News updates

The helicopter carrying Navy SEALs malfunctioned as it approached Osama bin Laden’s compound at about 3:30 p.m. ET Sunday, stalling as it hovered. The pilot set it down gently inside the walls, then couldn’t get it going again. It was a heart-stopping moment for President Barack Obama, who had been monitoring the raid in the White House Situation Room since 1 …

The United States probably knew by 2008 about Osama bin Laden's lair in Abbottabad, according to the anti-secrecy website Wikileaks on Monday, quoting from a leaked US cable, dpa reported. The document contained notes on the interrogation of a Libyan, Abu al-Libi, who was in detention at Guantanamo on Cuba and said he had been appointed as a bin Laden messenger in 2003 to be …

If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.  Think about …

Retranslations in the latest New American Bible are another step in lessening ill will between Jews and Roman Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI walks into the Auschwitz complex, where he made a plea for reconciliation and asked why God had allowed such "unprecedented horror" to happen. (Diether Endlicher / AP Photo) Despite the anti-Semitic ranting of Mel Gibson, the public gulf between …

The questions in the Pakistani mind centre around the vast difference between an American life and a Pakistani one. There is furore over the US’s chest-thumping pronouncements about the supremacy of the law and then its flagrant violation in other countries It is hip to hate sharia or Islamic law in the US. Many a Republican is jumping on the …