US will one day ‘beg’ Iran for ties: Ahmadinejad

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TEHRAN: Iran’s president claims the United States will one day apologize and “beg” Tehran that the two countries resume diplomatic relations.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also says the US administration has allegedly become so weakened that it can’t harm Iran in any way.

US-Iran relations broke off after the US Embassy hostage-taking that followed the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought Islamic clerics to power in Iran and ousted the pro-US shah.

The Iranian leader’s rhetoric often includes comments seeking to portray Iran as somehow superior to America.

Ahmadinejad has made a slew of different statements, at times urging US-Iranian friendship while at other times predicting America’s demise.

His latest remarks were reported Monday by the official IRNA news agency.

Suicide, depression cost Japan $32bn

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JNN 18.10.10 Japan has announced that increased depression and suicide among its citizens cost the Japanese government $32 billion last year.

Unemployment and financial hardship pertaining to health care expenses were cited as the main reasons behind the spike in suicide, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.

And 2009 was the twelfth year in a row that more than 32,000 people committed suicide.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the high number of bankruptcies is one of the major causes of the high suicide rate.

In response to the crisis, the Japanese government formed an emergency task force on September 3 to educate and inform the public about the realities of suicide.

Analysts believe that the Japanese perception on depression is the main cause of the high number of suicides in the East Asian nation.

Pakistan harboring bin Laden: Report

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JNN 18.10.10 A senior NATO official says Islamabad security and intelligence forces are harboring the fugitive al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, in northwestern Pakistan.

The unnamed NATO official told the CNN that bin Laden is comfortably living in a house close to his deputy Ayman al- Zawahiri.

The source added that the top militants are being protected by members of the Pakistani intelligence service.

According to the NATO official, bin Laden is likely to have moved around regions ranging from the Chinese border to the Kurram valley near Afghanistan.

The source also claimed that Taliban leader Mullah Omar has been moving between the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Karachi in the past several months.

“Nobody in al-Qaeda is living in a cave,” the unnamed senior Nato official reportedly told the network.

It said the Nato official could not be named “because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved”

Omar, the founder of the Taliban, was Afghanistan’s de facto head of state from 1996 to 2001. He was unseated in the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Senior officials in Islamabad have rejected the claim by the NATO official.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the two al-Qaeda leaders are not in Pakistan, adding that any intelligence to the contrary must be officially handed over to Islamabad so that “swift measures” can be taken to arrest the duo.

Bin Laden remains at large nine years after the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of capturing or killing the al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders after blaming them for the 9/11 attacks.