Tag: Afternoon Edition

With officials warning the overall death toll may top 100,000, there were fears that desperate Haitians, already living in one of the world’s poorest nations, will soon fall prey to hunger and disease.

The stench from rows of unclaimed rotting corpses began to hang over the capital Port-au-Prince, as the international aid operation led by the United Nations and the United States swung into place.

Hospitals collapsed, destroyed schools were full of dead and the cries of trapped victims escaped from crushed buildings in the center of the capital Port-au-Prince, which an AFP correspondent said was “mostly destroyed.”

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake could be “well over 100,000,” as an international aid effort geared up in a race against time to pull survivors from the ruins.

In a defiant appearance before a public inquiry on the conflict, Campbell said that while the highly controversial document could have been “clearer”, he still defended “every single word” of it — and the invasion itself.

“I think Britain as a country should feel incredibly proud of the role it played in taking on one of the most brutal, barbarous regimes in history,” said Campbell, one of the former prime minister’s closest allies.

The NATO-led alliance said that in addition to the Americans and the French soldier, two others had died of their wounds. An official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP one of the two was also French.

One of those whose nationality was not officially identified was killed by an improvised bomb in southern Afghanistan, said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The Labor Department report on nonfarm payrolls was a disappointment to those hoping for job growth, which is critical to economic recovery.

The figure was far worse than the consensus expectation for no change in overall employment levels, and came amid a wide array of predictions ranging from steep losses to modest gains.

Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, announced he would not seek re-election in November, depriving Obama of a steadfast, powerful ally and 35-year veteran of Washington.

“This is my moment to step aside,” Dodd told reporters outside his Connecticut home, acknowledging a series of troubles had left him in “the toughest political shape of my career.”

The futuristic Ady Gil trimaran, which holds the round-the-world speed record for a powered vessel and was enlisted by activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for this whaling season, received “catastrophic damage” and was sinking, they said.

All six crew, who earlier hurled stink bombs at the whalers to disrupt their annual hunt, were rescued unharmed by Sea Shepherd’s Bob Barker ship.

The Jordanian intelligence services, believing the bomber to be their double agent, brought him to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said.

But instead he blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Pakistani border, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family.

Blazing fireworks rippled up and down the massive structure after it was officially opened by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum.

Known during construction as Burj Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad renamed the building Burj Khalifa, in honour of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

The worst violence struck the western city of Ramadi, where 23 people were killed and 30 were wounded in co-ordinated bombings, blamed on Al-Qaeda amid collusion from the security forces, at the governor’s offices in the centre of Anbar’s provincial capital.

Governor Qassim Mohammed Abid was among the wounded, while senior security officials were also killed and injured. Around 20 cars were destroyed in the blasts.

The blast sparked riots in Karachi, the financial capital, where angry mourners went on the rampage, throwing stones at ambulances, torching cars and shops and firing bullets into the air, sparking appeals for calm.

Pakistan had deployed tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces, fearing sectarian clashes or militant attacks on Ashura processions, when Shiites whip themselves to mourn the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.

Montazeri, an inspiration to reformists and human rights activists and a fierce critic of the clerical regime he helped create, died aged 87 on Saturday.

Opposition websites said hundreds of thousands of mourners poured onto the streets of Qom, many chanting slogans and displaying the green of Iran’s opposition — effectively turning the funeral procession into a massive anti-government rally.