41 die in Pakistan anti-Taliban campaign

PESHAWAR/ISLAMABAD: Forty-one people, a majority of them militants, were killed in fresh clashes across Pakistan’s restive tribal belt even as the Army on Tuesday continued its push into the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan. Security forces backed by gunship helicopters killed 23 militants and captured 39 more during an operation.

Britain begins inquiry into Iraq war

LONDON: A British inquiry began hearings on Tuesday into the Iraq war — a conflict that stirred deep opposition here as former Prime Minister Tony Blair broke ranks with major European allies to join the United States as its leading ally in the 2003 invasion. “We want to establish a clear understanding of the various core elements of the UK’s involvement in Iraq,” the head of the inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, a former civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office, said.

Philippines toll 46, emergency declared

AMPATUAN: The Philippine President Gloria Arroyo placed two southern provinces under emergency rule on Tuesday as security forces unearthed more bodies, pushing the death toll to 46 in some of the deadliest election violence in the nation’s history. Police and soldiers found 22 bodies in a hillside mass grave on Tuesday.

China executes 2 in milk scandal

BEIJING: China executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman on Tuesday, the only two people sentenced to death in a scheme to water down infant formula with an industrial chemical that left at least six children dead and sickened more than 300,000. The contamination of the milk power with melamine was one of China’s worst-ever food safety scandals. It surfaced in 2008.

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