Friday prayers blast kills 40 in Pakistan

A deadly explosion has struck Friday prayers at a mosque in northwest Pakistan, leaving some 40 people killed, and many others wounded. "Around 40 people are killed…we have no idea as yet how many have been wounded," Reuters quoted government officials in Upper Dir. The explosion site in the northwestern area is close to Swat valley, where the Pakistani military forces have been engaged in a huge offensive against pro-Taliban militants since last month. The incident is the latest in a fresh spate of violence in the country with insurgents threatening to launch more attacks, already numbering to nine since the start of the military campaign to destroy militant havens in Swat. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Friday blast. Dir's bombing, which the police described as a suicide attack took more lives than last Wednesday's explosion in Lahore. The Lahore blast killed almost 30 people and injured 300 as it flattened a police building and ripped through an intelligence office in the eastern city. A day later, two simultaneous explosions in Qisa Khwani and Kabari Bazar in Peshawar followed by two separate ones outside the capital of the North Western Frontier Province city, leaving at least 14 people killed and more than 100 others injured. On March 27, a gunman blew himself up in a mosque packed with worshippers in Jamrud, also in northwest Pakistan, killing about 50 people.

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Sadr: Obama has subtle plans to control world

Iraq's senior cleric Moqtada al-Sadr says Barack Obama's speech indicates that the US wants to take a different avenue to bring the world under its control. "The honeyed political speech expressed only one aim -- America wants to take a different avenue to bring the world under its control" compared to the former US president George W. Bush's strategies, Sadr said in a statement released to journalists in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday. "Obama cannot change the American policies... which were and are still hostile to Islam, and that will continue," he added. The Iraqi cleric further pointed out that he would trust the US president "only after their (the US) withdrawal from our beloved Iraq and Muslim Afghanistan and their withdrawal of support for the Israeli enemy, and I hope for this from him." "Let him know that the resistance and the opposition will continue. We don't believe his words," he noted. The US president pledged to forge a "new beginning" for Islam and America in his speech in Cairo, vowing to purge years of "suspicion and discord." The American leader vowed to end mistrust, forge a state for Palestinians and defuse a nuclear showdown with the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Lebanon's Hezbollah said on Thursday that US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech had signaled no real shift in US policy in the Arab world.

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Barack admits US role in 1953 Iran coup

US President Barack Obama has admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran which overthrew the democratically elected government of premier Mohammad Mossadegh. "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said during his keynote speech to the Muslim world from Cairo University in the Egyptian capital. It is the first time a sitting US president has publicly admitted American involvement in the coup. The CIA, with British backing, masterminded the coup after Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry, run until then by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The oil company had been for many decades the largest single financial asset of the British government. For many Iranians, the coup demonstrated duplicity by the United States, which presented itself as a defender of freedom but did not hesitate to use underhand methods to get rid of a democratically elected government to suit its own economic and strategic interests (something the British were to note bitterly after Anglo-Iran's operations were taken over by by an American consortium in the immediate post-coup years). The 1953 Tehran skullduggery was the first time the CIA was directly involved in this type of action and its success fed into a long string of such involvements around the world, the democratically-elected government of president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala being the next victim in 1954. That same year, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned and decapitated in Egypt, with the Nasser regime being assisted by the guiding hand of Kerrmit 'Kim' Roosevelt, the same CIA operative who ran 'Operation Ajax', the code-name of the 1953 Iran coup. The meat of Obama's words on Iran-US ties frankly noted, "For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us. "Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against US troops and civilians. This history is well known." "Rather than remain trapped in the past, I've made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question now is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build." Shortly after Obama's inauguration on January 20, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded apologies for "crimes" he said the United States had committed against Iran, starting with the 1953 coup. On Thursday, ahead of Obama's speech, Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei had said, "Nations in the region hate the United States from the bottom of their hearts because they have seen violence, military intervention and discrimination (from that country)."

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Obama intel nominee involved in 'torture'

Barack Obama's pick for a top intelligence post at the Homeland Security Department has ties to the CIA's 'torture' program, says a congressional aide. The aide who spoke on condition of anonymity revealed the case, the Associated Press reported on Thursday. President Obama nominated Philip Mudd to be under secretary of intelligence and analysis at Homeland Security. His confirmation hearing is expected next week. Mudd was deputy director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis at the CIA during the administration of former president George W. Bush. He had knowledge of the agency's 'torturous' interrogation methods. The Senate will have to decide if indirect involvement or knowledge of the agency's interrogations, which included a method of simulated drowning called "waterboarding," is enough to disqualify a candidate. The congressional aide said that Mudd is likely to be questioned on whether the analysis branch pressured interrogators in the field to use harsher methods because they believed detainees were not telling the truth. In April, Obama released classified CIA memos that showed Bush administration lawyers authorized the use of techniques against enemy combatants. Later, Obama, who called them torture, banned the use of the techniques.

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Pakistan: Up to 700 militants killed

The Pakistani government says the country's military offensive against militancy claims the lives of up to 700 militants in northwestern Pakistan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters on Monday that 20 Pakistani soldiers were also killed in fighting against the militants. The minister added that the operations would continue to completely destroy the militants. The military has already deployed over 15-thousand troops to the conflict zones in the Buner and Dir districts as well as the Swat Valley. Earlier on Sunday, Pakistan's military -- backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery -- pounded militants hideouts, a Press TV correspondent reported. Islamabad said that the Sunday clashes killed about 200 militants in northwestern Pakistan's Swat Valley. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated 150,000 to 200,000 civilians had fled the scene of the fighting in the North-West Frontier Province. A UN spokesman warned that "massive displacement" of civilians is likely with government forces using helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery.

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