International

By DPA, San Francisco : Yahoo! reported an 18 percent drop in second-quarter profits Tuesday putting more pressure on the company in the aftermath of a shareholder revolt and the controversy over Microsoft's aborted attempt to buy the company. The Silicon Valley internet services company said it earned $131.2 million, or 9 cents a share, compared to $161 million , or 11 cents a share a year ago. Revenue for the three months ended June 30 was $1.8 billion, compared with $1.7 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

By DPA, Sydney : More than 34,000 applicants learned Tuesday they hadn't made the shortlist of 50 candidates for the dream job of highly paid caretaker on a paradise island in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The unlucky 34,634 are left clinging to the hope of being the sole wildcard entry when the final 11 contestants are selected and flown to Queensland's Hamilton Island in early May. The Top 50 are from Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, Greece, India, China and 14 other countries.

By Arun Kumar, IANS,

By Xinhua, Male : The run-off presidential election in the Indian archipelago of the Maldives went on peacefully on Tuesday with no major violence being reported, elections officials said. The incumbent President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is competing with the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party's (MDP) Mohamed Nasheed in the election. Election officials said 209,294 people were registered to vote in 403 polling stations in the country which consists of 1,192 small islands scattered across 800 km of the Indian Ocean neighboring India and Sri Lanka.

By IANS, Washington: A total of five people, including three children, were killed Tuesday in a house fire in the rural areas of US' Ohio state, Xinhua reported.

By Xinhua, Singapore : The prime ministers of Singapore and Australia Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to further strengthen defense cooperation between the two countries. "The MOU on Defense Cooperation which we have just signed underscores our strong and multi-faceted defense ties," said Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at a lunch in honor of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is in Singapore for a one-day visit.

By IANS Colombo : Sri Lanka's main opposition parties boycotted functions organised by the government to celebrate the country's 60th Independence Day Monday. "There is no freedom in the country under President Mahinda Rajapaksa," said Tissa Attanayake, general secretary and spokesman of the main opposition United National Party (UNP). "The UNP will conduct religious ceremonies in places of worship to make the occasion solemn," he told the media.

By IANS,

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter, Ahmedabad/London: Exactly 13 years to the day when the post-Godhra communal violence began in Gujarat in 2002, all six accused in...

By IANS, Colombo : Sri Lanka has rejected a UN proposal to set up an advisory panel in the wake of alleged human rights abuses during the final phase of the war between government forces and the Tamil Tigers. President Mahinda Rajapaksa said the UN move was "unwarranted" and would be perceived as "interference" in Sri Lanka's internal matters.

By DPA, Washington : The US House of Representatives Wednesday approved a $14-billion emergency loan to keep the country's car industry out of bankruptcy, sending the bill to a more skeptical Senate. House lawmakers approved the legislation by 237-170 after weeks of negotiations. The Senate could vote on Friday, but a group of Republican senators have vowed to oppose the loan and appeared to have enough support to block the legislation.

By IRNA, London : A leading British electoral reform campaigner, who organised thousands of voters in a demonstration yesterday, has called for a referendum on which voting system best serves the democratic interests of the people. “Politicians have an interest in which voting system give them more advantage. So it is better for us to seize the issue (of electoral reform) from the hands of the politicians and bring it back to the citizens,” Ken Ritchie the chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) said.

By Prensa Latina, Caracas : The 12-member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has announced the formation of an energy council for better integration of the region to ensure energy security. Representatives of the UNASUR states met Thursday in the Venezuelan capital and discussed aspects of the regional energy strategy as part of the arrangements for the bloc's upcoming summit in Brazil. Representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana and Uruguay, as well as delegates from Surinam, Peru and Paraguay attended the meeting.

By IANS, New York: A Sri Lankan government report disregards the "worst abuses" by government forces towards the end of the war that killed the Tamil Tigers in 2009, Human Rights Watch has said.

By IRNA Moscow : A sea rescue center in Astrakhan, in southern Russia, on November 17 launched a search-and-rescue operation to answer a distress call from a Russian freighter that had disappeared in the Caspian Sea, the transportation ministry said. The Kamyust-1 freighter, sailing under the Russian flag and registered at the Taganrog port, was on its way from Astrakhan to the Iranian port of Anzali, but failed to arrive to its destination on schedule," a ministry spokesperson said.

By DPA, Geneva : Taiwan has joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement that opens up government contracts to international competition, an official said Thursday. "This was not an easy process and various compromises were needed on all sides along the way," a member of the committee that finalised the government procurement agreement (GPA) late Wednesday said. Chinese Taipei, as Taiwan is known within the WTO, had been negotiating membership of the agreement for 14 years, under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu".

By IANS, Los Angeles: Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is known to be good friend with actor Brad Pitt but says the latter has not asked for any cooking tips from him.

By IANS/RIA Novosti,

By DPA, Washington : Somali pirates were reported to have obtained fuel for their hijacked lifeboat and were moving within 35 km of Somalia's shore late Saturday with the kidnapped US captain of a US-operated cargo ship, ABC news and CNN reported. Navy officials have said they would not allow the small lifeboat, in which captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama is being held hostage, to reach the shore, CNN reported.

By IANS,

By DPA, Beijing : A Chinese cargo ship was released off the coast of Somalia on Monday, more than two months after it was hijacked, state media reported. The De Xin Hai was now under the protection of a Chinese naval fleet, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency. A ransom of around 4 million dollars was paid to the pirates, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. "A helicopter dropped the ransom money onto the ship. We have received 4 million dollars," a pirate named Hassan was quoted as saying.

By DPA,

London : An online petition to the British House of Commons has urged the politicians to create a bank holiday for Hindu Diwali and...

By Xinhua, Phnom Penh : Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday that the other members of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) should not be the hostage of Thai political crisis while Thailand requested to delay the ASEAN summit to March. The summit should not be postponed, Hun Sen told reporters here, adding that "we have to meet to solve many issues, including the global financial crisis." "If we delay the summit, the ASEAN will move backward," he said.

Dhaka : Bangladesh executed two political leaders, convicted of war crimes during the country's independence war in 1971, amid tight security early on Sunday. Bangladesh's...

Florida – (IINA)February 13– World leaders from Africa and the Middle East gathered on Monday at Florida State University for an intercultural dialogue designed to support a United Nations initiative, the Alliance of Civilizations. Rwandan President Paul Kagame was one among the leaders who spoke in support of the UN initiative, which also included a presentation by Saudi Arabia's Minister of State Abdullah Alireza. The program titled “Bridging Civilizations” was sponsored by the FSU Claude Pepper Center for Intercultural Dialogue.

By DPA, Sydney: Australians were Thursday mourning an irrevocable change to the scenery along the iconic Great Ocean Road tourist drive after the collapse of the handsome Loch Ard Gorge rock formation. Two rock pillars are what is left of the formerly majestic archway that countless sightseers have photographed. Each year tens of thousands of tourists cycle or drive the Great Ocean Road - a 300-km scenic route that begins 100 km west of Melbourne and runs through Port Campbell to Warrnambool.

By SPA Belgrade : Serbian President Boris Tadic has disbanded parliament and called an early general election for May 11, state news agency Tanjug said on Thursday, according to Reuters. The vote, expected to be a close race between nationalists and pro-Western liberals, is seen as Serbia's most important election since the fall of autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The government collapsed at the weekend, with nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica blaming deep disunity in his coalition over defending Kosovo versus pursuing a place in the European Union.

By SPA, Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina : NATO troops searched Radovan Karadzic's family home Tuesday for evidence of contacts to the network that has helped genocide suspect Ratko Mladic evade arrest. NATO spokesman Derek Chappell said family members were questioned at their home in Pale, near Sarajevo. Soldiers were seen carrying out suitcases and boxes from the house. Karadzic's wife and daughter were among those at home. Former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic has been in the custody of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague since July, according to a report of Associated Press.

By RIA Novosti

Tokyo : Japan and the US are planning to conduct their first joint exercises on countering a potential missile attack in January 2008, a Japanese newspaper said Thursday.