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North Korea test-fired another short-range missile off its east coast Friday and said it would take "self-defence measures" if the UN Security Council punished it for this week's nuclear test. South Korea said an increasingly aggressive North may be preparing fresh provocations after Chinese fishing boats were spotted leaving a disputed sea border on the west coast. A Pentagon spokesman said there had been no sign of stepped-up North Korean military activity on the ground. But a U.S. defence official said satellite imagery showed "above-average activity" in the past 24 hours at a site in North Korea that has previously been used to test-fire long range missiles.

An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed more than 20 people in volatile southeastern Iran, two weeks before a presidential election. Washington denied the allegation. Jalal Sayyah of the governor's office in Sistan-Baluchestan province said three people had been arrested in connection with the blast on Thursday in a crowded Shia mosque in the city of Zahedan in a region where many of Iran's minority Sunnis live. A Sunni opposition group named Jundollah (God's soldiers), which Iran says is backed by the U.S., said it was behind the bombing, according to Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television. Elsewhere in the city, gunmen attacked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election campaign centre. State-run IRNA news agency said gunmen on motorbikes opened fire at the centre, wounding three people, including a child.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he will name a White House-level czar to co-ordinate government efforts to fight cyber-crime, saying such acts have become epidemic and even touched his presidential campaign. "Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with it", Obama said during a speech at the White House in which he discussed threats to the country's digital infrastructure from organized crime, industrial spies and international espionage. Obama said he would name an official to co-ordinate cyber-security policies across the government and organize a response to any major attack.

A former minister on Friday became the 13th British lawmaker to announce he would stand down at the next general election after revelations about expenses. Elliot Morley, who claimed nearly $30,000 to cover mortgage payments even though the loan had already been paid off, made the announcement after meeting Labour party officials. After emerging from the meeting in this Scunthorpe constituency, Morley said he was standing down but insisted he had made a "genuine mistake" and said he believed he would be cleared of any wrongdoing: "The last two weeks have been traumatic for me and I have to think of my family", he said.

Canada accused Sri Lankan police of failing to guard the Canadian embassy in Colombo when it was targeted by stone-throwing protesters, and demanded a fully enquiry. "Canada has expressed concern about the inadequate response by the Sri Lankan police to protect the Canadian High Commission and its staff in accordance with Sri Lanka's international obligations", the embassy said in a statement. Dozens of protesters pelted the mission building with stones on Wednesday and spray-painted the entrance to the diplomatic compound. The protesters accused Canada of being sympathetic to the Tamil Tiger rebels, who were wiped out in a final battle earlier this month.

Pakistan stepped up its offensive against the Taliban on Friday, slapping a $600,000 price on the head of a rebel and claiming to have captured the militant stronghold of Peochar village. The government hopes the bounty will help it get - dead or alive - Maulana Fazlullah, a hardline Taliban cleric and commander who master-minded a two-year uprising in the northwest Swat Valley to enforce sharia law. Fazlullah led thousands of supporters in a brutal campaign that beheaded opponents, burned scores of schools and fought against government troops since November 2007.

The Russian navy said Friday that one of its anti-submarine ships fired artillery at a village by mistake, state RIA news agency reported. The navy said no one had been injured when a small anti-submarine ship on Thursday opened fire on a village in the Byvorg region of St.Petersburg. "On the 28 May, a small anti-submarine ship from the Baltic fleet was working on a host of exercises in the gulf of Finland including artillery fire at aerial targets", RIA quoted a navy spokesman as saying. "No one was injured."

A small newspaper in northwest Pennsylvania apologized Friday for running a classified advertisement that called implicitly for the assassination of U.S. President Barack Obama. The Warren Times Observer, with a circulation of about 11,000 ran the ad in Thursday's paper and pulled it as soon as it was discovered by a manager, publisher John Elchert said. The ad read: "May Obama follow in the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy", Elchert said.

Pictures of rotting lungs, miscarried fetuses and bleeding brains should be put on all tobacco packages because they are effective in preventing tobacco use, the World Health organization said Friday. Graphic warnings have been put on cigarette packs in Canada, Singapore and Thailand. Studies have indicated that they work, according to the UN health agency, which launched its own poster campaign for World No Tobacco Day on May 31. The WHO said nine out of 10 people in the world have no access to such warnings.

Labels: World News

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 30, 2009