US President Barack Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said on Monday.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Obama’s State [...]

Sri Lankans crowded polling stations on Tuesday to choose between two Sinhalese war heroes — the president and his former army chief — in an election that could be decided by minority Tamils, who suffered most from the government offensive to end the civil conflict. (Read: Sri Lanka presidential candidate profiles)
While voting among the Sinhalese [...]

Profiles of the two main candidates in Sri Lanka’s presidential election Tuesday:
Mahinda Rajapaksa: Incumbent President Rajapaksa, 64, is a scion
of a renowned political family. He has become a hero to the Sinhalese majority for leading the offensive that destroyed the Tamil Tigers last year after more than two decades of brutal civil war that killed [...]

Key facts about Sri Lanka, which is holding its presidential election Tuesday.
Geography: A tropical island off India’s southern tip. Plantations of coconut, rubber, tea, cinnamon and other spices, with large, sparsely inhabited areas of forest and scrub in its 25,500 square miles (66,000 square kilometers).
People: Population about 20 million: 74 per cent Sinhalese, 18 per [...]

Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Rana, friends from a military school in Pakistan and facing charges of conspiring 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, have not been in contact with each other or met despite being in the same federal lock-up.
“They are not in contact with each other at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre. They are [...]

Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.
“My mother has 12 kids but a lot of them died,” he said, covering his meal so he could carry it [...]

An Ethiopian jet carrying 90 people plunged into the sea off the coast of Lebanon in a ball of fire just after takeoff in stormy weather early on Monday with no sign of survivors, officials said.
Helicopters and navy vessels rushed to the crash site as President Michel Sleiman ruled out foul play.
Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi [...]

Iraq’s government spokesman says Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin “Chemical Ali” was executed on Monday – about a week after being sentenced to death for the poison gas attacks that killed more than 5,000 Kurds in 1988.
News of the hanging came shortly after three suicide car bombs struck downtown Baghdad. It was not immediately clear whether [...]

The CNN anchor Anderson Cooper knows the 24-hour news cycle as well as anyone, and last week, he lamented that the survivors of the Haiti earthquake would soon fall victim to that reality.
“We all know what’s going to happen” in a week or two, he said to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the CNN medical correspondent and [...]

Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaida, spoke publicly for the first time about the botched Christmas Day airliner bombing, praising the attempt – but not explicitly taking credit for it – in an audiotape broadcast Sunday that was aimed personally at President Barack Obama.
Bin Laden said that the bombing attempt was a heroic act [...]

American filmmaker Dan Woolley, who lay trapped beneath Haiti’s earthquake rubble for some 66 hours used medical application installed on his iPhone to survive until help arrived.
American news network NBC reported that Wolley used the light from his iPhone to locate his injuries and diagnosed it as a broken foot. He, then, used the instructions [...]

America’s most wanted terrorist, Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, is back in news. In an audio message released on Sunday, Laden has claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day airline-bombing attempt in Detroit, and vowed further attacks on the US.
The message suggests that Bin Laden wants to show he remains in direct command of Al-Qaida’s many [...]

Things are still rolling along at the 2010 Aussie Millions in Melbourne. The Crown Poker Room is continually packed with poker players and it seems like more show up every day.
Just 24 players ponied up the $100,000 buy-in to play in the 2010 Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge. Tony G, Gus Hansen, Erick Lindgren, Howard Lederer, [...]

A top body that represents Australia’s universities has accused both state and federal governments of ignoring warnings issued by it on problems faced by overseas students, including Indians, in the country.
Universities Australia, which represents 39 universities, said it had alerted governments to problems relating to student safety, poor-quality colleges, lack of concessions on public transport [...]

A 69-year-old woman pulled from the wreckage of a building in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is being treated in Haiti’s General Hospital on Friday.
Doctors said the woman was rescued earlier on Friday, 10 days after the magnitude-7.0 quake struck.
The woman is being treated with oxygen and intravenous fluids at Haiti’s General Hospital.
Dr. Ernest Benjamin said she [...]

Britain raised its terror threat alert to the second-highest level on Friday, one of several recent moves the country has made to increase vigilance against international terrorists after a Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Europe-US flight.
The threat level was raised from “substantial” — where it had stood since July to indicate a strong possibility [...]

US President Barack Obama is “troubled” by cyberattacks on Google and wants China to provide “answers” to charges of security breaches, his spokesman said on Friday.
The comment came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to conduct a thorough probe into cyberattacks on Google and other US companies, and lamented what she [...]

China rejected on Friday a call by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the lifting of restrictions on the Internet in the communist country, denouncing her criticism as false and damaging to bilateral ties.
A state-run newspaper labeled the appeal from Washington as “information imperialism.”
Clinton’s speech on Thursday elevated the issue of Internet freedom [...]