KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A bus packed with Afghan civilians hit a cheap NFL jerseys roadside bomb near the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday, killing 30 people and wounding 39, underscoring the dangers civilians face as the eight-year war turns increasingly violent. Nine women and seven children were among the dead, said provincial police chief, Sardar Mohammad Zazai. "The enemies of Afghanistan are planting mines on the main highway and killing innocent women and children," Zazai said. The bus was traveling along a main road when it encountered a NATO team clearing roadside bombs. Fearing more bombs ahead, the driver steered onto a parallel dirt road but struck an explosive device planted there, according to local official Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi. The bus hit the bomb on the western outskirts of Kandahar city, in a San Francisco 49ers jerseys militant- controlled district called Maiwand. Among the 39 wounded, some severely injured passengers were taken to a NATO base for treatment, said Bismullah Khan, the police chief in Maiwand. Others were taken to the main hospital in Kandahar. "An explosion hit the bus. I don't know what happened. When I came to, I got out of the bus and saw that the bus was totally wrecked," survivor Lal Jan said in Kandahar's hospital. Another survivor, an elderly woman named Zulaikha Bibi, cried over the Seattle Seahawks jerseys death of her daughter-in-law. Two of her nephews were wounded. The bus had been traveling from the western province of Nimroz to Kandahar city, a trip that winds through some of the country's most dangerous districts in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. US and NATO troops have long come under criticism for the civilian deaths they have caused, often in airstrikes. But US military officials say they believe the Taliban will also face a popular backlash for all the civilian deaths caused by militant-planted roadside bombs. A UN report issued Saturday said August was the deadliest month of the year for civilians because of violence from the insurgency. A total of 1,500 civilians died in Afghanistan from January through August, up from 1,145 for the same St. Louis Rams Jerseys period of 2008.

NEW YORK: US President Barack Obama will broker his cheap watches first summit of Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Tuesday but is given little chance of achieving a breakthrough toward relaunching long-stalled peace talks. Obama will make his most direct foray into Middle East diplomacy when he brings together Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in New York a day before making his U.N. General Assembly debut. With the two sides entrenched in their positions, the meeting -- the first between Netanyahu and Abbas -- could yield just a three-way handshake instead of the diplomatic coup White House aides had once hoped for. All parties have sought to lower expectations about the Dior watches results. "We have no grand expectations out of one meeting except to continue ... the hard work, day-to-day diplomacy that has to be done to seek a lasting peace," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Obama's best prospect for salvaging something more than symbolism from the talks is if he can find a way to narrow the gap between Israel and the Palestinians or wring out even modest good-faith concessions. Hopes that this would be a breakthrough summit dimmed after George Mitchell, Obama's Middle East envoy, left the region on Friday without reaching a deal with Israel over limits on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Each side has blamed the other for the failure of IWC watches Mitchell's mission.

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at replica Watches former President George W. Bush was released Tuesday after nine months in prison, and he said Iraqi security forces tortured him with beatings, whippings and electric shocks after his arrest. Muntadhar al-Zeidi, whose stunning act of protest last December made him a hero around the Arab and Muslim worlds, said he now feared for his life and believed that US intelligence agents would chase after him. "These fearsome services, the US intelligence services and its affiliated services, will spare no efforts to track me as an insurgent revolutionary ... in a bid to kill me," he told a news conference at the TV station where he works. "And here I want to warn all my relatives and people close to me that Cartier Watches these services will use all means to trap and try to kill and liquidate me either physically, socially or professionally," he said, wearing a scarf in the colors of the Iraqi flag draped around his neck. The 30-year-old reporter's act of protest deeply embarrassed Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who was standing beside Bush at a Dec. 14 news conference when al-Zeidi suddenly shot up from his chair had hurled his shoes toward the podium. Bush, who was on his final visit to Iraq as American president, was unhurt but had to duck twice to avoid being hit. Al-Zeidi was wrestled to the ground by journalists and Chopard Watches al-Maliki's security men. The reporter said Tuesday that he was abused immediately after his arrest and the following day. He said he was beaten with iron bars, whipped with cords and was electrocuted in the backyard of the building in the Green Zone where the news conference was held. "In the morning, I was left in the cold weather after they splashed me with water," he said.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.: Mike Duvall's second term as a member of the replica Watches California Assembly was progressing pretty much like his first — in relative obscurity, with few notable legislative accomplishments. The Orange County Republican is now a YouTube hit after his racy comments about his sexual conquests were caught on an open microphone in a Capitol hearing room. He resigned Wednesday. California's legislative leaders have been trying to focus on a number high-profile issues -- from water policy to prisons to renewable energy -- during the waning days of their legislative session. On Wednesday, they instead found themselves answering questions about a lawmaker who bragged about a spanking fetish, the type of underwear worn by a mistress and his apparent ability to carry on two extramarital affairs at once. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, called it "a Omega Watches very sad day." "We have such big issues before the Legislature and to have this become a distraction, he felt his responsibility was to step aside," she said. Duvall, 54, lives in Yorba Linda with his wife when he is not in Sacramento, and has two adult children. He made the comments about the affairs to Assemblyman Jeff Miller during a break in a committee meeting inside the Capitol on July 8, apparently unaware that the microphone at the desk was on. "I'm getting into spanking her," Duvall is heard saying on the videotape, which was made as a matter of routine by a legislative office. Miller asks if she likes it too. Duvall responds: "She goes, 'I know you like Raymond Weil Watches spanking me.' I said, 'Yeah, that's 'cause you're such a bad girl.'" Duvall also describes the woman's "eye-patch underwear" and the age difference between himself and his mistress, identified in some media reports as a lobbyist for an energy company. He tells Miller, a fellow Republican from Corona, that the woman's birthday was two days earlier. Duvall said he joked with the woman that she was getting old after turning 36 and told her, "I am going to have to trade you in." The lawmaker then brags about an affair he is having with another woman. "Oh, she is hot! I talked to her yesterday. She goes, 'So are Tag Heuer Watches we finished?' I go, 'No, we're not finished.' I go, 'You know about the other one, but she doesn't know about you!'" Duvall can be heard saying in an apparent reference to his affair with the lobbyist.

TOKYO: Japan's next leader, Yukio Hatoyama, told US replica watches President Barack Obama in a telephone call that close relations with the United States would remain a fundamental part of Japanese policy. "I told him that we think the US-Japan alliance is the foundation (of Japanese diplomacy) and that I would like to build US-Japan relations with eyes on the future," Hatoyama told reporters after speaking with Obama by telephone early on Thursday. "I told him that we will make efforts to improve each other's economy through cooperating closely," Hatoyama added. In the call that Obama made to Hatoyama, specific issues, such as the Concord watches future of US military bases in Japan, were not discussed, he said. Hatoyama, whose decade-old Democrat Party of Japan (DPJ) beat the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) by a landslide in Sunday's general election, will be voted in as premier on Sept 16 and should form his cabinet soon after. Hatoyama's party said during the election campaign that it wanted to chart a course more independent of Washington. Hatoyama will head to the United States soon after forming his Dior watches cabinet to make his diplomatic debut at a United Nations General Assembly meeting and a G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Japanese media said he would also hold talks with Obama. The US-educated Hatoyama raised eyebrows in Washington with a recent essay in which he attacked the "unrestrained market fundamentalism" of US-led globalisation. He sought to play down those comments on Monday, saying he was not anti-American.