BHUBANESWAR: Maoist rebels in eastern India on Thursday released a state lawmaker who had been held hostage for more than a month in the latest of a series of kidnappings by the guerrillas. Jhina Hikaka, 37, a member of the Orissa state assembly, was allowed to walk out of the remote jungle hideout where he had been held captive during weeks of negotiations. “I am a free man now. They did not torture me. I ...

The Occupy Wall Street activists are holding demonstrations across the United States to protest record-high college costs. The Occupy Student Debt Campaign, organized by members of the Occupy Wall Street, on Wednesday held demonstrations in over a dozen US cities. Organizers said the protests, dubbed “One Trillion Dollar Day”, were meant to point to the fact that US student loan debt has reached one trillio ...

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has expressed concerns over the ongoing suppression of anti-government protesters by the Saudi-backed Bahraini regime forces. “The secretary general remains concerned about the situation in Bahrain, particularly with regard to the continuing clashes between security forces and protesters which have resulted in more casualties,” Ban’s office said in a statement issued late on ...

Argentina's senate has endorsed a presidential decree to nationalize Spain-owned oil company YPF amid widespread domestic support for the plan. At the Wednesday session of the senate, legislators from both the ruling party and the opposition voted in favor of the decree issued by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner last week, AFP reported. The proposal, which enjoys nationwide popularity, will be sent ...

The Unites Nations and aid agencies have warned that a severe hunger crisis is threatening the lives of millions of people across western and central Africa this year. The UN says around 15.6 million people across Africa are already affected by a deepening food crisis, "due to a mix of drought, insect infestations and high food prices." The hunger crisis extends across many African countries, including Chad ...

 The Social Security Trustees has released their annual report saying that social security will run out of money by 2036. This is one year earlier than projected last year.   Social Security expenditures exceeded the program’s non-interest income in 2010 for the first time since 1983.   The report said: “The $49 billion deficit last year (excluding interest income) and $46 billion projected defici ...

At least four US-led foreign soldiers have died in separate incidents over the past 24 hours in different parts of the war-torn Afghanistan. Two foreign soldiers working with North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces were killed in bomb blasts in the country's south and east on Monday, according to a NATO statement. Meanwhile, two more US-led soldiers died of non-combat injuries in eastern and southern Afgh ...

 The Taliban militants have attacked a convoy of tankers transferring fuel to US-led forces in Afghanistan, setting fire two of them in the country’s Herat Province. Local officials said that militants linked with the Taliban attacked the convoy midnight Tuesday in the town of Gozare and torched two of the tankers using a rocket-propelled grenade. The Gozareh governor told a Press TV correspondent that two ...

The British government has been involved in secret training of the anti-Iranian terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in collaboration with the US and the Israeli regime forces, media reports said. The American Free Press website reports in an article on western collusion to train terrorists to target Iranian scientists and officials, that Britain has been part of covert operations in the Middle Ea ...

The United States military and foreign service are embroiled in yet another sex scandal as fresh revelations surface concerning the misconduct of a number of US military service members and an embassy staffer in Brazil. The incident took in the capital Brasilia late last year, when three Marines on a US Embassy security team and one embassy staff member pushed a female escort out of a car after a dispute ov ...