LA Times News

LA Times News

Obama visits Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned

Posted: 30 Jun 2013 08:55 AM PDT

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- President Obama walked in the steps of Nelson Mandela on Sunday as he visited the lime quarry where the civil rights icon once hunched in backbreaking work and the spare cell where he spent 18 years confined for fighting apartheid.

Obama aims to spread electricity to more Africans

Posted: 30 Jun 2013 04:33 AM PDT

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- President Obama on Sunday will unveil a new initiative to expand access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, in a speech that will point to Nelson Mandela's work as evidence of the potential for rapid transformation on the continent.

Two Syria shrine towns: Worlds apart yet united in battle

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 10:27 PM PDT

Sednaya is Christian and Sayyida Zainab is Shiite Muslim, both famous for their shrines. And both say they face constant threat from Sunni rebels hoping to evict or kill them.

SEDNAYA, Syria — This prosperous hillside town north of Damascus appears a universe away from another capital suburb, Sayyida Zainab, a cluttered, frenzied urban patch off the road to the international airport.

War on MERS: Deadly virus prompts global battle plans

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 10:22 PM PDT

The deadly MERS virus from the Middle East hasn't reached the U.S., but health officials take it seriously and are making plans.

ATLANTA — In a war room of sorts in a neatly appointed government building, U.S. officers dressed in crisp uniforms arranged themselves around a U-shaped table and kept their eyes trained on a giant screen. PowerPoint slides ticked through the latest movements of an enemy that recently emerged in Saudi Arabia — a mysterious virus that has killed more than half of the people known to have been infected.