IRAN: Outrage, and a warning, over Swiss vote to ban minarets 
An East-West clash over a Swiss referendum last week banning the construction of mosque minarets heated up today as Iran's foreign minister warned of unspecified "consequences" if the ban were enforced.
Manouchehr Mottaki spoke on the phone with his Swiss counterpartMicheline Calmy-Rey. Switzerland and Iran generally have good relations. The Swiss serve as Washington's representative in the Iranian capital in the absence of formal relations between America and the Islamic Republic, giving them exalted status in Tehran's diplomatic circles.
ButMottaki had harsh words for Switzerland, saying enforcement of the ban on new minarets was “against the prestige of a country which claims to be an advocate of democracy and human rights" and would "damage Switzerland’s image as a pioneer of respecting human rights among Muslims' public opinion," according to a report by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA.
McChrystal's Afghanistan plan stays mainly intact
When he finishes testifying on Capitol Hill this week, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will return to Kabul to implement a war strategy that is largely unchanged after a three-month-long White House review of the conflict.
In interviews and congressional testimony last week, members of President Obama's national security team said the U.S. effort in Afghanistan would be more focused and limited. "A good part of the debate and the discussion," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told the House Armed Services Committee, revolved around ways to "narrow the mission."
But other than a decision not to double immediately the size of Afghanistan's uniformed security forces and the president's pledge to begin withdrawing forces by July 2011, a deadline that has grown less firm since he announced it -- Gates said Sunday it might involve only a "handful" of troops -- the new approach does not order McChrystal to wage the war in a fundamentally different way from what he outlined in an assessment he sent the White House in late August.
Russian Nightclub Fire Kills at Least 111 People, Injures 123
Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The death toll from a fire at anightclub in the Russian city of Perm rose to 111, with 123injured, as President Dmitry Medvedev declared tomorrow anational day of mourning.
Of the injured, 27 are in Perm hospitals, while 96 weretransferred to hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, anofficer at the Emergency Ministry’s Perm office said bytelephone today. The toll is being updated regularly, he said.
The fire broke out in the city’s popular Lame Horse club onDec. 4 after an explosion and a fire that took an hour toextinguish, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.State television Vesti said today the death toll was at 112.
Romania Presidency Claimed by Geoana and Basescu
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Romanian opposition leader MirceaGeoana claimed victory over President Traian Basescu yesterdayand pledged to form a Cabinet within two weeks. Basescu refusedto concede and said the polls were too close to call.
Three of four exit polls showed Social Democratic PartyChairman Geoana with a lead of between 0.4 percentage point and3.2 points while one showed a tie. An exit survey released bypollster INSOMAR as polling stations closed showed Geoana with51.6 percent of the vote and Basescu with 48.4 percent. Turnoutas of 7 p.m. was 54 percent. First official results will bereleased today at 8 a.m., while a final count may take days.
“We will have a government by Christmas,” Geoana, 51,said in a speech after polls closed. “We have to get back tobusiness to take care of the country’s economic problems.”Basescu told supporters he refused to concede and said the votewas too close for Geoana to claim victory.
Russia's Perm Mourns, Anger Voiced After Club Fire
Filed at 3:51 a.m. ET
PERM (Reuters) - Perm residents gathered at the central morgue on a bitter cold Siberian Sunday to identify the dead after Friday's nightclub fire and express outrage over safety standards they blame for causing 110 deaths.
Roughly three dozen people stood in the snow outside the morgue, while a small crowd laid flowers and lit candles at daybreak outside the Lame Horse nightclub where a pyrotechnics show sparked the blaze on Friday.
Toll Stirs Grief and Anger in Russian Nightclub Fire
MOSCOW — The master of ceremonies at the nightclub was cracking jokes late on Friday, surrounded by hundreds of people eating sushi and dancing with drinks in hand, when a pyrotechnic display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with twigs. “Ladies and gentlemen!” the M.C. shouted. “We are on fire! Leave the hall!”
A stampede ensued that ended in one of Russia’s worst calamities in recent memory. The authorities said Saturday that 109 people died — from the blaze or in the crush of people fleeing — and that more than 130 were injured in the central Russian city of Perm. Many of them were hospitalized in critical condition with severe burns.
Bodies were piled up outside the club in the early-morning cold on Saturday as traumatized survivors, their clothes seared by flames, and others searched for loved ones, witnesses said.
Russian nightclub fire kills 109; many crushed
PERM, Russia — A blaze sparked by onstage fireworks tore through a nightclub ceiling covered in twigs and plastic sheeting early Saturday, killing at least 109 people and critically injuring about 90 in Russia's deadliest fire since the fall of the Soviet Union, witnesses and officials said.
Many victims died in a panicked crush for the single exit as they attempted to escape the flames and thick black smoke, witnesses said.
Hundreds of people had gathered at the Lame Horse nightclub Friday night to celebrate the anniversary of the popular establishment's opening in the industrial city of Perm in the Ural Mountains.
Russian nightclub fire kills 103; many crushed
PERM, Russia — Panicked clubgoers crushed each other to death in a popular Russian nightspot as they tried to flee a fast-moving fire that one eyewitness told The Associated Press was started by pyrotechnic fountains set up on the stage.
Officials said 103 people died when the fire tore through the popular Lame Horse nightclub in the city of Perm late Friday, filling the crowded barracks-like building with thick black smoke. Authorities said they arrested the registered owner of the club and the manager.
Officials said the club managers ignored repeated demands from authorities to change the club's interior to comply with fire safety standards. "They have neither brains, nor conscience," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, urging a tough punishment for the culprits.
NATO allies pledge 7000 more troops for Afghanistan mission
BRUSSELS -- NATO allies welcomed President Obama's new Afghanistan strategy Friday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton received pledges of 7,000 extra troops to back up the U.S. escalation.
Twenty-five countries have announced that they will deploy additional troops next year, and more contributions are expected "during the coming weeks and months," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
However, officials were still trying to nail down some of the promises.
At least 7000 fresh NATO troops to bolster war
BRUSSELS — NATO allies will bolster the American troop surge in Afghanistan by sending at least 7,000 soldiers of their own, officials said Friday in pledges that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described as crucial to turning the tide in the stalemated war.
The promised increase came as U.S. Marines and Afghan troops launched the first offensive since President Barack Obama announced a 30,000-troop American increase. The Marines and Afghan forces struck Taliban communications and supply lines Friday in an insurgent stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
In yet another war development, U.S. officials said the Obama administration may expand missile strikes on al-Qaida and the Taliban inside Pakistan and will focus on training Pakistan's forces in a border area where militants have been aiding the Afghan insurgency.
