Mogadishu—At least 24 people were killed in fighting that pitted Is-lamist insurgents against government forces and African Union peacekeepers in Somalia’s capital Friday, witnesses and medical staff said. Residents were hid-ing in their homes as mortars slammed into the city. The bloodshed came one day after fighting killed at least 40 people in central Somalia as the warring sides tried to gain ground in strategic towns.

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London—It was “deeply distressing” and “deeply upsetting” to see the convicted Lockerbie bomber get a hero’s welcome in Libya, British For-eign Secretary David Miliband said Friday. The way Libya handles the return of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi will deter-mine its place on the world stage, Miliband said. Al Megrahi, 57, was freed Thursday from the Scottish prison where he had been serving a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. He suffers from terminal prostate cancer and has three months to live, Scottish Justice

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Washington—US President Barack Obama launched a mocking counter-attack at pundits who believe the euphoric early promise of his presidency is evaporating amid bitter political warfare. Obama, who has watched his poll ratings dip sharply over recent months, drew comparisons to his 2008 presidential campaign, which was several times all but written off by media experts who set prevailing political wisdom. “We have been through this before, in Iowa,” Obama said, referring to the first state to hold a 2008 Democratic nominating contest,

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Beijing—The global spread of swine flu will endanger more lives as it speeds up in coming months and governments must boost preparations for a swift response to a coming “explosion” of cases, the World Health Organization said Friday. Many countries could see swine flu cases double every three to four days for several months until peak transmission is reached, once cold weather returns to the northern hemisphere, said WHO’s Western Pacific director, Shin Young-soo. “At a certain point, there will seem to be an explosion in case

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Arianna Huffington Comment

THE White House is in full scramble mode, trying to walk back last week’s re-ports that the administration had struck a deal with Big Pharma promising to re-move from its health care overhaul the ability of Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. But they can’t walk back two essential facts: 1) the drug industry has drawn an $80 billion line in the sand-that’s the maximum amount of cost cutting it’ll ac-cept before withdrawing its support for health care reform, and 2) during the campaign Obama promised to repeal the ban on negotiating

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