Eurasia Press & News

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Taliban militants beheaded seven policemen Friday after overrunning their checkpoints in southern Afghanistan, officials said, while in a separate clash, an Australian soldier and three civilians were killed.

Lebanon’s outgoing President Emile Lahoud asked the army to take control of the country’s security on Friday, after rival leaders failed to agree on his successor, creating a vacuum in the presidency from midnight.

Lebanon’s parliament failed on Friday to grasp its last chance to elect a head of state before pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud leaves office at midnight, creating a vacuum that many fear could lead to violence.

Fear of violence looms over Lebanon after parliament failed to elect a new head of state on Friday, but analysts say blood will not flow just yet since rival political groups have too much to lose.

Prosecutors charged Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak on Friday with attempting to embezzle $43 million in budget funds, his lawyers said.

The portrait of Hussein Saleh al-Me’ari holding a slim iron key and the legend “We will return” hangs on a wall with peeling paint in a tiny room at the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the man President Pervez Musharraf deposed, is set to return to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia within days, aides said on Friday.

A bomb hidden in a box of birds killed 13 people and wounded 57 at a popular pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, police and witnesses said, describing the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in two months.

Iraq is facing a health “catastrophe” in the capital Baghdad, with reports of cholera rising sharply over the past weeks to more than 80 new cases, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

About 60 percent of the foreign militants fighting in Iraq have come from U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Libya, unidentified U.S. military officials said in a newspaper report on Thursday.