COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A protest by African nations accusing rich countries of doing too little to cut greenhouse gas emissions slowed U.N. climate talks on Monday just four days before world leaders are due to forge a deal in Copenhagen.

Protesters push and destroy a balloon during a demonstration in Copenhagen December 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Christian Charisius)

After [...]

JAKARTA: A ferry carrying more than 200 people sank off Indonesia’s Sumatra island, possibly due to bad weather, police said Sunday.
The Dumai Express was sailing from Batam island to Pekanbaru in Riau province when it went down at around 10:00am (0300 GMT) off Karimun island near Singapore, local police official Boy Herlambang told AFP.
“The ship’s [...]

ZHONGYANG, Shanxi: All of the 23 people buried under the debris after a massive landslide in north China’s Shanxi Province have been confirmed dead, China’s Xinhua news agency reported quoting rescuers as saying on Tuesday.
Rescuers retrieved 12 bodies Monday, and they had found another 11 bodies by early Tuesday morning.
The landslide, covering an area of [...]

News photos of President Barack Obama bowing to Japan’s emperor have incensed critics here, who said the US leader should stand tall when representing America overseas.
Obama on Monday was in China, having wrapped up the Japan leg of his Asia trip two days earlier. But Washington’s punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the US [...]

Shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan
FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) – An Army psychiatrist set to be shipped overseas opened fire at the Fort Hood, Texas Army post Thursday, authorities said, a rampage that killed 12 people and left 31 wounded in the worst mass shooting ever at a military base in the United [...]

WASHINGTON (AP): President Barack Obama is calling a mass shooting at an Army base in Texas a “horrific outburst of violence.”
He says he doesn’t yet know all the details but promised the government would get “answers to every single question.”
The commander in chief says it’s a tragedy to lose a soldier overseas and even more [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States wants Afghan President Hamid Karzai to arrest and prosecute corrupt government officials and take other concrete measures to shore up his legitimacy, the top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday, suggesting such steps were key to a troop increase.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai speaks during a news conference in Kabul [...]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., (Reuters) – An unmanned NASA rocket intended to help develop a new space taxi service to the moon streaked into the sky on Wednesday for a brief two-minute test flight.
The 327-foot (100-meter) Ares 1-X rocket, currently the world’s tallest, blasted off at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT) from a modified space shuttle [...]

JAKARTA: A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the western end of Indonesia’s Java island on Friday, shaking office buildings in Jakarta, officials said.
The quake struck off the coast near Ujung Kulon, about 260 kilometres (162 miles) west of the capital Jakarta, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, officials said. AF
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NST

August was the worst month of Barack Obama’s presidency. And he seems to know it—he is now planning to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress 232 days into his administration in a desperate attempt to save his biggest domestic priority, overhauling health care.

He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, [...]