| January--June
2004 News Excerpts |
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| ( Last updated on 2004-06-30 ) | |
The U.S.
military launched another airstrike early Thursday against a suspected
hideout of terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah. (...)
U.S. coalition authorities handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi
government on Monday. A watchdog
group says it will file a complaint with federal election officials,
accusing two conservative organizations of illegally helping Ralph Nader's
presidential campaign, possibly with support from President Bush's re-election
campaign. (...) It says [they] violated election laws last week by telephoning
people and urging them to help Nader get on Oregon's ballot in November.
(...) Both groups acknowledge trying to influence Nader's petition drive
Saturday in Oregon, in hopes that getting him on the ballot would take
votes away from Democrat John Kerry and help Bush win the battleground
state. (...) [The watchdog group's executive director, Melanie] Sloan
said she also would name the Nader and Bush campaigns in her complaint
because of reports that some Bush-Cheney volunteers may have made similar
calls from Bush campaign offices. Almost
100 million people in 21 U.S. states breathe unhealthy levels of tiny
particles spewed by coal-burning power plants, cars and factories, the
Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday. Even as
he calls for shared sacrifice to solve the state's financial crisis,
[California] Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is spending more than his predecessor
on salaries for his official staff, an Associated Press investigation
found. Schwarzenegger has slightly fewer employees than Gov. Gray Davis
did toward the end of his term, but is spending nearly 8 percent more
on salaries. He is also paying more six-figure incomes within his inner
circle than Davis did. US filmmaker
Michael Moore claimed a major political coup against US President George
W. Bush as "Fahrenheit 9/11" scorched box office records and
shook the US political scene. The polemical film earned 23.9 million
dollars at the box office in its North American debut, more than any
other documentary in history, indicating it could yet influence voters
ahead of November's election, some experts said. (...) But experts had
warned that the documentary, which includes allegations of links between
the Bush family and that of al-Qaeda terror network leader Osama bin
Laden, would not change voters' minds but simply reinforce existing
beliefs. Liberal
Leader Paul Martin was handed a minority government in a surprising
election outcome Monday that marked the party's fourth-straight mandate
but a return to the House of Commons with diminished clout. The NDP
improved its seat totals, giving the Liberals a possible ally in the
Commons. The two parties are just one seat shy of a majority. Few had
predicted that the Liberals would win a strong minority Monday evening,
but the Liberals won in 135 ridings, the Tories in 99, the Bloc Québécois
in 54 and the NDP in 19. All four party leaders won in their ridings. French
President Jacques Chirac told President Bush to mind his own business
Monday after Bush called on the European Union to fix a date for Turkey
to start EU entry talks. (...) "If President Bush really said that
the way I read it, well, not only did he go too far but he went into
a domain which is not his own," Chirac told reporters at the summit.
"It is like me trying to tell the United States how it should manage
its relations with Mexico," he added. The U.S.-led
coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government Monday,
speeding up the move by two days in an apparent bid to surprise insurgents
who may have tried to sabotage the step toward self rule. Legal documents
handing over sovereignty were handed over by U.S. governor L. Paul Bremer
to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in a small ceremony attended by
about a half dozen Iraqi and coalition officials in the heavily guarded
Green Zone. "This is a historical day," Allawi said during
the ceremony. "We feel we are capable of controlling the security
situation." Bremer will leave Iraq sometime Monday, coalition officials
said on condition of anonymity. In its
effort to quickly build and deploy a missile defense system, the Bush
administration has quietly sidestepped a federal law that requires "operational
testing" for new weapons systems before they are deployed. The recent
beheadings of two American businessmen in the Middle East have added
fuel to the angry backlash against Arab-Americans and Muslims that began
after the 2001 terrorist attacks. "I believe the time is coming
when Muslims will not be safe inside the U.S. borders," one man
wrote to the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"I see nothing wrong with us doing the same things to them that
they are doing to innocent people." "It is high time you people
wake up and smell the blood," another man wrote to [the American
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee] in New Jersey. "Turn in the
terrorists. They are your relatives, in a lot of cases. Cousin Omar.
Uncle Mohammad. You know what I mean. Until you come forward to help
us stamp out this vermin, you are as bad as they." The Supreme
Court protected the Bush administration Thursday from having to reveal
potentially embarrassing details about Vice President Dick Cheney's
energy task force until after the election, sending the case back to
a lower court and noting a "paramount necessity of protecting the
executive branch from vexatious litigation." The justices voted
7-2 to have an appeals court decide whether a federal open government
law could be used to compel the administration to publicly release task
force documents, dragging out an already 3-year-old fight over the records. Ron Reagan,
a son of late US president Ronald Reagan, has lashed out at the Bush
administration's foreign policy, calling the war in Iraq a "terrible
mistake" that his father would never have made. Insurgents
set off car bombs and seized police stations Thursday in a six-city
offensive aimed at creating chaos ahead of next week's handover of power
to a new Iraqi government. U.S. and Iraqi forces took back control in
heavy fighting that killed more than 100 people and wounded about 320.
Facing
widespread opposition fueled by the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, the
United States on Wednesday dropped its attempt to renew a U.N. exemption
shielding American troops from international prosecution for war crimes.
The U.S. move raised concern that Washington might carry out its threat
to shut down or stop participating in U.N.-authorized peacekeeping operations. "We
are opening the door of amnesty ... to everyone who deviated from the
path of right and committed a crime in the name of religion, which is
in fact a corruption on earth," [Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah]
said. "We swear by God that nothing will prevent us from striking
with our full might" anyone who ignores the offer, [he] said. An elderly
woman complained that police dragged her from bed, threw her in jail,
then forced her to walk home in her nightgown. A 10-year-old girl said
officers broke her arm because she "got in the way." Inmates
at RCMP holding cells said they could shower only once a week, and became
infected with scabies. After hearing these and many other stories, a
$2.8-million investigation into Saskatchewan's justice system reported
yesterday that anti-native racism exists in the police system and contributes
to an environment of mistrust. Reviews
have been discouraging and conservatives are on the attack, but book
sellers still expect the best as they brace for today's release of Bill
Clinton's My Life, the year's most anticipated non-fiction book. "It's
like adult Harry Potter mania." said Michael Link, a book seller. Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller took over as commander at Guantanamo in November 2002
after interrogators criticized his predecessor for being too solicitous
for the detainees' welfare. Between January and March 2003, 14 prisoners
at Guantanamo tried to kill themselves. That's more than 40 percent
of the 34 suicide attempts by 21 inmates since the prison was opened
in January 2002. Miller is now in charge of all military-run U.S. prisons
in Iraq, a job he took after news broke of beatings and sexual humiliations
last fall at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Miller had visited
Abu Ghraib in August and September and recommended interrogation techniques
that military lawyers said had to be modified to comply with the Geneva
Conventions on treating prisoners of war. President
Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering
prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan (...). (...) "I
have never ordered torture," Bush said. "I will never order
torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part
of our soul and our being." Building
superintendents and doormen in New York City are receiving anti-terrorism
training under a program developed with the help of the Police Department.
The idea is to make the building employees the eyes and ears for the
police. Plans call for the training of 28,000 building employees in
the next 18 months. President
Bush condemned the beheading [of a South Korean businessman today] as
"barbaric" and said he remained confident that South Korea
would go ahead with plans to send the troops to Iraq. "The free
world cannot be intimidated by the brutal actions of these barbaric
people," the president said. American
Indians are discovering that one route out of poverty is joining a tribe
with a successful casino, a transfer that is allowed if they can show
they have blood ties to the tribe. [Connecticut,
U.S.,] Gov. John G. Rowland announced his resignation Monday amid a
(...) rapidly gathering drive to impeach him for accepting gifts from
friends and businessmen. (...) "I hope there have been times when
I made you all proud, or made you all smile or at least piqued your
interest in this wonderful institution we call government," [the
third-term Republican] said. The Pentagon
has declassified and will release as soon as Tuesday memos signed by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that critics argue authorized torture
of detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Pentagon
officials strongly disputed the contention that the aggressive techniques,
including the use of dogs to induce fear, constituted torture. Among
the memos (...) is a directive signed by Rumsfeld in October 2002 authorizing
a technique called "water boarding," in which a prisoner is
strapped down, immersed in water and made to feel as if he is going
to drown. The elimination
of tariffs and other trade barriers could lift more than 500 million
people out of poverty over the next 15 years, says [economist William
Cline]. (...) Much of the gains, the economist says, would come from
agricultural liberalisation - allowing poorer nations to have greater
access to sell their goods in wealthier countries. Such a move would
provide long-term economic benefits of some $200 billion a year to developing
countries. About $100 billion of the gains would come from removal of
trade barriers from the industrialised countries - or about twice as
much as foreign aid from rich to poor countries, he noted. The chairman
of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday that al-Qaida had much more interaction
with Iran and Pakistan than it did with Iraq, underscoring a controversy
over the Bush administration's insistence there was collaboration between
the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein. Thousands
of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs,
forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps
and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq.
The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the
armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who
ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi
Arabs north to fill the area with supporters. Conservative
Leader Stephen Harper is maintaining his attack on Liberal Leader Paul
Martin over what Mr. Harper says is a Liberal failure to address child
pornography. (...) On Friday, the Conservatives issued a news release
suggesting the Liberal Leader supports child pornography. The Conservatives
withdrew and re-worded the release and blamed the initial e-mail on
over-caffeinated youngsters in the party's election war room who have
been working long hours for nearly a year. U.S. forces
killed 22 people in an air strike on what they said was a safe house
linked to al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Iraqi city
of Falluja Saturday. U.S. military officers said there was no sign Zarqawi
himself -- who has a $10 million price on his head -- was in the house
when it was destroyed. Furious Iraqis said the dead included women and
children. A World
Trade Organization ruling today on U.S. cotton aid may strengthen developing
countries' efforts to change the way wealthy governments pay their farmers
$300 billion in annual subsidies, said economists including Gary Hufbauer
in Washington. Italian
officials have suggested that the elderly should be herded into air-conditioned
cinemas or supermarkets to avoid a repeat of last summer's tragedy,
in which a record heatwave claimed some 8,000 lives. "It is a system
that has proved successful in the United States: make use of cool places
to shelter vulnerable people at the hottest hours," Health Minister
Girolamo Sirchia said. South Korea
will send 3,000 soldiers to northern Iraq (...). "Our troop dispatch
to Iraq is to assist the quick establishment of peace and reconstruction
of Iraq, to develop the South Korea-U.S. alliance, and for our national
interest, and to contribute to peace and stability in the world,"
[a Defense Ministry spokesman] said. Vice President
Dick Cheney said Thursday the evidence is "overwhelming" that
al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, and
he said media reports suggesting that the 9/11 commission has reached
a contradictory conclusion were "irresponsible." "There
clearly was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is
overwhelming," Cheney said in an interview with CNBC's "Capitol
Report." "It goes back to the early '90s. It involves a whole
series of contacts, high-level contacts with Osama bin Laden and Iraqi
intelligence officials." "The press, with all due respect,
(is) often times lazy, often times simply reports what somebody else
in the press said without doing their homework." The uproar
over tapes in which Enron Corp. energy traders bragged of exploiting
"Grandma Millie" and other Californians intensified Thursday
as state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer sued the disgraced company and U.S.
regulators said they would review the new evidence of market manipulation.
"We want our money back. Grandma Millie ought to get her money
back," Lockyer said Thursday, announcing a lawsuit that seeks to
recover "potentially hundreds of millions of dollars" for
Enron's alleged gaming of the system during the 2000-01 energy crisis. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged on Thursday he ordered the detention
of an Iraqi terrorism suspect who was held for more than seven months
without notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross, but
said the man was "treated humanely." The number
of refugees worldwide has fallen to 9.7 million, the lowest level in
at least a decade because of increased international efforts to help
uprooted people, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday. Defying
the United States, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the U.N. Security
Council on Thursday to stop shielding American peacekeepers from international
prosecution for war crimes. Annan cited the U.S. prisoner abuse scandal
in Iraq in opposing a U.S. resolution calling for the blanket exemption
for a third straight year. The United States introduced the resolution
last month but has delayed calling for a vote. Despite intensive lobbying,
Washington doesn't have the minimum nine "yes" votes on the
15-member council to approve a new exemption, council diplomats said.
The current exemption expires June 30. The Bush administration argues
that the International Criminal Court — which started operating
last year — could be used for frivolous or politically motivated
prosecutions of American troops. The 94 countries that have ratified
the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the court maintain it contains enough
safeguards to prevent frivolous prosecutions. President
Bush on Thursday disputed the Sept. 11 commission's finding that there
was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein
and the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the attacks. "There
was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida," Bush insisted following
a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. "This administration
never said that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and
al-Qaida," he said. "We did say there were numerous contacts
between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, for example, Iraqi intelligence
agents met with (Osama) bin Laden, the head of al-Qaida in Sudan." A closely
watched gauge of future economic activity rose (...) suggesting that
the U.S. economy will continue sturdy expansion through the summer.
(...) [An] economist (...) said the latest data "reflect a robust
economic environment this spring and point to more of the same this
summer." Rebuffing
Bush administration claims, the independent commission investigating
the Sept. 11 attacks said Wednesday no evidence exists that al-Qaida
had strong ties to Saddam Hussein. A group
of 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers said Wednesday that
President Bush should be voted out of office in November for damaging
U.S. national security interests and America's standing in the international
community. "Today we see that structure crumbling under an administration
blinded by ideology and a callous indifference to the world around it,"
said Phyllis Oakley (...). A poll
of Iraqis (...) has provided the Bush administration a stark picture
of anti-American sentiment — more than half of Iraqis believe
they would be safer if U.S. troops simply left. The poll, commissioned
by [Iraq's] Coalition Provisional Authority last month but not released
to the American public, also found radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is
surging in popularity, 92 percent of Iraqis consider the United States
an occupying force and more than half believe all Americans behave like
those portrayed in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos. The world
is turning to dust, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming desert
wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of
people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says. One-third
of the Earth's surface is at risk (...) [and by] 2025, two-thirds of
arable land in Africa will disappear, along with one-third of Asia's
and one-fifth of South America's. The new
Iraqi government wants custody of Saddam Hussein and all other prisoners
by the time sovereignty is handed over at the end of this month, the
interim prime minister said. Four British
soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers will face courts-martial
on charges of abusing prisoners in Iraq, (...) [involving] "assault,
indecent assault, which apparently involves making the victims engage
in sexual activity between themselves, and a military charge of prejudicing
good order and military discipline," [Attorney General Lord] Goldsmith
said. (...) "It involves photographic evidence developed in this
country and referred to the U.K. police." A doctor's
proposal asking the American Medical Association to endorse refusing
care to attorneys involved in medical malpractice cases drew an angry
response from colleagues Sunday at the annual meeting of the nation's
largest physicians group. Alarmed
by the assassination of two Iraqi officials, Bush administration officials
are warning of increasing violence as the June 30 transfer of political
power nears. (...) "They're not going to succeed," [U.S. National
Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice told CNN's "Late Edition."
The weekend assassinations "are very sad events when Iraqi patriots
are gunned down by these traitors and by these terrorists," Rice
said. "And indeed, there will continue to be violence, because
these are people who have no future in a free Iraq." A car bomb
exploded at rush hour Monday along one of central Baghdad's most heavily
trafficked streets, and it appeared dozens had been injured in the blast.
Witnesses said three civilian sport utility vehicles — the kind
favored by Western contractors — passed by as the blast occurred
(...) All three of the SUVs were damaged, and one could be seen burning.
(...) [Crowds] shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great,"
and "Down with the USA." The scene was chaotic, with people
trying to pull out victims from the wreckage. (...) American troops
arrived at the scene and tried to seal off the area. Three U.S. 1st
Cavalry Division soldiers dragged a bystander away from the scene and
began beating him with a stick. Iraqi police had to intervene as the
crowd screamed in outrage. As the
Boston Archdiocese prepares to put 60 churches up for sale, developers
and real estate brokers predict they will be scooped up and converted
into condos because the market is hot for trendy, distinctive real estate.
"Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge," said Peter LaBranche, a real
estate agent in Newton, where two churches are to be closed. "They'll
sell in a heartbeat, overnight, in 10 minutes." (...) Archbishop
Sean O'Malley announced the closures in May in the midst of a financial
crisis caused in part by settlements in the clergy sex abuse crisis.
(...) At St. Peter and Paul, the one- to three-bedroom condos are priced
from $300,000 for the smallest one-bedroom unit to $1.2 million for
a 2,400-square-foot penthouse with cathedral ceilings and the bell tower
of the 1840s church. [U.S.]
Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was convening a meeting on Monday
to determine how erroneous data on global "terrorist" incidents
was included in a recent U.S. report. (...) The State Department last
week said the "Patterns of Global Terrorism Report" released
on April 29 incorrectly said terrorist attacks fell to 190 last year,
their lowest since 1969. In fact, attacks had risen sharply. Powell
again denied there was any political motive for releasing data that
appeared to bolster the White House's claim that Washington was winning
the "war on terrorism." "Nobody was out to cook the books,"
he said. Israel
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet approved a plan to evacuate settlements
and soldiers from Gaza, where 1.3 million Palestinians live in crowded
poverty, by the end of 2005. Under the plan, Israel would maintain control
of Gaza's coast, airspace and border with Egypt. The Army
hired private interrogators to work in Iraq and Afghanistan despite
the service's policy of barring contractors from military intelligence
jobs such as interrogating prisoners. A policy memo from December 2000
says letting private workers gather military intelligence would jeopardize
national security. An Army spokeswoman said senior commanders have the
authority to override the contractor ban. Oklahoma
City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols was again spared the death penalty
Friday when jurors who convicted him of 161 murder counts deadlocked
over his sentence (...). (...) The state convictions were for the 160
other victims, and one fetus whose mother died in the blast. The U.S.
government is investigating payments made by a Halliburton Co. joint
venture to the Nigerian government in connection with a liquefied natural
gas plant project in Nigeria, the company said on Friday. (...) Halliburton
(...) said it does not believe it violated the act but "there can
be no assurance that government authorities would not conclude otherwise." Britons
angry over Iraq have given Prime Minister Tony Blair a drubbing in local
elections, relegating his ruling Labour Party to an unprecedented third
place. "It's a bad night for us, but it's not meltdown," Blair's
Home Secretary David Blunkett said on Friday. "On Iraq, we are
very clear about that -- it has damaged us." President
Bush, previewing his eulogy, remembered Reagan on Thursday as "a
great man, a historic leader and a national treasure." More money
does not lead to more sex, economic researchers concluded in a study
released by a major US economic institute. The study (...) focused on
the "still relatively unexplored links between income, sexual activity
and well-being." Misguided
U.S. training of Iraqi police contributed to the country's instability
and has delayed getting enough qualified Iraqis on the streets to ease
the burden on American forces, the head of armed forces training said
Wednesday. "It hasn't gone well. We've had almost one year of no
progress," said Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton (...). At a June
1 news conference, the [U.S.] Justice Department said [an] alleged al-Qaida
associate hoped to attack Americans by detonating "uranium wrapped
with explosives" in order to spread radioactivity. But uranium's
extremely low radioactivity is harmless compared with high-radiation
materials — such as cesium and cobalt isotopes used in medicine
and industry that experts see as potential dirty bomb fuels. (...) [American
nuclear physicist Peter] Zimmerman, (...) said last week's government
announcement was "extremely disturbing — because you cannot
make a radiological dispersal device with uranium. There is just no
significant radiation hazard." The grass
really is greener in British Columbia — to the tune of $7-billion
a year, according to a landmark study by the Fraser Institute. (...)
[The] study author Steve Easton says that the time has come to legalize,
regulate and allow governments to tax marijuana. The U.S.
government is becoming increasingly concerned about political indecision
in Canada, fearful that a prolonged period of minority government uncertainty
would complicate resolution of crucial bilateral issues such as Canadian
participation in the ballistic missile defence program. (...) [At a
meeting with] President George W. Bush (...) Mr. Martin made a point
of expressing "on behalf of all the Canadian people," his
regret at the death of former president Ronald Reagan. "What a
tremendous contribution he made to the free world," said Mr. Martin,
adding that historians "will laud him forever." The U.N.
Security Council gave resounding approval Tuesday to a resolution endorsing
the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq's new government by the end of June.
President Bush said the measure will set the stage for democracy in
Iraq and be a "catalyst for change" in the Middle East. (...)
Iraqi leaders [have] control over the activities of their own fledgling
security forces and a say on "sensitive offensive operations"
by the U.S.-led multinational force — such as the controversial
siege of Fallujah. But the measure stops short of granting the Iraqis
a veto over major U.S.-led military operations (...). President
Bush, as commander-in-chief, is not restricted by U.S. and international
laws barring torture, Bush administration lawyers stated in a March
2003 memorandum. The 56-page memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
cited the president's "complete authority over the conduct of war,"
overriding international treaties such as a global treaty banning torture,
the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law against torture. The idea
of American energy independence is a myth and the United States must
maintain "constructive relationships" with oil-producing countries
for its own prosperity, the head of petroleum giant Exxon Mobil Corp.
said Monday night. "We do not have the resource base to be energy
independent," Exxon Mobil chairman Lee R. Raymond said in a speech
in which he outlined some of what he called the "hard truths"
about global energy markets. Raymond, who runs the world's largest publicly
traded oil company, said that while other countries, including Russia,
will play a growing role in supplying oil to the world, the Middle East
will remain the center of supply because it holds as much as half of
the world's oil reserves. (...) The fact that the United States and
the rest of the world will have to depend increasingly for its oil and
also for natural gas from Middle East, "is not a matter of ideology
or politics," he said. "It is simply inevitable." (...)
"The fact is, the United States is a part of the world energy market
and we must participate and compete in that market." Oil prices
slipped further away from recent peaks as supply worries abated in the
wake of last week's pledge by OPEC producers to boost output. Signaling
its confidence in the booming Chinese economy, General Motors Corp.
said Monday it plans to spend $3 billion in China over the next three
years in a challenge to rival Volkswagen for dominance of the world's
fastest-growing auto market. The United
States reacted with indifference after Pakistan conducted its second
ballistic missile test in less than a week last Friday, but experts
see new evidence of an ominous trend. An inexorable arms race in South
Asia is proceeding while President Bush -- focused on re-election, Iraq
and the war on terrorism -- is unable or unwilling to grapple with it
in a significant or effective way, they say. The Rev.
George Malkmus often preaches about how he believes the world of proper
eating began — or, in his opinion, vegan. "The Lord gave
us everything we need in the Garden of Eden: fruits, vegetables, nuts
and seeds," the preacher-turned-diet adviser said in an interview
at Hallelujah Acres, his North Carolina headquarters. "That's why
we call the way we eat the 'Hallelujah Diet.' We celebrate its true
creator." Malkmus's diet is one of a batch of Bible-based eating
plans flooding bookstores and health food stores. Last summer's "What
Would Jesus Eat?," by Dr. Don Colbert, encourages eating non-animal-derived
"living foods" and eschewing most "dead" or processed
foods. Ronald
Reagan's enemies and friends agreed he changed the world. The popular,
infectiously optimistic president reshaped the Republican Party in his
conservative image and devoted most of his energies to the destruction
of Soviet communism abroad. Reagan, 93, died Saturday following a 10-year
battle with Alzheimer's disease. A muffler
shop owner reportedly angry at local government over a zoning dispute
tore through town Friday in an armored bulldozer, smashing buildings
and firing shots as police tried to stop the slow-motion rampage. (...)
The scene was reminiscent of a 1998 rampage in Alma, another town in
the Colorado Rockies. Authorities said Tom Leask shot a man to death,
then used a town-owned front-end loader to heavily damage the post office,
fire department, water department and town hall. President
Hugo Chavez is expected to face a recall vote after Venezuela's elections
council projected Thursday that supporters of a referendum had gathered
enough signatures, opening a turbulent new phase in this oil-producing
nation's volatile power struggle. (...) Opponents of the leftist Chavez,
who was re-elected in 2000 to a six-year term, accuse the former paratroop
commander of gradually imposing an authoritarian government. Supporters
applaud his far-reaching social programs for Venezuela's poor majority. Two 19-year-old
Marines pleaded guilty to giving electric shocks to an Iraqi prisoner
they were guarding in early April, months after the Abu Ghraib prison
abuse, military officials said. A humanitarian
crisis of enormous proportions is now inevitable in western Sudan's
Darfur region and up to one million people could die if aid cannot be
delivered there swiftly, international officials warned. (...) More
than one million African civilians have been forced to flee their homes
because of an onslaught by government-backed Arab militia and Sudanese
troops in the largely desert region over the past year, and atrocities
are continuing, the United Nations said. "Today,
George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A., submitted a letter of resignation,"
Mr. Bush said on the South Lawn of the White House. "(...) He told
me he was resigning for personal reasons." (...) [T]here was immediate
speculation that there was much more behind the departure (...). [Former
C.I.A. chief Stansfield] Turner said the resignation is "too significant
a move at too important a time" to be inspired by nothing more
than personal considerations. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday he did not know if Iraqi leader
Ahmad Chalabi told Iran that Washington had broken Tehran's secret communications
code. (...) The FBI has begun administering polygraph examinations on
a small number of Pentagon employees who had access to the information
that was compromised, The New York Times reported Thursday. The interim
Iraqi government that takes power [June 30] (...) will be more caretaking
than autonomous, unable to do basic functions such as make laws or control
military forces. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former
President Carter, says the term "full sovereignty" (...) lacks
credibility. No government can be fully sovereign while its country
is "still being occupied by a foreign army, 140,000 men, subject
to our authority," he said. Brzezinski envisions a government of
"limited sovereignty," (...). The Bush administration quickly
disavowed that phrase in favor of "full sovereignty." Afghanistan
is the world's leading producer of opium, and the United States estimates
that its farmers are expected to harvest 50 percent more poppy plants
this year. Output has soared since the ouster of the Taliban, which
had almost eradicated opium poppy production. Condoleezza
Rice described the new leaders [of the new Iraqi interim government]
as a "terrific list," saying they were "not American
puppets." Former
Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi was appointed as Iraq's new president
Tuesday but turned down the post, an aide said. Governing Council President
Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer was then named to the top post, a council
member said. (...) The confusing scenario unfolded after council members
angrily accused the American governor of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, of trying
to strongarm the choice of Pachachi for the largely ceremonial post.
(...) On Friday, the most powerful post, the prime ministership, went
to Iyad Allawi, a U.S.-backed Shiite Muslim with military and CIA connections. "The
naming of the new interim government brings us one step closer to realizing
the dream of millions of Iraqis, a fully sovereign nation with a representative
government that protects their rights and serves their needs,"
[President] Bush said in the White House Rose Garden. (...) "We
will stand with the Iraqi people in defeating the enemies of freedom
and those who oppose democracy in Iraq," Mr. Bush went on. (...)
Asked whether he thought Iraq would be secure enough for him to visit
by the end of the year (...) [he said] "I'd like to be able to
stand up and say: `Let me tell you something about America. America
is a land that's willing to sacrifice on your behalf. We sent our sons
and daughters here so you can be free.'" Iraqi leaders
were dismayed that the United States and United Nations Monday were
blocking their choice of a president to succeed Saddam Hussein when
the U.S. occupation authority is wound up in a month's time. (...) The
U.S.-appointed Council favors its present leader, Ghazi Yawar, a prominent
tribal leader with support from various ethnic and religious groups.
Council members said U.S. governor Paul Bremer and U.N. envoy Lakhdar
Brahimi were pressuring them to back Adnan Pachachi, an 81-year-old
former foreign minister. "There's quite a lot of interference.
They should let the Iraqis decide for themselves. This is an Iraqi affair,"
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurd on the 22-member Council, told Reuters. A Pentagon
e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney coordinated a huge Halliburton
government contract for Iraq, despite Cheney's denial of interest in
the company he ran until 2000. (...) [Top Pentagon official Douglas]
Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on
informing WH (the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since
action has been coordinated w(ith) VP's (vice president's) office,"
said the e-mail obtained by [the newsweekly] Time. President
Bush keeps in his White House offices a trophy of one his high points
in the Iraq war, the pistol that Saddam Hussein held when soldiers pulled
him from his underground hideaway. (...) "The president was proud
of the performance and bravery of our armed forces and was honored to
receive it on behalf of the troops involved in the operation,"
said White House spokesman Jim Morrell. A San Francisco
gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish
over the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison — a black eye delivered
by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to a painting that depicts
U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. (...) [She] has received some
expressions of support since closing the gallery. Her favorite: an e-mail
whose writer said, "I'm sure that a few and dangerous minds don't
understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting
had expressed." As of April,
the 10 largest troop contributors to U.N. operations were developing
nations: Pakistan (7,680 troops), Bangladesh (6,362), Nigeria (3,398),
India (2,930), Ghana (2,790), Nepal (2,290), Uruguay (1,833), Kenya
(1,826), Ethiopia (1,822) and Jordan (1,804). In contrast, Western nations
contribute fewer than 600 peacekeepers each on average, the largest
contingents coming from Portugal (558 troops), United States (562),
United Kingdom (550), France (509) and Ireland (485). "Developing
nations are virtually subsidising U.N. peacekeeping operations,"
a South Asian diplomat told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iyad Allawi,
a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party who worked with the
CIA to topple him, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq Friday (...)
[, his] nomination emerg[ing] by consensus at a meeting of the 25 U.S.
appointees on Iraq's Governing Council. (...) An official in President
Bush's administration said: "We thought (Allawi) would be an excellent
prime minister. ... I think that this is going to work." (...)
Allawi is related to Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite to
lead Iraq who is now at odds with Washington. (...) Allawi's cousin
Ali Allawi is the present defense minister. "[C]redible"
doesn't mean the same thing to every [U.S.] government official and
even credible information can be wrong. (...) "[C]redible intelligence
is a very subjective term," [former FBI counterterrorism chief
Larry] Mefford added. And the analysis of intelligence "is not
a science; it's an art." Just in
time for Memorial Day weekend, Minnesota's Commerce Department is cracking
down on service stations over the price of gasoline. The problem: Some
stations aren't charging enough. Under Gov. Jesse Ventura, the state
adopted a law in 2001 that prohibits gas stations from selling gas without
taking a minimum profit. These days, they must charge at least 8 cents
per gallon, plus taxes, more than they paid for it. America's
inmate population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million
people, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail. The New
York Times acknowledged on Wednesday it had failed to adequately challenge
information from Iraqi exiles who were determined to show Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction and overthrow him. (...) The editors'
note cited five stories -- including several that appeared on page one
-- written between 2001 and 2003 that had accounts of biological, chemical
and nuclear weapons in Iraq that have never been independently verified
or were discredited by its own reporters or reporters at another news
organization. Film documentary
"Super Size Me," a critical look at the health impact of a
fast-food only diet, has been downsized at cable network MTV which has
refused to air advertisements for the film, its distributors said on
Wednesday. (...) the cable TV channel targeted to young audiences has
told them the ads are "disparaging to fast food restaurants."
(...) MTV and VH1 are owned by media giant Viacom Inc, which depends
on advertising for a major portion of revenues. Brazil's
government accused foreign media and nongovernmental organizations on
Tuesday of trying to undermine Brazil's farm boom by distorting the
facts and linking it to destruction of the Amazon jungle. (...) The
ministry cited recent stories in The New York Times, Britain's The Guardian
and The Economist linking to agriculture the destruction of the Amazon
(...). Voters
would rather flip burgers and drink beer at a backyard barbecue with
President Bush than Sen. John Kerry, according to a national poll that
found Bush leading Kerry on "regular guy" qualities. (...)
The [Quinnipiac University] poll questioned 1,160 registered voters
nationwide by telephone from May 18 to 24 [and] has a sample error margin
of plus or minus 3 percentage points. "There
was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments
found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect
from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday.
"There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have
celebrations, too." But video that APTN shot a day after the attack
shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored
beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent. [U.S.]
[j]ournalists are growing more concerned that bottom-line financial
pressures are "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage,
according to a survey taken at a time when news organizations face increased
competition for readers and viewers. More than
5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the
first 12 months of the occupation, an Associated Press survey found.
The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically
higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from
morgues. There are no reliable figures for places like Fallujah and
Najaf that have seen surges in fighting since early April. (...) The
U.S. military, the occupation authority and Iraqi government agencies
say they don't have the ability to track civilian deaths. Saudi Arabia
has assured the United States that it will supply up to 2 million barrels
a day in additional crude oil if the market demands it, the U.S. Energy
Secretary said Sunday. Saudi Arabia has pledged to pump an additional
600,000 barrels a day starting in June, lifting its total daily output
to 9.1 million barrels. Causing
an uproar, an Israeli Cabinet minister said Sunday he was reminded of
the suffering of his family under Nazi rule when he saw TV images of
an Israeli offensive in a Palestinian refugee camp. Justice Minister
Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, insisted he was not likening army
actions to Nazi policies. However, he said the picture of an elderly
woman searching for medication in the rubble of a home razed by Israel
in the Rafah camp reminded him of his grandmother. A 3-year-old
Palestinian girl was shot dead Saturday as a senior U.N. official toured
a battle-scarred refugee camp where Israeli troops continue the hunt
for weapons-smuggling tunnels and militants. The United Nations condemned
the "completely unacceptable" destruction of houses, which
has left 1,650 Palestinians homeless in the last 10 days. President
Bush suffered cuts and bruises early Saturday afternoon when he fell
while mountain biking on his ranch, White House spokesman Trent Duffy
said. (...) "He had minor abrasions and scratches on his chin,
upper lip, nose, right hand and both knees," Duffy said. "Dr.
Tubb, who was with him, cleaned his scratches, said he was fine. The
Secret Service offered to drive him back to the house. He declined and
finished his ride." Bush was wearing his bike helmet and a mouth
guard when the mishap occurred. [A] memo
that encouraged interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison to work closely with
military police to manipulate the "emotions and weaknesses"
of detainees [has been published]. Signed by Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez
last October, just before the abuses recorded on film began, the memo
also put prison intelligence officials in control of "lighting,
heating, food, clothing . . . and shelter" of detainees being questioned. CBS television,
quoting senior US officials, said the former Pentagon favourite [Iraqi
politician Ahmed Chalabi] personally handed Iranian intelligence officers
sensitive information that could "get Americans killed." Fears that
the 2001 terrorist attacks could halt the growth of international commerce
have proven groundless, [U.S.] Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
said Thursday. Greenspan said the spread of free markets gave the world
the flexibility it needed to rebound despite worries the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks would deliver a serious setback to globalization. Before
helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix,
a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of
120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists. The U.N.
Security Council passed a resolution condemning the loss of life and
Israel's demolition of homes [in the latest Gaza "operations"].
The United States abstained, the first time in nearly two years it did
not exercise its veto on a resolution sharply critical of Israel. U.S. forces
killed dozens in an attack in Iraq's western desert, the army said on
Thursday, (...) [telling] Reuters the attack early on Wednesday targeted
"a suspected foreign fighter safe house." (...) "We took
ground fire and we returned fire." (...) We estimate that around
40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement."
(...) In July 2002, a U.S. air strike on an Afghan wedding party killed
48 civilians. A report released by the U.S. Central Command said the
strike was justified because American planes had come under fire. A U.S.
helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border
with Syria, killing more than 40 people, most of them women and children,
Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it was investigating. Associated
Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies,
many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children,
one of whom had been decapitated. Spc. Jeremy
C. Sivits received the maximum penalty Wednesday — one year in
prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge — in the
first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at
the Abu Ghraib prison. Israeli
forces fired a missile and four tank shells to hold back a large crowd
of Palestinian demonstrators Wednesday, and shrapnel from the blasts
killed at least 10 Palestinian children and teenagers and wounded 50
people, hospital officials said. (...) It appeared likely that Israel
would break off its offensive — dubbed "Operation Rainbow"
— in the Rafah refugee camp because of Wednesday's strike. (...)
The offensive, in search of gunmen and weapons-smuggling tunnels, was
to have lasted more than a week. A member
of US military intelligence said that the army tried to cover up the
extent of detainee abuse in Iraq, a US television network reported.
Sergeant Samuel Provance told ABC television that dozens of soldiers
had been involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Stunning
her supporters, Sonia Gandhi announced Tuesday she would "humbly
decline" to be the next prime minister of India, sidestepping Hindu
nationalist outrage over the prospect of a foreign-born woman leading
the nation. (...) The favorite [substitute] appeared to be Manmohan
Singh, the architect of India's economic liberalization program (...). Angry investors
chanted "Down with Sonia Gandhi" outside India's stock exchange
Monday, blaming the country's prime minister-in-waiting for a panic
that led to the biggest one-day plunge in the market's 129-year history.
(...) Since Thursday, when Parliament election results showed Gandhi's
Congress party would be able to govern only with support from pro-labor,
anti-privatization communists, India's capital markets have bled some
$45 billion, brokers estimate. A roadside
bomb containing deadly sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military
convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. It was believed to be the first
confirmed discovery of any of the banned weapons that the United States
cited in making its case for the Iraq war. Two former weapons inspectors
— Hans Blix and David Kay — said the shell was likely a
stray weapon that had been scavenged by militants and did not signify
that Iraq had large stockpiles of such weapons. [Brig. Gen. Mark] Kimmitt
said he believed that insurgents who planted the explosive didn't know
it contained the nerve agent. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program
that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners
to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New
Yorker reported Saturday. The Defense Department strongly denied the
claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence
officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman
Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish,
conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture." The head
of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed in a suicide car bombing near
a checkpoint outside the coalition headquarters in central Baghdad on
Monday, dealing a blow to U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq ahead of a
handover of sovereignty on June 30. Low U.S.
gasoline inventories ahead of peak demand in the summer months, a surge
in global consumption driven by healthy economic growth and worries
that instability in the Middle East may disrupt supplies have attracted
investment hedge funds to oil in droves. On Sunday,
American tanks drove through the center of Karbala and exchanged gunfire
with insurgents. The tanks also opened fire to break up an anti-American
demonstration. Tens of
thousands of Israelis rallied on Saturday to pressure Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon to push ahead with his stalled Gaza pullout plan after
Palestinian militants dealt Israel's army its deadliest blow in two
years. Crowds poured into Tel Aviv's main square for the start of what
leftist organizers hoped would grow into one of the biggest demonstrations
in years by Israel's "peace camp," largely dormant since the
outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in 2000. Outside
the [Electronic Entertainment Exposition] Convention Center, the real
U.S. Army has stationed a real OH-58 helicopter. Every few hours, real
Special Forces teams perform mock urban assaults. The mission: encourage
today's youth to play the Army's new computer game called Overmatch,
in which our troops use their superior "training and technology
to defeat a vast enemy force" in a desert town that bares a striking
resemblance to downtown Fallujah. It is a recruitment tool. (...) The
game industry is huge, the fastest-growing entertainment sector on the
planet. Annual North American sales of game software and hardware is
$10 billion (compared with $9 billion in movie box office receipts). Despite
all the attention these latest war images are getting, there remain
a few who still don't follow the war much. "To me, the war is just
kind of like another show on television," says Chris Urban, a 28-year-old
from St. Louis who works in magazine distribution. "I try to check
in on it a couple times a week. But it doesn't have much bearing on
my life." The U.S.
military, facing a scandal over the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib
jail, has prohibited several interrogation methods from being used in
Iraq, including sleep and sensory deprivation and body "stress
positions," defense officials said on Friday. The officials, briefing
reporters on condition of anonymity, said these techniques previously
required high-level approval from the U.S. military leadership in Iraq,
but now will be banned completely. (...) A senior Central Command official
said the U.S. military leadership in Iraq never actually approved a
request from personnel at any prison to use any of the techniques that
now are being prohibited, (...). Officials refused to say the methods
were barred because they were onerous or violated the Geneva Convention
governing the treatment of prisoners of war. The Vatican
warned Catholic women on Friday to think hard before marrying a Muslim
and urged Muslims to show more respect for human rights, gender equality
and democracy. The Daily
Mirror newspaper apologized Friday for publishing faked photographs
of alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British forces, and the editor
stepped down. Against
the backdrop of war in Iraq, world leaders will issue "a message
of peace" when they gather in France next month to mark the 60th
anniversary of the D-Day landings, the French war veterans minister
said in an interview Thursday. (...) Two world wars on its soil in the
20th century taught France there are no winners in armed conflict, he
said. "We paid a heavy price. The Americans, perhaps, had no war
on their territory. Americans who did not fight the war, who did not
come to Europe to fight, cannot perceive as much as we do the disastrous
consequences of war," the minister said. "We became aware
that in the end, those who lose the war and those who win it are all
losers." Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making a surprise visit to Iraq, went
to the Abu Ghraib prison Thursday (...). (...) "The people who
engaged in abuses will be brought to justice," the defense secretary
[told the U.S. troops there]. "The world will see how a free and
democratic society functions." (...) Rumsfeld has heard many calls
for his resignation (...). (...) "I've stopped reading newspapers,"
Rumsfeld quipped to the troops here. "You've got to keep your sanity
somehow. I'm a survivor." The world's
cod stocks could be wiped out by 2020 because of overfishing, illegal
catches and oil exploration, the environment group [World Wide Fund
for Nature] said Thursday. [A New
York congresswoman] asked the judge who presided over [Martha] Stewart's
trial to sentence the domestic doyenne to community service at a training
center for low-income women in the impoverished Bushwick section of
Brooklyn. An explosion
ripped apart an Israeli armored vehicle Wednesday, killing five soldiers,
in the second such attack by Palestinian militants in Gaza in two days.
Hours later, an Israeli missile attack killed seven Palestinians in
a refugee camp, Palestinian medical officials said. (...) In all, 11
Israeli soldiers and 22 Palestinians were killed in Gaza fighting Tuesday
and Wednesday, and more than 175 Palestinians were wounded in the biggest
operation in Gaza in nearly a decade. Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques
in Iraq on Wednesday, rejecting complaints that they violate international
rules (...). Rumsfeld told a Senate committee that Pentagon lawyers
had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as
well as rules permitting prisoners to be made to assume stress positions. The [U.S.]
Senate passed a $170 billion package of corporate tax cuts Tuesday,
including provisions to head off a trade war with Europe and stimulate
American manufacturing and energy production. In addition
to lecturing the United States to use the current period of strong growth
to begin dealing with [its] federal budget deficit, [the next IMF head
Rodrigo] Rato urged countries in Europe and Asia to keep pushing ahead
with their economic reform efforts. Plastic
surgeons in Britain have criticized television's "dangerous"
new craze of putting members of the public under the knife, often to
make them look like celebrities. In the latest reality TV fad, American
twins have undergone surgery to look like actor Brad Pitt, while another
man underwent a sex change and buttock surgery to look like pop diva
Jennifer Lopez. A video
posted Tuesday on an al-Qaida-linked Web site showed the beheading an
American civilian in Iraq in what was said to be revenge for abuse of
Iraqi prisoners. Crude oil
roared past 40 dollars a barrel in New York to the highest finish since
October 1990 as supply fears returned, stirred by hot demand and high
Middle East tension. Leading
OPEC producer Saudi Arabia Monday called on the oil cartel to raise
supply limits by at least 1.5 million barrels per day, just over 6 percent,
to prevent high crude prices from derailing global economic growth.
(...) Monday's Saudi statement hit prices hard, with U.S. crude losing
as much as $1.65 a barrel. The New York Mercantile Exchange crude oil
contract later clawed back some losses to end the day one dollar down
at $38.93 a barrel. Lawyers
for Martha Stewart plan to say that a prison sentence for the domestic
trendsetter could harm her company and lead to lay-offs of some of its
500 employees, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday. Stewart's lawyers
will cite a 1995 decision that avoided jail time for a corporate executive
because he was considered a crucial figure in his company (...). "The
actions of a few will not be allowed to stain the honor of the mighty
United States military," Bush said. "All
it is (is) lack of leadership, lack of instruction and lack of standard
operating procedure and everyone at the top is covering their butts,"
[the father of accused soldier Jeremy] Sivits said. "My only question
is this: Where was the leadership?" The Red
Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness
at the Abu Ghraib jail in October, and was told by the intelligence
officer in charge it was "part of the process," a leaked report
said on Monday. (...) [It] also describes the death of an Iraqi prisoner
in custody in the British zone Basra last September. It said the death
certificate for the Iraqi prisoner listed his cause of death as a heart
attack. "An eyewitness description of the body given to the ICRC
mentioned a broken nose, several broken ribs and skin lesions on the
face consistent with beatings." Bracing
for what the defense secretary has described as "sadistic"
pictures, Congress will see the unreleased photos showing Iraqi prisoners
being abused by U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee said Sunday. (...) "This is deeper and wider than I think
most in this administration understand. Aside from the fact we're losing
the Iraqi people, we're losing the Muslim, Arab world, and we're losing
the support of our allies," [Sen. Chuck Hagel] told CBS' "Face
the Nation." (...) "The tragedy of this is, it goes directly
to the heart of how we hope to win the war against terror and what we're
hoping to accomplish in Iraq," [Sen. Evan] Bayh told "Fox
News Sunday." "And that is that we are morally superior to
our adversaries. We don't kill women and children. We don't torture
people. We stand for freedom," he said. "As
a former secretary of defense, I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best secretary
of defense the United States has ever had," [U.S.] vice president
[Dick Cheney] said in a statement relayed to CNN through a spokesman
Saturday. "People ought to let him do his job". Detailed
allegations of psychological abuse, deprivation, beatings and deaths
at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq were met by public silence from the U.S.
Army last October — six months before shocking photographs stirred
world outrage and demands for action. At the time, one ex-prisoner sensed
that words might count for little. Instead, Rahad Naif told a reporter,
"I wish somebody could go take a picture of Camp Bucca." These
early accounts by freed prisoners, reported by The Associated Press
last fall, told of detainees punished by hours lying bound in the sun;
being attacked by dogs; being deprived of sufficient water; spending
days with hoods over their heads. One told AP of seeing an elderly Iraqi
woman tied up and lying in the dust; others told of ill men dying in
crowded tents. Family
members of an Army reservist shown in photographs humiliating Iraqi
prisoners insist she was following orders when she pointed at naked
inmates and held a leash attached to a man's neck. (...) "I don't
believe my sister did what was in those photos," her sister Jessica
Klinestiver said at a news conference (...). "Certain people told
her what to do. I believe they were posed," Klinestiver said. A senior
aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told worshippers during
a Friday sermon in southern Iraq that anyone capturing a female British
soldier can keep her as a slave. Iraqi detainees
were subjected to "serious violations," with abuse so widespread
it may have been condoned by U.S.-led coalition forces, the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Friday. Breaking with its usual
vow of silence, the Geneva-based humanitarian organization said visits
to coalition detention centers in Iraq, carried out between March and
November 2003, had shown infringements of international treaties on
the treatment of prisoners of war. "You've
got thousands of people running around on taxpayer dollars that the
Pentagon can't account for in any way," said Dan Guttman, a lawyer
and government contracting expert at Johns Hopkins University. "Contractors
are invisible, even at the highest level of the Pentagon." The
problem has been known at the Pentagon for years. [President]
Bush pledged that his [U.S.] defense secretary would not be ousted,
even as he acknowledged that he had chastised [Donald] Rumsfeld 24 hours
earlier for his failure to inform him about graphic photographs showing
the American abuse of Iraqi captives. "Secretary Rumsfeld has been
the secretary during two wars and he is an important part of my cabinet,
and he will stay in my cabinet," Mr. Bush said. The publication
of more photos showing the abuse and degradation of prisoners in Iraq
prompted U.S. President George W. Bush to apologize Thursday for the
humiliation they had suffered. The new photos threaten U.S. efforts
to limit a scandal spiralling out of control. They come amid reports
from the International Committee for the Red Cross that its officials
were worried about activities at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, long
before stories of mistreatment became public. President
Bush told Arab television the treatment of Iraqi prisoners was "abhorrent,"
but stopped short of apologizing. Oscar-winning
filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary linking President Bush with powerful
Saudi families, including that of Osama bin Laden, is stirring up controversy
even before its release. That's if it even gets released. Hollywood
trade paper Daily Variety said in its Wednesday edition that Walt Disney
Co. has moved to prevent its Miramax Films unit from distributing "Fahrenheit
911." (...) [It] will still premiere in competition at the Cannes
Film Festival in France later this month. There was
more evidence yesterday that the Liberals and Conservatives are spoiling
for a fight, as Treasury Board President Reg Alcock asked Tory Peter
MacKay to “step outside” over the sponsorship scandal —
and Mr. Mackay took him up on his offer. (...) No blows were exchanged
or physical contact made (...). Bush administration
officials were wrong to prevent a budget expert from giving Congress
estimates of the cost of Medicare legislation, congressional researchers
have concluded. In a report made public Monday, the nonpartisan Congressional
Research Service said efforts to keep Richard Foster, the chief Medicare
actuary, from giving Democratic lawmakers his projections of the bill's
cost — $100 billion more than the president and other officials
were acknowledging — probably violated federal law. "In
November I talked to [US overseer Paul] Bremer about human rights violations
in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no
answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security
prisoners, but I failed," [former Iraqi human rights minister Abdel
Basset] Turki told AFP on Monday. "I told him the news. He didn't
take care about the information I gave him." The coalition had
no immediate comment about Turki's meeting with Bremer. A late-night
deal that ended a hospital support worker walkout in British Columbia
seems to have staved off the general strike that threatened to paralyze
the province Monday. Labour unions had vowed to do their best to shut
down the province in support of the Hospital Employees Union, whose
members had been ordered back to work under legislation. (...) Both
sides remained furious, with [Premier Gordon] Campbell accusing the
union of holding patients hostage and labour leaders calling the government's
actions "unjust." Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday he will rework his plan for
pulling out of Gaza and four West Bank settlements in an effort to salvage
the proposal following its resounding defeat in a ruling party referendum. Seven more
U.S. soldiers have been reprimanded in the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners,
and the U.S. officer who oversaw Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison
suggested Monday that more may be involved. (...) [S]ix of the soldiers
— all officers and noncommissioned officers — have received
the most severe level of administrative reprimand in the U.S. military
(...). [An] official said he believed investigations of the officers
were complete and they would not face further action or court martial.
However, the reprimands could spell the end of their careers. Another
six U.S. military police already are facing criminal charges. The U.S.-appointed
Iraqi Governing Council joined the chorus of international criticism
of the alleged abuse, terming it a violation of international law and
the Geneva Conventions. "The
mission in Iraq, which is showing itself every day to be a failure,
should serve as a lesson to the international community: preemptive
wars, never again; violations of international law, never again,"
Prime Minister [of Spain] Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said [today]. Amnesty
International said it has uncovered a "pattern of torture"
of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops, and called for an independent
investigation into the claims of abuse. "We
review all the interrogation methods. Torture is not one of the methods
that we're allowed to use and that we use," [Gen. Richard] Myers
said. "I mean, it's just not permitted by international law, and
we don't use it." (...) Myers said the Army is trying to determine
whether military guards were encouraged to use such tactics in order
to make prisoners disclose more information during interrogations. (...)
He said he would be "very surprised if there was somebody on the
intelligence side saying, 'Go do this,' because everybody knows that's
wrong." (...) "I hope that the incredible damage this situation
has cause will be somewhat counterbalanced by the millions of acts of
kindness and generosity and sacrifice that American soldiers have made
in Iraq, for the Iraqi people," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The EU
swelled [today] from 15 nations to 25 by taking in the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia,
along with the Mediterranean nations of Cyprus and Malta. Together,
they boost the EU's population to 450 million. [A]s worldwide
furor mounted over apparent abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US and British
troops (...) Bush said: "One year later, despite many challenges,
life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption
of Saddam's regime." [T]he [prisoner]
scandal broadened with a British newspaper publishing new photographs
of a hooded Iraqi prisoner, who reportedly was beaten and humiliated
by British troops. The Daily Mirror's front page showed a soldier apparently
urinating on the prisoner, who was sitting on the floor. Also Saturday,
The New Yorker magazine said it obtained a U.S. Army report that Iraqi
detainees were subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal
abuses" at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Those abuses included
threats of rape and the pouring of cold water and liquid from chemical
lights on detainees, said the internal report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
Detainees were beaten with a broom handle and one was sodomized with
"a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick," the report said.
(...) Many Arabs in neighboring countries accuse the United States of
having double standards on human rights (...). One photograph
shows Iraqi prisoners, naked except for hoods covering their heads,
stacked in a human pyramid, one with a slur written in English on his
skin. That and other scenes of humiliation at the hands of U.S. military
police that appear in photographs obtained by CBS News have led to criminal
charges against six American soldiers. The Martin
government [in Canada] has agreed to sign on to an aerospace early-warning
system for North America, smoothing the path for almost certain participation
in the U.S. missile defence shield — but the Liberals had hoped
to keep it under wraps until after a federal election expected in June. U.S. President
George W. Bush said Thursday that he answered "every question"
posed him by a commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks on
America. (...) Outwitted by a reporter at one point, he acknowledged
that the commission had not asked him whether al-Qaeda was still active
in America. (...) "I told you I wasn't going to get into details
about what they asked me and then I just fell into your trap,"
he complained. (...) Critics suggested the two men insisted on appearing
together to ensure there were no discrepancies in their statements.
(...) "If we had something to hide, we wouldn't have met with them
in the first place," he said. "I think it was important for
them to see our body language, how we work together," he added. World leaders
must not be afraid to bypass multilateral institutions when faced with
crises, Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday. (...) "Only political
leaders can make the leap so often required to break an intellectual,
emotional or historical impasse (...)" he added. The Treasury
Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of
terrorists told Congress that at the end of last year it had just four
full-time employees dedicated to investigating Osama bin Laden's and
Saddam Hussein's wealth while nearly two dozen were working on Cuban
embargo violations. (...) "[The Office of Foreign Assets Control]
plays a key role in the war against terrorism since it is responsible
for shutting down terrorist financing activities — which has nothing
to do with Americans taking bike tours through Cuba," said Sen.
Max Baucus. A recent
[U.S.] telephone survey offered a twist: Would you prefer more money
or more sex? [T]wo-thirds selected money, regardless of income. General
Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt defended his company's outsourcing
of some jobs overseas (...) "Half of our sales are outside the
United States. (...) If you want to sell in places like China, India
and Europe you've got to employ people there. GE is a global company." The U.S.
military is demanding the return of five howitzers that two Sierra Nevada
ski resorts use to prevent avalanches, saying it needs the guns for
the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain
received the artillery pieces on loan from the Army and began using
them last year (...). (...) [The senior vice president at Mammoth Mountain]
said she understood the Army's decision: "We're certainly at a
different place in the world than when we first got the guns." Iran may
be running a covert military nuclear program parallel to the peaceful
one it has opened to international scrutiny in efforts to dispel suspicions
it has weapons ambitions, U.S. officials said Tuesday. (...) "We
are beginning to see indications that there is a parallel military program,"
one of the officials told AP. The source cautioned that the "limited
evidence" was not enough to draw firm conclusions. Supporters
of Ronald Reagan have begun raising money to establish a university
in his name in Colorado. (...) "Because he had a vision of a shining
city on the hill, I want us to be on a rolling plain, looking at the
Front Range," Terry Walker, the university's founding president,
said Monday. (...) "I love his legacy, and I will do anything I
can to perpetuate it and memorialize it," said Steve Schuck, the
Colorado Springs businessman who donated the land. Twelve-year-old
Nicole Townes is out of a coma but still struggling to recover after
being pummeled and stomped at a birthday party in a beating that (...)
was meted out by other girls. (...) [In the U.S.], violence among teenage
boys — as measured by arrest statistics and surveys — outstrips
violence among teenage girls 4 to 1, according to the Justice Department.
But a generation ago, it was 10 to 1. (...) Around the country, school
police and teachers are seeing a growing tendency for girls to settle
disputes with their fists. (...) Experts say the trend simply reflects
society — girls are more violent because society in general is
more violent and less civil. (...) [Phil] Leaf said the situation in
Baltimore and other cities reminds him of the William Golding novel
"Lord of the Flies": "We're seeing the effects of children
growing up in a world without adults." U.S. military
officials at Ramstein, a major air base used as a transfer point, said
the Department of Defense re-affirmed a ban on television crews and
photographers from filming flag- draped coffins, although coverage of
the wounded is permitted. An explosion
leveled part of a building as U.S. troops searched it for suspected
"chemical munitions" on Monday, an American general said.
Two soldiers were killed and five wounded (...). After the blast, there
was no sign in the area of precautions against chemicals. "Chemical
munitions could mean any number of things," including smoke grenades,
he said. Abortion-rights
supporters marched in the hundreds of thousands Sunday, galvanized by
what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President
Bush and foreign policies that hurt women worldwide. The food
line begins to form during the sunrise chill, more than two hours before
the metal gates to the Care United Methodist Outreach pantry open. (...)
"This is a have-to case for us. It's humiliating," said [Theresa]
Ware, 49, who makes $7.50 an hour working the afternoon shift at a nursing
home. This recent visit was one of two food pantry stops she and her
unemployed husband, Rocky, make every month. "We shouldn't have
to do this," she said. Theresa and Rocky Ware toil in the ranks
of the working poor, a growing category of millions of Americans who
play by the rules of the working world and still can't make ends meet.
After tapping friends and family, maxing out their credit cards and
sufficiently swallowing their pride, at least 23 million Americans stood
in food lines last year--many of them the working poor, according to
America's Second Harvest, the Chicago-based hunger relief organization. U.S. troops
will likely enter parts of Najaf soon to clamp down on a radical Shiite
cleric's rebel militia, but they will stay away from sensitive holy
sites in the center of the city to avoid rousing religious outrage,
a U.S. general said Sunday. (...) "We probably will go into the
central part of the city. Will we interfere in the religious institutions?
Absolutely not," said [Brig. Gen. Mark] Hertling, a deputy commander
of the 1st Armored Division. (...) "Either [cleric Muqtada al-Sadr]
tells his militia to put down their arms, form a political party and
fight with ideas not guns — or he's going to find a lot of them
killed," he said. Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry received communion from a Catholic
priest Saturday, one day after a top Vatican cardinal said politicians
who support abortion rights should be denied the Eucharist. During
the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia secretly helped the United States far more
than has been acknowledged, allowing operations from at least three
air bases, permitting special forces to stage attacks from Saudi soil
and providing cheap fuel, U.S. and Saudi officials say. The American
air campaign against Iraq was essentially managed from inside Saudi
borders (...) according to the officials. The Pentagon
announced Friday in its weekly casualty report that 3,864 troops have
been wounded in action since the war began in March 2003, an increase
of 595 from two weeks earlier. The U.S. military death toll as of Friday
stood at 707, according to the Pentagon's count. (...) The Pentagon's
figures do not include troops who are injured in accidents or felled
by illness. Thousands
of demonstrators banged pots and pans, blew whistles and beat drums
on Saturday in a Latin American-style protest of World Bank and IMF
policies in poor countries. (...) The boisterous rally modeled after
"cacerolazo" pot-banging protests common in South America
led protesters to a park across the street from the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund headquarters in downtown Washington. (...) There is an
abortion rights demonstration planned for Sunday in Washington. Both
pro-life and pro-choice signs were visible among the anti-IMF and World
Bank crowd. [American
football player] Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan after walking
away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army Rangers,
U.S. officials said Friday. (...) "Pat knew his purpose in life,"
[Former Cardinals head coach Dave] McGinnis said. "He proudly walked
away from a career in football to a greater calling." President
Bush said Friday he is a committed conservationist who will safeguard
the nation's natural treasures, rejecting widespread criticism that
his administration has harmed the environment. "I know there's
a lot of politics when it comes to the environment, but what I like
to do is focus on ... results" and "I am committed to preserving
Florida's natural beauty," Bush told an audience of several hundred
supporters (...). Iraq's
U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said Friday a policy to root out members
of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party had been unjustly applied. He announced
changes to its implementation that he said would allow thousands of
teachers sacked for holding party cards to return to work and thousands
more to receive pensions. "The de-Baathification policy was and
is sound," he said in a speech on U.S.-funded Iraqiya television.
"It does not need to be changed ... but it has been poorly implemented." The Bush
administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would
place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command
over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration
officials said Thursday. "Some
of the Mujahideen brothers have told me they want to carry out martyrdom
attacks but I am postponing this," [Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada]
al-Sadr said in front of thousands of worshippers. "When we are
forced to do so and when our city and holy sites are attacked, we will
all be timebombs in the face of the enemy." He condemned suicide
bombings Wednesday in the southern city of Basra that killed 73 people
because they targeted Iraqi police and civilians. A military
contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose
photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published
in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times. Top Bush
administration officials said Wednesday that restrictions on the entry
of foreigners have prompted many to shun travel to the United States
since 2001. They recommended that the constraints be reviewed. "This
hurts us," Secretary of State Colin Powell said, citing a 30 percent
decline in overseas visits to the United States over 2 1/2 years. "It's
is not serving our interests. And so we really do have to work on it." About one
in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked
against" U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq,
and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation,
the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday. In an interview
beamed by satellite from Baghdad to news executives attending The Associated
Press annual meeting, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said the campaign in
Iraq was at a critical point. The world
economy will snap out of a three-year slump with unexpected vigor in
2004 and 2005 (...) the International Monetary Fund said (...) in its
semi-annual World Economic Outlook. Citing
increasing pressures from pollution, overfishing and residential development,
a [U.S.] federal commission on Tuesday called for sweeping changes in
how the U.S. manages the oceans, including allocating billions of dollars
in gas and oil royalties for ocean preservation. The U.S. Commission
on Ocean Policy, created by Congress in 2000 and appointed by President
Bush, concluded that human actions have seriously jeopardized the health
of the oceans, from huge and toxic algae blooms to depletion of fish
stocks. Only a major overhaul of federal policy could reverse the trend,
the commission found in its 413-page report. [Ahead
of a June election,] Liberal Party pollsters were in the field last
week asking Ontarians whether they were "more or less likely to
vote for the Conservative/Alliance if you knew they had been taken over
by evangelical Christians." (...) "We're going to be drawing
some pretty careful distinctions between Stephen Harper and Paul Martin,"
a senior Liberal strategist said, adding the Liberals plan to paint
the Conservative leader as "radical and right-wing" and "very
non-mainstream" with a "very American style." Saudi Arabia
is strongly denying accusations that it agreed with the White House
to "fine tune" oil prices before this November's presidential
elections, a move that would help the economy at an opportune time for
the Republicans. The White
House played down any hint of friction with Jordan, saying the Wednesday
meeting with King Abdullah was rescheduled to the first week of May
"because of developments in the region." (...) [In reality,
the] Abdullah-Bush meeting will not be held "until discussions
and deliberations are concluded with officials in the American administration
to clarify the American position on the peace process and the final
situation in the Palestinian territories, especially in light of the
latest statements by officials in the American administration,"
[a Jordanian] palace statement said. President
Bush named John Negroponte, the United States' top diplomat at the United
Nations, as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Monday and asserted that
Iraq "will be free and democratic and peaceful." (...) "John
Negroponte is a man of enormous experience and skill" and "has
done a really good job of speaking for the United States to the world
about our intentions to spread freedom and peace," said Bush. When FBI
agents searched a rented storage locker in a small east Texas town last
year, they were alarmed to discover a huge cache of weapons and the
ingredients to make a cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands. Just
as startling was the identity of the owner of the arsenal, which included
nearly half a million rounds of ammunition and more than 60 pipe bombs.
He was not some foreign terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda but a 63-year-old
Texan [William Krar] with an affinity for anti-government militias and
white supremacist views. [R]adical
Muslim cleric [Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad] said in an interview published
Sunday (...) [that] "We don't make a distinction between civilians
and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims
and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has
no sanctity." It was important to see accusations of terrorism
in their proper context, he said. "If we give money to needy women
and children, they say they are the families of terrorists. But where
do the terrorists come from? Zimbabwe? No. They are people from here.
And they are our brothers, the terrorists." "The British also
are terrorists, in Iraq... Terrorism is the law of the 21st century.
It's legitimate." Vice President
Dick Cheney portrayed President Bush and himself as champions of the
Second Amendment (...) in a speech at the National Rifle Association's
133rd annual convention Saturday. "John Kerry's approach to the
Second Amendment has been to regulate, regulate and then regulate some
more," Cheney said, citing votes against legislation that would
protect gun makers from lawsuits and in favor of allowing federal authorities
to randomly inspect gun dealers without notice. (...) Earlier in the
day, Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed with an assault weapon
in the Columbine High School killings five years ago, tried to enter
the convention hall where the NRA was meeting, seeking to urge Cheney
to support extending the assault weapons ban. Mauser was turned away
by a security guard as several conventioneers applauded. A couple of
conventioneers yelled "Get a life" and "Vote for Bush."
Two Americans
and a Jordanian were shot dead in Kosovo Saturday when emotions over
Iraq apparently boiled over into a gunbattle between members of the
U.N. law enforcement mission. (...) [U.N. police spokesman Neeraj] Singh
said the U.N. was still investigating the possible motive. Israel
assassinated Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi in a missile strike on
his car Saturday (...), less than a month after [they] killed Hamas
founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in an air strike outside a Gaza City mosque. [Secretary
of State Colin] Powell, [Robert] Woodward said, opposed the war and
believed [Vice President Dick] Cheney was obsessively trying to establish
a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network. He said
Powell believed Cheney took ambiguous intelligence and treated it as
fact. "Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I.
Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell
called Feith's 'Gestapo' office -- had established what amounted to
a separate government," the [Washington] Post writes. "The
vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with
his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago
celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and 'always
had major reservations about what we were trying to do."' In Fallujah's
darkened, empty streets, U.S. troops blast AC/DC's "Hell's Bells"
and other rock music full volume from a huge speaker, hoping to grate
on the nerves of this Sunni Muslim city's gunmen and give a laugh to
marines along the front line. (...) [A]n Army psychological operations
team hopes a mix of heavy metal and insults shouted in Arabic —
including, "You shoot like a goat herder" — will draw
gunmen to step forward and attack. (...) On Thursday night, the crew
and its Arabic-language interpreter taunted fighters, saying, "May
all the ambulances in Fallujah have enough fuel to pick up the bodies
of the mujahadeen." The message was specially timed for an attack
moments later by an AC-130 gunship that pounded targets in the city. Anyone
who doubts the gravity of global warming should ask Alaska's Eskimo,
Indian and Aleut elders about the dramatic changes to their land and
the animals on which they depend. Native leaders say that salmon are
increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions
and strange behavior. Salmon and moose meat have developed odd tastes
and the marrow in moose bones is weirdly runny, they say. Arctic pack
ice is disappearing, making food scarce for sea animals and causing
difficulties for the Natives who hunt them. It is feared that polar
bears, to name one species, may disappear from the Northern hemisphere
by mid-century. As trees and bushes march north over what was once tundra,
so do beavers, and they are damming new rivers and lakes to the detriment
of water quality and possibly salmon eggs. Still, to the frustration
of Alaska Natives, many politicians in the lower 48 U.S. states deny
that global warming is occurring or that a warmer climate could cause President
Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two
months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the
decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national
security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy. Bush feared that
if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another
conflict, people would think he was too eager for war. The National
Rifle Association is creating a news corporation, starting an Internet
talk show and preparing to buy a radio station to speak about candidates
and gun rights at election time despite new political ad limits. Worldwide
demand for oil is growing fast (...) [while] spare production capacity
worldwide is down to (...) just half the wiggle room that existed in
late 2002, according to [U.S.] Energy Dept. data. (...) The IEA [International
Energy Agency] expects world oil demand to grow over 2% this year, with
China alone accounting for 40% of the jump and the U.S.--the world's
biggest energy user--for close to 20%. The [U.S.]
Environmental Protection agency told officials in 31 states Thursday
they must develop new pollution controls because the air in some of
their counties, home to more than 150 million people, does not meet
federal health standards. (...) Most of the countries are in eastern
third of the country, although California (...) continues to have the
worst air problems with four regions designated with either "severe"
or "serious" air pollution. Iraq's
nuclear facilities remain unguarded, and radioactive materials are being
taken out of the country, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency reported
after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in
European scrap yards. (...) The IAEA has been unable to investigate,
monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the
country in March, 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA
or other UN weapons inspectors into the country, saying that the coalition
has taken over responsibility for illicit weapons searches. So far those
searches have come up empty-handed (...). Key European
nations, including Iraq war opponents Germany and France, vigorously
rejected a truce offer purportedly from Osama bin Laden on Thursday,
saying there could be no negotiating with his al-Qaida terrorist network. An audio
tape purportedly by Osama bin Laden and aired on Arab TV Thursday offered
a truce to Europeans if they withdrew troops from Muslim nations but
vowed to continue fighting the United States and Israel. When President
Bush threw his support on Wednesday behind an Israeli plan to withdraw
from the Gaza Strip, he provided diplomatic assurances that represented
a victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Mr. Sharon wanted three commitments:
backing for the Gaza withdrawal, American recognition that Israel would
hold on to parts of the West Bank, and an American rejection of the
right of millions of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war
of 1948 and their descendants to return to their lands in what is now
Israel. (...) And he got them without having to negotiate with the Palestinians.
(...) "Imagine if Palestinians said, `O.K., we give California
to Canada,' " said Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser for the Palestine
Liberation Organization. "Americans should stop wondering why they
have so little credibility in the Middle East." Q: (...)
After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say? And what
lessons have you learned from it? /// A: Hmmm. I wish you'd have given
me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. [pause]
I'm sure historians will look back and say, Gosh, he could have done
it better this way or that way. [pause] You know, I just — I'm
sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press
conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer,
but it hadn't yet. (...) Even though what I know today about the stockpiles
of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam
Hussein. (...) You know, there's this kind of, there's this terror still
in the soul of some of the people in Iraq. They're worried about getting
killed. And therefore, they're not going to talk [about the weapons].
And it'll all settle out. We'll find out the truth about the weapons
at some point in time. (...) He's a dangerous man. (...) You know, I
hope I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident
I have. I just haven't — you just put me under the spot here and
maybe I'm not quick, as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up
with one. /// Q: Mr. President, Why are you and the vice president insisting
on appearing together before the 9/11 commission? (...) /// A: (...)
because the the [sic] 9/11 commission wants to ask us questions. That's
why we're meeting, and I look forward to meeting with them and answering
their questions. /// Q: Mr. President, I was asking why you're appearing
together rather than separately, which was their request. /// A: Because
it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11
commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward
to answering them. (...) /// Q: (...) with public support for your policies
in Iraq falling off the way they have quite significantly over the past
couple of months, I guess I'd like to know if you feel in any way that
you've failed as a communicator on this topic? /// A: Gosh, I don't
know. /// Q: Well, you deliver a lot of speeches. And a lot of them
contain similar phrases and they vary very little from one to the next.
And they often include a pretty upbeat assessment of how things are
going (...) I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in
any way? You don't have many of these press conferences where you engage
in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to make the case
to the American public? /// A: (...) that's the kind of thing the voters
will decide next November. That's what elections are about. They'll
take a look at me and my opponent and say let's see which one of them
can better win the war on terror. Who best can see to it that Iraq emerges
as a free society. (...) I'll do it the best I possibly can. I'll give
it the best shot. I'll speak as plainly as I can. One thing is for certain,
though, about me, and the world has learned this, when I say something
I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important
for keeping world peace and freedom. Thank you all very much. The Marines
are investigating a photograph circulating on the Internet that depicts
a soldier with two Iraqi boys and a sign, in English, proclaiming the
soldier had killed one boy's father and impregnated the boy's sister.
(...) Investigators have not determined if the photo showing Lance Cpl.
Ted J. Boudreaux Jr. was altered (...). Results of the investigation
and possible punishment were expected Wednesday. A 2,500-strong
U.S. force, backed by tanks and artillery, pushed to the outskirts of
the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Tuesday for a showdown with a radical
cleric. (...) "Treat the people of Najaf with dignity and respect,"
[Maj. Gen. John R. S.] Batiste said. "Only bite off the head of
the poised rattlesnake." A British
newspaper reported that an Indian steel tycoon [Lakshmi Mittal] paid
$128 million for a mansion in the British capital, breaking the world
record for the most expensive house purchase. (...) In February, Forbes
magazine ranked him 62nd in its list of the globe's richest billionaires
with a fortune worth $6.2 billion. [Lt.-Col.
Brennan] Byrne said U.S. marines would not withdraw from their positions
in Fallujah. "Diplomacy is just talk unless you have a credible
force to balk it up," he said. "People will bend to our will
if they are afraid of us." When Brig.
Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, was asked
Sunday what he would tell Iraqis about televised images "of Americans
and coalition soldiers killing innocent civilians," he said: "Change
the channel." Singling out the popular Arabic-language networks
for criticism, he continued, "Change the channel to a legitimate,
authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans
intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources.
That is propaganda, and that is lies." "When
I saw those [suicide] vests, I thought those people obviously don't
value life," said one staff sergeant, shaking his head in bewilderment.
A 20-year-old corporal, Philip Dennis, said he had expected to be building
schools in Iraq, not dodging mortar shells. "I'm a humanitarian
person, and I don't believe in killing for no reason, but I guess this
is the job that needs to be done," he said. On his first day of
combat, Dennis recounted, he climbed onto a roof and was astonished
to see dozens of black-robed insurgents with AK-47 rifles. "I had
no idea they had so many people, and I realized this was very big."
He paused and added, "We killed a lot of them." A few minutes
later, a Navy chaplain arrived at the command post in a Humvee to hold
a brief Easter communion service, (...) "God, we pray that our
actions here give some glory back to you," said Navy Chaplain Wayne
Hall, 36, who set up his communion vessels on a factory workbench. "We
live in grace even here, and we are not afraid of death... None of us
wants to die here, but death is the blink of an eye, and you wake up
in paradise." "What
we're doing in Iraq is right," Bush said after attending an Easter
service at a chapel on this sprawling base. "Today, on bended knee,
I thank the good Lord" for protecting U.S. troops (...). (...)
Bush said it was "hard to tell" whether Americans should expect
to see more of the kind of deadly weeks that the military just sustained.
But, he said, "We're plenty tough." Hundreds
have been killed in the [Fallujah] fighting, and attempts at a ceasefire
have so far failed to halt the bloodshed. (...) An assessment by five
international non-governmental organisations on Friday said 470 people
had been killed in Falluja. Of 1,200 injured, it said 243 were women
and 200 children. The groups said their estimate may be conservative. The U.S.
military pulled back Saturday from an earlier prediction that Osama
bin Laden would be captured this year, even while preparing its largest
force to date for operations along the Pakistani border where the al-Qaida
chief is suspected to be hiding. The U.S.
military campaign across Iraq this week infuriated Arabs in the region
and brought strident calls for Muslim solidarity against the American-led
occupation. Throughout the week, Arabic-language television networks
have repeatedly aired images of U.S. tanks rumbling through Fallujah,
a mosque damaged by a U.S. bomb and the corpses of Iraqis killed in
the heaviest fighting in almost a year. (...) Leading Arab newspapers
and clerics have praised Iraqi insurgents and the emerging anti-U.S.
alliance among Sunni and Shiite Muslims as a turning point in the fight
against the occupation. Amid an
uprising in Iraq, President Bush declared Saturday that insurgents are
"a small faction" trying to derail democracy in a battle he
vowed the U.S. military and its allies will win. (...) "Coalition
forces will continue a multi-city offensive ... until these enemies
of democracy are dealt with," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
(...) "A small faction is attempting to ... seize power" as
the June 30 date for Iraqi sovereignty draws near, the president said
on the radio, and to delay the turnover of sovereignty "is precisely
what our enemies want." Anger grew
Friday among U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders over the Marines' bloody siege
of Fallujah, with one member of the Governing Council suspending his
membership and another threatening to quit. (...) Several of the council's
25 members spoke out against what they called the "mass punishment"
of Fallujah's people in the siege, launched early Monday by U.S. forces
to uproot Sunni insurgents in the city. The people
of Fallujah carried their dead to the city's soccer stadium and buried
them under the field on Friday, unable to get to cemeteries because
of a U.S. siege of the city. As the struggle for Fallujah entered a
fifth day, hundreds of women, children and the elderly streamed out
of the city. Marines ordered Iraqi men of "military age" to
stay behind, sometimes turning back entire families if they refused
to be separated. Former
Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a hospital early Friday after
several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes
and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated
Press. Army Lt.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (...) vowed that coalition forces would (...) destroy
[the] al-Mahdi Army militia across the country in a new operation dubbed
"Resolute Sword." A Reliant
Resources Inc. power-trading unit and four employees were indicted Thursday
in the first criminal case lodged against a company accused of manipulating
power prices during California's energy crisis. A federal grand jury
indicted [them] in an alleged scheme to illegally increase electricity
costs while creating a "false and misleading appearance of an electricity
supply shortage." Thousands
of Iraqi sympathisers, both Sunni and Shiite Muslim, forced their way
through US military roadblocks in a bid to bring aid from the capital
to the besieged Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah. Troops in armoured
vehicles attempted to stop the convoy of cars and pedestrians from reaching
the western town where US marines have met ferocious resistance in a
two-day-old offensive against the insurgents. But the US contingents
were overwhelmed as residents of villages west of the capital came to
the convoy's assistance, hurling insults and stones at the beleaguered
troops. Iraq could
become a "terrorist Disneyland" and the conflict there is
already inspiring a growing number of attacks worldwide, terrorism experts
say. (...) in
Fallujah, U.S. forces seized another mosque, the al-Muadidi mosque,
and a marine climbed its minaret and fired down on gunmen, witnesses
said. Insurgents hit the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades, causing
it to partly collapse, [an] AP reporter said. A U.S.
military source said that in Fallujah (...) U.S. aircraft destroyed
part of a wall of the Abdul Aziz Shakir Mosque compound. (...) The Associated
Press reported that cars were seen taking bodies from the scene, and
reported that witnesses said 40 people were killed. The Marine source
could not provide a casualty report, but said that if there were "enemy"
casualties at the mosque, they were brought down by fire from U.S. Marines'
rifles. U.S. Marines
in a fierce battle for this Sunni Muslim stronghold fired rockets that
hit a mosque compound filled with worshippers Wednesday, and witnesses
said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread
to nearly all of the country. The fighting in Fallujah and neighboring
Ramadi, where commanders confirmed 12 Marines were killed late Tuesday,
was part of an intensified uprising involving both Sunni and Shiites
that now stretched from Kirkuk in the north to the far south. Despite
the widespread unrest, L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator
in Iraq, said there was no question coalition forces were in control
of the country. "I know if you just report on those few places,
it does look chaotic," Bremer said. "But if you travel around
the country ... what you find is a bustling economy, people opening
businesses right and left, unemployment has dropped." (...) Bremer
described [Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada] al-Sadr as "a guy who
has a fundamentally inappropriate view of the new Iraq." "He
believes that in the new Iraq, like in the old Iraq, power should be
to the guy with guns," Bremer said. "That is an unacceptable
vision for Iraq." Reported
civilian deaths resulting from the US-led military intervention in Iraq
(Jan 1/2003-Apr 6/2004): between 8827 and 10677. The sight
of military jets flying low over the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall
rattled some nerves Tuesday. Local radio and television stations reported
getting worried calls from residents asking about the jets, which were
part of a military publicity and recruitment campaign. (...) "We
are the protectors of the U.S. Capitol, and we want to tell the community
we are here," a spokesman for the 113th Air Wing of the D.C. Air
National Guard, which staged the flyovers, said before the event. Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that there were no immediate
plans to increase the number of United States troops in Iraq. But he
said that the American commanders there would get more soldiers if they
asked for them. Including
casualties Monday and Tuesday, at least 18 American Marines and soldiers
and 99 Iraqis have been killed since Sunday. (...) "We have problems,
there's no hiding that. But basically Iraq is on track to realize the
kind of Iraq that Iraqis want and Americans want, which is a democratic
Iraq," [U.S.-posted Iraq administrator L. Paul] Bremer said on
ABC's "Good Morning America." U.S. troops
closed off entrances to Fallujah with earth barricades ahead of [a]
planned operation, code named "Vigilant Resolve." The four
U.S. security guards who were horribly killed in the western Iraqi city
of Falluja on Wednesday (...) were combatants of a different kind —
front-line mercenaries of the corporate world, the new warriors of fortune.
(...) According to Singer, the private military industry has more than
15,000 personnel on Iraq's parched and deadly ground, roughly one-tenth
the entire foreign military presence in the country, a figure that eclipses
the British contingent of about 9,000 conventional troops. (...) These
private-sector "assets" (...) run the same risks faced by
conventional soldiers, sometimes with the same bloody results [but]
their deaths or injuries do not show up on casualty lists like those
kept by the Pentagon. A retired
army colonel commissioned by the Pentagon to examine the war in Afghanistan
concluded the conflict created conditions that have given "warlordism,
banditry and opium production a new lease on life." (...) "The
failure to adjust US operations in line with the post-Taliban change
in theater conditions cost the United States some of the fruits of victory
and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian and stability costs on
Afghanistan," [Retired Army Colonel Hy] Rothstein wrote in the
report. "Indeed, the war's inadvertent effects may be more significant
than we think." Newly declassified
U.S. documents show the extent of American willingness to provide aid
to Brazil's generals during the 1964 coup that ushered in 21 years of
often bloody military rule. (...) The documents show members of Lyndon
B. Johnson's administration actively preparing to aid the coup plotters.
In a March 27, 1964, cable to the State Department, [Lincoln Gordon,
the U.S. ambassador to Brazil at the time] requested a naval task force
and deliveries of fuel and arms to the coup plotters "to help avert
a major disaster here." Gordon said in the cable that Brazil could
fall under the spell of a communist-style regime led by President Joao
Goulart (...). (...) In one instance, Johnson instructs aides "to
take every step that we can" to aid Brazilian military forces opposed
to Goulart. On the
outskirts of this hostile city Friday night, battalions from the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force set up checkpoints and camps in preparation
for their eventual return. (...) "I've got a lot of hate inside
me, but I try to put that aside," said Sgt. Eric Nordwig, 29, of
Riverside, a veteran of the battle that toppled Saddam Hussein. "We
just sit and take it and be mortared." The time has come to "clean
up the town," he said. Marine officials have insisted that any
military strike would be "precise" and "overwhelming."
Col. J.C. Coleman, chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force,
said (...) "Fallouja is a barrier on the highway to progress. We're
going to eliminate that barrier without damaging the highway." [U.S.]
Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded Friday evidence he presented
to the United Nations that two trailers in Iraq were used for weapons
of mass destruction may have been wrong. "Islam
bans what was done to the bodies, but the Americans are as brutal as
the youths who burned and mutilated the bodies," said Mahdi Ahmed
Saleh, a 61-year-old retired primary school principal who runs a grocery
store. Mohammed Mikhlef, a 45-year-old contractor, added: "We just
do not know what the Americans will do now. But, by God, they are capable
of so much cruelty." [Regarding retaliation,] "We are not
going to do a pell-mell rush into the city. It will be deliberate, it
will be precise and it will be overwhelming," [Brigadier-General
Mark Kimmitt] said. "We will re-establish control of that city.
... It will be at the time and place of our choosing." Ford Motor
Co. calls it the right vehicle for the wrong place. This month, as it
moves to capitalize on surging demand for armored protection since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, Ford will begin
offering a "Ballistic Protection Series" version of its Lincoln
Town Car. (...) It's "an elegant answer to a hostile world,"
according to a brochure from Ford's luxury Lincoln division. "A
barrier against bigger, faster bullets," adds the brochure. On Sept.
11, 2001, [U.S.] national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled
to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the
threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday"
-- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from
Islamic radicals. Jubilant
residents dragged the charred corpses of four American contractors through
the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Euphrates
River. Five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby. (...)
In all, at least 597 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the war began
March 20, 2003. Of the total, 459 have died since May 1 when Bush flew
onto an aircraft carrier off the California coast to declare the end
of major combat. President
Bush welcomed seven former Soviet-dominated nations into NATO on Monday.
(...) "As witness to some of the great crimes of the last century,
our new members bring moral clarity to the purposes of our alliance.
They understand our cause in Afghanistan and in Iraq," the president
said, "because tyranny for them is still a fresh memory." American
soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened
chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it
of printing lies that incited violence. Thousands of outraged Iraqis
protested the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the
hostility many feel toward the United States a year after the invasion
that toppled Saddam Hussein. "No, no, America!" and "Where
is democracy now?" screamed protesters (...). Mr. Bush
wanted to know "did Iraq have anything to do with this? Were they
complicit in it?" Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security
adviser, recounted [Sunday] in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes."
(...) the White House suggested last week [the conversation] had never
taken place (...). [Presidential
adviser Karen Hughes] said Bush helped compose speeches, revised Middle
East policy and marched nations to war without fear or doubt (...). Diplomatic
and military officials say the former Iraqi leader [Saddam Hussein]
has provided little useful information in interrogations so far —
and may even be having fun. Descendants
of slaves filed a $1 billion lawsuit Monday against U.S. and British
corporations (...). Lawyers (...) said the complaint was the first slave
reparations lawsuit to use DNA to link the plaintiffs to Africans who
suffered atrocities during the slave trade. The suit (...) accuses Lloyd's
of London, FleetBoston and R.J. Reynolds of "aiding and abetting
the commission of genocide" by allegedly financing and insuring
the ships that delivered slaves to (...) the United States. (...) DNA
testing has made a "direct connection" between Farmer-Paellmann
and the Mende tribe in Sierra Leone (...). Scientific evidence also
has linked the other plaintiffs to tribes in Niger and Gambia, the suit
said. The spread
of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the oceans, a graveyard
for fish and plant life, is emerging as a threat to the health of the
planet, experts say. (...) Some of the oxygen-deprived zones are relatively
small, less than one square kilometre in size. Others are vast, measuring
more than 70,000 square kilometres. Pollution, particularly the overuse
of nitrogen in fertilizers, is responsible for the spread of dead zones,
environment ministers and experts from more than 100 countries were
told. The number of known oxygen-starved areas has doubled since 1990
to nearly 150, according to the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), holding
is annual conference here. The murder
of a United Nations policeman in Kosovo last week was committed by ethnic
Albanians who posed as Serbs in an effort to cast their bitter rivals
as villains, the Telegraph has learned. A claim
by Israeli intelligence that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction
was based largely on speculation, not fact, parliamentary investigators
said in a report Sunday. They dismissed suggestions that Israel tried
to push its Western allies to war. U.S. officials
are moving rapidly to create a civilian-run Iraqi Defense Ministry that
will work in tandem with the American military after the handover of
Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 and could form the nucleus of a strategic
alliance between the two countries. Since February, about 50 Iraqi officials
have been flown to Washington to attend a Pentagon-run school on how
to recruit, train and equip a military that operates under civilian
leadership, according to the retired U.S. Army colonel who directs the
program. U.S. Sen.
Jay Rockefeller regrets his vote to authorize a war against Iraq. "If
I had known then what I know now, I would have voted against it,"
Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday. (...) "The decision got made
before there was a whole bunch of intelligence," said Rockefeller,
(...). "I think the intelligence was shaped. And I think the interpretation
of the intelligence was shaped. "We had this feeling we could be
welcomed as liberators. Americans don't know history, geography, ethnicity.
The administration had no idea of what they were getting into in Iraq.
We are not internationalists. We border on being isolationists. We don't
know anything about the Middle East." "When
Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular
concept of 'weekend' dominated by such things as entertainment and sport,
people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer
see the heavens," [Pope John Paul] said in a speech to Australian
bishops. [I]ntelligence
officials say [there is] a new, complicated and deadly trend of like-minded
terror groups that have become more diffuse. Lines between organizations
are blurring, with old groups disbanding and re-emerging under new names,
harder to define and predict. Democratic
critics and some family members of soldiers serving in Iraq took President
Bush to task Thursday for his jokes at a black-tie dinner about the
fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction. (...) In several photos
[on projection screens], he appeared to be searching the Oval Office.
A photo of Bush looking under a piece of furniture was flashed on the
large projection screens in the ballroom. "Those weapons of mass
destruction got to be here somewhere," Bush said in his narration
(...). (...) White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan defended the president.
"There is no question about the seriousness about which the president
approaches this issue" of the Iraq war, she said. Soldiers
headed for Iraq are still buying their own body armor — and in
many cases, their families are buying it for them — despite assurances
from the military that the gear will be in hand before they're in harm's
way. [U.S. pre-election]
polls show jobs are the top issue with most voters, and [John F.] Kerry
is viewed as best suited to improve the economy. Terrorism is the No.
2 issue, and most voters say they trust [George W.] Bush most to protect
the nation. The International
Monetary Fund said on Wednesday long-standing weaknesses in Argentina's
economy led to its collapse in 2001, while the global lender acknowledged
that its own shortcomings had prevented it from detecting the looming
crisis. In a self-examination of the handling of the crisis, the IMF
said it could not single out the sole source of the crash but realized
there were several key lessons to be learned, including the need to
strengthen its surveillance mechanisms. [A] study
by the UN population division estimated that 48 percent of the world's
population was living in urban areas in 2003. "It is projected
to exceed the 50 percent mark by 2007, thus marking the first time in
history that the world had more urban residents than rural residents,"
the study said. The United
States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday condemning
Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin. (...) Thursday's
veto is the United States' 79th and the latest in a long string of vetoes
regarding Israel. The Soviet Union and Russia have cast the most Security
Council vetoes over the years, 121. Britain has cast 32, France 18 and
China, 5. President
Hamid Karzai launched one of the largest mobilizations of Afghanistan's
new U.S.-trained army Monday, sending hundreds of soldiers to the western
city of Herat after gun and tank battles between rival warlords killed
about 100 people. (...) U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty
said Americans also had a bomber buzz the combatants late Sunday "to
help try to calm the fighting." El Salvador's
ruling rightwing Arena party returned to power on Sunday after an often
vitriolic election campaign that included heavy lobbying by the US.
(...) The result will come as a relief to Washington, which had warned
Salvadorean voters of the consequences of electing the FMLN [Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front] candidate. (...) While the central
American country has a population of 6.6 million, 2.3 million are in
the US. [FMLN's candidate] Mr. Handal, 73, accused [Arena's candidate]
Mr. Saca of resorting to "lies, fear and blackmail" to win
the election, and vowed to oppose the US-Salvador trade agreement. Arena
was lent help by the architect of US policy in the region, Otto Reich.
In in interview last week for Salvadorean radio, he said: "We [the
US government] could not have the same confidence in an El Salvador
led by a person who is obviously an admirer of Fidel Castro and of [Venezuelan
president] Hugo Chávez." (...) Arena (...) has ruled since
1989, (...) is one of the closest allies of the US in the region and
has troops in Iraq. Israel
killed Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in a helicopter missile strike outside
a Gaza City mosque Monday, prompting threats of unprecedented revenge
by Palestinian militants against Israel and the United States. Yassin
was the most prominent Palestinian leader killed by Israel in more than
three years of fighting, and his assassination was seen as a major escalation.
More than 200,000 Palestinians, some carrying billowing green Hamas
flags, flooded the streets for the funeral procession (...). (...) [Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon said Israel will press ahead with its war
on terror, signaling more targeted attacks and raids. "The war
against terror has not ended and will continue day after day, everywhere,"
he said. The [U.K.]
government's anti-poverty programme is having only a patchy impact on
long-term inequalities, especially among racial minorities, according
to research published today by the Social Exclusion Unit. (...) Writing
in the Guardian, [social exclusion minister] Ms [Yvette] Cooper does
not hide the limits of the government anti-poverty programme. She admits:
"In the last few decades of the 20th century inherited disadvantage
got worse not better. Poverty in childhood for those born in 1970 was
more likely to lead to poverty in adulthood compared to those born in
1958". President
Bush entrusts adviser Karl Rove to oversee his bare-knuckle bid for
a second term. Yet Rove is but one of a small group of counselors helping
to guide the most expensive, and possibly the most corporate-like, presidential
campaign in history. (...) It was Rove who masterminded Bush's 1996
gubernatorial race in Texas and his 2000 presidential campaign (...). [Richard]
Clarke [the former White House counterterrorism coordinator] (...) writes
in a new book (...) that [U.S. President] Bush and his Cabinet were
preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the
same Cold War issues that had faced his father's administration. "It
was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office
eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview Sunday on
its "60 Minutes" program. As the
Bush administration touted accomplishments in Iraq, some Iraqis said
Saturday they feel more insecure as attacks persist a year after the
United States launched military strikes to oust Saddam Hussein. (...)
Millions of protesters marched around much of the globe to denounce
the U.S.-led occupation that some say has caused an upsurge of international
terrorism. Hundreds
of thousands of people around the world rallied against the U.S. presence
in Iraq on the first anniversary of the war Saturday, in protests that
retained the anger, if not the size, of demonstrations held before the
invasion began. Carbon
dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high
levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the
past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station
atop a Hawaiian volcano. NATO-led
forces surrounded a key Kosovo town Saturday in efforts to separate
ethnic Albanians and Serbs and prevent a resurgence of attacks that
killed 28 people and wounded 600, the worst bloodshed in the province
since its war ended in 1999. [U.S.]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld almost immediately urged President
Bush to consider bombing Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks
on New York and Washington, says (...) Richard A. Clarke, the White
House counterterrorism coordinator at the time, [as he] recounts in
a forthcoming book details of a meeting the day after the terrorist
attacks during which top officials considered the U.S. response. Even
then, he said, they were certain that al-Qaida was to blame and there
was no hint of Iraqi involvement. "Rumsfeld was saying we needed
to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "We all said, 'But no, no, al-Qaida
is in Afghanistan." (...) Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that
"there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots
of good targets in Iraq." Competitive
pressures and a fear of appearing unpatriotic discouraged journalists
from doing more critical reporting during the run-up to the invasion
of Iraq, according to reporters and others at a conference on media
coverage of the war. The journalists on the panels at the University
of California at Berkeley this week blamed the Bush administration for
leaking faulty information, but said the media also has itself to blame
for not being more skeptical about the case for war. (...) Much of the
criticism focused on a Sept. 8, 2002, New York Times article by Judith
Miller and Michael Gordon, which said Iraq was importing aluminum tubes
that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a critical step
in making an atomic bomb. [Michael] Massing said nuclear experts or
weapons inspectors would have refuted the evidence had the Times consulted
them. Experts later verified the tubes were not used for nuclear weapons,
but The New York Times and other papers buried that news in their inside
pages, he said. Massing noted that a phrase from the article —
"The first sign of a smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud"
— made it into a speech given by President Bush in the fall of
2002, days before Congress gave him war powers (...). (...) [Lt. Col.
Rick Long] deflected accusations that the Pentagon decision to embed
about 700 journalists with troops fighting in the Iraq war allowed the
government to influence their coverage. "The reason we embedded
so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate the information environment,"
Long said. "We wanted to beat any kind of disinformation or propaganda
by beating them at their own game." Oil prices
rose on Friday to extend a searing rally that pushed crude earlier in
the week to its highest closing price in 13 years on concern over U.S.
summer gasoline supplies. (...) Soaring Chinese demand and low U.S.
fuel inventories ahead of peak summer holiday driving consumption have
helped fire the rally. The Imaris
are Shiite Muslims, like most Iraqis. (...) Hamid, a younger brother
and the family artist, is still a sign painter. But the messages have
changed. Around this time last year, he was asked to paint banners that
read "Happy Birthday Our Magnificent Saddam." Now, he gets
paid to make pretty letters that say "Get Rid of the Americans"
or "Drink Pepsi." A year
after war began in Iraq, President Bush said today that the campaign
there was nothing less than a struggle between civilization and darkness,
good and evil, life and death. "Each of us has pledged before the
world we will never bow to the violence of a few," the president
told envoys from the 84 nations that are part of the Iraqi effort. (...)
"There is a dividing line in our world, not between nations and
not between religions or cultures, but a dividing line separating two
visions of justice and the value of life." Jay Garner,
the US general abruptly dismissed as Iraq's first occupation administrator
after a month in the job, says he fell out with the Bush circle because
he wanted free elections and rejected an imposed programme of privatisation.
(...) Despite being a protege of Mr Rumsfeld, Gen Garner was the subject
of what was alleged to be a White House whispering campaign, describing
him as weak. President
Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key Washington ally, said Thursday he may
withdraw troops early from Iraq and that Poland was "misled"
about the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. His
remarks to a small group of European reporters were his first hint of
criticism about war in Iraq, where Poland currently has 2,400 troops
and with the United States and Britain commands one of three sectors
of the U.S.-led occupation. A defiant
[U.S.] Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused Thursday to remove
himself from a case involving his good friend, Vice President Dick Cheney,
dismissing suggestions of a conflict of interest. (...) The environmental
group [Sierra Club] said it was improper for Scalia to take a hunting
trip with Cheney while the court was considering whether the White House
must release information about private meetings of Cheney's energy task
force. North Korea
said Thursday that inspections and the dismantling of its nuclear weapons
programs would only pave the way for a U.S. invasion, as proven by the
U.S.-led war in Iraq. In Baghdad,
the U.S. military lowered the death toll in Wednesday's suicide bombing
at another hotel to seven, after initially putting it at 27. The Madrid
bombers appear to have succeeded in keeping their deadly intentions
hidden. A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, said authorities found no evidence of increased "chatter"
— monitored contacts between suspects that might have pointed
to a plot — in the days prior to the attack. A majority
of people living in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey say they believe
the U.S. is conducting its campaign against terror to control Mideast
oil and to dominate the world, according to an international poll released
Tuesday. (...) A sizable number of people in France, Germany and Russia
also have these suspicions about the campaign against terror, according
to the Pew Global Attitudes Project. Ten years
after the ratification of a United Nations treaty on climate change,
greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the
rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized
world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI),
a leading environmental think-tank. (...) "The five warmest years
in recorded weather history have taken place over the last six years,"
noted WRI's president, Jonathan Lash. "The ten warmest years in
recorded weather history have taken place since 1987." Most U.S.
news media are experiencing a steady decline in their audiences and
are significantly cutting their investment in staff and resources, according
to a report issued on Monday. (...) "Trust in journalism has been
declining for a generation," said project director Tom Rosenstiel.
"This study suggests one reason is that news media are locked in
a vicious cycle. As audiences fragment, newsrooms are cut back, which
further erodes public trust." (...) Only 5 percent of stories on
cable news contained new information, the report found. Most were simply
rehashes of the same facts. There was also less fact checking than in
the past and less policing of journalistic standards. Quality news and
information were more available than ever before, but so was the trivial,
the one-sided and the false. U.S. stocks
staged a robust recovery on Friday from four days of heavy losses as
investors put aside security fears triggered by the attacks in Madrid
and bought heavyweight technology stocks. Investigators
are exploring the possibility that the stabbing death of a federal prosecutor
in December was a random act of violence or even a suicide, a police
official said Friday. (...) The married father of two had been stabbed
36 times with what was believed to be a penknife and was left to drown. The [U.S.]
Justice Department investigation that criticized FBI agents for taking
souvenirs from the World Trade Center site also found that Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld and a high-ranking FBI official kept items from the
Sept. 11 attack scenes. The final investigatory report said the Justice
Department inspector general confirmed Rumsfeld "has a piece of
the airplane that flew into the Pentagon." (...) Pentagon spokesman
Lawrence Di Rita said Friday night that Rumsfeld (...) shows it to people
[in his office] as a reminder of the tragedy (...). "He doesn't
consider it his own," Di Rita said (...). Millions
of Spaniards poured into the streets Friday, chanting "Cowards!"
and "Assassins!" in a protest of the bombings that killed
199 people. The Basque separatist group ETA denied government allegations
that it staged the attacks. Martha
Stewart, the creator of a media empire based on domestic arts, was convicted
today of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements
in connection with the sale of her shares of ImClone Systems in 2001.
(...) On Feb. 27, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum dismissed a charge
of securities fraud against Ms. Stewart. (...) Ms. Stewart's appearance
got coverage. Her handbags and boots were scrutinized by eager journalists.
(...) Conviction on the charges against Ms. Stewart would carry a possible
sentence of up to 20 years in prison, but federal guidelines could reduce
that to about a year. Communist
China is changing its constitution to embrace the most basic tenet of
capitalism, protecting private property rights for the first time since
the 1949 revolution. (...) Communist Party leaders (...) tout privatization
as a way to continue the country's economic revolution and help tens
of millions of poor Chinese. It will bring China's legal framework in
line with its market-oriented ambitions by providing a constitutional
guarantee for entrepreneurs, once considered the enemy of communism
but now pivotal in generating jobs and wealth. Jean-Bertrand
Aristide said in a telephone interview Monday that he was "forced
to leave" Haiti by U.S. military forces. Aristide was put in contact
with The Associated Press by the Rev. Jesse Jackson following a news
conference, where the civil rights leader called on Congress to investigate
Aristide's ouster. (...) Also Monday, two Democratic congressmen, California's
Maxine Waters and New York's Charles Rangel, said they, too, had spoken
to Aristide, and he had made similar claims. (...) [Rev. Jesse] Jackson
said Congress should investigate whether the United States, specifically
the CIA, had a role in the rebellion that led to Aristide's exile. Jackson
encouraged reporters to question where the rebels in Haiti got their
guns and uniforms. (...) The White House, Pentagon and State Department
have denied allegations that Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces eager
for him to resign. Ronald
Noble, Interpol's first American secretary general, told The Associated
Press that (...) [34 member countries] report 80,000 missing passports.
(...) By multiplying the 34 members' lists of stolen blank passports
by a factor of five, Noble said, the number reaches 400,000. The Pentagon
announced Friday that it will issue a Global War on Terrorism Medal
for troops who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones
as well as those who performed support duty, such as guarding domestic
airports after the Sept. 11 attacks. More than
10,600 children said they were molested by priests since 1950 in an
epidemic of child sexual abuse involving at least 4 percent of U.S.
Roman Catholic priests, two studies reported on Friday. (...) [They
also] said the figures depend on self-reporting by American bishops
and were probably an undercount. After 25
years on the blacklist of America's energy sources, coal is poised to
make a comeback, stoked by the demand for affordable electricity and
the rising price of other fuels. At least 94 coal-fired electric power
plants - with the capacity to power 62 million American homes - are
now planned across 36 states. The newly
elected chairman of Smith & Wesson's parent company has resigned
in the wake of reports about his criminal past. (...) he spent more
than 10 years in Michigan prisons in the 1950s and 1960s for a string
of armed robberies and an attempted prison escape. President
Bush tightened U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba on Thursday, saying
that Fidel Castro's government has taken steps to destabilize relations
with the United States over the past year. [U.S. Lt.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez] said that when the day came that the Americans
did depart from Iraq, their efforts would be looked upon as a kindly
act by a responsible nation that brought peace and prosperity to a place
that had known little of either. "It will be a remarkable case
study in what a powerful, benevolent army can do," he said. Britain
spied on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the build up to the Iraq
war, a former Cabinet minister said Thursday (...). [U.K. Prime Minister
Tony] Blair refused to confirm or deny the accusation and branded his
former international development secretary, Clare Short, "deeply
irresponsible" for commenting on sensitive security issues. [U.S.]
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress on Wednesday
to deal with the country's escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits
for future Social Security retirees. (...) Greenspan, who turns 78 next
week, said that the benefits now received by current retirees should
not be touched (...). Modern-day
slavery is alive and well in Florida, the head of a human rights center
said Tuesday as it released a report on people forced to work as prostitutes,
farmworkers and maids across the state. President
Bush urged approval of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages
on Tuesday (...). (...) Bush said "activist judges and local officials"
from Massachusetts to San Francisco to New Mexico were attempting to
redefine marriage and "change the most fundamental institution
of civilization" by allowing same-sex weddings. (...) Democrats
accused Bush of pandering to right-wing supporters and tinkering with
the Constitution to divert attention from his record on jobs, health
care and foreign policy. Ever since
its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi
Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming
the mainstay of the global energy markets. But the country's oil fields
now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise
serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy
the world's thirst for oil in coming years. (...) Industry officials
are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive
to extract it. Rebels
seized control of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, on Sunday,
meeting little resistance as hundreds of residents cheered, burned the
police station, plundered food from port warehouses and looted the airport,
which was quickly closed. Police officers and armed supporters of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled. (...) [The seizure] throws into question
whether an American-backed peace plan to create a power-sharing government
could save the country from further mayhem. "We came here to free
the people. We will free all the people," Guy Philippe, the 36-year-old
commander of the rebel army, said in an interview here Sunday evening
(...). A secret
report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to
global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat
than terrorism. The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon
advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four
months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The
Observer. The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental
and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush's skepticism
about global warning -- a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.
(...) Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head
of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business
Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered
"immediately" as a top political and military issue. "In
San Francisco, it is license for marriage of same sex. Maybe the next
thing is another city that hands out licenses for assault weapons and
someone else hands out licenses for selling drugs, I mean you can't
do that," [California Gov. Arnold] Schwarzenegger said Sunday on
NBC. A quarter-million
soldiers (...) [will participate in] the largest such rotation of U.S.
forces in history, according to military planners overseeing the project.
"This is a breathtaking, history-making operation," said Army
Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, who runs the rotation from this sand-blown
base south of Kuwait City. (...) About 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq
will go home and 110,000 will take their places for about a year, in
Operation Iraqi Freedom 2. The United
States is now plunging into a fundamental overhaul of its assistance
to developing nations, demanding that applicants for a rich new source
of financing prove their worthiness. Already countries from Bolivia
to Bangladesh are competing to be among the winners. This month, the
board of the new Millennium Challenge Account met for the first time
to lay the groundwork for grants that President Bush has promised will
total $5 billion annually by 2008. In the first year, perhaps just 15
nations will win awards. (...) Critics (...) are warning that it may
produce inequities, handsomely rewarding a handful of nations while
leaving some of the most economically needy countries to vie for much
smaller amounts of traditional aid. [U.S.]
Government forensic investigators examining how terrorists manufacture
improvised explosives have found indications of a global bomb-making
network, and have concluded that Islamic militant bomb builders have
used the same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia,
government officials said this week. President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide agreed Saturday to a U.S.-backed peace plan calling
for shared power with political opponents. He said rebels will be disarmed,
and a new government will hold elections. Aristide appeared to lay down
a condition, saying he would "not go ahead with any terrorists,"
referring to rebels who have led a two-week-old uprising that has killed
more than 60 people and chased police from dozens of towns. American
officials say U.S. forces will be needed in Iraq long after a sovereign
government is restored this summer (...). (...) If the new Iraqi government
[to be elected in the summer] decided it wanted American forces to leave,
"We would certainly be obligated to leave, under international
law," [a strategist at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Anthony] Cordesman said. Japan tightened
security at airports, nuclear plants and government facilities Friday,
dispatching armed riot police to guard against possible terror attacks
as the country dispatches troops on a humanitarian mission to Iraq. House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, said, "President Bush is rapidly
becoming the permanently surprised president. He is surprised that every
economic prediction that he and his administration make does not pan
out." [T]he number
of major U.S. traffic chokepoints — places where highways cannot
handle all the cars — rose 40 percent over five years. There were
233 major bottlenecks in 2002, compared with 167 in 1997 (...) The report
was commissioned by the American Highway Users Alliance, a group that
is lobbying Congress this year for a bigger highway-mass transit bill
than President Bush wants. (...) "For the sake of public safety,
an improved environment and a better quality of life, Congress should
act quickly and dedicate significant funding to fixing these chokepoints,"
said Diane Steed, president of the group, which represents automakers,
oil, trucking and construction companies and state highway departments.
Top scientists
and environmentalists on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of
suppressing and distorting scientific findings that run counter to its
own policies. They backed a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists
that said the administration had suppressed research on global warming,
air quality, sexual health, cancer and other issues. The report said
there had been a systematic effort to manipulate the government's supposedly
independent scientific advisory system "to prevent the appearance
of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda."
Good soldiers
do their duty and keep their mouths shut. They don't come home to criticize
their country's mission while others are still fighting. But that, in
[retired Army colonel Dewey Brown's] view, is what [U.S. candidate for
presidency John F.] Kerry did. (...) Following his return from Vietnam
in 1969, he led protesters on a Washington march (...). He testified
before Congress and accused fellow servicemen of committing wartime
atrocities against civilians. He also headed a demonstration in which
he and other veterans threw war medals onto the Capitol steps. (...)
Many veterans say that (...) history has proved him right about Vietnam
(...). Others call Kerry's protest activities the reflection of a man
so ambitious for a career in politics that he consciously held on to
his own medals, now displayed in his Washington office. During the protest
at the Capitol, Kerry, then 27, threw the medals of two other servicemen,
along with his own ribbons. A Jerusalem
bus wrecked in a suicide bombing was readied Tuesday for a flight to
the Netherlands as part of an Israeli public relations offensive surrounding
a World Court hearing on Israel's West Bank barrier. Israel's Zaka private
emergency service said it was sending [it] (...) as grim evidence of
how Israel has "suffered from terror." (...) [The bus was
to be] displayed outside the World Court in The Hague during next week's
hearings on the legality of the barrier Israel is building in the West
Bank. Israel says the network of concrete and razor wire, which snakes
into Palestinian territory in some places, is meant to stop suicide
bombers. Palestinians condemn it as a grab for land they want for a
state. (...) Israel questions the court's right to rule on the barrier
and is backed in this position by the United States and European Union
(...). Cingular
Wireless on Tuesday won an auction for smaller rival AT&T Wireless
Services Inc. with a $41 billion offer that edged out Britain's Vodafone
Group Plc and secured its future as the largest wireless carrier in
the United States. Sunni politicians
speak angrily of U.S. bias toward their Shiite rivals. Kurds are more
outspoken in demanding self rule — if not independence. (...)
Rivalry and resentment among Iraq's ethnic and religious groups have
become much more pronounced since Saddam's ouster in April. (...) The
fault lines are emerging for a possible civil war. Most members
of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council no longer support the Bush
administration's plan to choose an interim government through caucuses
and instead want the council to assume sovereignty until elections can
be held, several members have said. (...) Seeking to lay the foundation
for a political system that would shun extremism and keep the country
united, the administration had wanted a transitional government selected
by carefully vetted local caucuses to run Iraq through the end of 2005.
(...) Senior U.S. officials said the council's motives were largely
selfish. With elections likely by early next year at the latest, sovereignty
could give council members unrivaled political influence in the months
before the vote, allowing them to engage in patronage and skew balloting
rules. America's
economy hangs by a thread while Cuba — after four decades under
a U.S. economic blockade — continues to offer free health care
and boasts an infant mortality rate lower than its northern neighbor,
President Fidel Castro asserted early Saturday. In a 4 1/2-hour speech
to economists, Castro also took shots at President Bush, saying he "couldn't
debate a Cuban 9th-grader." (...) Castro also challenged Bush to
be clear about how the United States plans to realize a transition to
democracy in Cuba. He wondered aloud — again — if it involved
a plan to kill him. (...) Castro also lashed out at the "foolishness"
of the U.S. economic blockade that has been in place since the presidency
of John F. Kennedy, saying it hadn't stopped Cuba from surpassing the
United States in many areas. The communist-run island has no illiteracy,
a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, lower student-teacher
ratios and higher levels of educational achievement, he said. Guerrillas
overwhelmed an Iraqi police station west of Baghdad on Saturday, meeting
little resistance as they went room to room shooting police in a bold,
well-organized assault that killed 23 people and freed dozens of prisoners,
officials said. The fierce, well-coordinated daylight attack —
unprecedented in its scale — raised questions whether Iraqi police
and defense forces are ready to battle insurgents as the U.S. military
pulls back from the fight in advance of the November U.S. presidential
election. Iraq's
hospitals were in bleak shape before the American-led invasion last
year. (...) But Iraqi doctors say the war has pushed them closer to
disaster. (...) "It's definitely worse now than before the war,"
said Eman Asim, the Ministry of Health official who oversees the country's
185 public hospitals. "Even at the height of sanctions, when things
were miserable, it wasn't as bad as this. At least then someone was
in control." Occupation authorities insist improvements are coming.
(...) "Bombs and elections — that's all people on the outside
seem interested in," said Khalil Sayyad, head of the Baghdad office
of Médicos del Mundo (...). A classified
U.S. intelligence study done three months before the war in Iraq predicted
a problem now confronting the Bush administration: the possibility that
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might never be found. Al-Hurra,
or The Free One, [a satellite television station financed by the U.S.
government and directed at Arab viewers,] is to start broadcasting Saturday.
President Bush has promised the news station (...) will "cut through
the hateful propaganda that fills the airwaves in the Muslim world."
It already has landed a one-on-one interview with Bush. White House
Press Secretary Scott McClellan has said the interview allows Bush to
tell of "his commitment to spreading freedom and democracy in the
Middle East." The Bush administration's hope is that a fashionably
produced Arab-language station will help stem anti-Americanism fueled
by the war on terrorism, the occupation of Iraq and U.S. support for
Israel. (...) "Al-Hurra, like the U.S. government's Radio Sawa
and 'hi' magazine before it, will be an entertaining, expensive, and
irrelevant hoax. Where do they get this stuff from? Why do they keep
insulting us like this?" [Rami G. Khouri, executive editor of Lebanon's
The Daily Star] wrote. The Bush
administration, signaling a major shift of policy on the Middle East,
has indicated that it may support Israel's new proposal for a unilateral
withdrawal from parts of Gaza and the West Bank, according to administration
and Israeli officials. A U.N.
official said Friday it was unlikely elections could be held before
a U.S.-set June 30 deadline for handing power to the Iraqis, and several
Iraqi leaders said there was growing support for scrapping the U.S.
blueprint for establishing a new government. Two ex-Halliburton
employees told Democratic lawmakers that Vice President Dick Cheney's
old energy company "routinely overcharged" for work it did
for the U.S. military, the congressmen said on Thursday. The Texas oil
services giant, which is being examined by the military for possibly
overcharging for services, has consistently denied allegations of overbilling. Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday the U.S. economy has
made "impressive gains" since last summer and predicted that
even the lagging jobs market should perk up in coming months. But he
also cited the soaring federal deficit as a risks factor, saying this
problem must be addressed soon to avoid the threat of "serious
longer-term fiscal difficulties." Alfonso
Gagliano was at the heart of a government-wide scandal that engulfed
his former Department of Public Works and five Crown corporations, which
used accounting tricks to give massive commissions to a handful of politically
connected advertising firms, the Auditor-General said yesterday. (...)
Overall, the advertising firms reaped a total of $100-million in commissions
and fees between 1997 and 2003. In a stunning
move, cable TV giant Comcast Corp. proposed early Wednesday to buy Walt
Disney Co., the iconic entertainment powerhouse, for stock valued at
about $54 billion. (...) [I]t would also assume $11.9 billion in debt
held by Disney, which also owns ABC and ESPN television networks. (...)
Comcast Corp. also reported Wednesday that it swung to a profit of $383
million, or 17 cents per share, for the quarter ending Dec. 31 (...).
Revenues jumped 58 percent to $4.74 billion. Comcast also has extensive
holdings in content providers, with majority stakes in Comcast-Spectacor,
the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers; Comcast SportsNet, E!
Entertainment Television, the Style Network, Golf Channel, Outdoor Life
Network and G4. The generals
who head the nation's military services said Tuesday they were convinced
before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. In their first joint testimony since the war began, the
chiefs of the Air Force, Navy and Marines stood by the decision to invade,
even though intelligence used to justify the campaign apparently turned
out wrong. (...) "I stand by my position at that time," said
Air Force Chief of Staff. Gen. John P. Jumper. "It was my belief
that this cause was just," said Adm. Vernon Clark, chief of Naval
Operations. "That was my position then and that's what I believe
today." OPEC will
cut oil production by a total 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) from
April 1, including 1.5 million in current surplus production to be eliminated
before that date, two ministers revealed. (...) OPEC's current official
production level is 24.5 million bpd. (...) OPEC (...) [will also] trim
an additional 700,000 barrels from the quota after April 1 if prices
drop below 25 dollars a barrel, a source close to the cartel said. (...)
[They] made "a judgement that the oil market is already well-supplied
with crude". (...) [Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar] Zanganeh
acknowledged that OPEC was interested in keeping oil prices at the upper
end of the cartel's official price band of 22-28 dollars for a reference
basket of crudes. The production cut was decided in order "to keep
in the upper part of the band", which appears in fact to be shifting
higher to compensate for a fall in the value of the dollar, the currency
used in oil sales. OPEC president Yusgiantoro said: "Oil producers
cannot take direct measures to support the dollar, we can at least minimize
the impact of its decline by ensuring that oil prices remain at reasonable
levels." (...) OPEC is worried oil prices will plunge as spring
arrives in the northern hemisphere, which has consumed massive amounts
of crude to heat homes and businesses during bitter cold weather, particularly
in the United States. Fox television
news anchor Bill O'Reilly, usually an outspoken Bush supporter, said
on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized
to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. "I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and
I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly
said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America. Russia
is in the midst of a strategic military exercise motivated in part by
Moscow's concerns about U.S. plans to develop new types of nuclear weapons,
a top general said Tuesday. (...) At the same time [first deputy chief
of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces Col.-Gen. Yuri] Baluyevsky
said the exercise reflects Russia's concern about the development of
low-yield nuclear weapons in the United States, which he described as
destabilizing. "Shouldn't we react to that?" he said. "I'm
sure that we should and we are doing that." He said the maneuvers
will also help Russia develop the means to penetrate missile defenses,
another priority of the U.S. military. Moscow informed the U.S. government
in advance of the exercise, in keeping with its arms control treaty
obligations, Baluyevsky said. He added that Russia wasn't trying to
scare anyone. China banned
U.S. poultry imports Tuesday to ease growing fears about bird flu (...).
(...) According to China's Agriculture Ministry, in 2003 the country's
total import of poultry meats and products was 709,000 tons —
96 percent of which came from the United States. That's a small fraction
of China's poultry market; the country produced more than 9.9 million
tons of chicken meat alone last year — 20 percent of total worldwide
production. A letter
seized from an al-Qaida courier shows Osama bin Laden has made little
headway in recruiting Iraqis for a holy war against America, raising
questions about the Bush administration's contention that Iraq is the
central front in the war on terror. (...) Having found no weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, the administration has been shifting the reason
for going to war to the fight against global terrorism and to oust Saddam
Hussein. (...) White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the letter,
first reported Monday by The New York Times, shows that "Iraq is
the central front in the war on terrorism." As France
forges ahead with plans to outlaw Muslim head scarves in public schools,
taking a first parliamentary vote Tuesday, critics warned a ban could
backfire and encourage the Islamic radicalism the law is intended to
stave off. An American
Airlines pilot (...) asked Christians on Friday's flight [from Los Angeles
to New York] to raise their hands. He then suggested non-Christians
talk to the Christians about their faith. He went on to say that "everyone
who doesn't have their hand raised is crazy", passenger Amanda
Nelligan told CBS news. (...) The pilot also told passengers he would
be available for discussion at the end of the flight. (...) American
Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner said (...) "It falls along the lines
of a personal level of sharing that may not be appropriate for one of
our employees to do while on the job," (...). In 1846
President James Polk announced that Mexican troops had fired on American
soldiers on American soil, and he took the country to a war that eventually
gained it California, New Mexico and Arizona. Was the disputed soil
ours? Probably not. Did Polk distort the information he had? Almost
certainly. He wanted the territory, and he needed a war to get it. (...)
Our current dispute over the intelligence that led to the invasion of
Iraq seems to be yet another illustration of this eternal principle:
presidents and other decision makers usually get the intelligence they
want. (...) In 1965, the duly elected but deposed president of the Dominican
Republic, Juan Bosch, was leading a revolution against the military
cabal that had displaced him. A panicky telegram from our ambassador
detailing (largely imaginary) horrors in Santo Domingo's streets led
Lyndon B. Johnson to send in the Marines. With our troops already in
the air, Johnson called a White House meeting to explain the decision
he had already made. Gathered in the Cabinet Room, we were told by William
Raborn, the incoming head of the C.I.A., that Communists had infiltrated,
perhaps even dominated, the Bosch insurgency. That belief, not any supposed
bloodshed, was of course the real reason for Johnson's intervention. The landscape
of the terrorist threat has shifted, many intelligence officials around
the world say, with more than a dozen regional militant Islamic groups
showing signs of growing strength and broader ambitions, even as the
operational power of Al Qaeda appears diminished. It probably
means little now to Howard Dean, but CNN's top executive believes his
network overplayed the infamous clip of Dean's "scream" after
the Iowa caucuses. "It was a big story, but the challenge in a
24-hour news network is that you try to keep all of your different viewers
throughout the day informed without overdoing it," said Princell
Hair, CNN's general manager. The breathtaking media explosion turned
the former Democratic presidential front-runner into a punch line and
arguably hastened his campaign's free fall. It's also an instructive
look at how television news and entertainment works today. (...) "It
shouldn't be an anvil that you keep hammering to destroy his candidacy,"
[Dean's former campaign manager Joe] Trippi said. "I don't think
there was a big conspiracy to do that, but that's what was going on."
A second
American paid a hefty fine for making an obscene gesture during fingerprinting
procedures for U.S. citizens in Brazil, police said Saturday. Douglas
A. Skolnick will be allowed to leave the southeastern resort town of
Foz do Iguacu with his tour group Sunday after paying $17,200 for raising
his middle finger when he was fingerprinted and photographed, said federal
police spokesman Marcos Koren. World financial
leaders meeting in Florida struggled on Saturday for consensus on how
to steady global currency markets amid European and Japanese worries
a sliding U.S. dollar could spin out of control. (...) Million-dollar
yachts bobbed at anchor next to the 80-year-old hotel on Florida's lush
"Gold Coast" as the finance ministers and central bankers
debated inside how to keep expansion going among the world's wealthy
nations while helping rebuild countries like Iraq. (...) [U.S. Treasury
Secretary John] Snow on Saturday said he felt the meeting should chiefly
focus on sustainable expansion -- a message that plays well in America
during a presidential election year. "The focus of the conference,
from my point of view, will continue to be growth and what we as ministers
can do to build support for higher growth in domestic economies of our
countries and the economies of the developing world." In what
may be the first subpoena of its kind since the Communist-hunting days
of the 1950s, a [U.S.] federal judge has ordered a university to turn
over records about a gathering of anti-war activists. In addition to
the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week
on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school,
ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters
said. (...) [T]he case brings back fears of the "red squads"
of the 1950s and campus clampdowns on Vietnam War protesters. Intelligence
analysts never said Iraq presented an imminent threat, the director
of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, asserted today in his first
public defense of prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons. On March
4, 2003, with the invasion just fifteen days away, the United States
Agency for International Development asked three US firms to bid for
a unique job: After Iraq was invaded and occupied, one company would
be charged with setting up 180 local and provincial town councils in
the rubble. (...) The "local governance" contract, worth $167.9
million in the first year and up to $466 million total, went to the
Research Triangle Institute (RTI) (...). (...) [W]hen RTI arrived in
the province of Taji, armed with flowcharts and ready to set up local
councils, it discovered that "the Iraqi people formed their own
representative councils in this region months ago, and many of those
were elected, not selected, as the occupation is proposing." (...)
[RTI senior vice president Ronald] Johnson (...) says that, besides,
RTI is only "assisting the Iraqis," not making decisions for
them. (...) Is this Iraqi sovereignty--conceived in Washington, outsourced
to North Carolina, modeled on Massachusetts and Houston and imposed
on Basra and Baghdad? (...) Washington wants a transitional body in
Iraq with the full powers of sovereign government, able to lock in decisions
that an elected government will inherit. To that end, Paul Bremer's
CPA is pushing ahead with its illegal free-market reforms, counting
on these changes being ratified by an Iraqi government it can control.
[US Defense
Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld (...) [has used] emergency powers to temporarily
increase the size of the army by some 30,000 troops (...). (...) "The
demand (for troops), in my opinion, is not a temporary spike,"
said Representative Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat in the House Armed
Services Committee (...). (...) "One can't know, of certain knowledge,
whether it will prove to be a spike," he said. "But we believe
it's a spike, driven by the deployment of some 115,000 troops in Iraq
and still more, another increment, in Afghanistan," he said. For the
first time, Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange have filed a suit against
the U.S. companies that produced the toxic defoliant used by American
forces during the Vietnam War. The lawsuit, filed by the Vietnam Association
for Victims of Agent Orange on behalf of three people, was submitted
to the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Jan. 30, said the group's
vice president Nguyen Trong Nhan. (...) Nhan said 10 companies are named
in the suit, though he declined to specify them by name. Dow Chemical
Co. and Monsanto were two of the primary producers of Agent Orange.
If the
commission [on Iraq intelligence] is truly independent, as the president
has promised, it could examine not only the work of intelligence agencies,
but how the administration handled intelligence. It could make demands
for access to Bush's secret intelligence briefings, as has the congressionally
created commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But if
the commission members are seen as too close to Bush, the panel's credibility
could be questioned. Democratic leaders have already expressed doubts
that a commission appointed entirely by the president can be impartial.
(...) "This commission will be bipartisan and independent (...),"
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. A flash
of singer Janet Jackson's right breast during a halftime Super Bowl
performance has become the most-searched image in Internet history,
online companies say. Jackson's unscripted flash of flesh during Sunday's
Super Bowl halftime send Internet surfers seeking pictures of the snafu
in greater numbers over a 24 hour period than searches for "September
11" or Madonna's kiss with Britney Spears. [Justin]
Timberlake reached across [Janet] Jackson's leather gladiator outfit
and pulled off the covering to her right breast, which was partially
obscured by a sun-shaped, metal nipple decoration. In a statement, FCC
Chairman Michael Powell said, "I am outraged at what I saw during
the halftime show of the Super Bowl. Like millions of Americans, my
family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead,
that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt.
Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better." "I
have instructed the commission to open an immediate investigation into
last night's broadcast," he said, vowing it would be "thorough
and swift." Halliburton
Co. allegedly overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a single
U.S. military base in Kuwait during the first seven months of last year,
Monday's Wall Street Journal reported, citing Pentagon investigators
auditing the company's work. (...) Last month KBR reimbursed the Pentagon
$6.3 million after disclosing that two employees had taken substantial
kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor in return for work providing
services to U.S. troops in Iraq. KBR also has been accused of overcharging
for gasoline under an Army Corps of Engineers contract. The corps has
cleared KBR of any wrongdoing, but the Pentagon continues to investigate
the dispute. As one
in six Americans live under private rules of 260,000 homeowners associations,
such foreclosures by an aggressive and some say predatory collection
industry that pursues back dues have become more common. In the past
three years, homeowners in Las Vegas, San Diego, St. Petersburg, Fla.,
and Houston have lost homes over sums as small as $81. The U.S.-installed
monetary authorities [in Iraq] have invited international banks to apply
for six five-year licenses. (...) "Iraq is definitely very interesting.
We are talking about billions. They need everything, including capital
and every type of finance. Everyone is trying to get in one way or another,"
[Joe] Sarrouh [executive adviser at Beirut's Fransabank] said. Saudi Arabia's
top cleric called on Muslims around the world Saturday to forsake terrorism,
saying those who claim to be holy warriors were an affront to the faith.
In a sermon that was remarkable not only for its strong language but
also its timing — at the peak of the annual hajj — Sheik
Abdul Aziz al-Sheik told 2 million pilgrims that terrorists were giving
their enemies an excuse to criticize Muslim nations. Russia's
nuclear forces reportedly are preparing their largest maneuvers in two
decades, an exercise involving the test-firing of missiles and flights
by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of an all-out nuclear war.
(...) [The newspaper] Kommersant said Moscow had notified Washington
about the exercise, describing it as part of efforts to fend off terror
threats even though it imitates the Cold War scenario of an all-out
war. John Edwards
is confident quarterback Jake Delhomme will guide the upstart Carolina
Panthers to a Super Bowl win. John Kerry is counting on the New England
Patriots to capture their second title in three years. (...) on Sunday
night the two [Democratic presidential candidates] will be just a couple
of guys rooting for the home team in [American] football's biggest game.
(...) Kerry and Edwards haven't gotten around to a wager yet. (...) [Pentagon]
documents that were released by mistake Friday (...) [show a] total
[U.S.] Defense Department budget request of $401.7 billion (...) 7 percent
more than last year's $375.3 billion (...) [that] does not include money
for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Georgia]
state's school superintendent [Kathy Cox] has proposed striking the
word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and replacing it with
the phrase "biological changes over time." (...) "Here
we are, saying we have to improve standards and improve education, and
we're just throwing a bone to the conservatives with total disregard
to what scientists say," said state Rep. Bob Holmes, a Democrat.
Former President Jimmy Carter (...) [said] it exposes the state to nationwide
ridicule. (...) "If you're teaching the concept without the word,
what's the point?" said Rep. Bobby Franklin, a Republican. "It's
stupid. It's like teaching gravity without using the word gravity." Senior
Indian ministers said on Thursday they would confront their counterparts
in Washington over recent US Senate legislation that bans certain types
of federal work from being outsourced to developing countries, including
India. (...) "Here you have a country whose main mantra [at the
World Trade Organisation] is 'market access' and whose argument is that
opening markets to competition is the solution to poverty in countries
like India. And then they enact something like this." [Yuri Koptev,
head of Russian space agency] said Thursday that U.S. plans for manned
missions to Mars were unrealistic and said the emphasis for space exploration
should be completion of the International Space Station (ISS). (...)
He was particularly critical of Bush's plan for designing a spacecraft
capable of carrying astronauts to the space station, the moon and Mars,
saying he did not understand how this could be done since each destination
had different needs. (...) Koptev said Bush's plans to send humans back
to the moon and then on to Mars were simply connected to his election
campaign as had been the case with previous U.S. presidents. "I
think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between
what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," [U.S. national
security adviser] Condoleezza Rice told CBS. But she added: "That's
not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq,
a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United
Nations, to deceive the world." The U.S.
military is "sure" it will catch Osama bin Laden this year,
perhaps within months, a spokesman declared Thursday, but Pakistan said
it would not allow American troops to cross the border in search of
the al-Qaida leader. (...) U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty's
prediction about capturing bin Laden comes as the Army readied a spring
offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts. A U.S. official hinted
Wednesday that the offensive might extend into Pakistan. While glitzy
diet plans remain perennial best sellers, most Americans are inactive
and overweight. While nutritionists push broccoli and water, television
advertising dangles snacks and beer. And while U.S. agriculture policy
subsidizes and promotes such products as sugar and cheese, it offers
little or no assistance to fruit and vegetable growers. At a 20-year
celebration for the IBM PC, [David] Bradley was on a panel with Microsoft
founder Bill Gates and other tech icons. The discussion turned to the
[ctrlAltDelete] keys. "I may have invented it, but Bill made it
famous," Bradley said. Gates didn't laugh. The key combination
also is used when software, such as Microsoft's Windows operating system,
fails. The privatization
of Iraq's state-run oil industry has faded as a priority for U.S. officials
advising the Iraqi Oil Ministry, despite enthusiastic support for the
idea among some American conservatives in the months leading up to the
war. (...) U.S. oil advisers and their Iraqi counterparts (...) said
they are focusing for now on the immediate goals of boosting Iraq's
crude output to prewar levels and securing its oil facilities and pipelines
against sabotage. Oil is Iraq's most valuable export, and Iraqis need
to produce all they can of it to rebuild their country. The White
House retreated Monday from its once-confident claims that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction (...). (...) Asked about [retired chief
U.S. weapons inspector David] Kay's remarks, White House spokesman Scott
McClellan refused to repeat oft-stated assertions that prohibited weapons
eventually would be found. (...) [Bush's] handling of Iraq has the approval
of more than half of Americans questioned in polls. Analysts said it
was doubtful the weapons issue would hurt Bush much. The war
in Iraq cannot be justified as an intervention in defense of human rights
even though it ended a brutal regime, Human Rights Watch said Monday,
dismissing one of the Bush administration's main arguments for the invasion.
(...) While Saddam Hussein had an atrocious human rights record and
life has improved for Iraqis since his ouster, his worst actions occurred
long before the war, the advocacy group said in its annual report. It
said there was no ongoing or imminent mass killing in Iraq when the
conflict began. (...) Atrocities such as Saddam's 1988 mass killing
of Kurds would have justified humanitarian intervention (...) [but]
"such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent
or ongoing slaughter (...) [, not] used belatedly to address atrocities
that were ignored in the past." Even if
weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the U.S.-led war
was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might
again resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology," Attorney
General John Ashcroft said Monday. Dick Cheney,
US vice-president, "waged a guerrilla war" against attempts
by Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to secure United Nations
backing for the invasion of Iraq [, according to Blair's new biography].
(...) In the run-up to the war, Mr Blair worked closely with Mr Bush
to try to secure prior UN backing. (...) One Blair aide remarked: "[Mr
Cheney] waged a guerrilla war against the process . . . He's a visceral
unilateralist". Another agreed: "Cheney fought it all the
way - at every twist and turn, even after Bush's speech to the UN."
In the US, Democrats have also accused Mr Cheney of putting pressure
on intelligence agencies to produce evidence Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. (...) Scooter Libby, the vice-president's chief of staff,
made little secret of his boss's scorn for multilateralism. [Outgoing
top U.S. inspector David] Kay said his predictions [that his search
would turn up banned weapons] were not "coming back to haunt me
in the sense that I am embarrassed. They are coming back to haunt me
in the sense of `Why could we all be so wrong?'" Britain
will give an honorary knighthood to Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates
in recognition of his contribution to enterprise in Britain, the government
said Monday. (...) "He has also made significant contributions
to poverty reduction in parts of the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the
developing world." [T]he U.S.
Department of Homeland Security is determined to protect commercial
aircraft (...) [and] expects to award one company, or possibly two,
a contract that could be valued at more than $1 billion initially —
and far more over the long haul if the government mandates that all
6,800 commercial aircraft in service be fitted with the equipment. The
cost of the gear, expected to be similar to the kind used by military
fighters and bombers, could reach $1 million per plane. Mexico
City's subway began lending books to riders Friday in a new program
aimed at reducing crime and fostering a more hospitable atmosphere for
millions of commuters. (...) [In one book, the] opening piece by Carlos
Monsivais, one of Mexico's most prominent writers, recounts the aftermath
of the devastating 1985 earthquake, when people rallied to organize
rescue crews and help victims. "It could have some effect if it
convinces people that without organization, without solidarity you cannot
confront the immense urban and ecological catastrophe that is Mexico
City," Monsivais said. Consumers
around the world put aside any ill-feeling about US foreign policy when
they choose their fast food, soft drinks and athletic shoes, a Harvard
Business School study [by Professor John Quelch & Douglas Holt]
has found. The survey of 1,800 consumers in 12 countries including Egypt,
Turkey and Indonesia found that, despite expectations of a consumer
backlash against US brands, most people still choose brands such as
Coca-Cola and McDonald's. (...) "It appears that consumer interest
in new brands was short-lived, and they have reverted to trusted global
products" (...). (...) Consumers were able to separate their feelings
about US foreign policy and US brands more than had been predicted.
Japanese
telecom carriers, (...) have now come up with the world's first mobile
phone that enables users to listen to calls inside their heads -- by
conducting sound through bone. (...) Masaya Iwata, a 31-year-old accountant,
said the product was interesting but he was not sure if he would buy
it because he uses his mobile less and less for talking. "I use
my mobile for picture-taking and e-mailing rather than having conversations,"
he said. If Iraqis
ever see Saddam Hussein on trial, they want his former American allies
shackled beside him. "Saddam should not be the only one who is
put on trial. The Americans backed him when he was killing Iraqis so
they should be prosecuted," said Ali Mahdi, a builder. (...) The
United States backed Saddam in his war with Iran in the 1980s. During
that time, he also gassed an estimated 5,000 Kurds to death in the village
of Halabja. (...) "Saddam was a top graduate of the American school
of politics," said Assad al-Saadi. (...) "The Americans and
Saddam should face justice. Do you really think the Americans are going
to put themselves on trial?" said Ali, a U.S.-trained policeman. America
is getting more international help in its quest to build a peaceful,
democratic Iraq but, ironically, its plans are under threat because
the spiritual leader of the country’s Shia majority, Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, is demanding fully democratic elections. President
Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space parallels U.S. efforts
to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain. (...)
Under a 1996 space policy (...) the United States is committed to the
exploration and use of outer space "by all nations for peaceful
purposes for the benefit of all humanity." "Peaceful purposes
allow defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national
security and other goals," according to this policy. "Consistent
with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and
maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space,
and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries." Caltech,
which runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA, patented the twin
rovers it sent to investigate the surface of Mars and is licensing their
images for commercial use. Models of the six-wheeled Spirit rover are
already on store shelves. (...) Officials of the private university
didn't say how much money they hope to make, but pledged to donate half
to educational outreach programs and the rest for Caltech research.
"We did it more for publicity than as a commercial hit," said
Frederic Farina, assistant director of Caltech's office of technology
transfer. To the
U.S. Army, flying eight West Point professors to lecture at Baghdad
University was a chance to showcase the military's scholarly and humanitarian
credentials. For the Iraqi students and professors in attendance, the
lectures smacked of education at the wrong end of an M-16. (...) Although
the lecturers were unarmed, their American security escorts carried
M-16s into the classroom. (...) The [attendees] sat through a lecture
Wednesday on recent trends in political science (...). [An] Iraqi professor
said she found Gordon's material divorced from Iraq's reality. (...)
"The Americans haven't changed anything since they arrived in the
country, so how are a few lectures going to help?" asked Enaas
Jihad, 25. "You Americans managed to bring your tanks here by airplane
very quickly. Can't you do anything about the electricity?" Maricopa
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who gained notoriety for putting inmates
on chain gangs and issuing them striped uniforms and pink underwear,
has now ordered all undocumented immigrants currently in jail to register
for the draft. About 500 undocumented immigrants housed in the Phoenix-area
county's jail system have not complied with a 1980 federal law that
requires all men between the ages of 18 and 26 to register for the draft,
regardless of their immigration status, Arpaio said. "(...) we
do appreciate any effort toward compliance," said Dan Amon, a spokesman
for the Selective Service System in Washington, D.C. He said Arpaio
may be doing the undocumented immigrants a favor by ordering them to
register, because Selective Service is tied to a number of benefits,
including citizenship. [According
to Reporters Without Borders,] U.S. commanders bear "criminal"
responsibility in the deaths of two reporters because they didn't tell
troops firing from a tank at a Baghdad hotel that the building housed
journalists — but the soldiers did not deliberately kill the journalists,
a press freedom group said Thursday. (...) The Pentagon had no immediate
comment on the report. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday called a U.S. military trial of
Saddam Hussein unlikely but did not rule it out, and said the United
States reserved the right to change his prisoner-of-war legal status.
(...) The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority said last month it
has trained Iraqi judges and lawyers to try Saddam and his entourage
on charges that may include genocide and crimes against humanity. Administration
officials say they are planning an extensive election-year initiative
to promote marriage (...). For months, administration officials have
worked with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide
at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal
skills that sustain "healthy marriages." (...) It also plays
to Mr. Bush's desire to be viewed as a "compassionate conservative,"
an image he sought to cultivate in his 2000 campaign. This year, administration
officials said, Mr. Bush will probably visit programs trying to raise
marriage rates in poor neighborhoods. "The president loves to do
that sort of thing in the inner city with black churches, and he's very
good at it," a White House aide said. President
Bush, seeking to mend relations with America's northern neighbor, said
Tuesday that Canada will be eligible for a second round of U.S.-financed
reconstruction contracts in Iraq that the administration valued at about
$4.5 billion [of the $18.6 billion that Congress has approved]. [Canadian
Prime Minister Paul] Martin "understands the stakes" in rebuilding
a free and peaceful Iraq, Bush said. The Iraq
invasion was "an unnecessary preventive war of choice" that
has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against
al Qaeda in a hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to
a study recently published by the U.S. Army War College. (...) In an
interview, [the document author Jeffrey] Record took issue with the
very concept of a war on terrorism. "Terrorism is a common noun.
It's a technique. How do you make war on terrorism as opposed to specific
terrorist organizations?" Record asked. "I don't think that
it is within America's power to rid the world of terrorism. ... The
idea that you're going to be able to expunge this form of warfare from
the world, I think, is really stretching it." At a ceremony
formally opening the summit Monday evening, Bush called on his fellow
leaders to "stand with the brave people of Cuba, who for nearly
a half-century have endured tyranny and repression." "Dictatorship
has no place in the Americas," Bush said. The Brazilian
government will issue an executive order strengthening a new policy
of fingerprinting all U.S. visitors (...) U.S. Customs, using digital
technology, on Monday began photographing and taking fingerprints of
arriving foreigners. The only exceptions are visitors from 27 countries
— mostly European nations — whose citizens are allowed into
the United States for up to 90 days without visas. U.S. officials consider
the Brazilian response discriminatory because it affects only American
citizens. Former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, pushed out of the [US] administration
for not being a team player, says President Bush was so disengaged during
Cabinet meetings that he was like a "blind man in a roomful of
deaf people." Canada
is entering into final negotiations on joining the controversial U.S.-built
anti-missile shield without guarantees that the project will never lead
to placing weapons in space. (...) "This is not an issue that this
government will have to deal with, that the next government is going
to have to deal with, or even the government after that. This is so
far off into the future that it may never happen," [Defence Minister
David Pratt] said. (...) [NDP Leader Jack Layton:] "It's only in
Canada that they're trying to pretend this is not the weaponization
of space." Canada's decision to move ahead on [ballistic missile
defence] comes just before Mr. Martin and U.S. President George W. Bush
hold their first meeting next week. [Two of
President Bush's military advisors Richard] Perle and [Robert] Frum's
book, "An End to Evil," promotes the so-called neo-conservative
use of military force to pacify the world. They take aim at Saudi Arabia,
US politicians, journalists and France -- all of whom they said stand
in the way of Bush's "War on Terror." (...) "All we ask
from France is that, in the construction of Europe, Europe think of
itself as a partner with the United States in the protection of Western
civilization. That's not a lot to ask," [Perle said.] (...) "Sometimes
the right answer, when a person has a grievance against you, is to say:
'You're completely mistaken; that grievance comes out of a completely
wrong way of looking at the world and you're just going to have to get
over it'," Frum said. "We're not going to change." Poland
has launched negotiations with Washington on hosting U.S. military bases
on its territory, Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said Thursday.
(...) Poland, a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq, could see one
of the biggest build-ups of U.S. forces in Europe on its territory,
diplomats say. (...) Washington has said any redeployment of troops
to eastern Europe was intended to tackle new security threats and was
in no way directed against Moscow. George
Bush's administration regularly and confidently asserts that it is winning
the “war on terror”—and not without some justification.
The invasion of Afghanistan denied al-Qaeda its sanctuary. (...) Even
before the loss of its Afghan base, al-Qaeda was not an organisation
in a conventional sense (...) the alumni of [bin Laden's] Afghan camps—perhaps
numbering in the tens of thousands—have dispersed across the globe,
forming their own more or less autonomous units. [Britney]
Spears and [Jason] Alexander, both 22, filed for an annulment just hours
after tying the knot Saturday in Las Vegas. (...) The tabloid New York
Post brought in a handwriting expert, Taylor Morgan, to analyse Spears's
signature on the marriage license and he decided that the marriage was
not consumated. "She wasn't feeling physical," Morgan said,
explaining that the "y" in Britney indicated she was "not
in a sexy state of mind." The 1.3
million low-wage workers the [US] Labor Department says will be guaranteed
overtime pay as part of new rule changes may not necessarily see any
extra cash. While touting the $895 million in increased wages it says
those workers would be guaranteed from the changes, the Labor Department
is suggesting ways employers can keep their labor costs from going up.
Among the options: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to
equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual
threshold, making them ineligible. Senior
executives at the two biggest seed companies in the world met repeatedly
in the mid- to late 1990's and agreed to charge higher prices for genetically
modified seeds, according to interviews with former executives from
both companies and to court and other documents. The Monsanto Company
and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. acknowledge that their executives
met to discuss genetically modified seeds. United
States immigration officers began fingerprinting and photographing tens
of thousands of foreign visitors required to have visas on Monday, in
what federal authorities described as a sophisticated new security measure
to monitor who enters the country and how long they stay. A revolution
in U.S. foreign aid, rewarding countries for how they govern, is finally
ready to get under way, almost two years after first promised by the
Bush administration. The program will favor countries whose governments
are judged to be just rulers, welcoming hosts for foreign investment
and promoters of projects to meet their people's basic health and education
needs. Corrupt police states need not apply. Britain
welcomed General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile and regarded
his military officers as "decent professionals" who were "on
our side," documents released Thursday showed. While accepting
that the coup leaders would crack down hard on their leftist opponents,
London's ambassador to Chile said Pinochet was better for Britain than
the deposed Socialist government of President Salvador Allende. "The
current regime has infinitely more to offer British interests than the
one which preceded it," ambassador Reginald Seconde wrote in a
report on the coup three weeks after Pinochet seized power on September
11, 1973. "The new leaders are unequivocally on our side and want
to do business, in its widest sense with us." The report is one
of hundreds of papers relating to the Chilean coup released by Britain's
national archive, the Public Records Office (PRO). The United
States government seriously contemplated using military force to seize
oil fields in the Middle East during the Arab oil embargo of 30 years
ago, according to a declassified British government document made public
today. (...) [British Ambassador in Washington] Lord Cromer quoted [Defense
Secretary James R.] Schlesinger as saying "it was no longer obvious
to him that the United States could not use force." (...) As recounted
by Lord Cromer, Mr. Schlesinger said the United States was unwilling
to abide threats by "under-developed, under-populated" countries.
(...) The documents did not rule out the possibility that Washington
would consider pre-emptive strikes (...). "The U.S. government
might consider that it could not tolerate a situation in which the U.S.
and its allies were in effect at the mercy of a small group of unreasonable
countries." Brazilian
police on Thursday began fingerprinting and photographing U.S. visitors
on orders of a judge who compared planned U.S. security controls on
travelers from Brazil and other nations to Nazi horrors.
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