Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad resigns

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, left, shakes hands with President Mahmoud Abbas as he submits his resignation at Abbas' headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Saturday, March 7, 2009.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Prime Minister submitted his resignation Saturday, a move that could help pave the way for an elusive power-sharing deal between Palestinian moderates and militants.

Salam Fayyad was appointed prime minister by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007, in response to the violent takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic Hamas in June 2007. Mr. Abbas and the Fayyad government control the West Bank, while Hamas continues to rule Gaza, despite a recent three-week Israeli military offensive there.

Mr. Fayyad’s decision was meant as a confidence-building measure ahead of the resumption of Palestinian reconciliation talks on Tuesday in Cairo. Negotiators from Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah movement are trying to form a transition government that is to prepare for presidential and legislative elections by January 2010.

Mr. Abbas said Saturday that he hoped a transition government could be formed by the end of March, suggesting that power-sharing talks have moved into high gear, following failed attempts in the past.  Mr. Fayyad’s resignation “comes to enhance and support the national dialogue to reach a national unity government,” Mr. Abbas said.        Breaking News

NATO renews ties with Russia

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives to address a news conference after a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, March 5, 2009.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO agreed on Thursday to resume formal ties with Russia, suspended after Moscow’s war with Georgia, in the hope of winning greater Russian support for its struggle to stabilize Afghanistan.

“We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.  Russia immediately welcomed the move agreed at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

“This decision is positive,” its ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told a news conference, calling it “promising in terms of stability and security in Afghanistan.”  But he regretted that ties would only be formally resumed after an April 3-4 NATO summit. “Russia is in no hurry on Afghanistan but NATO indeed should be hurrying and we are just surprised that this issue of the resuming of practical work is postponed for another month.”         Breaking News

Gorbachev criticizes Putin’s party

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 5, 2009.

MOSCOW – In some of his strongest criticism of his successors, Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday likened Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party to the worst of the communists he once led and helped bring down, and said Russia is today a country where the parliament and the judiciary are not fully free.

In an interview with The Associated Press some 20 years after the Soviet empire started its rapid collapse on his tumultuous watch, Gorbachev also said the global economic crisis showed capitalism should be tempered with elements of the socialist system he played such a critical role in sweeping away.

The last Soviet leader was interviewed in the offices of his Gorbachev Foundation, a think tank founded in 1992 to promote “democratic values and moral, humanistic principles” — as well as, some say, Gorbachev himself. A little aged and more heavyset perhaps, Gorbachev, 78, seemed feisty, friendly and often reminiscent of the man who once ruled one of two superpowers on Earth.        Breaking News

An Israeli police officer escorts a wounded girl, whose face is painted for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, from the scene after a bulldozer slammed into vehicles in Jerusalem, on Thursday.

JERUSALEM – A Palestinian driver rammed a construction vehicle into a bus and police car on a highway Thursday, wounding two officers before he was shot dead, police said, the latest in a string of attacks by militants using heavy machinery against Israeli targets.

Witnesses described a harrowing sight of a towering yellow front loader speeding along Jerusalem’s Begin Highway, dragging the police car, flipping it into the air and trying to crush it with its front shovel.

Begin Highway is a main thoroughfare connecting the city’s north and south. Witnesses said the attacker apparently worked at a nearby construction site. There was no immediate claim of responsibility and police said the man was not carrying identification.   “It was simply an attack meant to murder innocent people,” Mayor Nir Barkat told Channel 2 television.  He called for the demolition of the attacker’s home, a tactic that has drawn international criticism in the past. Barkat said home demolitions are needed to deter other attacks.       Breaking News

Hague cites Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir on March 4, 2009, for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Wednesday for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The warrant is the first issued by the Hague-based court against a sitting head of state since it was set up in 2002. The move could spark more turmoil in Sudan and the surrounding region.

The court said it did not find sufficient grounds to include the count of genocide in Bashir’s arrest warrant, but indicted Bashir on seven counts for war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, forcible displacement and other crimes.

“Omar al-Bashir’s official capacity as sitting head of state does not exclude his criminal responsibility, nor does it grant him immunity against prosecution before the ICC,” court spokeswoman Laurence Blairon told a news conference.        Breaking News

Pakistan angry as police hunt gunmen in Lahore attack

Supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) chant slogans during a protest against the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani investigators were following “important leads” to identify who was behind the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Wednesday.

The ambush in broad daylight, and the apparent ease with which around a dozen gunmen escaped after a firefight with police of almost 30 minutes, sent shudders through a world fearful of nuclear-armed Pakistan’s inability to contain rising militancy.

“We also have some important leads that would eventually unearth people responsible for this terrible act,” Qureshi told a news conference with his Sri Lankan counterpart in Islamabad.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said this was the first attack on its nationals outside the country and he did not rule out possibility that the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) movement was involved.        Breaking News

Clinton denounces Israel over demolition of east jerusalem homes

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) and outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert smile during a meeting in Jerusalem March 3, 2009.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized Israel Wednesday over plans to demolish Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem and said Washington would engage Israeli leaders on Jewish settlements.

Calling the planned destruction of more than 80 dwellings “unhelpful,” Clinton said after talks with Palestinian leaders: “It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem.”

Israel says the homes slated for demolition were built without permits.

Palestinians say authorization from Israel’s Jerusalem municipality is nearly impossible to obtain. They accuse Israel of trying to drive them out of East Jerusalem, territory captured in a 1967 war, to make room for Jewish families.        Breaking News

Mexico: Drug violence seems unstoppable

Mexican soldiers inspect vehicles at a checkpoint at the Paso del Norte international border crossing in Ciudad Juarez March 3, 2009.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across Mexico’s bloodiest drug war city on Tuesday, trying to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the U.S. border.

Sirens blared as the army staged one of its biggest troop build-ups in years in Ciudad Juarez, a desert city across the border from El Paso, Texas, where near-daily clashes between drug gangs and police have terrified residents.

Infamous in the 1990s for the unsolved murders of hundreds of women, Ciudad Juarez is now engulfed in the worst drug violence in Mexico as cartels in league with corrupt cops fight over one of the country’s most profitable smuggling routes.  More than 2,000 people have been murdered in the area over the past year and drug gang hitmen showed their power last month by forcing the city’s police chief to resign with a threat to keep killing police officers until he quit.        Breaking News

Obama denies Russian deal with Iran

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speaks at the United Russia party congress in Moscow, November 20, 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he wanted to work with Russia to resolve a nuclear stand-off with Iran but denied reports he had offered to slow deployment of a missile defense shield in exchange for Moscow’s help.

The New York Times reported that Obama had sent a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting he would back off deploying a system in eastern Europe to intercept and destroy missiles, a move Russia sees as a military threat, if Moscow helped stop Iran from developing long-range weapons.

“What I said in the letter is what I have said publicly, which is that the missile defense that we have talked about deploying is directed toward, not Russia, but Iran,” Obama said after meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.        Breaking News

Cricket team ambushed by gunmen in pakistan

Staff carry Sri Lankan cricket player Tharanga Paranavitana in a hospital in Lahore on Tuesday. Seven players and an assistant coach from Britain were hurt in the brazen assault on South Asia's most beloved sport. Six policemen and a civilian were killed.

LAHORE, Pakistan – At least a dozen men ambushed Sri Lanka’s cricket team with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers Tuesday as they drove to the stadium ahead of a match in Pakistan, killing six policemen and a driver.

The attackers struck as a convoy carrying the squad and match officials reached a traffic circle 300 yards from the main sports stadium in the eastern city of Lahore, triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police guarding the vehicles.

Seven players, an umpire and a coach were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries. The assault was one of the worst terrorist attacks on a sports team since Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Tuesday’s attackers melted away into the city, and none was killed or captured, city police chief Haji Habibur Rehman said. Authorities did not speculate on the identities of the attackers or their motives, but the chief suspects will be Islamist militants, some with links to al-Qaida, who have staged high-profile attacks on civilian targets before.        Breaking News