Pre-election violence kills 7 in Afghan capital

The Afghan capital, Kabul, came under attack Tuesday, two days before national elections. The violence included a rocket attack that damaged the presidential palace and a deadly suicide strike. The suicide bombing targeted a coalition military convoy on Jalalabad Road, a major thoroughfare in Kabul.

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Violence, graft overshadow Afghan elections

Welcome to democracy, Afghan style. An incumbent president and 38 challengers, including two women, are vying for the votes of 17 million registered Afghans against a backdrop of war, graft, poverty and illiteracy. More than 3,000 donkeys, 3,000 cars and three helicopters will traverse harsh terrain to carry voting materials to remote polling stations

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Box Office Weekend: District 9 Shows Prawn Power

Sometimes bad breaks can bring great fortune. A few years ago, Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings movies, planned a big-screen version of the Halo video-game universe and tapped Neill Blomkamp to direct it. When that project collapsed after a few months, Jackson proposed that Blomkamp turn his science-fiction short Alive in Joburg into his first feature film

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China vs. Rio Tinto Execs: Why Confrontation Isn’t Over

When the Chinese government announced earlier this week the formal arrest of four Shanghai-based executives of global mining giant Rio Tinto — one Australian citizen and three Chinese nationals — it seemed a deliberate ratcheting down of a case that had stunned foreign investors in the country. After all, Beijing had effectively dropped the case’s most ominous element: the charge that Rio’s Stern Hu and his three colleagues had allegedly stolen “state secrets,” in part by bribing executives of Chinese steel companies, who are Rio’s largest buyers of iron ore. Under a state-secrets charge, the four men faced the prospect of a secret trial and the possibility of lifetime sentences

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Vulture Restaurants: Serving Up Clean Carcasses, Free of Charge

For the small number of vulture lovers the world over, good news comes this summer from Sindh, Pakistan. In June, a new “vulture restaurant” opened to provide safe food for the endangered birds — no reservations needed, but it’s always a fierce fight for the flesh. Similar vulture ventures have already been successful in South Africa, India and Nepal, where one region in which a restaurant started to provide vultures with clean carcasses saw a doubling of nesting pairs in just two years, according to Bird Conservation Nepal

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Pan Am bomber at heart of controversy since 1988

Pan Am Flight 103 was 31,000 feet in the air, heading for New York City, when it exploded over Scotland on the longest night of the year, December 21, 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground below. It was the world’s deadliest act of air terrorism until the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to the FBI. American and British investigators painstakingly pieced together the aircraft’s wreckage and found it had been destroyed by a bomb, which they accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and another man of planting

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Steven Tyler’s health status unknown

Nearly a week after Aerosmith’s lead singer Steven Tyler fell off the stage at a South Dakota concert, mystery surrounds his current condition. A concert spokesman said Tyler, 61, was airlifted to a local hospital after suffering minor head, neck and shoulder injuries, according to The Associated Press. The band then postponed three concert dates in Canada and it’s unclear when they will resume touring.

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