Afghans killed in anti-NATO protests

In addition to the four deaths, five others are wounded during the demonstration3 NATO service members are killed in separate incidents1,680 NATO troops have died in Afghanistan since 2001, at least 1,577 of them American

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Four people were shot dead Friday in an anti-NATO demonstration in southern Afghanistan during an exchange of gunfire that took place amid a protest over civilian casualties, police said.

The violence erupted in Qalat -- the provincial capital of the country's southern border province of Zabul -- and left three civilians and one police officer dead, according to the provincial police chief, Abdul Elham.

Five others were injured in the firefight, he said.

Elham did not offer details regarding the previous civilian casualties, which allegedly occurred the night before, and it's not clear how Friday's protest turned deadly.

NATO officials acknowledged troops took part with Afghan security forces in a raid targeting Taliban insurgents that spanned Thursday night into Friday morning.

The insurgents are believed to have escaped through a municipal irrigation channel, according to International Security Assistance Force spokesman Capt. Pietro D'Angelo.

He said that NATO is not aware of any civilian casualties that resulted from the raid, but local officials say that the following morning hundreds took to the streets in protest.

Meanwhile, NATO reported that three service members were killed in separate incidents in southern Afghanistan. No details about their deaths were reported.

As of Friday, at least 1,577 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, according to Defense Department figures. The total number of NATO troops killed since the war began is 1,680.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read more »

Major oil pipeline explodes in Iran

NEW: Firefighters work throughout the day to contain the blaze, state media saysThe blast and fire are under investigationIran is the world's fourth largest oil producer

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- One of the longest oil pipelines in Iran exploded Friday and burned for 10 hours before firefighters were able to extinguish it, Iranian media reported.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the blast in the western town of Qale Naar, Iran's state-run Press TV reported.

Hundreds of firefighters responded at the scene, working through the day to contain the blaze.

"The production of oil in the southern oil fields is still continuing at full capacity and the output of the oil wells is transferred to other pipelines," said Hormoz Ghalavand, executive director of the National Iranian South Oil Company.

Ghalavand said on the national oil company's website that 40 thousand barrels per day pass through the pipeline.

Flames leaped as high as 40 meters (131 feet) and the fire covered an area of 300 square meters (3,229 square feet).

Iran is the world's fourth largest oil producer.CNN's Mitra Mobasherat and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed to this report.

Read more »

Activists: 15 dead in Syria's Hama

Death toll rises in Hama, SyriaNEW: Tribal leaders in northeastern city of Deir Ezzor prepare for battleSyrian state TV airs video of HamaDemonstrations rage in Homs and DamascusHuman rights experts cite "systematic use of excessive force"

(CNN) -- Violence raged in the Syrian city of Hama as approximately a dozen people died and anti-government protests unfolded across the restive country.

Hama endured steady shelling and bombing Friday morning while the government's military offensive continued in full swing, said a resident whom CNN has not identified for his safety. The man said casualties had occurred, but couldn't say how many.

Elsewhere, opposition members said thousands kicked off marches across the country after Muslim prayers, as they have every Friday for weeks, demanding political reforms or the fall of the regime and railing against the violent security crackdown directed at peaceful protesters.

Each Friday, nationwide protests have had a theme. This week's is "God is With Us."

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an activist group, reported 15 deaths, 11 in the Damascus suburbs of Arbeen, Dumair, and Mouadamyeh, three in the western city of Homs, and one in the southern city of Daraa.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, another activist group, reported 11 deaths and many injuries as security forces fired on demonstrators in Homs and around Damascus. It said tanks were in the northeastern city of Deir Ezzor.

There, tribal men were preparing for an assault by the military, according to a video posted on YouTube. The video shows a man telling tribal leaders that he had received information that the army would conduct an operation and asking the men to prepare.

Another man says that people in other areas have tried to resist peacefully, but without success. He says that jihad must be the answer if peaceful resistance does not succeed in effecting change. He adds that jihad would not be a waste of Muslim blood -- but a means of protecting it.

A third man says that more than five months of efforts to negotiate with the regime have proved fruitless, and that the regime is murderous.

At that point, a man in the background asked the men to stop filming. CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the video.

More than 2,000 people, the vast majority of them protesters, have died since anti-government demonstrations erupted nearly five months ago, the observatory said. Activists blame the deaths of demonstrators on security forces, but the Syrian government has consistently attributed the violence to "armed groups."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said President Bashar al-Assad has lost legitimacy as a leader and noted the mounting death toll.

"Sometimes you lose sight of the incredible tragedy unfolding on the streets by just looking at the numbers which are so numbing, but the shooting death of a 1-year-old recently by the Syrian regime's tanks and troops is a very stark example of what is going on," she told reporters Thursday.

"We think, to date, the government is responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 people of all ages."

Hama, a center of the country's anti-government movement, has been hit particularly hard in recent days by clashes and a military offensive.

Hama was the site of the bloody 1982 crackdown by the Alawite-dominated government against a Muslim Brotherhood uprising. Memories of that siege, carried out by the late President Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father, have reverberated across the country and in the city.

Syria state TV, which aired video of a tank and rubble on deserted Hama streets Friday, reported that the army carried out an operation "to restore the peace of mind to the families" of Hama.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency has said "armed terrorist groups perpetrated acts of sabotage and killing through setting up barricades, braking off roads, attacking and burning police stations using different kinds of weapons."

The resident who spoke to CNN said he fled his Hama neighborhood because of the intensity of the shelling and gunfire. With sounds of gunfire and blasts audible in the background, he said, "From this morning, shelling and bombing haven't stopped for three hours."

"They shoot right and left, right and left. We can't go anywhere. ... There are snipers all around."

The Hama resident, who spoke via satellite phone, said electricity, water, mobile, landlines, and Internet lines had been cut.

"Tanks have entered the city. I know some injured people in the hospital -- three injured people in the hospital that have passed away because the electricity has been cut. Children, babies have passed away."

Compounding the devastation is the mounting humanitarian emergency, the resident said, citing a lack of electricity and rotting food.

"So now we don't have food to eat," he said. "We just are fasting."

On Thursday, at least 109 people died in and around Hama, said Avaaz, a global activist group, citing a medical source. Another activist network, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, said 30 people were killed Wednesday in Hama.

CNN is unable to independently confirm death tolls or events in Syria, which has restricted access to the country by international journalists, including CNN's.CNN's Arwa Damon, Nada Husseini, Kamal Ghattas, Salma Abdelaziz, Tracy Doueiry and Jack Maddox contributed to this report

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read more »

Reports: Ukraine ex-PM in custody

Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko talks to press in front of a court building in Kiev before being arrested.NEW: Russia says gas contracts with Ukraine were legalTymoshenko is accused of abuse of power in negotiating gas contractsShe says the charges are politically motivatedSupporters take to the streets after judge agrees with motion for her arrest

Moscow (CNN) -- Dozens of angry supporters of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko took to the streets in the country's capital Kiev following a court decision to take her into custody on Friday, Ukrainian media reported.

Judge Rodion Kireyev, presiding in the case of former Ukrainian prime minister in Kiev's Pechersky Court, supported the prosecution's motion for her arrest based on what he described as "systemic abuses by the defendant" and her "obstruction of the interrogation of witnesses," the national UNIAN newswire reported.

Tymoshenko, a prominent character of the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution and leader of the opposition party Batkivshchyna ("Fatherland"), is facing charges brought against her by the country's current government for her "abuse of power and unilateral decisions" made at a time when she was concluding natural gas supply and transportation contracts with Russia as the country's prime minister in January 2009.

In April, the Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office opened a criminal case charging Tymoshenko with signing overpriced gas deals with Gazprom that inflicted damages to the country of more than 1.5 billion hryvnas (almost $190 million at the current exchange rate) and which Tymoshenko had allegedly no right to sign. She could face up to several years in prison if found guilty.

She was banned from travel until Friday's court decision to place her in a detention facility.

Tymoshenko has repeatedly brushed off all charges against her as political, calling the trial a "farce" and naming the judge a "stooge of (President) Yanukovych's administration" appointed to "fabricate" the case.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the nation's 2009 natural gas agreements with Ukraine were legal.

"We follow the principle that (Yulia) Tymoshenko's trial must be fair and unbiased and meet all of the requirements of Ukrainian legislation, with the possibility of defense and compliance with the fundamental humanitarian standards and rules," according to a ministry statement.

Tymoshenko narrowly lost to Viktor Yanukovych in a presidential election in February 2010, and is now his fiercest opponent.

The trial against her is scheduled to resume on Monday.

Read more »

S&P rethinks downgrade plan, source says

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 8888.
A trader working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the opening bell on August 5, 2011.G7 finance ministers may meet "in a few days," Berlusconi saysMarkets are demanding action, not more words, investment manager saysObama talks with German, French leadersEuropean stock indices all finish down; the Dow fluctuates wildly

(CNN) -- The Standard & Poor's rating agency served the Obama administration with notice Friday afternoon that it planned to downgrade the U.S. government's AAA credit rating but was reconsidering after the administration challenged its analysis, an administration official said.

The source, a senior official involved in the discussions, said the agency was off by "trillions" in its economic model and was revising its analysis.

S&P, which had not made public its ruling, did not return repeated calls for comment.

The official described the talks as a "moving target" and said "it's clear some people there still want to go forward" and downgrade U.S. debt.

Rumors had swirled for most of Friday that S&P was preparing to make such a move. But even several hours after the market close, official notice had not materialized.

Rating agencies -- S&P, Moody's and Fitch -- analyze risk and give debt a "grade" that is supposed to reflect the borrower's ability to repay its loans.

The safest bets are stamped AAA. That's where U.S. debt has stood for years. Moody's first assigned the United States a AAA rating in 1917.

The news broke shortly after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced in Rome that finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations may meet "in a few days" to discuss the sagging world economy.

At a hastily arranged news conference, Berlusconi -- who did not name a date for the meeting -- said he and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had discussed the matter earlier in the day.

"The answers to the crisis must be coordinated at an international level," Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti said. He added that he had spoken with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and was planning to speak later in the day with President Barack Obama.

Tremonti predicted that his country's budget will be balanced in 2013, a year earlier than previously planned, and a constitutional amendment will ensure that it remains balanced.

The G7 members are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

The announcement came on a day when financial anxiety gripped the globe. Stock markets worldwide saw intense volatility amid worries of a widening debt crisis in Europe and a stalled economic recovery in the United States.

Stock market values fell across Asia and Europe on Friday. U.S. markets were dramatically up and down a day after having their worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

Concerns about debt issues in Europe appeared to battle with optimism that a positive U.S. jobs report indicated that the American economy is not headed for a new recession, the dreaded "double-dip."

"The crisis in Europe is quickly becoming on par with the financial crisis of 2008," David Levy, portfolio manager at Kenjol Capital Management, told CNN Money. "The jobs report shows that things aren't getting much worse in the U.S., but the focus is clearly on Europe at this point."

Investors will be looking for a strong reaction over the weekend and into next week, said Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of the global investment firm Pimco.

"Words aren't enough," he said. "The markets now are saying, 'We've heard it all before. We want to see action.' "

The Dow Jones index spiked 170 points in early trading on a better-than-expected jobs report, but then dropped to be off by 200 points in mid-morning trading. It closed Friday up 60.93 points (0.54%). The Nasdaq closed down 23.98 points (0.94%).

In London, the FTSE 100 closed off 146 points, or 2.7%, to close the week down nearly 10%. Germany's DAX fell 2.78% to finish the week down nearly 13%. And the French CAC 40 declined 1.26% to finish the week off 10.73%.

"We are going to get through this," Obama said at the Washington Navy Yard, where he announced a jobs program for veterans. "Things will get better. And we're going to get there together."

Obama, who spoke Friday afternoon with France's Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the crisis, noted that July marked the 17th consecutive month of private-sector job growth in the U.S. but said much more work needs to be done.

Friday's stock slide started in Asia, where leaders tried to contain the damage. The South Korean Finance Ministry held an emergency meeting. Japanese authorities sought to reassure nervous investors, while China's foreign minister expressed confidence that other world economies would weather the storm.

In Europe, leaders sought to dampen investors' fears that debt crises hobbling Greece, Ireland and Portugal could take a toll on larger economies such as Italy and Spain.

Merkel and Sarkozy planned to interrupt their vacations to speak by phone about the economic unease, a German government spokesman said. Sarkozy was to speak separately with Spanish leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the French newspaper Le Monde reported.

In Belgium, EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn tried to calm the swirl of rumors surrounding stability in the eurozone, the 17-country region that uses the euro as a common currency. He said he does not believe Italy and Spain will need bailing out.

Concern about the debt held by the governments of Italy and Spain -- which has pushed up their costs of borrowing -- was "incomprehensible," he said.

"The market unrest witnessed in the last few days is simply not justified on the grounds of economic fundamentals," Rehn said, having broken off his holidays to return to Brussels. "It is not justified for Italy. It is not justified for Spain."

He insisted that needed reforms will be undertaken, following the eurozone nations' agreement of July 21, adding that it would take weeks, rather than months, for the member states to ratify them.

Seeking to reassure the markets, he said, "The political will to defend the euro should not be underestimated."

He said measures should be in place next month to improve the new European Financial Stability Facility, a euro rescue fund with 440 billion euros ($625 billion).

Rehn's remarks followed a statement made Thursday by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that was widely seen as fueling concerns over Europe's ability to limit the debt crisis to smaller members like Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

"We are no longer managing a crisis just in the euro area periphery," Barroso said, as he urged European leaders to act quickly to carry out reforms. "Euro area financial stability must be safeguarded."

Heightening concerns in Europe, a monthly economic bulletin released Friday from Banco de Espana -- the Bank of Spain -- showed that the Spanish economy slowed through the second quarter on its road to a "moderate recovery." Gross domestic product grew 0.2% quarter-over-quarter, or 0.7% year-over-year.

Asian stock markets, which closed before the U.S. jobs announcement, were down across the board Friday.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei index closed down 3.72%. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong fell more than 4%, and the Shanghai Composite was off less than 2%.

Asian leaders sought to reassure jittery markets that they are on the case.

China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, expressed confidence in European economies, saying the country welcomed initiatives taken by European Union leaders following their July summit on the debt crisis.

In South Korea, the finance ministry called an emergency meeting to discuss concerns about a growing global economic crisis.

"We believe that the recent market instability stemmed from concerns over a double-dip recession in the U.S. and spreading anxiety over the fiscal crisis in Europe," the semi-official Yonhap News Agency quoted the ministry as saying in a statement.

"The government will closely monitor financial market situations in cooperation with related agencies and take proactive actions to ease market anxiety."

In Japan, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda also said he will continue to monitor markets as his country watches to see if the ministry's efforts on Thursday to bring down the value of the yen will succeed.

Uncertainty over the economic situation in the United States and Europe also dented Latin American confidence.

Mexico's stock market, the BMV, fell 3.37% Thursday, its biggest drop since February 2009 and the fourth consecutive day of declines, but rose 1.13% on Friday, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.

In the United States, the Dow tumbled 512 points Thursday, its ninth-deepest point drop ever.

U.S. markets already had been sharply lower on widespread worries, including the weak job market.

But the selling gained momentum as Japanese and European policymakers stepped in with dramatic measures to shore up their financial markets. All three major indexes tumbled more than 4% Thursday and erased all their gains for the year.

CNN's Ben Brumfield, Laura Smith-Spark, Mariano Castillo, Mike Pearson and Kendra Petersen contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Read more »