General News Archive - May 20, 2006
By Jeffrey Jones NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleanians will choose a mayor on Saturday to lead the battered city's recovery through the next hurricane season and beyond after one of America's most closely watched civic election campaigns.
By Lutfi Abu Oun and Mariam Karouny BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bombs killed 24 people in Iraq on Saturday, including 19 in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad, hours before Iraq's parliament was to inaugurate a national unity government aimed at halting a slide toward civil war.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Afghanistan is on the brink of becoming a narco-state with drug cartels now posing a greater threat to the country's future than Taliban insurgents, NATO's top military commander in Europe said on Saturday.
By Robert Birsel KABUL (Reuters) - Fresh fighting erupted in southern Afghanistan on Saturday after a man claiming to be top Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah dismissed a report he had been captured in heavy fighting this week.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan may begin withdrawing its noncombat troops from southern Iraq as early as next month, winding down the country's riskiest mission since World War Two, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
By Robert Birsel KABUL (Reuters) - Heavy fighting erupted in southern Afghanistan on Saturday and both international and Afghan government forces suffered casualties, military officials said.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some members of the largest Sunni political bloc in parliament staged a walkout after Shi'ite Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki read out his proposed cabinet list to the assembly on Saturday.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament on Saturday approved the line-up of a government of national unity proposed by Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki. Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, read out his program to the 275-seat assembly after its approval of his cabinet.
