WASHINGTON, Sept 5: Democrats wooed the middle class with Michelle Obama calling the first family a testament to the American dream as others attacked President Barack Obama’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney for being out of touch.

“In the end, for Barack, these issues aren’t political- they’re personal,” said the First Lady making an impassioned case for...

MOSCOW, Sept 5: Lebanon’s Shia group Hezbollah has no chemical weapons, but enough missiles to inflict a considerable damage on Israel in case of an assault, the group’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said.

“We have no chemical weapons and we do not need it. But we are capable of hitting Israel targets. Israelis understand this and take it into account,” Nasr...

CARACAS, Sept 5: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez acknowledged on Tuesday that he thought about abandoning public life after discovering he had cancer in June 2011, for which he had to be operated three times.

“At a certain moment I began to think that, yes, that I’d have to leave the political arena, but thank God here I am all recovered,” Chavez, 58, said in an inter...

BEIJING, Sept 5: Expectations from the visit of Defence Minister Liang Guanglie to India are running high, said a daily that claimed “outsiders with ulterior motives dislike” that the Chinese military has forged closer ties with other militaries in the region.

An editorial in the China Daily on Wednesday said: “General Liang’s current visit to India is the first ...

DAMASCUS, Sept 5: Armed men abducted and “brutally killed” two Syrian policemen guarding the residence of the Lebanese ambassador to Damascus, according to Lebanese newspaper As Safir. The police officers guarding Michel al-Khoury’s residence were killed last week. The envoy’s residence is located in Yaafor suburb of Damascus. Many diplomats have vacated the area amid sanct...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5: Indicating the bipartisan support that US-India ties enjoy, Democrats have now vowed to “continue to invest in a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability to serve as a regional economic anchor” as they formally approved President Barack Obama’s second run for the White House.

Reaffirmation of the ties with India came in the ...

DAMASCUS, Sept 5: Around 5,000 people died in Syria’s civil war in August, making it the deadliest month since violence started 18 months ago, according to opposition activist groups. The groups said more than 26,000 people have died during the conflict. The Unicef put the toll for last week alone at 1,600. Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said around 5,440 pe...

ROME, Sept 5: Italy would be ready to send military forces to Syria if President Bashar al-Assad is toppled, Italian Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola has said.  “Italy has the ability to do it,” Di Paola said in an interview to Rai state television. “I think that the international community would have to contribute,” he said, stressing that he was not endorsing inte...

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 5: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on all outside parties, especially countries in the Middle East, “to do all they can” to help end the Syrian conflict, Xinhua reported. Ban made the appeal in an address to the UN General Assembly, which met on Tuesday to discuss the prolonged crisis that has plagued Syria since March 2011. “The continuing milita...

ISLAMABAD, Sept 5: There is “no clear state policy in sight” on terrorism, said a leading Pakistani daily that called upon the media to form a narrative that is independent of the state’s and is based on factual reporting. An editorial in the Dawn on Wednesday said that the extent to which extremist groups have managed to proliferate in Pakistan and the impunity with which they o...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5: To help bring the best, most efficient and cost effective healthcare solutions to India, the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), a powerful body with over 65,000 members, will organize a health summit in Kochi next January.

Aimed at advancing the accessibility, affordability and the quality of world-class healthcare, the January 1-3 Indo-US Gl...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 5: Beverage giant AmBev was ordered by a Brazilian court to pay damages to one of its salespeople who was forced by a superior to take part in meetings and parties where prostitutes were present.

The Superior Labour Court ruled that the firm must pay an indemnity of 50,000 reais ($25,000) to the employee who accused a manager of hiring prostitutes to motivate salesm...

MOSCOW, Sept 5: A man in Russia’s Siberia region got 7,500 rubles ($230) in compensation for “moral damage” that he had suffered during a rush hour train ride, RIA Novosti reported.

The passenger in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk filed a lawsuit in February, saying that he bought a train ticket on October 31, 2010 but had to spend more than two hours in the train&rsq...

MOSCOW, Sept 5: Iran will be on its own with its first nuclear power plant after Russia officially hands Bushehr over at the end of December, a Russian project manager said.

The station began operating at full capacity on August 31 as the reactor of Bushehr’s Unit 1 was brought up to 100 per cent of its projected capacity.

“We believe that the unit will be transferre...

BERLIN, Sept 5: Germany’s largest air carrier Lufthansa had to cancel about 300 flights on Tuesday as its flight attendants went on strike in the country’s major airports, the company said.

The strike took place in Berlin’s Tegel airport, in Frankfurt and in Munich.

The strategy was intended to paralyze air traffic in Germany for more than 12 hours. Flight dela...

TOKYO, Sept 5: The Japanese government is in talks to buy the disputed Diaoyu Islands from a family that claims to own them, media reports said on Wednesday.

The central government has reached an agreement to pay 2.05 billion yen ($26.15 million) for the purchase of part of the chain of the islands in the East China Sea, reported Xinhua.

Kyodo reported that the government and th...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5: Exposure to perfluoro-octanoic acid (PFOA), a man-made chemical used in the manufacture of lubricants, polishes, paper and textile coatings and food packaging, may be linked with heart disease and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). PAD is a disease in which plaque builds up in the arteries that carry blood to your head, organs, and limbs. Plaque is made up of fat, cholesterol, ...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5: Taking vitamin D supplements to compensate for its deficiency did not lower LDL or bad cholesterol levels – not at least in the short term, suggests new research. Researchers from The Rockefeller University, New York, studied 151 people with vitamin D deficiency who received either a mega-dose (50,000 internationals units) of vitamin D3 or placebo (substance containing ze...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5: Obese people can be just as healthy and fit as their slimmer counterparts, with no greater risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer, says the largest study so far on the subject. The findings show a subset of obese people who are metabolically healthy - they don’t suffer from conditions such as insulin resistance, diabetes and high cholesterol or ...

BOGOTA, Sept 5: A woman was slain and her body burned after being accused of casting spells against other women in the northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia. The victim was Maria Verenice Martinez, 47, who was struck on the head with a blunt object and then set afire in the municipality of Santa Barbara. Some of the victim’s neighbours told the media that the woman had her clothes rip...

Washington, Sept 5: Can describing your feelings when you are particularly stressed make you less anxious? A new study suggests it may very well be so. A new psychology study by the University of California-Los Angeles suggests that labelling your emotions at the moment you are confronting what you fear can indeed have the effect of reducing anxiety. The psychologists asked 88 people with a fear o...

MOSCOW, Sept 5: A museum has been built in Moscow to commemorate Russia’s victory in the 1812 Patriotic War against Napoleon, RIA Novosti reported. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday attended a ceremony to open the museum, built as part of Russia’s celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of its victory. The museum was due to open around 1912 to coincide with the 100th...