Sarkozy told Obama he is fed up with Israeli PM

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.


French President Nicolas Sarkozy told President Barack Obama last week he was fed up with dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered him a liar.

Sarkozy made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French riviera town of Cannes last week and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists but not initially reported.

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama during a frank exchange where the US president took him to task for backing a Palestinian request for membership of the UN cultural heritage agency UNESCO.

US drone strikes must stop, says American lawyer

A Global Hawk UAV is seen flying over an unidentified location in this US Air Force image.




Prominent international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-year-old boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings.

Three days later, on October 31, he and his 12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said.

For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which US officials say is invaluable in the war on militants.

“What they did to Tariq was absolutely disgusting,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Calls for tougher sanctions against Iran following IAEA report

A UN nuclear watchdog report is expected to show concern that Iran benefited from foreign expertise to help develop technology that could be used to build atomic bombs, Western officials said yesterday.

Tehran is “clearly trying to reach out to nuclear scientists around the world,” a Western diplomat accredited to the UN agency in Vienna said, suggesting it was a case of Iran contacting individuals rather than their governments.

Other Western officials painted a similar picture of suspected foreign involvement in providing know-how for activities seen as geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability, but it was unclear how extensive it had been.

Quake Kills at Least 3 in Turkey

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake on Wednesday in the same region hit by a larger quake two weeks ago killed at least three people and trapped others who had moved into damaged buildings that collapsed Wednesday, the Turkish media ...

China protests Mongolia visit by Dalai Lama

China said today that it had lodged a complaint with the Mongolian government about a visit to the vast and remote country by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had made “stern representations” to the government in Ulan Bator about the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

“We have always opposed any country providing a platform for the Dalai Lama to engage in activities to split China in any form,” he told a daily news briefing.

Cemetery collector with 29 bodies arrested

A still image taken from undated police footage shot inside the flat of Anatoly Moskvin and released to Reuters on November 8, 2011. It shows books, clothes and dressed figures, reportedly mummified bodies desecrated from cemeteries.


Russian police have arrested a man described by local media as the "cemetery collector" for digging up 29 corpses and dressing the remains in female clothing to display around his flat.

Grainy police video images of the man's cramped flat showed what look like several life-sized female dolls without faces, some with platinum blond wigs.

Thai PM pledges flood relief as fight for Bangkok goes on

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pledged more than US$4 billion (RM12.47 billion) today to help Thailand recover from the worst floods in half a century, as workers slowed the flow of water threatening the commercial heart of the capital, Bangkok.

Evacuation orders have spread to a third of Bangkok’s districts, mostly in the north of the densely populated city of 12 million people, since late October, as floodwater strewn with trash slowly seeps in from northern and northeastern provinces.

Big asteroid has close encounter with Earth

This NASA radar image showing asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on November 7, 2011, at 11.45am PST (2.45pm EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometres, from Earth.


A black asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier has zoomed past Earth, delighting astronomers who trained telescopes on the ancient body in hopes of learning more about its composition and origin.

With a diameter estimated at 400 metres, or about a quarter of a mile, Asteroid 2005 YU 55 is the biggest asteroid to make a close pass by Earth since 1976.

During its closest approach, which occurred at 6.28pm EST (2328 GMT) yesterday, it was inside the orbit of the moon, about 322,000km above the planet. It posed no threat to either.

Zsa Zsa Gabor returns to hospital

Gabor and husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt celebrate his 68th birthday, on June 18, 2011.



Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was rushed to a hospital yesterday for the second time in less than a month after complications arose from her recently replaced feeding tube, her husband said.

‘Her stomach is bleeding and her feeding tube is coming out,” Frederic Prinz von Anhalt told Reuters. “It’s not good.”

The 94-year-old actress was hospitalized just over two weeks ago due to complications with a feeding tube attached to her stomach. The tube was replaced and she returned home.

Gabor has been in and out of hospitals numerous times since July 2010, when she fell out of bed and broke her hip. Last January, doctors amputated a portion of her leg and in February, she was treated for a lung infection.

Woman accuses US presidential candidate Cain of groping

Radio talk show host and former chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizza Herman Cain, speaks during the Reagan Centennial GOP presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California September 7, 2011.


A woman accused US Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain yesterday of reaching under her skirt in 1997, adding to sexual harassment allegations that are threatening to derail his campaign.

Cain, a former pizza company executive, has led many opinion polls in the race to be the Republican nominee to face President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in next year’s election.

Sharon Bialek said Cain made the unwanted advance after dinner in Washington when she asked for help finding a job after she was laid off by the National Restaurant Association, which he then headed.

Bialek, who identified herself as a registered Republican and single mother from Chicago, put a public face on a growing problem for Cain’s campaign. The 65-year-old candidate quickly denied her account, saying all allegations of sexual harassment against him were “completely false.”

Bialek, looking composed and confident before a phalanx of television cameras, said she had not filed a complaint against Cain but was now coming forward to “give a face and a voice to those women” who did not wish to go public.

Meet the last surviving master of the Sikh warrior art: He lives in Wolverhampton and he is on the lookout for an apprentice * But former factory worker, 45, says learner warrior must come to Midlands * 'I am the last known remaining master - it is my mission in life now to find a successor to carry on this great martial art. If I die with it, it is all gone'

Nidar Singh Nihang has devoted his life to the mysterious Sikh martial art of Shastar Vidiya.

Having learned his skills from an 80-year-old Indian guru, he is now seeking an apprentice to keep the ancient art alive.

But he insists that any budding warrior wanting to follow in his footsteps must travel to his home - in Wolverhampton.

Berlusconi’s top ally tells him to resign

Silvio Berlusconi’s closest coalition ally Umberto Bossi told him to resign today in what could be a mortal blow to the Italian prime minister.

Bossi, head of the devolutionist Northern League, said the 75-year-old media magnate should be replaced by Angelino Alfano, secretary of the premier’s PDL party.

“We asked the prime minister to stand down,” Bossi told reporters outside parliament.


Berlusconi (picture) has until now remained defiant ahead of a key parliamentary vote today afternoon, refusing calls from all sides to step down, but Bossi’s call could tip the balance against him.

The League, together with many members of the PDL, are believed to want Berlusconi to make way for a new centre-right government capable of facing a huge economic crisis and restoring the confidence of markets without handing power to a transitional administration.

Agents intercept military flare in mail

Federal agents at Chicago's O'Hare Airport averted "a potential catastrophic event" when they stopped a package containing a live military flare from being loaded onto a flight to Japan, says a federal agency.

The Customs and Border Protection said the Vietnam War-era device, identified as an M49A1 phosphorous trip flare, was found in the mail as it was passing through the busy facility on Thursday.

Brian Bell, a customs supervisor, said he did not know whether the package that contained the device would have been routed onto a passenger or cargo plane.

China warns of turmoil over Iran, mute on sanctions

A general view shows the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, about 1,215km south of Tehran, in this file photo of November 30, 2009. China warned on November 9, 2011 against turmoil in the Middle East from action over Iran’s nuclear programme.


China warned today against turmoil in the Middle East from action over Iran’s nuclear programme, but declined to comment on the possibility of new sanctions following a UN report that Iran appears to have worked on designing an atomic weapon.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was “studying” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, and repeated a call to resolve the issue peacefully through talks.

UN report reinforces worries over Iranian threat

Germany says it will push for resolution urging Iran to return to negotiating table; Hague: Britain considering how to raise pressure on Iran.