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Marines airdrop into Taliban stronghold
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU | Associated Press Writer : MARJAH, Afghanistan – Elite Marine recon teams were dropped behind Taliban lines by helicopter Friday as the U.S.-led force escalated operations to break resistance in the besieged insurgent stronghold of Marjah.
As the major NATO offensive entered its seventh day, about two dozen Marines were inserted before dawn into an area where skilled Taliban marksmen are known to operate, an officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
Other squads of Marines and Afghans, marching south in a bid to link up with Marine outposts there and expand their territory, came under sniper fire and rocket attacks by midday. The rattle of machine-gun fire and the thud of mortars echoed nearby.
The Marjah offensive is the biggest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and a test of President Barack Obama's strategy for reversing the rise of the Taliban while protecting civilians.
A NATO statement said troops were still meeting "some resistance" from insurgents who engage them in firefights, but homemade bombs remain the key threat to allied and Afghan forces.
At least 18 killed in Belgian train collision
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer : BRUSSELS – A rush-hour commuter train sped through a red signal and slammed into an oncoming train as it left a suburban Brussels station Monday, killing at least 18 people and disrupting rail traffic in northern Europe.
Investigations into one the worst accidents on the Belgian rails were likely to focus on whether human error was responsible or if it could have been influenced by the persistently freezing temperatures that have iced up the European capital.
Officials said 80 people were injured, 20 of them seriously, and the death toll — 15 men and three women — was not considered final. As darkness fell more than 10 hours later, rescuers were still looking for victims in the wreckage, said Jos Colpin, the spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office.
The fate of the two drivers was not immediately known, and officials said they were having difficulty identifying some of the victims.
South Africa: Mandela marks 20 years of freedom
By DONNA BRYSON | Associated Press Writer : JOHANNESBURG – South African lawmakers sang Nelson Mandela's praises Thursday as the anti-apartheid icon settled into parliament's public gallery for a State of the Nation address scheduled in tribute to his 20 years of freedom.
Mandela was released in 1990 after spending 27 years in prison and went on to lead South Africa through the last stretch of a stunning, peaceful revolution from apartheid to democracy.
His release was remembered as triumphant Thursday, but the moment was uncertain and anxious for South Africa, and it is a testimony to Mandela's statesmanship that things went so well.
"When Mandela was released we did not know what was going happen," said Nontuntuzelo Faku, who joined thousands of people who marked Thursday's anniversary near Cape Town at what was known in 1990 as Victor Verster, the last prison where Mandela was held.
How Much Water is on Earth?
livescience.com : If you poured all the world’s water on the United States and could contain it, you’d create a lake 90 miles deep.
How much water is that? Roughly 326 million cubic miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Some 72 percent of Earth is covered in water, but 97 percent of that is salty and no good for drinking. So, some facts about the freshwater:
* 70 percent of freshwater is locked in ice caps
* Less than 1 percent of the world’s freshwater is readily accessible
* 6 countries (Brazil, Russia, Canada, Indonesia, China and Colombia) have 50 percent of the freshwater reserves
* One-third of the world’s population lives in “water-stressed” countries
There is much more freshwater stored in the ground than there is in liquid form on the surface, according to the USGS.
Latvian ghost town auctioned off for $3.1 million
By ROMANS KOKSAROVS | Associated Press Writer : SKRUNDA, Latvia – Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction Friday, officials said.
The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.
A representative of a Russian investor won the bidding contest in Latvia's capital, Riga, with an offer of 1.55 million lats ($3.1 million), said Anete Fridensteina-Bridina, a spokeswoman for the Baltic country's privatization agency. She said the buyer was Aleksejevskoje-Serviss, a Russia-based firm, though she could not provide details.
It wasn't immediately clear what plans the buyer had for the 110-acre (45 hectare) property, which is located in western Latvia about 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Riga.
Haiti food convoy attacked; UN warns of volatility
By PAISLEY DODDS | Associated Press Writer : PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Twenty armed men blocked a road and tried to hijack a convoy of food for earthquake victims, but were driven off by police gunfire, U.N. officials said Tuesday.
The attack on the convoy as it carried supplies from an airport in the southern town of Jeremie underscored what the United Nations calls a "potentially volatile" security situation as frustration has grown at the slow pace of aid since the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Most quake victims are still living outside in squalid tents of sheets and sticks and aid officials acknowedge they have not yet gotten food to the majority of those in need. Mobs have stolen food and looted goods from their neighbors in the camps, prompting many to band together or stay awake at night to prevent raids.
About 20 armed men blockaded a street Saturday and attacked a convoy carrying food from the airport in Jeremie, according to UN spokesman Vicenzo Pugliese. U.N. and Haitian officers fired warning gunshots and the men fled the scene, Pugliese said. No injuries were reported and no one was hurt.
Biggest and Brightest Full Moon of 2010 Tonight
Robert Roy Britt | SPACE.com : Tonight's full moon will be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. It offers anyone with clear skies an opportunity to identify easy-to-see features on the moon.
This being the first full moon of 2010, it is also known as the wolf moon, a moniker dating back to Native American culture and the notion that hungry wolves howled at the full moon on cold winter nights. Each month brings another full moon name.
But why will this moon be bigger than others? Here's how the moon works:
The moon is, on average, 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth. The moon's orbit around Earth – which causes it to go through all its phases once every 29.5 days – is not a perfect circle, but rather an ellipse. One side of the orbit is 31,070 miles (50,000 km) closer than the other.
So in each orbit, the moon reaches this closest point to us, called perigee. Once or twice a year, perigee coincides with a full moon, as it will tonight, making the moon bigger and brighter than any other full moons during the year.
Teenage girl rescued 15 days after quake is stable
By VIVIAN SEQUERA || Yahoo News : PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A 16-year-old girl pulled from the rubble more than two weeks after a deadly earthquake was in stable condition Thursday, able to eat yogurt and mashed vegetables to the surprise of doctors, who said her survival was medically inexplicable.
Hundreds of thousands of other survivors hoped for a breakthrough of another kind — the delivery of badly needed food aid.
Key players in the Haiti earthquake relief effort, in what may prove to be a pivotal meeting Wednesday, decided to better coordinate by dividing up the shattered capital, giving each responsibility for handing out food in certain areas.
Food distribution thus far has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times shoved aside the women and weak and took their food.
Dollar up sharply, pound struggles
By ANITA CHANG || Yahoo News : LONDON (AFP) – The dollar was sharply higher against the euro on Tuesday, buoyed by US consumer confidence data while the pound took a hit after news that Britain had only just limped out of recession, dealers said.
They said fears that China, which has played a key role in the recovery so far, might be trying to slow its booming economy has dampened investor confidence given the weak growth prospects in the developed countries.
Those countries have also run up huge deficits to get their economies back on track, sparking a warning Tuesday from the International Monetary Fund of the dangers involved and the need for sound policy.
"A key risk is that a premature and incoherent exit from supportive policies may undermine global growth and its rebalancing," it said in a report cautiously upgrading its overall growth forecasts.
China: Google case not linked to ties with US
By ANITA CHANG || Yahoo News : BEIJING – Google's threat to pull out of China over concerns about censorship and security should not affect ties with the United States, a top Chinese official said Thursday, seeking to contain the government's dispute with the Internet giant.
The comment from Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei came just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a speech in Washington on Internet freedom calling for American companies to resist pressure to accept censorship.
"The Google case should not be linked with relations between the two governments and countries; otherwise, it's an over-interpretation," He told a news conference, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The Xinhua report did not mention censorship, instead referring to Google's "disagreements with government policies."