Shelling resumes in Al-Shabaab stronghold of Mogadishu

Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) -- Shelling resumed Monday in North Mogadishu -- Al-Shabaab's stronghold -- for the ninth consecutive night, a local journalist said.

The shelling resumed at 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. ET), said the journalist, who asked not to be identified.

During the prior 24 hours, 25 people died and 83 were wounded -- including schoolchildren -- in the fighting between Somali government forces backed by African Union Mission forces and Al-Shabaab fighters, said Ali Muse, an ambulance director.

But Abdurisaq Qeylow, a government spokesman, denied civilian areas in Mogadishu had been shelled.

The fighting broke out when Al-Shabaab fighters attacked the bases of Somali government forces in Boondhere district in Mogadishu.

CNN

Suriname ex-strongman Bouterse back in power

The former military ruler of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, has been elected president by the South American nation's parliament.

Mr Bouterse won the necessary 36 votes out of 50 after weeks of negotiations with political factions following a narrow election victory in May.

Mr Bouterse, 64, first led Suriname after taking power in a coup in 1980.

He has been accused of killing political opponents and convicted of drug trafficking in the Netherlands.

His supporters waved flags and cheered outside parliament in the capital Paramaribo, after he secured enough votes for the presidency.

But opponents voiced dismay that the former coup leader had been elected.

"We have gone totally mad in this country," government employee Michael Charles told the Associated Press news agency.

BBC News

Syria bans full Islamic face veils at universities

DAMASCUS: Syria has banned the face-covering veil from the country’s universities to prevent what it sees as a threat to its secular identity, as similar moves in Europe spark cries of discrimination against Muslims.

The ban shows a rare point of agreement between Syria's secular, authoritarian government and the democracies of Europe: Both view the niqab as a potentially destabilizing threat.

"We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women from registering," a government official in Damascus told The Associated Press on Monday.

The order affects both public and private universities and aims to protect Syria's secular identity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Hundreds of primary school teachers who were wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month to administrative jobs, he added.

The ban, issued Sunday by the Education Ministry, does not affect the hijab, or headscarf, which is far more common in Syria than the niqab's billowing black robes.

Arab News

Casinos operators eye Chinese tourists

BEIJING - Casino operators just love Queenie Liu, the queen of the tables.

The 30-year-old Shanghainese is no stranger to high stakes and spends $15,000 on average when she rolls the dice - at the expense of her high net worth husband who doesn't share her passion for gambling.

"It's the excitement that I crave for. It's exhilarating. For me, it's not the money," she told China Daily in a telephone interview from her holiday home in Vancouver.

Queenie is one of the VIP gamblers at the casinos in Macao, Malaysia and Las Vegas. She now plans to visit the two new casinos in Singapore - Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and Resorts World (RWS). "Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the big gamblers are of ethnic Chinese origin," she said.

Casino operators from Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia are getting ready to make hay from the surge in outbound tourists from China.

So much so, that most of the operators are now wooing tourists through indirect sales and promotional activities routed through operators of group tours or junkets.

The companies have to use the indirect method to increase footfalls as marketing of casinos and gambling are illegal in China, said Ben Lee, Chief Operating Officer - Gaming at Intercity Group. Intercity Group is planning to set up a $400 million integrated resort and gaming property in Siem Reap, Cambodia. "The biggest players in the region tend to be from China," he said.

"Junkets get higher commissions in Singapore as gaming taxes are much lower at 12 to 22 percent versus Macao at 39 percent," said Aaron Fischer, Head of Consumer and Gaming Research at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets. Junkets are also a big incentive in luring gamblers to Singapore.

China Daily

Scientists say vaginal gel cuts HIV-infections by half

A vaginal gel has significantly cut the rate of women contracting HIV from infected partners in an experiment in South Africa, researchers said.

They said the gel, containing Aids drug tenofovir, cut infection rates among 889 women by 50% after one year of use, and by 39% after two and a half years.

If the results are confirmed it would be the first time that a microbicidal gel has been shown to be effective.

Such a gel could be a defence for women whose partners refuse to wear condoms.

New ways of curbing the spread of HIV are badly needed, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 60% of those infected with the virus are women.

Many women are often forced to take part in unsafe sex, and are biologically more vulnerable to HIV infection than men, making a gel they apply an attractive option.

Welcoming the results, UN agencies said they would convene an expert consultation in South Africa next month to discuss the next steps with the product.

BBC News

Eastern European street kids facing 'HIV epidemic'

(CNN) -- Growing numbers of vulnerable children across Eastern Europe and Central Asia are at risk of dying from AIDS, with widespread drug use and the sex trade contributing to an "underground HIV epidemic," UNICEF warned on Monday.

The former Soviet states, from Baltic Russia to Tajikistan in Central Asia, and parts of the Balkans remain the only regions of the world where rates of HIV infection continue the rise, according to the UNICEF report, released at an international HIV/AIDS conference in Vienna, Austria.

"Today, street children in the region are dying of AIDS and drug use in much the same way as they died of cold, famine and typhoid in the twentieth century," claims the report, entitled "Blame and Banishment".

Newly diagnosed HIV cases increased by eight percent in Russia in 2009, by 10 percent in Georgia and by 22 percent in Belarus, according to figures released last week by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Some parts of Russia have experienced a 700 percent increase in rates of infection since 2006, UNICEF says.

Widespread social stigmatization and discrimination associated also threaten to drive the epidemic underground, warned UNICEF's regional HIV/AIDS specialist Nina Ferencic.

CNN

The Big Society: a genuine vision for Britain's future – or just empty rhetoric?

Yesterday David Cameron laid out his flagship policy. Andy McSmith reads between the lines

I've been in Downing Street for a couple of months now and it seems to me that the business of government falls into two categories. There are the things you do because it's your duty. Sometimes unpopular – but you do them because it is in the national interest.

But there are the things you do because it's your passion.(Almost all the economic news we have heard since the coalition came to power has been bad news about cutting public services to pay off a deficit. David Cameron's Big Society speech yesterday was his attempt to convince us that there is a positive case for cutting government down to size) The things that fire you up in the morning, that drive you, that you truly believe will make a real difference. And my great passion is building the Big Society.

It's an idea I spoke about when I ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party, during the years in opposition, during the election campaign and when I stood on the steps of Downing Street. (The first reported occasion when Mr Cameron used the phrase 'Big Society' was in a lecture he delivered in November 2009, but he is right that it has been his consistent theme. He complained about 'big government' and talked of involving voluntary organisations in the speech which won him the Tory leadership election in November 2005) Today, I want to take this opportunity to explain some of the real, practical steps that we are taking to make the Big Society a reality.

Let me briefly explain what the Big Society is and why it is such a powerful idea. You can call it liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it the Big Society.

The Independent

How to beat depression – without drugs

A healthier lifestyle could banish the blues, says a new book

Dr Steve Ilardi is slim and enthusiastic, with intense eyes. The clinical psychologist is 4,400 miles away, in Kansas, and we are chatting about his new book via Skype, the online videophone service. "I've spent a lot of time pondering Skype," he says. "On the one hand it provides a degree of social connectedness. On the other, you're still essentially by yourself". But, he concludes, "a large part of the human cortex is devoted to the processing of visual information, so I guess Skype is less alienating than voice calls".

Social connectedness is important to Ilardi. In The Depression Cure, he argues that the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of depression as an infection. Thinking that isolation is needed, it sends messages to the sufferer to "crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away". This can be disastrous because what depressed people really need is the opposite: more human contact.

Which is why social connectedness forms one-sixth of his "lifestyle based" cure for depression. The other five elements are meaningful activity (to prevent "ruminating" on negative thoughts); regular exercise; a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids; daily exposure to sunlight; and good quality, restorative sleep.

The programme has one glaring omission: anti-depressant medication. Because according to Ilardi, the drugs simply don't work. "Meds have only around a 50% success rate," he says. "Moreover, of the people who do improve, half experience a relapse. This lowers the recovery rate to only 25%. To make matters worse, the side effects often include emotional numbing, sexual dysfunction and weight gain".

As a respected clinical psychologist and university professor, Ilardi's views are hard to dismiss. A research team at his workplace, the University of Kansas, has been testing his system – known as TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Change) – in clinical trials. The preliminary results show, he says, that every patient who put the full programme into practice got better.

The Guardian

Officials: National Guard troops headed to border next month

(CNN) -- U.S. National Guard forces will begin deploying along the U.S. border with Mexico in August and will be fully trained and deployed by the end of the month, government officials announced Monday.

Some 1,200 Army and Air National Guard troops will be in place for a year to assist the Border Patrol in monitoring and capturing illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States.

They will served as a "gap-filler" while the Customs and Border Patrol agency hires additional staff to fill the demand in protection along the almost 2,000-mile-long southern border with Mexico.

The troops, from the four border states, will be fully trained and in place in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas by September 1, according to Gen. Craig McKinley, commander of the National Guard.

CNN

Senators request meeting with British PM over Lockerbie case

Washington (CNN) -- Four U.S. senators have requested a formal meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron during his visit to the United States this week to discuss the 2009 release of a Libyan man convicted of playing a role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

It was unclear Monday if Cameron would meet with the four senators on Tuesday, when he will hold talks with President Barack Obama and also meet with Senate leaders.

According to a statement issued by Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, one the four requesting the meeting, Cameron turned down the request.

However, the press secretary at the British Embassy, Martin Longden, told CNN in a statement that no final decision had been made.

CNN

U.S. sends carrier to South Korea

The United States is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to South Korea this week in a display of "the strength of our alliance and our constant readiness to defend the Republic of Korea," the ship's commander said Monday.

The visit comes after months of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after the sinking of a South Korean warship in a torpedo attack in March. A multinational inquiry found North Korea responsible for the attack on the corvette Cheonan, in which 46 South Korean sailors were killed. North Korea has denied any connection with the attack and said it is the victim of an international conspiracy.

Earlier this month, the United Nations formally denounced the sinking of the Cheonan, but did not specifically mention North Korea.

In anticipation of the U.S. announcement, Pyongyang at the weekend said the presence of the carrier would be a "reckless provocation," according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. It said the U.S. and South Korea were trying to save face after suffering a "diplomatic defeat" in the United Nations.

CNN

International experts to discuss restoration of West Siberian coal mine

International experts will discuss on Tuesday the ways to overcome the consequences of deadly blasts at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia's Western Siberia in May, a local government spokesman has said.

The accident at the Raspadskaya mine that killed at least 67 miners is believed to have been caused by poor observation of safety regulations. Twenty-three miners are still missing following the blasts.

Mining consultants from the international IMC Montan company, Ukrainian and Russian experts and officials will take part in the meeting that will take place near the town of Mezhdurechensk, where the mine in located, the spokesman said.

Earlier, he said repair works that are under way at the mine following the May 9 explosions have been hampered by frequent fires and underflooding.

RIA Novosti

Iskander missile deployment in northwestern Russia incomprehensible – Estonian defense minister

The deployment of Iskander missiles in Russia's northwestern military district is incomprehensible in view of Russia's current relations with NATO, Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo has said.

On Saturday, the chief of Russia's Ground Forces, Col. Gen. Alexander Postnikov, said the Iskander missiles had been deployed in the Leningrad Military District.

"During the past two decades, NATO has been seeking benevolent mutual understanding in relations with Russia. But benevolence does not mean naivety, that is why Moscow's decision to deploy Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region did not surprise us," Aaviksoo said.

RIA Novosti

No early elections ahead of vote on new constitution – Saakashvili

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has rejected the opposition's demand that a new parliament be elected to vote on a new constitution intended to give more powers to the parliament and prime minister.

The draft constitution that would cut presidential powers is now being considered by a special state commission.

Ten Georgian opposition parties has said that the current parliament, dominated by the center-right United National Movement, must be replaced by a more "legitimate" one ahead of the crucial vote.

RIA Novosti

Best Russian Sherlock Holmes turns 75

Russian actor Vasily Livanov, whose Sherlock Holmes was acknowledged even by British critics as the best screen image of the famous detective, marked his 75th birthday on Monday.

Livanov was born on July 19, 1935, in Moscow into the family of prominent actor Boris Livanov. He is gifted in many fields - as an actor, a scriptwriter, a film director, a writer and an artist. Livanov says he is interested in everything.

The actor appeared in more than 70 movies but his most famous role is Sherlock Holmes. Six screen versions of Arthur Conan Doyle's novels about the world-famous fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson have been made in Russia since 1979. In 2006, Livanov received the Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of the detective.

RIA Novosti