How to find a good yoga teacher

Finding a yoga class is easy, but finding one that is a good fit is an altogether different matter. If you're new to yoga, or still searching for a class that strikes the right chord, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

A good place to start is by talking: ask your friends or colleagues at work to recommend a teacher or studio or school. Even if you consider yourself in great shape but are new to yoga, sign up for a beginner's class. Also investigate the methods beforehand: some techniques are notoriously intense, such as Ashtanga, while others are gentle, such as Kripalu.

Before unrolling your mat, have an idea of what you're getting to. Get the details beforehand on the length of the class, the cost, what kind of dress is recommended (for example, for heated classes such as Bikram and Power Yoga, you'll want lightweight clothes that breathe), whether or not you need to bring your own yoga mat, and how large the class is. More experienced and popular teachers can draw huge, tightly packed classes, meaning less time to work with individuals. Newer teachers, while a little rougher around the edges, will have more time to give you personalized attention.

When it comes to finding a good teacher, make sure he or she not only has been certified to teach yoga but also continues to practice and study under a master yoga teacher. Talk to your teacher beforehand if you have any problems or issues, and look for a teacher who is patient and respectful.

While yoga can be challenging and will initially at least cause some pain, never perform a position in class that generates "bad" pain, especially in the knees, lower back, and neck. Talk to your teacher, ask for a modified pose, or assume a rest position. Never allow a teacher to encourage you to "work through" this kind of pain.

Also a good teacher will walk around the class, looking at the students' poses, making adjustments as necessary. Get a feel for how the students respond, whether or not there is camaraderie in the class, and if he or she offers feedback and alternatives. Also be sure your teacher incorporates some breath work, which is an intricate part of all forms of yoga.

If you find a teacher you like, it's best to study under that teacher as much as you can, allowing your teacher to familiarize herself with your practice. A good teacher will take a personal interest in you and your yoga by listening to your goals and hopes.

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Top 10 Reasons to Hire Older People

In a world where traditional retirement makes less and less sense, the need and desire of older people to retain or find meaningful jobs depends in part on overcoming bogus attitudes about older employees. Smart and progressive employers get this. Sure, Google is probably not losing any sleep over failing to train septuagenarians about search-engine algorithms. But being uninterested in crowd-sourcing the best taco stand within four blocks of your smartphone is not a disqualification for being an excellent employee.

[See 10 Workplace Myths Debunked.]

Unemployment rates among older workers are lower than that of the general workforce. However, when an older person does lose a job, it has been much harder to find a new one. Older job seekers need to do an honest self-assessment of their skills and upgrade them if needed or set their sights on jobs that better match their current capabilities.

Employers need to make their own adjustments, beginning with tossing preconceptions of older workers out the window. Judge each job applicant as an individual. It's the law, and it's also the right thing to do. In assessing the suitability of older job applicants, here are 10 other things to keep in mind:

1. They are not unhappy. MetLife recently completed its 10th annual survey of employee benefits, based on extensive surveys of hiring managers and employees. It finds that younger employees are really unhappy these days. Older workers, by contrast, tend to be more appreciative of what they've got.

2. They are not going to jump ship. MetLife also found that alarming percentages of younger workers would like to be working somewhere other than their current employer in 2012. Among Gen Y workers (born 1981 to 1994), it was 54 percent, while 37 percent of Gen X workers (born 1965 to 1980) were ready, willing, and able to bail on their employers. The comparable figures were 27 percent for younger boomers (born 1956 to 1964) and 21 percent for older boomers (born 1946 to 1955).

3. They are not as needy. Upwards of two-thirds of Gen Y and Gen X employees want more help from employers in providing benefits that better meet their needs. Among older baby boomers, only 31 percent felt that way.

4. They don't want their boss's job. Older employees have, by and large, recognized where they are in terms of professional advancement. They don't waste a lot of time, either theirs or their employer's, with career concerns.

[See When Your Boss is Younger than Your Child.]

5. Their skills shortage may be way overblown. Don't assume that older employees don't know their stuff. Maybe they are not texting during meetings because they are more polite. Odds are, they may actually know how to spell complete words, too, if that's important to you.

6. They know what they want. Personal quests are great but they shouldn't be done on work time. Older workers tend to leave their angst at the door when they get to work.

7. They show up on time every day. Any older employee with a solid resume has already developed the kind of attendance and reliability records employers want.

8. They have few personal or family distractions. Seniors love their children but are gladly done with afternoon school runs, soccer games, and any number of other parental duties.

9. Benefits are not as crucial. The MetLife research found that much more pressure for better benefits comes from younger workers. In part, that's because they don't believe Social Security and Medicare benefits will be around for their later years. Older workers, by contrast, have much greater confidence in being able to count of those government programs.

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Half of all cancers are preventable: study

Half of all cancers could be prevented if people just adopted healthier behaviors, US scientists argued on Wednesday.

Smoking is blamed for a third of all US cancer cases and being overweight leads to another 20 percent of the deadly burden that costs the United States some $226 billion per year in health care expenses and lost productivity.

For instance, up to three quarters of US lung cancer cases could be avoided if people did not smoke, said the article in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.

Science has shown that plenty of other cancers can also be prevented, either with vaccines to prevent human papillomavirus and hepatitis, which can cause cervical and liver cancers, or by protecting against sun exposure, which can cause skin cancer.

Society as a whole must recognize the need for these changes and take seriously an attempt to instill healthier habits, said the researchers.

"It's time we made an investment in implementing what we know," said lead author Graham Colditz, an epidemiologist at the Siteman Cancer Center at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

Exercising, eating right and refraining from smoking are key ways to prevent up to half of the 577,000 deaths from cancer in the United States expected this year, a toll that is second only to heart disease, according to the study.

But a series of obstacles to change are well enshrined in the United States, which will see an estimated 1,638,910 new cancer cases diagnosed this year.

Those hurdles include skepticism that cancer can be prevented and the habit of intervening too late in life to stop or prevent cancer that has already taken root.

Also, much of the research on cancer focuses on treatment instead of prevention, and tends to take a short-term view rather than a long-term approach.

"Humans are impatient, and that human trait itself is an obstacle to cancer prevention," said the study.

Further complicating those factors are the income gaps between the upper and lower social classes that mean poor people tend to be more exposed to cancer risk factors than the wealthy.

"Pollution and crime, poor public transportation, lack of parks for play and exercise, and absence of nearby supermarkets for fresh food hinder the adoption and sustained practice of a lifestyle that minimizes the risk of cancer and other diseases," said the study.

"As in other countries, social stratification in the United States exacerbates lifestyle differences such as access to health care, especially prevention and early detection services.

"Mammograms, colon screening, diet and nutrition support, smoking cessation resources and sun protection mechanisms are simply less available to the poor."

That means any bid to overcome deep social imbalances must be supported by policy changes, said co-author Sarah Gehlert, professor of racial and ethnic diversity at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the School of Medicine.

"After working in public health for 25 years, I've learned that if we want to change health, we need to change policy," she said.

"Stricter tobacco policy is a good example. But we can't make policy change on our own. We can tell the story, but it requires a critical mass of people to talk more forcefully about the need for change."

A separate annual report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other major US cancer groups found that death rates from cancer in the United States continued to decline between 1.3 and 1.7 percent from 1998 to 2008.

New cancer diagnoses also decreased less than one percent per year from 1996 to 2006 and leveled off from 2006 to 2008.

However, the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer also highlighted the problem of obesity-related cancers, such as colorectal cancer, as well as cancer of the kidney, esophagus, pancreas, breast and endometrial lining.

"If you watch your diet, exercise, and manage your weight, you can not only prevent your risk of getting many lethal forms of cancer, you will also increase your chances of doing well if you should get almost any form of cancer," counseled Edward Benz, president of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

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Few US cities prepared for aging baby boomers

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Few communities have started to think long term about how to plan and redesign services for aging baby boomers as they move out of the workforce and into retirement.

Even more troubling, dwindling budgets in a tight economy have pushed communities to cut spending on delivering meals to the homebound and shuttling folks who can no longer drive to grocery stores and doctor's offices.

These cuts, advocates for older Americans say, are coming when the services are needed more than ever. And those needs will grow tremendously over the next two decades.

The nation's population of those 65 and older will double between 2000 and 2030, according to the federal Administration on Aging. That adds up to one out of every five Americans — 72.1 million people.

Just eight years from now, researchers say, a quarter of all Ohio's residents in half of the state's counties will be 60 or older. Arizona and Pennsylvania project that one in four of its residents will be over the age of 60 by 2020.

"The bottom line is, the baby boomers are hitting," Chuck Gehring of LifeCare Alliance, an agency serving seniors in central Ohio, told The Columbus Dispatch. "Are communities prepared for this? No."

Six years ago, the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging said less than half of cities it surveyed at the time were preparing to deal with the needs of older folks. It said the results "should serve as a wake-up call for communities to begin planning now."

Five years later, the Washington, D.C.-based group revisited the survey and found little had changed. There was still a great need for transportation and housing for aging boomers, it said.

"There are a lot of communities that recognize they need to do something but haven't done it yet," Sandy Markwood, the group's chief executive officer, told The Associated Press.

Some of the changes cities can make include offering training to help older people drive more safely, installing road signs that are easier to read or creating ride-share programs, said Jo Reed, who oversaw the latest survey.

The biggest reason why cities have made little progress is the economy.

Nearly 21,000 times last year, drivers for the Licking County Aging Program in Ohio took elderly residents in communities east of Columbus to medical appointments. The gasoline bill has more than doubled in the past four years, topping $7,000 a month.

"With federal funding for these programs very flat, the burden is on local communities," Dave Bibler, the agency's executive director, told The Dispatch.

Transportation usually tops the list of unmet needs in local aging-agency surveys, advocates say. Public transit routes and stops sometimes aren't flexible enough; volunteer transportation networks are popping up in a few places but remain rare.

"How do we keep people involved in the community once they stop driving?" said Cindy Farson, executive director of the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging. "It's one of those bottomless pits of need and demand. It's going to take a lot of creative thinking."

Home and apartments will need boomer makeovers too.

Two Ohio lawmakers have proposed a tax credit to install bar handles, light switches and ramps to improve accessibility in homes. Supporters say it will save money because fall-related hospitalizations in Ohio cost $298 million a year in medical costs.

Communities can do some preparations on the cheap, said Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration.

Cisneros, now executive chairman of Los Angeles-based CityView, an institutional investment firm geared toward urban real estate, said communities can be creative with zoning for denser housing and what he called "granny flats" next to houses.

Although the task looms large, communities that address these issues now could reap benefits that reach beyond the boomer bubble. Creative planners like to envision neighborhoods that appeal to those who are young and old.

Young people actually have similar tastes to seniors when looking for a place to live, coveting walkable communities with easy access to shopping, entertainment and transit. And boomers want affordable and accessible housing, transportation, recreation options and, when the time comes, in-home care and services to help them avoid nursing homes.

Edward Elberfeld, a retired art teacher, and his wife, Barbara, plan to stay in their home near downtown Columbus as long as they can. Elberfeld, 63, has been working with neighborhood residents to form a group of volunteers to help other seniors do the same.

Their "aging in place" effort is based on similar projects in affluent neighborhoods of cities such as Boston and Washington, D.C., where private, nonprofit corporations formed to provide services and social activities so seniors don't have to move.

When residents are no longer able to drive, or walk down steep basement stairs, volunteers would ferry people around, check on a basement furnace, or help landscape the yard. Residents usually pay an annual membership fee, but far less than the cost of staying in a nursing-home.

Minnie Figart-Braden, 63, who oversees a meals-on-wheels kitchen in the city, said it's best for people to realize that good plans and quality care might call for sacrifice. "The boomers have to learn to give," she said. "They have to be responsible enough to give back to the community, to see what's going on."

The latest installment of Aging America, the joint AP-APME project examining the aging of the baby boomers and the impact that this silver tsunami will have on the communities in which they live.

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Stay happy by avoiding junk food, says study

Feeling blue? Drop the burger and donuts.

While junk food and processed foods may provide a dose of instant gratification, Spanish researchers say they’ve found a direct link between the consumption of fast food and depression.

After observing 8,964 participants over six months, scientists found that consumers of fast food were 51 percent more likely to develop depression. And the more they ate, the greater the risk.

Their findings, published in the March issue of Public Health Nutrition, reveal a grim portrait of the junk food binger: single, inactive, with poor dietary habits like eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil.

They also tend to be smokers who work more than 45 hours a week.

While the chosen participants had never been diagnosed with depression or taken anti-depressants, by the end of the study 493 were diagnosed with the condition or started to take mild anti-depressants.

Even eating small quantities of processed foods like pre-packaged cakes and hot dogs is linked to a significantly higher chance of developing depression, researchers said.

The latest study builds on previous research from the same group which found that while trans fats and saturated fats have been linked to an increased risk of depression, olive oil can actually protect against mental illness.

Meanwhile, WebMD.com offers a list of mood-boosting foods which also happen to be rich in vitamins and nutrients.

For example, look for foods rich in folic acid like beans and spinach, and fish, lean poultry and dairy, which are good sources of vitamin B12, two nutrients which have been shown to help keep mood disorders at bay.

Strong evidence has also linked depression to deficiency in Vitamin D –- better known as the sunshine vitamin. Dietary sources include fatty fish, beef liver, cheese and egg yolks.

And for an instant mood lift, treat yourself to a small piece of dark chocolate, which releases the feel-good endorphins that can send people on a momentary, all-natural high.

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China police detain two Tibetans for inciting self-immolations

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Police have detained a Tibetan monk and his nephew in southwestern China for inciting eight people to set themselves on fire in anti-Chinese protests, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

Ninety-two Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against Chinese rule since 2009, with at least 75 dying from their injuries. The number of these cases have increased significantly this year, with 28 alone in November.

Police in Sichuan province have detained Lorang Konchok, a 40-year-old monk in Aba county, and his 31-year-old nephew for inciting eight people to set themselves on fire since 2009, encouraging them by saying they would be "heroes", Xinhua said.

Three of the eight died, it said.

Tibetan areas in China have been largely closed to foreign reporters, making an independent assessment of the situation there impossible.

Xinhua said Lorang Konchok, who was detained with his nephew in August, confessed to police that he had followed instructions from exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and his followers.

Lorang Konchok and his nephew passed on information about each self-immolation, including photos, to overseas contacts belonging to a Tibetan independence organization through mobile phones, it said.

Maria Otero, United States Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, said in a statement on Wednesday that tensions in Tibetan areas, including self-immolations, had been exacerbated by tough Chinese policies and controls.

In return, China's Foreign Ministry lambasted the United States on Friday for the "disgusting" comments, saying it had prompted them to file a formal diplomatic complaint with Washington.

China has defended its iron-fisted rule in Tibet, saying the remote region suffered from dire poverty, brutal exploitation of serfs and economic stagnation until 1950, when Communist troops "peacefully liberated" it.

The Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He denies fomenting violence or supporting independence, saying he merely wants genuine autonomy for his homeland.

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Syrian rebels elect new military commander

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebel groups have chosen a former officer to head a new Islamist-dominated command, in a Western-backed effort to put the opposition's house in order as President Bashar al-Assad's army takes hits that could usher his downfall.

In Turkey, a newly formed joint command of Syrian rebel groups has chosen Brigadier Selim Idris, one of hundreds of officers who have defected from Assad's army, as its head, opposition sources said on Saturday.

Idris, whose home province of Homs has been at the forefront of the Sunni Muslim-led uprising, was elected by 30 military and civilian members of the joint military command after talks attended by Western and Arab security officials in the Turkish city of Antalya.

The unified command includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists, who follow a puritanical interpretation of Islam. It excludes the most senior officers who have defected from Assad's military.

On the Damascus battlefront, Assad's forces used multiple rocket launchers on Saturday against several suburbs that have fallen to rebels who have fought their way to the edge of the city's international airport, where foreign carriers have suspended all flights.

Rebels, who have overrun several army bases near Damascus over the last month, appeared to be holding their ground, encircling a main military base in the northeastern suburb of Harasta, known as "idarat al markabat", near the main highway to Aleppo, according to opposition campaigners.

"The fighters made slight progress today. They captured a weapons depot and got to a tank repair facility in the base, but all 20 tanks inside were inoperational," said Abu Ghazi, a rebel who was speaking from the area.

"The weather cleared and MiG fighters hit rebel positions around the base. Rocket launchers did not stop for the last three days. The site is crucial for the regime," he added.

BOMBARDMENT NEAR AIRPORT

Heavy army bombardment was also reported on the town of Harran al-Awamid near the airport, which is 20 kilometers southeast of Damascus, and on the suburb of Hajar al-Aswad, at the southern entrance of the capital, which has been at the forefront of the Sunni-led revolt against Assad.

Western officials have begun speaking about faster change on the ground in a conflict that is becoming increasingly sectarian and deepening the Shi'ite-Sunni fault lines in the Middle East, a hallmark of politics in the region since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Like his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad who ruthlessly put down an Islamist challenge, the younger Assad is portraying himself as the only hope for survival of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated power in majority Sunni Syria since the 1960s.

Moscow, Assad's strongest foreign backer, and Washington, which says it supplies only "non-lethal" aid to the rebels, sounded downbeat about the prospects of a diplomatic push to end the conflict after talks this week.

The head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency said Assad's government is its final stages and will be unable to survive as more parts of the country slip from his control.

"Armed rebels are coordinating better, which is making their fight against Assad more effective," Gerhard Schindler told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung newspaper, in an interview made public on Saturday.

"Assad's regime will not survive. "Evidence is mounting that the regime in Damascus is now in its final phase," Schindler said

Setbacks for the Alawite-led military, whose core units are stationed in Damascus and on hill tops surrounding the capital, have raised Western concerns that the ruling elite may use chemical weapons to turn the tide of the war.

In a letter to the United Nations Security Council published by official state media, the Syrian foreign ministry said "Syria will not use chemical weapons under any circumstances".

"We are seriously afraid that some countries that support terrorism would supply chemical weapons to the terrorist armed groups and claim that the Syrian government is the one that is using them," the letter said.

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Bodies of three Lebanese gunmen killed in Syria returned

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Lebanese authorities received on Sunday the first three bodies from a group of 14 Lebanese gunmen killed in Syria, local clerics said, as fighting triggered by their death continued to shake the northern port town of Tripoli.

A Reuters reporter in the area said fighting overnight killed at least one person, bringing the total to over 14 dead in a week, and more than 120 wounded.

Tensions in northern Lebanon have been high since at least 14 Sunni Muslim Lebanese and Palestinian gunmen from the area were killed by Syrian security forces a week ago in a Syrian border town. The men appeared to have joined the armed insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Militants from northern Lebanon had long been suspected of entering neighboring Syria, but the killing of the gunmen sparked tensions Tripoli's long simmering tensions.

Syria's conflict has not only stirred sectarian fighting in its own population, it has also revived sectarian clashes in Tripoli, whose communal makeup reflects that of Syria. Majority Sunnis in the city support Syria's mostly Sunni-led uprising, while Alawites, the Shi'ite-linked minority sect to which Assad belongs, are generally supportive of the Syrian president.

Syrian state television aired graphic video of the dead Lebanese gunmen, their bloodied corpses riddled with bullet holes. Families of the dead demonstrated last week to demand the return of the bodies, as clashes resumed in Tripoli.

An agreement was eventually reached between Syrian and Lebanese officials to transfer the bodies gradually, with the first three being delivered on Sunday. Cars brought the bodies up to the northern Lebanese border, where security forces and local religious authorities came to receive them.

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Italy PM Monti says he will resign when budget passed

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti announced on Saturday that he would resign once the 2013 budget is approved, potentially bringing forward an election due early next year and fuelling speculation that he might run.

The surprise announcement came two days after Silvio Berlusconi's party withdrew parliamentary support for the technocrat government and hours after Berlusconi said he would run to become premier for a fifth time on a platform that attacks Monti's stewardship of the economy.

Parliament is already poised to pass the budget by Christmas, and so Monti's resignation probably brings the expected vote forward by no more than a month to February. Elections must follow no more than 70 days after President Giorgio Napolitano dissolves parliament.

Monti's move turns the tables on Berlusconi, who seemed to have once again seized a political opportunity to keep his party in the political game just a year after being forced to resign amid a sex scandal and a debt crisis.

Berlusconi could now be forced into an election earlier than he expected with his badly divided party trailing in opinion polls behind the centre-left and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of the comic Beppe Grillo.

Monti's announcement will also increase speculation that he could be eyeing a run as a candidate in the election himself although he has yet to make any clear statement.

At a conference in France earlier, Monti, a former European commissioner who is widely credited with restoring Italy's international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi era, appeared to take aim at Berlusconi, warning against "populism".

He said Italy should not go back to where it was when he took over for Berlusconi a year ago.
Following a two-hour meeting with Napolitano, he warned that not approving the budget "would render more serious the government crisis, also at a European level," and said that after it is approved, his resignation would be "irrevocable".

Leaders of both Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which is leading in the opinion polls, said they were willing to accelerate the passage of the budget.

"Faced with the irresponsibility of the right that betrayed a commitment it made a year ago before the whole country... Monti responded with an act of dignity that we profoundly respect," said PD leader Pier Luigi Bersani.

"We are ready to approve the budget in the fastest possible manner," he said in a statement.

"RECESSIVE SPIRAL"

Italians will vote in the middle of a severe economic crisis, with a recession that began mid-way through last year showing no signs of abating, a massive public debt and unemployment at 11.1 percent, a record high.

With the support of a cross-party alliance including both the PD and the PDL, Monti imposed tax hikes and spending cuts to bring borrowing costs under control and undertook a series of reforms to improve the competitiveness of the economy.

But Berlusconi said on Wednesday that the former economics professor's austerity policies had left Italy facing a "recessive spiral without end".

The PDL withdrew parliamentary support for Monti on Thursday, driving up the difference between German and Italian benchmark bonds by about 30 basis points.

"On Monday morning the markets will judge this latest outburst by Berlusconi and they certainly will not judge it positively," PD vice president Enrico Letta commented. Letta added that elections now were likely in February.

Berlusconi's centre-right PDL lags the PD by at least 16 percentage points in opinion polls, and also trails the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which has surged to prominence on a tide of public anger against the mainstream political class.

Monti's move will fuel speculation over whether he intends to run to lead the country next year once he has resigned. So far he has said he will step in only if the election result is unclear, but there has been growing speculation he could join forces with a centrist group.

Financial markets have been closely watching the political upheaval in Italy and many in the business establishment have hoped for a second term from Monti.

However Berlusconi, Italy's most proved election campaigner, said that he would not give in easily.

"I race to win," Berlusconi told reporters at the practice field for AC Milan, the soccer club he controls.

"To win, everyone said there had to be a tested leader. It's not that we did not look for one. We did, and how! But there isn't one... I'm doing it out of a sense of responsibility."

The media magnate has ample resources to back his bid - the country's biggest television network, its biggest magazine publisher and a family-owned newspaper.

Echoing comments by the leader of the 5-Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, Berlusconi criticized the single currency earlier this year and has slammed Germany's influence on European policy.

In his blog, Grillo said Berlusconi is running for office because he knows the average Italian "is literally terrified about the prospects of five more years of Monti-like rule".

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U.S. drone strike kills another al Qaeda commander in Pakistan

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone attack killed a senior al Qaeda commander in Pakistan's northwest on Sunday, military intelligence officials said, the second militant leader to be killed in strikes by the unmanned aircraft in three days.

The attack killed Mohammad Ahmed Almansoor and three others in a village close to Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.

The drone fired missiles at a house with Almansoor inside, destroying two rooms and a car. Four drones were seen flying over the area during the attack, residents and government officials said.

A similar attack on Thursday in North Waziristan killed another senior al Qaeda commander, Abu Zaid, who replaced Abu Yahya al-Libi as one of the militant Islamist group's most powerful figures, intelligence sources said. A U.S. drone attack also killed Libi in June.

Unmanned aerial attacks have crushed al Qaeda's network along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan but have drawn trenchant criticism in the two countries.

Al Qaeda has been weakened steadily in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the killing of Osama bin Laden in a raid by U.S. special forces on a Pakistani garrison town in May 2011.

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