Rejecting American pressure, Russia announced the planned launch this summer of Iran’s first, Russian-built nuclear power plant.

Russian Premier Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would start up Tehran’s first and only nuclear power plant this summer. Moscow has been helping Iran build the Bushehr facility since 1995, but work has been delayed several times.

The statement of Russian Premier came at a time when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is in Moscow for talks on the Middle East and a stalled US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty. Russia’s foreign minister, gave Mrs Clinton short shrift and argued that making Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant operational would keep Tehran engaged with the international community.

SYDNEY : Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Friday shrugged off US President Barack Obama’s decision to postpone next week’s visit, saying he would be welcome any time.

Rudd said he had spoken to Obama about the move to reschedule the trip as the president wrestles with landmark healthcare legislation, and hailed his close relationship with the American leader.

“I’m going to be very happy any time the president chooses to visit,” Rudd told the Seven Network TV station.

“I know President Obama pretty well. It would be nice to have him and Michelle and the kids.

“I spoke to him on the phone this morning: he’d like to have a more relaxed visit than the 24-hour whip in, whip out that the last one had come down to.”

Obama had already delayed his visit and trimmed it from three days to one, opting to leave his wife Michelle and two daughters behind. The tour, also taking in Guam and Indonesia, has been put back until June.

Rudd, who has also seen legislation blocked by the Australian Senate, said he sympathised with Obama’s “massive” healthcare project and described the US leader as “a lot of fun”.

“We talk from time to time and he’s got a great sense of humour but it would be breaching all protocols to go to the content of conversation,” he said.

“But it’s a good relationship and he’s doing

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DHAKA : A blazing fire lit up the night as it swept through a Dhaka slum in the early hours of Thursday, razing hundreds of dwellings to the ground in just over half an hour.

There were no immediate reports of serious casualties or fatalities.

The fire was under control within 40 minutes, but almost three quarters of the homes gutted, said a witness at the scene.

33 abducted children have been reunited with their families. A group of American missionaries attempted to kidnap these children on January 29.
The children left the safe environment of the children’s village that welcomed them during the process. The children stayed in SOS village for seven weeks. While the Haitian Child Authority traced the parents and cleared the paperwork the children, aged between four months and twelve years, were placed in a SOS Children on the outskirts of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.
More than 400 unaccompanied and orphaned children have found their way to the SOS Children’s village since the earthquake, SOS Children said.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Amman on Wednesday to talk to Jordanian officials on how to speed the start of peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

Ashton held a meeting with Jordan’s foreign minister Nasser Judeh and top officials on ways to boost relations between Jordan and the EU, according to Jordanian officials.
During a news conference at the foreign ministry, Ashton said her regional trip is meant to support US efforts to kick off talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

“I am here today because I will be visiting later on today Israel and Palestine and I will be going into Gaza tomorrow and I come from a number of other countries where I have had important dialogues.

I am also on my way to the quartet meeting in Moscow on Friday where this will be an opportunity to do more to try and support exactly, as you say minister, the move to proximity talks with a view to these leading to formal negotiations and a resolution to the issues that are so difficult at current time.”

Earthquake Los Angeles 2010, Earthquake Los Angeles : An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.4 in the Los Angeles area this morning around 4:04. Millions of people from southern California was awaken by the quake. See details below of the earthquake by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The AP is reporting that a 4.4 magnitude earthquake tore across Los Angeles, California just before sunrise this morning. Thankfully, there are no reports of damage or injuries in conjunction with the California earthquake.

According to the US Geological Survey, the 4.4 magnitude earthquake epicenter was about 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. There is a minor chance that this 4.4 magnitude California earthquake foreshadows a larger earthquake.

Date, Time:

* Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 13:54:27 UTC
* Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 06:54:27 in the epicenter of the quake

Website: 34,005 ° N, 116.931 ° W
Depth: 16.8 km (10.4 miles)
Region: Southern California
Spaces:

* 9 km (5 miles) north to north-west (339 degrees) from the prohibition, California
* 10 kilometers (6 miles) north (24 degrees) of Beaumont, California
* 11 kilometers (7 miles) east (105 degrees) of Yucaipa, California
* 29 kilometers (18 miles) east (72 degrees) of Moreno Valley, California
* 121 km (75 miles) E (92 degrees) from Los Angeles Civic Center, Californiaa

KABUL AFGANISTAN: Two suicide attackers dressed in burqas were shot dead Wednesday as they attempted to enter the compound of a US-linked aid organisation in a southern Afghan town, officials said.

The male bombers were wearing explosives-packed vests beneath traditional women’s all-covering dress and opened fire on guards at the gates of International Relief and Development (IRD) in Lashkar Gah, the officials said.

“The two suicide bombers were shot and killed by the IRD guards, luckily their explosives did not explode,” provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, is 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from a major US-led offensive testing a new counter-insurgency strategy aimed at wiping out the Taliban and drug-trafficking cartels.

The interior ministry said no one else was killed or harmed in the thwarted attack, which happened around 9.45 am (0515 GMT).

But Ahmadi said two people employed by IRD were wounded.

The would-be suicide bombers had opened fire on police guarding the IRD gates, he said.

“In the exchange of fire, a woman and a man working for IRD were wounded,” he said.

There were no details on whether the wounded included foreigners.

The interior ministry said in a statement: “Two (male) suicide bombers… started firing on the police guards and in a return of fire by the national police within moments, both suicide attackers were killed.

“In this incident no harm was caused to anyone else and only the suicide attackers were killed,” it said, adding that police seized two assault rifles and two suicide vests filled with explosives.

IRD implements projects on behalf of the US Agency for International Development, Ahmadi said, including helping farmers market their products, improving food security and other agriculture-related projects.

Helmand is a hotbed for the Taliban, who have been waging an increasingly virulent insurgency since their regime was overthrown in the 2001 US-led invasion following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The United States and NATO are raising to 150,000 the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan by August under a strategy marrying military and civilian efforts to eradicate the militant presence and establish Afghan sovereignty.

The strategy is currently being tested in Helmand’s Marjah and Nad Ali districts, where poppy-production is controlled by Taliban and drug traffickers in areas that have long been outside government control.

Operation Mushtarak, “Together” in Dari, is regarded by military planners as an initial success, but a Western official told AFP that it will be many months yet before it is clear if the Taliban have receded for good.

NATO said two foreign soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan by a crude bomb on Tuesday, although it did not say where.

The bombs, known as IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, are the main weapon used by Taliban rebels, though suicide attacks are becoming more common.

On Saturday, 35 people were killed in the southern city of Kandahar in one of the biggest coordinated suicide assaults claimed by the Taliban since their insurgency began more than eight years ago.

The militia said the attack was a pre-emptive response to plans by Afghan and NATO forces to widen anti-insurgent operations in Kandahar.

WASHINGTON : US Attorney General Eric Holder has said it was unlikely that Osama bin Laden would ever face a trial in the United States since he would likely be killed.

“You’re talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom,” Holder said.

“The possibilities simply do not exist.” Holder later said, “It’s infinitesimal.”

“He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so that he is not captured by us,” he said.

Holder, appearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee, also announced that the Obama administration was “weeks away” from reaching a decision on how — and where — to prosecute alleged Sept. 11, 2001 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The attorney general defended his decision to try Khalid Sheik and four alleged co-conspirators before a civilian jury in New York City.

The decision was shelved after what Holder called several months of undermining by local leaders in New York and internal debates among White House officials.

KABUL: A bus plunged off a mountain road in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains Wednesday, catching fire and leaving as many as 35 people dead, though authorities were still pulling burned bodies from the wreckage.

Dr. Sanim Rasouli, health director in Baghlan province, says the bus picked up speed, struck other vehicles and then plunged off a road near the Salang Pass, a major route through the mountains about 70 miles (115 kilometers) north of the capital, Kabul.

“The bus failed to brake and hit several other small vehicles on its way down a hill,” Rasouli said, adding that the brakes might not have been working.

He said dozens of people — some of them children — burned to death when the bus caught fire.

The Afghan Interior Ministry reported that up to 35 people were killed in the accident just north of the 12,700-foot- (3,800-meter-) high Salang Pass, the site of an avalanche earlier this year that killed more than 170 people.