NEW DELHI (AFP) ― India’s power network was back at full capacity Wednesday after two days of massive outages that blacked out half the country and left more than 600 million people without electricity.“Power has been restored fully across the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids,” Power System Operation Corp. chief S.K. Soonee told AFP.Monday’s failure of the northern network, followed by the expanded collapse of all three grids after midday Tuesday caused chaos across a vast region, paral

U.S. secretary of state to be top U.S. official to visit South SudanDAKAR (AFP) ― U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Senegal’s capital Dakar late Tuesday at the start of a six-nation, 11-day trip to Africa due to focus on regional peace and security.The U.S. top diplomat, whose tour will take in the world’s newest nation South Sudan and Ebola-hit Uganda, departed Tuesday from Andrews Air Force base heading first to Senegal where she will meet President Macky Sall.Sall’s coalition

A surveillance camera caught sight of a robbery scene in a pet store located in Long Island, New York.Two men came in to the store, one distracting the clerk away from the cash register. The second man spend 20 minutes to open the cash register, but even after several attempts, he failed. So instead, he turned to the caged puppies and grabbed a Pomeranian puppy, which he stuffed inside his pants. The puppy was worth $1000.The puppy refused to go down and tried to struggle, but the man covered th

A man and his companion were thrown off an airliner in Chicago over the weekend after arguing with attendants over his severely sagging pants, the airline said.The Chicago Tribune said the unnamed man was kicked off a Spirit Airlines flight, bound for Orlando, Fla., at O‘Hare International Airport.The report said the man and the woman with whom he was traveling Sunday morning became “verbally abusive” and threatened physical harm to flight attendants. His pants were “excessively low,” hanging be

A demonstration by the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Washington state was interrupted by dozens of counter-protesters dressed as zombies.Melissa Neace, 27, of Spanaway, said she rallied the zombie hoards on Facebook after discovering eight members of the Kansas-based church were planning a demonstration Sunday at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in DuPont, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash., reported Tuesday.Westboro‘s lawyer sent a fax to DuPont Police Chief Ron Goodpaster about the church’s pla

TUNIS (AP) ― U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged Monday that increasingly stiff international sanctions have yet to compel Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. But he argued that more pressure eventually would lead Iran to “do what’s right.”Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which Tehran contends is only for peaceful purposes, is a prominent backdrop to Panetta’s five-day tour of the Middle East and North Africa. On Wednesday he’ll be in Israel, whose leaders have said they are cont

CENTENNIAL, Colorado (AFP) ― Prosecutors hit grad school dropout James Holmes with 142 charges Monday after a gunman shot dead 12 people and wounded scores more in one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history.The 24-year-old neuroscience student allegedly burst into a midnight viewing of the latest Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” then opened fire into the packed auditorium with a high-powered assault rifle.Ten of the 58 who were wounded in the July 20 attack remain hospitalized and four

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Bill Clinton is to sprinkle political stardust on President Barack Obama’s re-election bid by giving the nominating address at the Democratic Party convention, the campaign said Monday.The 65-year-old former president, a hugely popular figure more than 11 years after leaving office, will outline the economic arguments for giving Obama a second term in a speech on Sept. 5 in Charlotte, North Carolina.“President Clinton oversaw the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, pur

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― It’s easy to dismiss Mitt Romney’s foreign trip as a debacle after the White House hopeful’s controversial comments in London and Israel. Harder to discern is whether he has helped or hurt his case with US voters.Romney has lurched from one hiccup to the next on his first venture onto the global stage, offending the British by questioning their readiness to host the Olympics, then infuriating Palestinians by saying Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and that Israeli “culture” helps