WASHINGTON (AFP) - The U.S. military is weighing support for French forces in Mali including surveillance drones, a U.S. official said Friday, as Washington backed moves to deny safe haven to extremists in the country.U.S. commanders were looking at providing intelligence and aerial refueling tankers among a range of options, such as logistical backup and boosting intelligence sharing, which would involve surveillance drones, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.Backed by

Saudi King Abdullah appointed 30 women to the previously all-male consultative Shura Council in decrees published on Friday, marking a historic first as he pushes reforms in the ultra-conservative kingdom.The decrees, published by the official SPA news agency, give women a 20 percent quota in the Shura Council, a body appointed by the king to advise him on policy and legislation.One decree amended an article in the council's statute to give women representation on the body while the other named

BEIJING (AFP) ― Chinese authorities handed warnings to several celebrities who voiced support for a newspaper at the centre of a censorship battle online, newspaper reports and social media posts said Friday.Taiwanese singer Annie Yi, who works in mainland China, said on her social media account that she had been invited to “drink tea” with authorities, a common euphemism for being cautioned by authorities, the South China Morning post reported.The warning came after Yi ― who has more than six m

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Charting the course for a war’s end, President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are meeting at the White House to discuss the future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan and the 66,000 American troops in harm’s way. The two leaders plan a joint news conference Friday afternoon. However, White House officials said Obama will not announce any decisions on the next phase of troop withdrawals or whether any U.S. forces will stay behind in Afghanistan after the war formally

TOKYO (AFP) ― Japan’s hawkish new prime minister took aim at Beijing again Friday, accusing China of deliberately allowing Japanese businesses to suffer in the corrosive row over disputed islands.The salvo is the latest from nationalist Shinzo Abe since he swept to victory in elections last month and came as he announced a spending splurge, including on military hardware.It also follows reports that policymakers want next year’s defense budget in Japan to rise for the first time in more than a d

The Obama administration is assembling proposals to curb gun violence that would include a ban on sales of assault weapons, limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines and universal background checks for gun buyers. The country's most powerful pro-gun group made clear its opposition to such moves.President Barack Obama has pushed reducing gun violence to the top of his domestic agenda following last month's massacre of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school. The president

A series of bombings killed 115 people across Pakistan on Thursday, including 81 who died in twin blasts on a bustling billiards hall in a Shiite area of the southwestern city of Quetta.Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims have increasingly been targeted by radical Sunnis who consider them heretics, and a militant Sunni group claimed responsibility for Thursday's deadliest attack _ sending a suicide bomber into the packed pool hall and then detonating a car bomb five minutes later.It was one of th

GUANGZHOU, China (AFP) ― A Chinese newspaper at the center of a dispute over censorship said Thursday that Communist regulation of the media must “keep pace with the times,” in its first edition since the row began.“It’s fundamental that the party regulates the press, but its method of regulation needs to be advanced to keep pace with the times,” the Southern Weekly said in an editorial, without making direct reference to the controversy.The row at the popular liberal paper, which had an article

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― The United States on Wednesday called on India and Pakistan to seek to cool tensions after Delhi accused the Pakistani army of beheading one of two Indian soldiers killed in Kashmir.“Violence is not the answer for either country,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted. “We’ve been counseling both governments to de-escalate, to work through this issue, to continue the consultations between them at a high level that we understand are ongoing now.”Pakistan has ins

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― U.N. peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will meet with top Russian and U.S. officials in Geneva on Friday, for fresh talks on how to end the bloody 21-month conflict in Syria.Both Moscow and Washington confirmed Wednesday that talks would go ahead between joint U.N.-Arab League envoy Brahimi, as well as Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.Since the three men met for the first time in December, Brahimi has traveled to Syria w