West African army chiefs to approve Mali troops plan

BAMAKO (Reuters) - West African defense chiefs will on Tuesday approve plans to speed up the deployment of African troops against Islamist rebels in northern Mali, with some regional soldiers seen arriving next week. France has already poured hundreds of troops into Mali and carried out days of air strikes in a vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance that combines al...

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New Holocaust museum opens at gruesome WW2 site

BRUSSELS: Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps.The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials...

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Hospitals crack down on workers refusing flu shots

CHICAGO (AP) — Patients can refuse a flu shot. Should doctors and nurses have that right, too? That is the thorny question surfacing as U.S. hospitals increasingly crack down on employees who won't get flu shots, with some workers losing their jobs over their refusal."Where does it say that I am no longer a patient if I'm a nurse," wondered Carrie Calhoun, a longtime critical care nurse in suburban...

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Armstrong Admits Doping in Tour, Sources Say

Lance Armstrong today admitted to Oprah Winfrey that he used performance enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France, sources told ABC News.A goverment source tells ABC News that Armstrong is now talking with authorities about paying back some of the US Postal Service money from sponsoring his team. He is also talking to authorities about confessing and naming names, giving up...

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France bombs Islamist strongholds in north Mali

BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - French fighter jets pounded Islamist rebel strongholds deep in northern Mali on Sunday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting a West African force to dislodge al Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country's north. The attacks on Islamist positions near the ancient desert trading town of Timbuktu and Gao, the largest city in the north, marked...

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Halimah Yacob is first female Speaker

SINGAPORE: Madam Halimah Yacob is Singapore's first woman Speaker of Parliament.She took the Speaker's seat at the start of the sitting of the House on Monday afternoon.Madam Halimah, who resigned on Sunday as Minister for State, fills the position vacated by former People's Action Party Member of Parliament, Mr Michael Palmer, who stepped down on 12 December 2012 due to an extramarital...

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Fog disrupts schedule of over 40 flights at IGI airport

NEW DELHI: Dense fog on Monday returned to the Indira Gandhi International Airport here, badly affecting the schedule of over 40 flights, including diversions of eight to other cities.Flight operations at the airport came to a standstill for around one-and-half hours, between 5am and 6.30am, as the runway visibility was less than 50 metres on both the runways, main (28/10) and third (29/11), airport...

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Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest...

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'Argo' Wins the Golden Globe for Best Movie Drama

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: The women of the night. Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/AP Photo.11:06 p.m. ET: And finally, the Globes by the numbers: “Les Miserables” was the top winner, with three major trophies, followed by “Argo” and “Django Unchained, which each got two. On the TV side, “The Game Change” and “Homeland” scored three major awards, “Girls” got two.11:00 p.m. ET: Fey and Poehler...

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Russia rejects Assad exit as precondition for Syria deal

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia voiced support on Saturday for international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi but insisted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's exit cannot be a precondition for a deal to end the country's conflict. Some 60,000 Syrians have been killed during the 21-month-old revolt and world powers are divided over how to stop the escalating bloodshed. Government aircraft bombed...

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