Report: Afghan police officer sought in US slayings
By NBC News, msnbc.com and news services
A police intelligence officer was the “main suspect” in the alarmingly brazen killing of two senior U.S. Army officers at Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry, sources told BBC News on Sunday.
Abdul Saboor, 25, fled the ministry after the slayings on Saturday, counter-terrorism officials told the BBC. His family home in Parwan province in the northeast of the country had been raided and his family in Kabul detained, the BBC reported.
A gunman shot dead two American military officials – a lieutenant colonel and a major – inside the heavily guarded ministry in the center of the capital as protests raged across the country for a fifth day over the burning of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base.
Bin Laden’s last refuge is razed in the dead of night’
Pakistan brings in the bulldozers to destroy any chance of the spot where the al-Qa’ida leader died becoming a shrine
Sunday 26 February 2012
Authorities inPakistan last night started to tear down the compound located barely a mile from the country’s premier military academy in which Osama bin Laden lived undetected for more than five years.
Military officials had warned there was concern the house could become a shrine to supporters of the dead al-Qa’ida leader.
Reports from the town of Abbottabad said local people had watched as troops started bringing in bulldozers and other heavy machinery yesterday evening and began to demolish the three-storey house.
Bloodbath on eve of Syria’s referendum
February 26, 2012 – 2:15PM
Syrian government forces have reportedly killed at least 83 people in a sustained clampdown on rebel areas on the eve of a referendum across the country on a new constitution.
The surge in violence came on Saturday as the Syrian government was preparing to hold a vote called by President Bashar al-Assad for Sunday on a new constitution.
Witnesses in the Damascus told DPA that women in white T-shirts were stopping cars and handing out leaflets reading: “Your vote is essential for Syria’s sovereignty”.
Nelson Mandela: SA prepares for the day it fears most
It is the day South Africans dread more than any other, and it is not a question of if but when.
DAVID SMITH Feb 26 2012 07:20
“It’s like watching one’s grandfather fade away,” was how Heidi Holland, the South African-based journalist, put it recently. After Mandela’s previous health scare last year, Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes wrote of a “country huddled as if in a national waiting room”.
He added: “What South Africans feel for Madiba is not simply affection or respect. Even love may not be a strong enough word. His presence is part of the structure of our national being. We worry that we may not be quite ourselves without him.”
Ordinary Russians train to observe presidential vote
Since the Russian parliamentary election in December, which was widely seen as fraudulent, thousands of people have been volunteering to monitor the presidential vote on 4 March. I went to see how they were being trained.
By Oleg Boldyrev BBC Russian
It is late and getting to a college in the north of Moscow across frozen streets takes some time. But two dozen people are willing to make the effort.
When the lecture finishes, at around ten o’clock in the evening, they will be qualified to work as election observers.
Opposition leaders hope to see volunteers at every polling station in the country.
This will be difficult to achieve throughout Russia but in Moscow, at least, there are already enough activists to cover the city.
War of 1812 bicentennial is a big deal – in Canada
It may have given Americans ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ but Canadians say they were the big winners. Major celebrations are planned.
By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington-
For a piece of history that gave us the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air, the War of 1812 tends to evoke a collective “Huh?” on the U.S. side of the border with Canada.“The War of 1812 has no compelling narrative that appeals to the average American,” said Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. “It’s just a hodgepodge of buildings burning, bombs bursting in air and paintings being saved from the invaders, all for a vaguely defined purpose. ”
Yet the vacuum of interest in the War of 1812 is about to get a pyrotechnic blast of attention for its bicentennial year.