TIMES OF INDIA - Kenya's Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai dies, Sep 26, 2011

"It is with great sadness that the family of professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25th September 2011 at the Nairobi hospital after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer," the Green Belt Movement said in a statement.

NAIROBI: Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her environmental work, has died of cancer, the campaigning movement she founded announced on Monday.

"It is with great sadness that the family of professor Wangari Maathai announces her passing away on 25th September 2011 at the Nairobi hospital after a prolonged and bravely borne struggle with cancer," the Green Belt Movement said in a statement.

Born in 1940, Maathai became a key figure in Kenya since founding the movement in 1977, staunchly campaigning for environmental conservation and good governance.

Since its founding, her organisation has planted some 40 million trees across Africa. In the 1970s, she also headed the Kenya Red Cross.

NZ HERALD News - It's Gillard v footy chiefs over pokie machine law, Sep 26, 2011

EXPAND

Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo / Greg Bowker

With the dice already loaded against her, Prime Minister Julia Gillard now faces a political deck stacked by the nation's biggest football codes.

NRL and AFL bosses have banded together to fight plans to set limits on poker machines to cut problem gambling that is estimated to cost Australia at least A$4.7 billion ($5.6 billion) a year and affect the lives of five million people.

With grand final week raising passions, code chiefs are calling the proposal to pre-programme cash limits on club pokies a "footy tax" and are preparing to unleash a media blitz against it.

Gillard has no option but to face them down.

She agreed to push the limits into law as part of the deal to win her minority Government the support of Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie, a committed anti-pokie campaigner.

Under the deal Gillard must have legislation in place by next May's budget, and a timetable for the law's introduction by 2014.

If she fails, Wilkie will withdraw his support for Labor and possibly precipitate the Government's final death spiral.

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REUTERS World News - Libyan forces close on Gaddafi loyalists in Sirte | Reuters, Sep 26, 2011

1 of 16. Anti-Gaddafi fighters return fire at pro-Gaddafi forces, around 8 km (5 miles) east of Sirte, September 26, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Asmaa Waguih

By Alexander Dziadosz and Sherine El Madany

SIRTE | Mon Sep 26, 2011 1:21pm EDT

(Reuters) - Libyan provisional government forces backed by NATO warplanes raced through the eastern outskirts of Sirte on Monday, closing in on Muammar Gaddafi loyalists holed up in one of the last two bastions of the deposed leader.

Thick, black smoke billowed into the air as National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters battled loyalist troops at a roundabout about 2 km (1.2 mile) from the center of Gaddafi's home town, Reuters journalists said.

The thud of large explosions could be heard as NATO aircraft roared overhead. NTC fighters said the jets were striking the positions of Gaddafi loyalists.

The advance came two days after anti-Gaddafi fighters west of Sirte drove to within a few hundred meters of its center before pulling back on Sunday to make way for NATO strikes.

On the western edges of Sirte on Monday, NTC fighters and Gaddafi loyalists traded heavy machine gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and artillery rounds.

Snipers loyal to Gaddafi could be seen on building rooftops. NATO aircraft flew overhead.

NEWS CN- War-weary Afghans plead for peace amid series of deadly attacks, Sep 26, 2011

An Afghan policeman checks a man near a security checkpoint in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, Sept. 26, 2011. Security forces in Kabul has been on high alert after series of attacks over the past few weeks including a suicide attack which killed former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. (Xinhua/Omid)

by Farid Behbud, Zhang Jianhua

KABUL, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- Series of deadly attacks, particularly a brutal suicide offensive on former Afghan president and peace body chief Burhanudin Rabbani, rocked parts of the country including the capital city of Kabul over the past couple of months and prompted the war-weary Afghans to pray for durable peace in their country.

"Yet again there was an attack in Kabul just last night, and this time also in the fortified location, we are tired of witnessing such incidents that always cause horror and dread among Kabulis," a Kabul resident Liyakat Khan told Xinhua on Monday, referring a gun battle Sunday night in Ariana Hotel near the Afghan presidential palace, NATO's headquarters and U.S. embassy in Kabul that left a U.S. citizen dead.

A security source who declined to be identified said that a U.S. -run intelligence agency located in Ariana Hotel opposite to the U. S. embassy building was the scene of gun shots Sunday night which left one person dead and injured two others.

Several Afghan cities including the capital city Kabul have experienced a string of deadly suicide attacks and gun battles since the beginning of this year, fading common citizens' hope for having viable peace.

The latest violent attack was a suicide attack against former Afghan President Burhanudin Rabbani, who also served as the Chairman of Afghan High Peace Council, a 70-member government- backed peace body which was set up by President Hamid Karzai on October 2010 to broker peace with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups.

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THE GUARDIAN - European debt crisis: As it happened, Sep 26, 2011

Europe's leaders are under pressure to calm the financial markets and avoid triggering another recession. Photograph: David Crossland/Alamy

7.45am: Six weeks to solve the crisis. That was George Osborne's stark warning last Friday, after world stock markets had been battered by fears that the world is heading for a new recession.

CBS News - Wreck of WWII ship with $210M in silver found, Sep 26, 2011

A ladder leading up onto the forecastle deck of the SS Gairsoppa shipwreck, approximately 4,700 meters beneath the North Atlantic. One of the cargo holds of the ship, sunk in 1941, can be seen at left. (Odyssey Marine Exploration)

(CBS News)

TAMPA, Fla. - The wreck of a British cargo ship carrying 7 million ounces of silver that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941 has been identified.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., announced Monday that it had located and verified the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa approximately 300 miles west of the Irish coast. The ship lies approximately 3 miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic.

The Gairsoppa, a 412-foot steel-hulled cargo ship, was in transit from Calcutta to London on February 17, 1941 with 85 people on board when it strayed from a convoy. A German submarine attacked, sinking the ship. Lifeboats were launched, but only the second officer, who washed ashore, survived.

The ship's manifest included 2,600 tons of pig iron, and 1,765 tons of tea.

More impressive was the cargo of silver ingots being carried, which was valued then at 600,000 pounds. At today's prices the silver would be valued at about 150 million pounds, or more than $210 million.

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CNN News - Freed hikers recount 2 years of 'lies and false hope', Sep 26, 2011

Freed hikers: Captive because of America

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Bauer and Fattal blast Iran's "brutality" after returning to the United States
• NEW: Their espionage trial was a "total sham," Bauer says
• NEW: Shourd says the screams of prisoners "will always be with me"
• The two hikers arrived in the U.S. after their release Wednesday

New York (CNN) -- Safely back on American soil, freed Americans Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer on Sunday recounted their two years in "a world of lies and false hope" behind the walls of an Iranian prison.

Wearing green shirts and big smiles, Bauer and Fattal landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport four days after their release by Iranian authorities. In a news conference following their arrival, they described long days held in isolation, the hours punctuated by the screams of other inmates, and their "total sham" of a trial.

"Releasing us is a good gesture, and no positive step should go unnoticed," Fattal told reporters Sunday afternoon. "We applaud the Iranian authorities for finally making the right decision regarding our case. But we want to be clear that they do not deserve undue credit for ending what they had no right and no justification to start in the first place."

Fattal, Bauer and Bauer's now-fiancee, Sarah Shourd, were arrested after straying across the unmarked border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran in July 2009. Shourd was released in 2010, but Bauer and Fattal were freed only Wednesday, after 781 days in captivity and a trial for espionage that Bauer said was based on "ridiculous lies."

Freed hikers speak out in New York

Freed American Hikers thank Oman

"Sarah, Josh and I have experienced a taste of the Iranian regime's brutality. We have been held in almost total isolation from the world and everything we love, stripped of our rights and freedom," Bauer said.

He urged Iran to release all political prisoners immediately, telling reporters, "There are people in Iran who have been imprisoned for years for simply attending a protest, for writing a pro-democracy blog or for worshiping an unpopular faith."

But he also criticized the treatment of prisoners held in U.S. facilities, such as the military's prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

email: info@als-alexander.org or interalex2@gmail.com

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LATEST World News, Sep 26, 2011

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