in their hundreds day by day. And the verbal condemnations coming from Washington and European capitals are soon buried under layers of inaction.
Isaiah 17
Proclamation Against Syria and Israel
1 The burden against Damascus.
“ Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap. 2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken;[a]
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and no one will make them afraid. 3 The fortress also will cease from Ephraim,
The kingdom from Damascus,
And the remnant of Syria;
They will be as the glory of the children of Israel,”
Says the LORD of hosts. 4 “ In that day it shall come to pass That the glory of Jacob will wane,
And the fatness of his flesh grow lean.
UN fails to agree on Syria condemnation
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/201142723514236533.html
The UN Security Council has failed to agree on a statement condemning Syria's deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters.
Envoys attending a special open meeting on Syria in New York on Wednesday said Russia, China and Lebanon opposed the wording of a draft statement distributed by European nations.
France called for "strong measures" if Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, rejects appeals to end violence which has killed hundreds.
The US said Assad must "change course now and heed the calls of his own people" for change.
"A real threat to regional security could come from outside interference. Such approaches lead to a never ending circle of violence" Alexander Pankin, Russian deputy UN envoy
Russia, after blocking a Security Council statement condemning the violence, however insisted that the Syrian crackdown did not amount to a threat to international peace and security, grounds that would justify international action.
"A real threat to regional security could come from outside interference," Alexander Pankin, the Russian deputy UN ambassador, told the council.
"Such approaches lead to a never ending circle of violence" and could set off civil war.
Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, welcomed the Security Council's inaction, saying his government was carrying out an investigation into the violence and that there was no need for a UN commission.
Al Jazeera's Kristin Saloomey, reporting from the UN headquarters, said any hope for Security Council action is "dead" for the moment.
"The council was not able to agree on even the most basic form of the statement calling for calm and calling for an investigation."
She said Russia offered the strongest opposition to the move, saying they were concerned about violence in Syria, but on both sides.
"In the end there were isolated statements of concern from various countries, but no unified action by the council."
China and India called for political dialogue and peaceful resolution of the crisis, with no mention of condemnation.
Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese envoy, said his country shared a special relationship with Syria, and that "the hearts and minds" of the Lebanese people are with the Syrians, and are supporting Assad's lifting of the state of emergency and reforms. Global criticism
The Syrian violence has sparked global criticism in recent days.
France, Britain, Germany and Portugal circulated a draft media statement on Monday calling for the 15-member Security Council to condemn the violence
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110315/wl_nm/us_bahrain_protests
MANAMA (Reuters) – Bahrain's king declared martial law on Tuesday as his government struggled to quell an uprising by the island's Shi'ite Muslim majority that has drawn in troops from fellow Sunni-ruled neighbor Saudi Arabia.
The three-month state of emergency will hand wholesale power to Bahrain's security forces, which are dominated by the Sunni Muslim elite, stoking sectarian tensions in one of the Gulf's most politically volatile nations.
Disturbances shook the kingdom through the day. A hospital source said two men, one Bahraini and the other Bangladeshi, were killed in clashes in the Shi'ite area of Sitra and more than 200 people were wounded in various incidents.
State television said a Bahraini policeman was also killed, denying media reports that a Saudi soldier had been shot dead.
The United States, a close ally of both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, said it was concerned about reports of growing sectarianism in the country, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. It dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman to Bahrain to push for dialogue to resolve the crisis.
Speaking in Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said she had told her Saudi counterpart to promote talks to resolve the situation.
It was not clear if a curfew would be imposed or whether there would be any clampdown on media or public gatherings.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said in an interview to be aired Friday that six years of war with Houthi fighters that drove 250,000 people from their homes in the northern mountains are now over.
"We can say the war is over," Saleh told Al-Arabiya in the interview, referring to the war in the north that has raged on and off since 2004. An
Saleh said that the successful implementation of a February 12 ceasefire with the fighters was a "sign that the war has ended and that this is not just a passing truce."
He also added that there were positive signs of the fighters'' commitment to ending the war such as removing landmines, opening roads, removing roadblocks and releasing prisoners.
Yemen had said on Thursday it would free Shi'ite fighters prisoners within days under the truce deal, a day after the fighters released at least 170 government soldiers and tribesmen who fought alongside the state.
The president also vowed to stand down in 2013 as the constitution requires
(CNN) -- Iran hanged two men at the end of January -- the first political prisoners known to be executed in Iran since the demonstrations protesting the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Amnesty International.
It's still not entirely clear what Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani's crime was. Rahmanipour's lawyer said he was already in jail on election day in June 2009, so he couldn't have been involved in the post-election uprising, she said.
But whatever their earthly crimes were, the two men executed last month were also accused of another offense far more serious than simply protesting against a government.
They were convicted of being "mohareb," enemies of God.
That is the worst possible crime in Shiite Muslimlaw, according to Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.
That the regime is labeling its opponents enemies of God is a sign of how rattled it is by the protests, he said.
"BAGHDAD – A female suicide bomber mingling among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad detonated an explosives belt Monday, killing at least 54 people, officials said. The bombing was the first major strike this year against pilgrims making their way to the southern city of Karbala to mark a Shiite holy day. It came as a security official warned of a possible increase in attacks by insurgents using new tactics to bypass bomb-detection methods. The bombing raises fears of an escalation of attacks as hundreds of thousands of Shiites head to Karbala to mark on Friday the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death Imam Hussein, a revered Shiite figure. The bomber hid the explosives underneath an abaya — a black cloak worn from head to toe by women — as she joined a group of pilgrims on the outskirts of Baghdad's Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Shaab, said Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Baghdad's top military spokesman. The bomber set off the blast as she lined up with other women to be searched by female security guards at a security checkpoint just inside a rest tent, al-Moussawi said. A police official said 54 people, including 18 women and 12 children, were killed and 117 were wounded. A hospital official confirmed the casualties. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Witnesses described a chaotic scene in the minutes after the blast. Raheem Kadhom, 35, said he was standing nearby when a huge fireball erupted among the pilgrims. Pilgrims were "on the ground, covered in blood and crying for help," he said. "Banners were all over the ground and covered in blood." The blast was so powerful it knocked some out of their slippers and shoes, which were scattered across the ground, he said, adding how people put the wounded in cars, taking them to hospitals rather than wait for ambulances. Despite an overall decline in violence in Iraq, al-Qaida and other Sunni extremists have routinely targeted pilgrims in an attempt to stoke sectarian
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