RIYADH (AFP) -- The Saudi health ministry on Sunday announced a new MERS death, raising to 55 the number of people killed by the coronavirus in the country with the most fatalities.A 37-year-old Saudi man died in Riyadh, the ministry said on its website.The World Health Organisation says it has been informed of 155 laboratory-confirmed MERS cases worldwide so far, including 64 deaths, most of them in Saudi Arabia.Experts are struggling to understand the disease, for which there is no vaccine.It

World News Nov. 24, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble by the Obama administration that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early Sunday in Geneva aimed at slowing Tehran's nuclear program, The Associated Press has learned.The discussions were kept hidden even from America's closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and that may explain h

World News Nov. 24, 2013

KABUL (AP) -- Afghanistan's president on Sunday refused to sign a security deal with the United States until next April's elections, ignoring a recommendation by an assembly of Afghan elders and leaders that he do so by the end of 2013.Hamid Karzai spoke after the 2,500-member national consultative council known as the Loya Jirga approved the deal and asked that the Bilateral Security Agreement be signed by year's end.Delegates had spent three days debating the deal seen as necessary to enable t

World News Nov. 24, 2013

BEIRUT (AFP) -- At least 160 rebel fighters and Syrian troops have been killed in two days of clashes in the Eastern Ghouta region just outside Damascus, a monitoring group said on Sunday.The latest fighting comes against the backdrop of regime advances in Damascus province that have cut rebel supply lines to the capital and its southern districts.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting began Friday when rebel forces, including jihadist fighters, launched attacks against checkp

World News Nov. 24, 2013

TEHRAN (AFP) -- A senior Iranian official has denied reports the Islamic republic has temporarily stopped enriching uranium to the 20 percent level, the state news agency IRNA said on Saturday."Iran's nuclear activities are unchanged and enriching uranium to 20 percent continues," IRNA quoted Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who heads the Iranian parliament's influential foreign policy committee, as saying.Iran's nuclear enrichment programme is at the core of its dispute with world powers, who suspect it ma

World News Oct. 26, 2013

BUSAN (Yonhap News) -- The remains of two South Korean victims who were killed in a Lao plane crash were brought home on Saturday, government and airport officials said.The French-made ATR-72 jet crashed into the Mekong River while attempting to land in bad weather on Oct. 16, killing all 49 passengers and crewmembers on board, including three South Koreans.The remains of Lee Jae-sang and Lee Kang-pil, whose bodies were identified days after the accident and then cremated, arrived at Gimhae Inte

Social Affairs Oct. 26, 2013

TEHRAN (AFP) -- The Iranian authorities on Saturday hanged 16 "rebels" following overnight clashes in which 14 border guards were killed on the frontier with Pakistan, a judicial official said."Sixteen rebels linked to groups hostile to the regime were hanged this morning in the prison of Zahedan in response to the death of border guards in Saravan," Mohammad Marzieh, the attorney general of Sistan-Baluchestan province, was quoted as saying by Fars news agency."We warned the rebel groups that an

World News Oct. 26, 2013

BEIJING (Yonhap News) -- South Korea plans to forge closer diplomatic cooperation with China to jointly counter reinforced Japanese moves to lay claims to Seoul's easternmost islets of Dokdo, the South Korean ambassador in Beijing said Saturday.Ambassador Kwon Young-se made the remarks at an annual parliamentary audit on the embassy as Japan is stepping up its global PR campaign for its assertions of sovereignty over Dokdo.China is also in an acute territorial dispute with Japan over a set of is

Foreign Affairs Oct. 26, 2013

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Skewed data and the economic setback of the partial government shutdown face Federal Reserve policymakers as they review their economic stimulus program on Tuesday and Wednesday.The broad consensus is that, in their first meeting with Janet Yellen as the official heir-apparent to chairman Ben Bernanke, the Federal Open Market Committee will opt again to wait for more evidence of economic strength.That will prolong the guessing game of when the "taper" of QE3, the Fed's $85 bi

World Business Oct. 26, 2013

BEIRUT (AFP) -- Kurdish fighters in Syria seized a crossing on the eastern border with Iraq from jihadist rebel forces during fierce clashes at dawn on Saturday, a monitoring group said.The Kurds "took control of the Al-Yaarubia border crossing with Iraq at dawn after clashes with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the Al-Nusra Front and other rebels," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.The clashes left fighters dead on both sides, said the Observatory, a Britain-based organisat

World News Oct. 26, 2013

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Boeing and Lockheed Martin said Friday they have teamed up to bid for a new $55 billion US Air Force bomber program aimed at replacing the aging bomber fleet.Boeing is acting as the prime contractor, and Lockheed is the main teammate in the bid to supply the Air Force's Long-Range Strike Bomber program, the companies said in a joint statement."Boeing and Lockheed Martin are bringing together the best of the two enterprises, and the rest of industry, in support of the Long-Ran

Defense Oct. 26, 2013

Twitter Inc. will make the case to potential investors in its initial public offering that it needs to keep spending to grow, and profit will come once it can reap the benefits of those investments. “The magnitude of our investments has limited our margins,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Gupta said in a video posted today to accompany the investor road show, which begins next week and will take Gupta and Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo from their San Francisco home to cities including New Yo

World Business Oct. 26, 2013

Apple Inc., Google Inc. and two other Silicon Valley companies must face a group lawsuit representing more than 64,000 technical employees claiming their incomes were held down by the companies’ agreements not to recruit one another’s workers. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, yesterday granted class-action certification. Koh’s ruling follows an April ruling rejecting the employees’ bid to proceed as a class -- partly because they failed to demonstrate that all or almost all

World Business Oct. 26, 2013