Tag: Evening Edition

A chastened president instead blamed the loss of the House of Representatives and Republican gains in the Senate on deep voter frustration at the sluggish recovery and his failure to clean up the “ugly mess” in Washington.

“It feels bad,” Obama said, digesting his defeat in a White House news conference setting the tone for a looming period of divided government and political confrontation in which he must now chart his 2012 re-election bid.

The packages were similar to four devices addressed to embassies in the Greek capital and intercepted on Monday, including one addressed to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“A Greek organisation belonging to the anti-establishment movement is very likely” behind the attacks, police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis told AFP.

Throughout the day mourners were seen carrying coffins out of the church and loading them onto vehicles for transfer to the mortuary. Most of the victims were to be buried on Tuesday.

The rescue drama on Sunday night, two months after US forces formally concluded combat operations in Iraq, ended with two priests among at least 46 slain worshippers.

The blast targetted riot police patrolling the busy Taksim Square in the centre of Turkey’s economic capital, police chief Huseyin Capkin said.

“We think it was a suicide attack,” he said, adding that the bomb had gone off before the bomber reached his target.

Washington’s streets were clogged with people walking towards the National Mall where two of America’s best known satirists joined forces for a super-sized joint gathering, the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”

“It’s chaotic but sane. There are a ton of diverse, happy people,” said James Cuizon, who had traveled from Hawaii to attend the rally and was on the chilly mall hours before the event kicked off at about noon (1600 GMT).

Less than a year after turning a page on a decade of fraught negotiations and failed referendums that ushered in the Lisbon Treaty, the bloc’s 27 leaders agreed to rewrite the rule-book in talks that dragged into the wee hours.

It was the price to pay to avoid a repeat of this year’s Greek turmoil.

One week after cholera was confirmed in Haiti for the first time in decades, the death rate is slowing but almost 5,000 people have now been infected and officials warn it could be years before it is eradicated.

Clinics were beyond capacity with cholera patients on the floor of one radiology department and another five-bed maternity center, not well equipped to treat the virulent diarrheal disease, housing 300 patients.

A total of 4,147 people were now being treated in hospitals for cholera, said the head of Haiti’s health department Gabriel Thimote, while eight new fatalities brought the death toll to 292.

The World Health Organization warned the outbreak had yet to reach its peak, and said Haiti should prepare for the disease to hit the capital Port-au-Prince, teeming with squalid tent cities.

The cholera outbreak, the first in Haiti in more than 100 years, has stabilized in recent days but the number of new deaths announced on Tuesday was more than four times the six reported on Monday.

Overall infections have been increasing steadily and doctor Roc Magloire of the Haitian public health ministry said the number being treated in hospitals and clinics had risen over the past 24 hours by 270 to 3,612.