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Mindful Webworks / Radical Incline / blog-heap o' links
from 2004-may
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MON 2004-MAY-31
Digital Consequences
Tips on Creating and Securing Passwords
Supernatural Consequences
COLUMBIA, Calif. (AP) - After a small plane crashed Monday in central California, killing two people, a sheriff's deputy on his way to the scene died when he lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a tree
Paris - John F. "Frenchy" Kerry, Democrat presidential candidate, has selected former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as his running partner for the November election, according to sources close to the campaign. (BrokenNewz.com)
HILLSBORO -- A Portland lawyer says suffering by African Americans at the hands of slave owners is to blame in the death of a 2-year-old Beaverton boy. Randall Vogt is offering the untested theory, called post traumatic slave syndrome, in his defense of Isaac Cortez Bynum, who is charged with murder by abuse in the June 30 death of his son, Ryshawn Lamar Bynum. Vogt says he will argue -- "in a general way" -- that masters beat slaves, so Bynum was justified in beating his son. The slave theory is the work of Joy DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor in the Portland State University Graduate School of Social Work. It is not listed by psychiatrists or the courts as an accepted disorder, and some experts said they had never heard of it.
Cinema ushers across Britain go into action today with a new piece of equipment which makes their ice-cream trays and hand torches look tame. Military-style night-sights have been sent to every outlet in the country showing the new Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban. Staff have been instructed to spend all two hours and 22 minutes of the film scanning the dark - for pirates making illegal copies.
Natural Consequences
North Pole Ice Pack Dwindles
BEIJING (AP) - A landslide triggered by torrential rains buried a village in China's southwest, killing eight people, the government said Monday.
Evidence has been found for a global winter following the asteroid impact that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago... This impact-induced darkness would have lasted between one and ten years on land, but there is evidence for a cooling of up to 2,000 years
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Ramona Trinidad Iglesias Jordan, who at age 114 was recognized as the world's oldest person, has died after a bout with pneumonia... She enjoyed a beer with meals... "Even when she was over 100 years, every time we took her out to a restaurant, she always like to have a beer, a small beer, a 7-ounce beer with the food... That was the first thing she asked for when she got to a restaurant."
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.N. troops are coming back to Haiti, but after a decade of failed missions many in the traumatized nation wonder whether the peacekeepers - cobbled together from countries ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe - are up to the daunting task.
MOEDLING, Austria (AP) - A catamaran filled with tourists overturned on Europe's largest underground lake Monday, drowning five people after the boat's railings formed a cage 5 feet down on the lake floor, officials said... The victims included a German couple in their 70s who were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary
Self-caesarean Mexican woman's story again -- By sitting forward in the traditional Indian birthing position instead of lying down, Ramirez unknowingly ensured that her uterus was directly under the skin and that she would not cut her intestines. Her incision was considerably higher than the one a doctor would make, and Galvan believes she was very lucky she didn't do serious damage. (AP)
A vicious skin infection resistant to all but the most powerful antibiotics has jumped out of New York City hospitals and onto the streets.
Extraterrestrial
On June 8... the silhouette of Venus [will] crawl across the face of the sun... a transit of Venus ...will return for the first time in 122 years, visible from much of Earth... watch a black dot inch across the lower part of the sun. It takes six hours.... (AP/Yahoo)
US Military dead
[flag]Army Capt. Daniel W. Eggers, 28, of Cape Coral, Fla.
[flag]Army Staff Sgt. Robert J. Mogensen, 26, of Leesville, La.
[flag]Army Pfc. Joseph A. Jeffries, 21, of Beaverton, Ore.
died May 29 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when their vehicle hit a land mine.
[flag]Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Brian J. Ouellette, 37, of Needham, Mass., a SEAL, died supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
[flag]Army Spc. Michael J. Wiesemann, 20, of North Judson, Ind., died May 29, at Forward Operating Base Q-West (Quyarrah Air Base, Iraq) of non-combat related injuries.
WW2 - still with us
LONDON (AP) - Archaeologists said Monday that they have unearthed parts of a World War II fighter plane that crashed after downing a German bomber near Buckingham Palace. Archaeologist Christopher Bennett said the plane's engine and control panel were located late Sunday during excavations in Buckingham Palace Road in the center of the capital.
US Civil War - still with us
The last Civil War widow, Alberta Martin, died Monday at a nursing home in Enterprise. She was 97... a widowed mother at age 21, Alberta Stewart met William Jasper Martin in Opp. William Martin was 81... married on December Tenth, 1927, and had a son ten months later. They lived as husband and wife until William Martin's death on July Eighth, 1931. ...Two months later, Alberta Martin married her late husband's grandson
Korean War - still with us
Charles Robert Jenkins has been in isolated North Korea since 1965. ... He desperately wants to be reunited with his Japanese wife, who returned to her homeland in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted kidnapping her and several others in the 1970s. But if he joined her, he would risk arrest by the US military, which accuses him of desertion.
Freedom
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - The president of the World Association of Newspapers said Monday that Turkey has made considerable progress in expanding freedom of the press and could serve as an example to other Islamic nations.
US ELECTION 2004
Boisterous Libertarians pick nominee -- computer programmer Michael Badnarik-- Where else could you hope to see George Bush, in cardboard cut-out form, patrolling the convention floor wearing a suspiciously-lifelike marijuana garland? Where else would you run into a presidential candidate stealing a quick cigarette break at the taxi stand outside the hotel? ...where else could you see a closely fought, three-way race go down to the wire? -- Libertarians claim nearly 600 officeholders nationwide, and argue that their stress on the rights of the individual over the power of government has universal appeal. But as a smaller party, Libertarians constantly have to counter the idea that a vote for them is a wasted vote. (al.com)
RADICAL INCLINE SAYS: WASTE YOUR VOTE
Memorial Day
[flag]On a holiday honoring the nation's war dead, Lambert and other childhood friends will remember Jason Dunham as the 6-foot-1 jock who stood by them to a fault as they grew up together in Scio, population 1,900, in New York's rural Allegany County. A world away, the Marines in his unit are remembering a 23-year-old hero who took the brunt of a grenade explosion to protect them. For that, they have nominated Dunham for the military's highest award, the Medal of Honor.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush has acknowledged the "great costs" of American military deaths from his administration's war on terror at a Memorial Day service as the combined U.S. death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan climbed toward the 1,000 mark.... Bush lauded the character of U.S. military personnel who he said have made America safer by ending "two terror regimes" and freeing more than "50 million souls".
"He would probably strike me from heaven if we didn't honor the day,"
WW3 - Repercussions
Just as a handful of American soldiers committing torturous war crimes do not represent the sense and sensibilities of the vast majority of Americans, it is important to judge Muslims by the same standards. Just as America cannot be judged through the lens of its often misguided foreign policy or torturous acts of American soldiers, the world of Islam should not be held accountable for the un-Islamic and barbaric deeds of a minuscule minority of over a billion Muslims.
Using sophisticated high-tech equipment the US forces could not distinguish between a wedding party and an attack by ‘insurgents’. So did those young children and women as ‘insurgents’ posed a serious threat at the time? Or does the US no longer bothers with that sort of assessment reflecting its ‘professionalism’ and keeping in line with the policies laid down at Abu-Gharib? In fact the shooting was deliberate.
There are claims that General William Boykin another ‘devout’ (fundamentalist) Christian is thought to have a hand in encouraging the use of torture to extract information. Why not? After all, according to his earlier statement, the US army is the army of God and the Muslims are the army of Satan. So sodomise, rape, torture and execute the army of Satan; behave like a Satan to beat the Satan. This is the evangelical face of America.
While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humiliation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees have also been abused.
American soldiers are raised in this sea of hate and intolerance created by its powerful mass media. From CNN, FOX TV to Hollywood blockbusters depicts American soldiers as righteous and Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. Arab and Muslims are the modern day wild Native Americans on horses waving an axe attacking the wagons of the early European ‘settlers’, the ‘peaceful’ Christian folks. PAK news editiorial
JEDDAH, 1 June 2004 -- Turkey and Saudi Arabia are to sign an agreement to fight terrorism and crimes jointly, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.
RAFAH - The Israeli military offensive on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah and its refugee camp has claimed the lives of up to 62 Palestinians, flattened 155 homes and drove some 2000 residents homeless, according to Palestinian medics and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
WASHINGTON -- Seven Iraqi men whose hands were ordered cut off by Saddam Hussein met with President Bush at the White House on Tuesday, along with a Houston doctor who helped fit them with prosthetics.
Senior Advisor Dan Senor said, "The history of these abuses is complex and involves many thousands of people." The Coalition has set aside $25 million for initial payments to victims
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Despite war and occupation, Iraq has seen a surge in human rights organizations, political parties and independent newspapers - entities almost unheard of under Saddam Hussein, said a report by an Arab think tank.
Iraqi leaders rounded on the United States and United Nations on Monday for blocking their choice of a president (Reuters)
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A legal snag effectively put on hold the start of a Turkish court hearing Monday into the case of 69 people charged with involvement in al Qaeda-linked suicide bombings in Istanbul ...four truck bombs killed 61 people and wounded more than 600 in the November attacks directed at two synagogues, the British consulate and the local headquarters of London-based bank HSBC.
After analyzing military records of 798 Americans killed in Iraq as of Wednesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said 46 percent of them were from communities of less than 40,000 residents at least 25 miles from a populated place of 100,000 or more. The figures include accidental and non-combat related deaths.
WW3 - Threats
Iraq has appealed to neighbouring Syria and Turkey to increase the water flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
WESTWATER, Utah (AP) - A Greyhound bus was hijacked Monday afternoon by a man with a knife who was captured just west of the Colorado state line
MILITANTS in Saudi Arabia could be in the final stages of preparing another terrorist attack, Britain’s ambassador to the kingdom warned yesterday
Private pilots who stray into Normandy air space during the 60th anniversary of D-Day next weekend will be shot down, French officials said yesterday. With at least 16 heads of state, including the Queen and President George W Bush, attending the ceremonies, organisers are guarding particularly against an al-Qa'eda attack from the air.
WW3 Battles - Congo
Democratic Republic of Congo troops have clashed with mutinous soldiers at the United Nations-controlled airport north of the eastern border city of Bukavu. The regular army withdrew from positions around the runway at Kavumu airport Sunday night after a two-hour clash with nearly one thousand rebellious troops. But the United Nations Mission at the airport reported Monday that it still controls the facility, which is located about 35 kilometers from Bukavu. Two regular army soldiers were killed in Sunday night's battle. (VoA)
WW3 Battles - Pakistan
A bomb blast has killed at least 10 people and injured about 50 at a Shia mosque in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, correspondents say. The blast happened during evening prayers, causing extensive damage to the building. (BBC)
KARACHI (Reuters) - A bomb blast inside a Shi'ite mosque during evening prayers killed at least 13 people on Monday in the southern city of Karachi, where a senior cleric from Pakistan's majority Sunni sect was gunned down a day earlier. Doctors at three city hospitals told Reuters reporters they had counted 13 dead so far, while an angry crowd milling around in the darkness outside the cordoned-off mosque talked of more bodies inside the shattered building. Doctors said about 30 had been wounded.
WW3 Battles - Iraq
FOUR Britons survived an ambush in northern Baghdad yesterday which left one Iraqi dead, the Foreign Office said last night.
[flag]Lance Cpl. Benjamin R. Gonzalez, 23, of Los Angeles, Calif., died May 29 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
KUFA, Iraq U.S. troops clashed on Monday with Shiite militiamen in fighting that killed at least two U.S. soldiers. Meanwhile, a strong explosion rocked Baghdad near the green zone headquarters of the U.S. coalition, causing a number of casualties.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A car bomb outside Baghdad's "Green Zone," headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition, killed four Iraqis and wounded 25 others Monday, said U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
WW3 Battles - Saudi
Al Qaeda thugs savagely slit the throats of nine hostages - forcing other terrified captives to watch - after shooting their way into a Saudi Arabian housing complex, officials revealed yesterday. The unspeakable butchery occurred after a group of restaurant workers - including Italian and Swedish chefs - were caught trying to escape by the terrorists, who invaded the Oasis compound in the port city of Khobar early Saturday. The thugs - who also killed a British oil executive and dragged his body through the streets - tied up the workers and cut their throats, ordering other captives to watch.
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (AP) - The gunmen went from house to house, rifling through papers, studying home decorations for clues, asking probing questions as they hunted down foreigners to kill. As they recounted Saturday's attack on offices, homes and a resort in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, survivors told of a careful, cold-blooded search for victims followed by unthinkable violence. In all, 22 people died.
WW3 Battles - Human Right
A Saudi man who severely beat his TV presenter wife has been sentenced to six months in prison and 300 lashes, a Saudi newspaper reports.
An ugly tug of war is raging over the fate of a 6-year-old boy being raised by a gay couple who won custody of the child in a landmark decision in 2000. Gays hailed the ruling as a major victory for same-sex couples, but the boy has since become a troubled kid who punches his teachers and repeatedly says he wants to kill himself, according to an expert's report requested by his school... report...blames his unruliness in part on the "hostility" between his parents. (nypost)
CHICAGO (AP) - Roman Catholic gay-rights supporters wearing rainbow-colored sashes to Mass were denied communion Sunday, while dozens in Minnesota had to walk around protesters to receive the holy sacrament.
Should smoking be banned? (BBC poll)
The Radical Incline reply
SUN 2004-MAY-30
Current
While his 800-mile drive confirmed that the number of wireless networks is growing explosively, he also found that only a third used basic encryption a key security measure. In fact, in nearly 40 percent of the networks not a single change had been made to the gear's wide-open default settings. ''They took it out of the box, powered it up, and it worked. And they left it alone,''
Mr. Kerry is in the process of setting out what looks like a sober and substantial alternative to Mr. Bush's foreign policy, one that correctly identifies the incumbent's greatest failings while accepting the basic imperatives of the war that was forced on the country on Sept. 11, 2001.
PORTLAND, Maine -- A baker who lost nearly half of his customers to the low-carb craze has tapped Dan Brown's best-selling novel for an Atkins alternative called the "Da Vinci Diet" that he hopes will bring people back to bread.
Natural Consequences
One With Nineveh Politics, Consumption and the Human Future By Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich -- Ever since his popular book "The Population Bomb" appeared in 1968, Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich has been the most widely known prophet of population problems -- if not doom. ..."One With Nineveh," co-written with his wife, Anne, is another such warning. "The thousandfold increase in the size of the human population in the past ten millennia is the most stunning and rapid biological change on the planet since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," ...But it's only in more recent decades that limits in food, water, energy and other resources, including space in some regions, have been approached.
A harrowing 27-hour search for two 11-year-old Nevada City children who went missing during a field trip to a cave turned into a heroic rescue for a Yreka pediatrician with a hunch he knew where to find them.
MARZANABAD, Iran (AP) -- Giant boulders and crushed cars littered a mountain road Saturday, a day after landslides were unleashed by a strong earthquake in northern and central Iran that killed at least 35 people and injured 250 others.
The Mississippi Valley Earthquakes of 1811 and 1812
Information
A television sewn into your shirt sleeve. A dashboard screen to monitor the kids in the back seat. A 3-D computer monitor sharp enough to make a hardcore gamer's heart stop - or help a surgeon start one. The gizmo-packed exhibition hall at the Society for Information Display's international symposium offers a tantalizing vision of what's to come.
A "smart bullet" that can be fired at a target and then wirelessly transmit back useful information has been developed by US researchers. The projectile, created at the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, is 1.7 centimetres in diameter can be fired at from an ordinary paint-ball gun. The front is coated in an adhesive polymer that sticks it to the target.
A year ago, the Jamestown prison became the first in the country to implement a Christian self-help program that has been popular with churches in the past few years. Now, officials with the state Department of Corrections credit the program for a significant decrease in violence at the prison, particularly in the area that houses the most serious offenders. The 40-day program is based on "The Purpose-Driven Life," a best-selling book by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County.
WW2 - Still with us
[flag]
The World War II Memorial
the first national memorial dedicated to all who served during WW2
www.wwiimemorial.com/
Holocaust miracle comes to light. Jewish families hid 344 days in the dark. During war in Ukraine, they had 'maybe two friends, and a million enemies' Ann Carroll The Gazette
Viet Nam - Still with us
HANOI -- Piloting the same plane that rescued him 31 years ago, a former American prisoner of war returned to Vietnam yesterday on his last military mission to bring home remains thought to be fallen comrades.
Watergate - a bit less with us
Two historic figures who were household names during Watergate have died on the same day. Archibald Cox, the prosecutor who refused to limit the Watergate probe, died at his Maine home. He was 92. Sam Dash, the Senate interrogator, died in Washington at the age of 79.
WW3 - Repercussions
LONDON (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said on Monday he had been shocked by U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper. "America generally we consider a champion of liberty, justice -- these things -- so then for something such as this to happen, we regard as shocking," said the exiled leader of Tibet's Buddhists. The aging monk is on a week-long visit to Britain, drawing large crowds to his lectures, but he will not meet Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said Tibetans had much experience of abuse at the hands of their Chinese occupiers: "A lot of torture, a lot of abuse, sexual abuse."
WASHINGTON, May 30 -- Twenty death certificates for Afghan and Iraqi prisoners who died in American custody were completed in a 10-day rush only after the investigation into the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib became public last month, even though some of the deaths occurred months -- in some cases many months -- before.
In his first trip back to his hometown of Chicago, the man who led the unit that captured Saddam Hussein said the United States has "turned the corner'' in defeating the enemy in many parts of Iraq. Army Col. James Hickey, who returned to lead Saturday's Memorial Day parade, said U.S. forces in the area he oversaw, the northern half of the Sunni triangle, were successful in their efforts.
Khalil Bendib ...knows his humor is not for everyone. He thinks of himself as a social activist with a pen, and is the only prominent Arab and Muslim editorial cartoonist in the United States. Born in Paris and raised in Algeria and Morocco, Bendib, 46, has lived in California since 1977. He now lives in Berkeley... see www.bendib.com.
WASHINGTON (AP) - 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 people of Iraq will forgive US-led occupying forces for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, according to a senior coalition spokesman.
Iraq war casualties mourned at L.A. National Cemetery
BAGHDAD, May 29 -- U.S. officials and a U.N. envoy were unable to reach consensus with Iraqi leaders Saturday over the selection of an interim president, with many members of the country's Governing Council opposing the U.S. and U.N. choice, according to Iraqi politicians and international officials involved in the process.
AYACUCHO, Peru (AP) - Authorities have unearthed the bullet-ridden remains of 15 peasants murdered by soldiers after the lone survivor of the massacre came forward following two decades of silence, officials said Saturday
Yesterday the troubled issue of sovereignty in Iraq was in turmoil as it emerged that it was not only ordinary Iraqis who had been sidelined in Allawi's appointment, but the United Nations, Downing Street and even parts of the Bush administration. Despite efforts to put the best gloss on Allawi's nomination, it was clear that a UN process to select an Iraqi leader had largely collapsed, placing the decision in the hands of the former exile groups that dominate the governing council - an outcome the UN had said it was determined to avoid.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - The Colombian government is willing to talk peace with the smaller of the country's two rebel groups if it halts attacks, even if the insurgents don't lay down their arms, President Alvaro Uribe said Saturday.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A suspected Taliban militant has been sentenced to death for a bombing in January that killed 13 children and two adults, a justice official said Saturday, amid an outcry over Afghanistan's return to capital punishment.
WW3 Battles - Saudi
Saudi officials are hailing as a great success their rescue mission to free foreign workers held hostage by Islamic militants in the city of Khobar. Figures in the Saudi royal family say they are confident that they are winning the battle against al-Qaeda. (BBC)
Suspected al-Qaeda militants have killed 22 people - mostly foreigners - in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar... Some of the captives were killed during the raid, but most are said to be safe. ... Three of the militants escaped and a fourth - described as the ringleader - was arrested (BBC)
41 foreigners were rescued and 201 other residents who had been trapped in the compound were evacuated. (Reuters)
police surrounding the building stormed in and reached the fifth floor before the captors fired at them from the floor above, and both sides exchanged machine-gun fire. (CNN)
Dozens of foreign hostages have been freed after Saudi commandos stormed the oil worker's compound where they were being held, Saudi officials have said. (BBC)
Tens of American, European and other hostages were released Sunday and a gunmen believed to be the lead Islamic militant holding them was arrested, a Saudi security official said, adding that two other gunmen were "in the process of being arrested." The security official would not comment on the whereabouts or conditions of the hostages, saying only: "It has ended. One has been arrested and two are in the process of being arrested _ they are surrounded."
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi commandos on Sunday moved to free some 50 foreign hostages held by suspected al Qaeda militants, who had killed 16 people in a major attack on Saudi Arabia's vital oil industry.
Saudi commandos have launched an operation to free about 50 hostages held by suspected Islamic militants in an oil workers' compound in Khobar.
Saudi Arabian security forces attacked suspected al Qaeda militants in a Khobar residential complex early Sunday morning. The gunmen were holding as many as 50 hostages, CNN reported. The hostage situation followed attacks on two petroleum industry compounds Saturday in the port city, which is about 250 miles northeast of the capital, Riyadh. At least 11 people were reportedly killed in the initial attack, including at least one American and one British citizen.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi state television turned to interviewing everyone from children to intellectuals to try to rally citizens against terrorism as it reported Saturday on the latest outburst of extremist violence in the kingdom.
WW3 Battles - Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of sport utility vehicles Sunday in the Iraqi capital, killing at least two people and injuring a pregnant woman, witnesses and officials said. There were conflicting reports about what transpired after the first volley of shots, which appeared to come from an oncoming vehicle.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked three civilian vehicles carrying foreigners in northwest Baghdad Sunday, killing two Westerners and seizing three others, witnesses and police at the scene said. ... Locals and police said the attackers had dragged away three survivors of the attack. Their fate was unknown. ... After the attack, locals set the two vehicles ablaze, and later shooting erupted between gunmen and police at the scene.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Assailants ambushed a convoy of Westerners on Sunday on a northern Baghdad highway, killing at least two people and possibly abducting others, police and witnesses said. U.S. soldiers came under fire in a Shiite holy city as an agreement to halt fighting there appeared to be unraveling.
Foreign insurgents suspected of links to al-Qaeda are operating in the flashpoint city of Fallujah... A senior sheikh in Fallujah said the group was "out of control", adding: "We are worried that they are part of al-Qaeda. That means that we will have to force them out and it will be hard. But this is our country we are fighting for, and it is our fight with the Americans. They have their own country and their own ideas which we do not share."
WW3 Battles - Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - Taliban guerrillas riding in a fleet of vehicles shot up a government office in southern Afghanistan, killing four Afghan soldiers
WW3 Battles - India
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - An explosion ripped through a bus in Nepal's capital on Sunday, injuring at least 21 people, three critically, police and witnesses said. Police blamed the blast in Katmandu on communist insurgents.
WW3 Battles - Pakistan
Mass riots have erupted across Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, after the assassination of one of the country's top religious leaders.
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Gunmen riding in two cars and a motorcycle opened fire on a pick up truck carrying a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in this violence-prone city Sunday, killing him and wounding four other people, police said. The cleric - Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai - died of gunshot wounds in a nearby hospital. He was attacked while he was driving to an Islamic seminary that he headed in an eastern Karachi neighborhood... A body guard of Shamzai returned fire wounding one of the six attackers
WW3 Battles - Colombia
THE rebels have seen 11 presidents come and go and have no fear of the latest counterinsurgency, backed by the US. The Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, marked its 40th anniversary promising to continue its £200m-a-year business of drug smuggling, kidnapping and extortion.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Gunmen in a coastal Colombian city killed a former right-wing paramilitary leader who objected to the militia's involvement in drug trafficking
WW3 Battles - Human Right
Federal investigators are frantically trying to determine what happened to a missing laptop computer that contains sensitive data on as many as 100 Drug Enforcement Administration investigations around the country, including a wealth of information about many of the agency's confidential informants, NEWSWEEK has learned.
Christian beaten to death in hospital by Muslim cop Policeman: 'I have offered my religious duty ... I'm spiritually satisfied'
After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nations unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work.
SAT 2004-MAY-29
Information
New research shows that much less sunlight is reaching the earth than 50 years ago.
Hollywood Disaster
mindless popcorn fun for moviegoers who get a vicarious thrill from seeing stuff get wrecked - and have a high pain threshold for tin-eared dialogue.
...Whatever your plans are, don’t waste any time on this ridiculous slice of apocalyptic nonsense. ...one of the funniest films of the year. But the trouble is I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not supposed to be a comedy. ...Pompously self important, sickeningly sentimental, politically juvenile and jam-packed with clichés, The Day After Tomorrow is Hollywood at its very worst. (Mirror)
Ebert: What's amusing in movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" is the way the screenplay veers from the annihilation of subcontinents to whether Sam should tell Laura he loves her.... I doubt that the cataclysm, if it comes, will come like this. It makes for a fun movie, though. (Sun-Times)
Before its release, "The Day After Tomorrow" prompted argument over whether its science is any good. Now that it's on screen, the argument can shift to where it belongs - whether the filmmaking is any good. It isn't.... What slides into deep-freeze most quickly and permanently are any emotions you might have expected to feel during such a traumatic tale.... (CSM)
Age of the Bizarre
A schoolboy posed as a female British secret service spy in an internet chatroom to persuade a friend to try to murder him, a court heard yesterday... an "elaborate matrix of deceit" involving six fictional characters in the MSN chatroom and correspondence totalling 56,000 lines of text.
WW3 - Repercussions
WASHINGTON-- Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.
The sister of Nick Berg, the contractor from the Philadelphia suburbs who was beheaded earlier this month in Iraq, says she's dumbfounded by reports that liberal icon Michael Moore had filmed an interview with her late brother for his new anti-war film. "I'm very skeptical of this," ...she said there was no way to confirm that Moore had sent a tape of the reported 20-minute interview to their parents' home ...because the couple has been away. ...the strangest twist yet in the increasingly weird saga of Berg...
WASHINGTON - Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football player who died in April while a U.S. soldier fighting in Afghanistan, likely was killed by friendly fire, an Army investigation has concluded.
''I see him as a good man and a loyal son of Iraq,'' Governing Council member Nasser Kamel al-Chaderchi said of Allawi. ''He is known for his ability to make decisions quickly and he also is decisive.'' Despite those attributes, Allawi's past associations particularly with the CIA and British intelligence could be a serious liability. (Boston)
US commanders, virtually alone in overseeing vast regions of Iraq, have pushed for at least superficial local empowerment as vital to stability. They have often forged ahead of civilian occupation authorities in Baghdad, resisting top-down mandates in favor of pragmatic problem solving from below. Yet so far steps toward Iraqi self-defense and self-rule remain fitful and tentative, hampered by mutual misunderstanding, resentment, and mistrust. (CSM)
WW3 - Human Right
A well-known Chinese house-church leader has been released after protests from Western organizations. Zhao Wenquan was let go Tuesday, suffering only "minor beatings," after his arrest May 9 in Hegou Town in Anhui province, reports Voice of the Martyrs... police raided a group of more than 4,000 Christians gathered for a special harvest celebration. ...He originally was charged with "disturbing the social order" and organizing an "illegal religious gathering"... (WND)
WW3 - Battles
(CBS/AP) Three U.S. Marines were killed in action Saturday in Anbar province west of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported. The Marines were assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which is responsible for security in a wide area from just west of Baghdad to the borders of Syria and Jordan. The statement gave no further details, citing security.
KABUL, Afghanistan --Four members of the American special forces were killed in action in a southern Afghan province at the heart of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency, the U.S. military said Sunday.
A senior Hamas commander, his assistant and a bystander died in a fiery Israeli air strike in Gaza City early Sunday
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A mortar bomb landed about 400 yards from the headquarters of the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad on Saturday, wounding four people
Suspected al Qaeda militants killed at least 16 people on Saturday and took 50 foreigners hostage in the second major attack in a month aimed at destabilizing Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter. (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia's 'war on terror'
Security forces have surrounded an oil company housing compound in the Saudi city of Khobar (BBC)
Islamic militants are holding more than 50 people hostage after an attack in the Saudi oil city of Khobar that killed at least 10 Saudis and foreigners. (VoA)
WW3 - Threats
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan successfully test-fired on Saturday a ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads, as part of efforts to boost defenses in its rivalry with India. ... The test ...came a week after a new government took office in India.
Rumsfeld addresses graduates at West Point. "Life is not predictable... the truth is we are closer to the beginning of this struggle -- this global insurgency -- than to its end. ... They seek no armistice, have no territory to defend, they have no public to answer to," he said. "They threaten us with shadowy networks not easily weeded out.... A terrorist needs to succeed only occasionally, but as defenders, we need to be successful always.... The only way to prevail in this struggle is to root out the terrorists before they develop still more powerful means to inflict damage on still greater numbers of innocent people...
Let me add a word about the young men and women you will have the privilege to lead -- the American soldier... They are the sons and daughters of America and some of the finest people you will ever meet. Take good care of them. Lead them and respect them. Your love for soldiers must be as unconditional as it is for your own families. Use the skills you've learned here to bring out the very best in them, including respect for others. Always fall back on the moral clarity of the Honor Code you have learned here.
The F.B.I. issued an urgent bulletin to several cities on Friday that warned of the prospect of an imminent terrorist attack but retracted the alert hours later, after the intelligence proved unfounded (NY Times)
The Bush administration's agreement for Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. special envoy to Iraq, to choose the next interim Iraqi government could signal the end of U.S. efforts to establish democracy in Iraq, says Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. ...Under this scenario, Iraq will have had its election, the United States will have declared victory and the only losers may be those who hope for Iraqi and Arab democracy. (WND)
An official of Iran's Revolutionary Guards has threatened the United States and other Western nations with suicide and missile attacks aimed at 29 sensitive sites. (WND)
Traces of enriched uranium discovered on recently surrendered Libyan nuclear components appear to have come from Pakistan, a critical black-market supply hub that also made deliveries to Iran and North Korea, U.N. inspectors reported yesterday in Vienna.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government officials declared on Friday they were working together to monitor terrorist threats after questions were raised about a possible Bush administration turf war over domestic security.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - An American Airlines flight attendant who told authorities she found a note saying there was a bomb in a jet's cargo hold was charged Friday for writing the threatening letter, which caused the plane to be diverted.
FRI 2004-MAY-28
Current
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When word surfaced in Baghdad on Friday that Iyad Allawi would lead Iraq's interim government, confusion reigned both in Washington and at the United Nations
QAZVIN, Iran (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake struck the Alborz mountain chain in northern Iran, killing at least 20 people and damaging scores of villages
TEHRAN, Iran – A strong earthquake struck northern Iran on Friday, killing at least six people, injuring 20 and damaging dozens of buildings and homes
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Just before the heavy-driving Memorial Day weekend, more than 500 Shell and Texaco stations in the South have stopped selling gasoline because of high sulfur levels that can ruin vehicle fuel gauges and make an empty tank appear full.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's Senate voted Thursday to support a bill to limit a new e-mail service by Google Inc. over concerns it could threaten the privacy of users.
BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - A giant three-tiered mushroom ... measures a meter (yard) across ...found in the tropical forests of the Republic of Congo
Coca-Karma: The Very Secret Battle of Bob Kolody vs. Coca-Cola (GNN)
History
ST. LOUIS (AP) - While not as harrowing as Lewis and Clark's sojourn westward two centuries ago, the river journey by modern-day re-enactors has been anything but smooth sailing.
DETROIT -- Authorities in Detroit searched a home Friday looking for clues into the greatest murder mystery in U.S. history -- what really happened to Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa (Fox)
Justice?
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - After 17 years in prison, a man convicted of stabbing a newlywed couple to death and setting their home ablaze was expected to walk free on Friday. A federal judge ruled last June it was "reasonably probable" that Gordon Randall Steidl would have been acquitted if his defense attorney had done more to challenge the state's case against him.
Information
The Universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide
Evidence of microbes eating away at volcanic glass 3.5 billion years ago (CSM)
Hollywood Disaster
...while the movie's topical jabs have a sneering, Verhoeven-lite quality (you keep expecting Emmerich to splice in Independence Day's money shot of the White House being incinerated), the human-interest stuff reeks, not least because Emmerich and co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff have no discernible interest in humans. (Village Voice)
"The Day After Tomorrow" is a disarmingly pulpy, eye-popping disaster movie during its first half, and an increasingly dull survival melodrama during its second. (Todd McCarthy, Variety) WARNING: WRITTEN IN VARIETYSPEAK
There comes a point when "The Day After Tomorrow" gets so bad that the film actually reaches a certain level of sublimity. (Jason Walsh, Marin Independent Journal)
Showing people The Day After Tomorrow may, like showing them other images of Hell, make them dramatically change their ways. More likely, it will get us to weigh up the odds of salvation. And the likelihood is we will make the odd penitential gesture rather than give up worldly pleasure altogether. (Richard D. North, Financial Times)
WW3 - Repercussions
The Connection: The collaboration of Iraq and al Qaeda. by Stephen F. Hayes ...Iraq's contacts with bin Laden go back some years, to at least 1994... (Weekly Standard)
A group of drunken off-duty police officers forced American students to kneel on the ground at their Fremantle dormitory while taunting and humiliating them about the United States involvement in Iraq.
For a man who has spent five years playing an elaborate game of cat and mouse with the British authorities, Abu Hamza al-Masri was uncharacteristically silent when police arrived at his Hammersmith home in the early hours of Thursday.
The threats that deterred pop icon Madonna from playing three Israeli concerts did not come from Palestinian Arab groups but more likely from local Islamist organizations in the United Kingdom where she lives most of the year
...in Iraq, where rumors alone can destroy a woman's reputation, the consequences of US detention are much more severe for women than for men. (CSM)
THE EXPERIMENT THAT ANTICIPATED ABU GHRAIB --In 1971 a group of 24 college men volunteered to act as either guards or prisoners in an experimental prison. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, esteemed professor of psychology and former president of the American Psychological Foundation, volunteers went through several rounds of testing to ensure psychological and physical health and "normalcy." They were then designated either guards or prisoners by the simple flip of a coin.
In Australia Friday a man pled guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida in a terrorist plot to attack the Israeli embassy in the capital Canberra.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iyad Allawi, a former supporter of Saddam Hussein who then worked with the CIA to topple him, was chosen as prime minister of Iraq Friday.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A soldier in the same ambush as former POW Jessica Lynch was not killed in action but captured by Iraqi fighters and then executed ...The family of Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, of Salem - who had pressed officials for an investigation of their son's death - learned the new information from the Oregon National Guard. Guard officials released the details to the public Thursday, more than a year after the March 23, 2003, ambush. The killing is being investigated as a war crime, and suspects have been identified. Their names have not b
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - A soldier initially listed as killed in action while riding in the same doomed convoy as former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch actually had been captured by Iraqi fighters before he was killed, the Oregon National Guard said Thursday.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - An Islamic civil rights organization said Thursday that a former professor accused of financing terrorists is being held under inhumane conditions. The wife of former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian compared his treatment to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American troops.
WARSAW (Reuters) - The Polish army denied media reports on Friday that its troops had abused Iraqi detainees in their occupation zone in southern Iraq.
WW3 - Threats
2 suspected al-Qaeda agents dropped in for meal, says Denny's manager in Avon CO... They said they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast. ...called the FBI in Washington, D.C., ...the man who answered the telephone said he had to call the Denver office and declined to take down any of the information. ...called the Denver office, ...shuttled to voice mail ...five hours before a seemingly uninterested agent called back.
Pakistani officials say al-Qaida is becoming more decentralized and its top leader, Osama bin Laden, may not be running the organization
PHILADELPHIA - (KRT) - Heavily armed IRS and immigration agents raided a Philadelphia mosque and two homes Thursday, seizing documents and detaining the imam on immigration charges. IRS officials gave no immediate explanation for the action, which came one day after U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced stepped-up operations based on concerns that al-Qaeda operatives were plotting an attack.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal official in charge of the nation's airports said Friday security has been "stepped up a notch" in the face of renewed terror warnings this holiday weekend and said authorities are asking the public to be vigilant.
WW3 - Battles
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Five Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in clashes between U.S. troops and Shi'ite militiamen in the holy city of Najaf and in nearby Kufa on Friday
MAHMUDIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi driver working for two missing Japanese journalists said both were killed in an attack on their vehicle south of Baghdad
WW3 - Human Right
Polk County Police Chief Billy Wills recently announced an operation conducted by members of the Polk County Police Departments’ Narcotics Enforcement Team (N.E.T.) in which $50,000 worth of marijuana was seized.
MORE than 9000 motorists will be randomly tested for drugs in a world-first initiative by Victoria Police. The test, which uses a saliva swab to test for cannabis and methamphetamine (or speed), is expected to hit the streets on July 1. Like random breath-testing for alcohol, police will not need reasonable suspicion to drug-test drivers - a fact that sets Victoria apart from European countries where the test is done.
A Georgetown man elected trial by jury after he was arraigned last Wednesday on a charge of possession for the purpose of trafficking after police found $200,000 worth of marijuana in a van Tuesday, May 18.
The police at Kpong paraded a 32-year old married man and father of two, naked to their station for questioning.
Bush orders 420 removed from national time keeping system
As a medical cannabis patient (quadriplegic) fortunate enough to have a doctor’s recommendation for the past five years, I feel compelled to comment on recent developments in our community regarding the cultivation and dispensing of medical marijuana. (Berk Daily Planet)
ROLLA (AP)--An elaborate drug sting operation that started when a motorist on Interstate 44 failed to use his turn signal in Phelps County has led to the arrest of three men in suburban Boston ... stopped by a Phelps County sheriff's deputy for failing to use his turn signal.
A Mount Healthy man who said he was growing marijuana for medical purposes will not spend any time in prison. Carter Singleton was convicted on drug charges after police found marijuana plants in his home. Singleton said marijuana helped stimulate his appetite when he was undergoing cancer treatment. Hamilton County Judge John Andrew West decided not to sentence Singleton to prison but said he must use prescription drugs to ease the pain. (WCPO)
MEXICO CITY – Four state policemen have been charged with abuse of authority in arresting two Tarahumara Indian environmentalists, lending credence to the Indians' claims they were hit with trumped-up weapons and drug charges to discourage their activism.
BEIJING - Police in China have placed prominent dissidents under house arrest to prevent them from publicly commemorating the 15th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown
SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court is deciding whether to throw out the conviction of a 15-year-old boy who served 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a poem that included a threat to kill his fellow students.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish art exhibit featuring cannabis plants ...due to open on Saturday ...was partially destroyed when police cut the plants to take them away as evidence, artist Sture Johannesson said.
THU 2004-MAY-27
Current
May 27, 2004 -- WASHINGTON -- When it comes to that great tradition of summer -- the backyard barbecue -- voters would rather fire up the grill with President Bush than John Kerry, a new poll showed yesterday. (NY Post)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- U.S. and Canadian troops helicoptered aid to a submerged Haitian village where up to 1,000 people are believed to have drowned in massive floods that lashed the island of Hispaniola Monday (Newsday)
BUFFALO, N.Y. - A man who sent 850 million junk e-mails through accounts he opened with stolen identities was sentenced to up to seven years in prison on Thursday. Atlanta-based Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. said it hoped the sentence and an earlier $16.4 million civil judgment against Howard Carmack will deter other spammers.
Information
WASHINGTON (AP) - The list of diseases linked to smoking grew longer Thursday. Add acute myeloid leukemia, cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach, abdominal aortic aneurysms, cataracts, periodontitis and pneumonia.
WASHINGTON - America's prison population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million inmates, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail.
Despite stereotypes to the contrary, researchers are increasingly convinced that mother-daughter fighting, which they say is more intense and frequent than any other parent-child two-some, is less about teenage girls pushing mothers away than about daughters trying to forge new connections based on their emotional and cognitive growth. What's more, the quality of the fights can affect the quality of the time in-between them. (Boston.com)
The increasing use of antibiotics to treat disease may be responsible for the rising rates of asthma and allergies. By upsetting the body's normal balance of gut microbes, antibiotics may prevent our immune system from distinguishing between harmless chemicals and real attacks. "The microbial gut flora is an arm of the immune system," says Gary Huffnagle at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour. His research group has provided the first experimental evidence in mice that upsetting the gut flora can provoke an allergic response. (NewScientist)
WW3 - Human Rights
OAKLAND (KRON) -- Some teachers in Oakland are rallying behind two students who were interrogated by the Secret Service. That followed remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class discussion. ... the students were grilled by federal agents without legal counsel or their parents present, just the principal. "When one of the students asked, 'do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights,'" (Kron)
Tammy Lafky has a computer at home but said she doesn't use it. "I don't know how"... But her 15-year-old daughter, Cassandra, does.... Lafky, a sugar mill worker and single mother ...became the first Minnesotan sued by name by the recording industry this week for allegedly downloading copyrighted music illegally. ... Lafky ,,earns $12 an hour and faces penalties that top $500,000. ...says she can't even afford an offer by the record companies to settle the case for $4,000. (SiliconValley.com)
DENVER -- A 13-year-old Denver girl said she was threatened with a knife at her middle school and her hair was set on fire, yet she was the one who was told to stay home for the remainder of the school year while her alleged attacker wasn't suspended or even investigated. (Denver 7)
WW3 - Repercussions
WASHINGTON (AP) - Some Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib said they were abused by troops from Poland and other coalition countries... new and more detailed allegations of abuse by military intelligence soldiers
Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics. (Daytona News-Journal)
Support among U.S. teens for the war in Iraq has slipped by one-third since the fighting began, according to an online survey that suggests fears of a revived military draft are eroding teen backing for the conflict.
If Sanchez isn't being removed for cause, he should be. (NY Post editorial)
Recently translated documents captured by U.S. forces provide new evidence of a direct link between Saddam Hussein's regime and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rosters of officers in Saddam's Fedayeen list Lt. Col. Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, who was present at the January 2000 al-Qaida "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9-11 attacks were planned, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Filmmaker Michael Moore...said Thursday that he has footage unused in the film of Nicholas Berg, the American civilian later beheaded in Iraq. The footage, of an interview with Berg, "is approximately 20 minutes long. We are not releasing it to the media," Moore said in a statement. "It is not in the film. We are dealing privately with the family." (WKMG)
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan has its first entertainment television channel, three years after the fall of the radical Taliban regime that banned the medium.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Saudi Arabian national who is believed to have roomed with a friend of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers was arrested on Thursday on immigration violations
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A nuclear scientist once jailed by Saddam Hussein hinted Thursday that he took himself out of the running for the prime minister's job because major Shiite political parties want to fill the post with one of their own.
LONDON, May 27 -- The British police arrested a radical Islamic leader, Abu Hamza al-Masri, early today after the United States requested his extradition on a variety of charges, including trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon and aiding Al Qaeda and the Taliban. (NYTimes)
President Pervez Musharraf says junior army and air force personnel were involved in assassination attempts on him last December. General Musharraf said that several military servicemen had been arrested and would soon be tried. (BBC)
WW3 - Battles
Former basketball star loses hand in Baghdad attack (Chi Sun-Times)
[flag]Army Pfc. Richard H. Rosas, 21, of Saint Louis, Mich.
[flag]Army Pfc. James P. Lambert, 23, of New Orleans, La. died May 25 in Fallujah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device hit their patrol.
[flag]Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle W. Codner, 19, of Wood River, Neb.
[flag]Marine Cpl. Matthew C. Henderson, 25, of Lincoln, Neb. died May 26, due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
[flag]Army Pfc. Daniel P. Unger, 19, of Exeter, Calif., died May 25 in Forward Operating Base Kalsu (Iskandariyah, Iraq) during a rocket attack.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States hopes Sudan and rebels in Darfur will implement a cease-fire this week to staunch a humanitarian crisis threatening hundreds of thousands of lives
TOKYO (AP) - Gunmen attacked a car carrying two Japanese men, their interpreter and driver in Iraq, Japan's top government spokesman said Friday. The government was unable to confirm details about the incident given it was still late at night in Iraq
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces agreed to a truce offered by Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday, suspending their attacks and allowing Sadr's Mehdi Army fighters to pull out of the city.
WW3 - Threats
Some allies of the Department of Homeland Security within the Bush administration and members of Congress criticized Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday for issuing terrorist threat warnings at a news conference on Wednesday, contending he failed to coordinate the information with the White House and with Homeland Security, which has the job of releasing threat warnings. (Wash Post)
A London-based Muslim cleric has been caught on film urging his followers to kill non-Muslims – particularly Americans – and to commit other acts of terrorism.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two preachers grounded a flight leaving Buffalo, New York, after they frightened passengers by declaring the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were a good reason to pray, officials said on Thursday. One preacher told fellow passengers as the Continental Airlines plane taxied down the runway, "Your last breath on earth is the first one in heaven as long as you are born again and have Jesus in your heart,"
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - An American Airlines jet flying from Dallas/Ft. Worth to Boston was diverted Thursday after a flight attendant found a note saying there was a bomb in the cargo hold. Investigators were examining a "suspicious package,"
ONDON : International Institute for Stategic Studies says United States has become preoccupied with the ongoing insurgency in Iraq... Bush administration is deeply divided over a strategy to contain the weapons of mass destruction arsenals of Iran and North Korea... Therefore... Bush administration has relayed considerable responsibility for efforts to curb Iranian and North Korean WMD to other countries. (World Tribune)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States agreed on Thursday to lock away some of the most dangerous nuclear material scattered around the globe to keep it away from "terrorists," but experts said that was no easy task.
WED 2004-MAY-26
Information
BERLIN (Reuters) - The universe looks like the Eiffel Tower topped with a never-ending spire, a German physicist said Wednesday.
History
MONTPELIER, Vt.-- David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Seven arrested and tried for their part in the violent antiwar protests that broke out during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, has died at 88. (Chi Sun-Times)
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) - Five days into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, with the superpowers on the brink of confrontation, President Nixon was too drunk to discuss the crisis with the British prime minister
Current
Mayor Daley scolded Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry Tuesday for making a wisecrack about the bicycle accident that scraped the face, hands and knees of President Bush.
CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, N.J. -- A man has been charged with child abuse for not applying enough sunblock to his 12-year-old son before a day at the beach.
ROME (Reuters) - ...Italian legislators are mulling a detailed draft law laying down rules to protect real Neapolitan pizza. ...three pages, eight articles and six sub-clauses ... Italy's leading financial daily... gave it a half-baked review. "It's useless to close the stable door now that the horse has bolted," the paper said, noting that people and restaurants the world over were making pizza any way they wanted.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of Russia's border guards, fed up with their dour image, has ordered them to start smiling at visitors
WW2 - Still with us
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - A pilot killed when his P-51 fighter was shot down over Germany during World War II will be laid to rest Friday alongside his brother, who died less than three weeks after he did in 1944. The remains of Lt. William Lewis were exhumed from a field near Oberhof, Germany, by a U.S. recovery team that spent a month excavating the site before returning the bones to Lewis' daughter, Sharon Cross of Houston.
WW3 - Repercussions
ASHINGTON -- America's "war on terrorism" has made the world more dangerous -- not safer -- since the Sept. 11 attacks, Amnesty International charged Wednesday.
WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed by the military with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Attorneys for a Saudi man accused of using his Web sites to foster terrorism rested their case Wednesday after presenting a single witness: an expert who testified the computer student never condoned terrorism.
And that is not to defend what happened and it is not to suggest that it's harmless and no big deal, but then expanding on this and trying to say this is the kind of behavior that defines the U.S. military, that's being done on purpose by people who wish to wound the U.S. military, and they are probably the same people who try to make us believe they support the troops. -Rush Limbaugh on the Abu Gahrib prison scandal aftermath, quoted by Kate O'Beirne, Washington Editor for National Review
Remarks by Al Gore May 26, 2004 at MovOnPAC.org -- George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world....
RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke issued the following statement today in response to a speech by former Vice President Al Gore attacking President Bush.
Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson has apologized for remarks at a campaign rally in which he compared a segment of the Republican Party to the Taliban.
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - Nearly a decade after the Oklahoma City bombing, Terry Nichols was found guilty of 161 state murder charges Wednesday for helping carry out what was then the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. He could get the death sentence he escaped when he was convicted in federal court in the 1990s.
MCALESTER, Okla. (Reuters) - Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols was found guilty on Wednesday of all 161 counts of murder for his part in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building.
Key dates in the Oklahoma City bombing and the case against Terry Nichols (AP)
MADRID, Spain -- Spanish police told the FBI all along that they doubted the fingerprints on a plastic bag containing detonators like those used in the Madrid train bombing belonged to the Oregon lawyer wrongly arrested in the case
PARIS (AP) - Two Frenchmen and an Algerian were convicted Tuesday of organizing networks that sent militants to Afghan camps for training in terrorism. The three men were sentenced to between two and 10 years in prison.
WINDER, Ga. (AP) - Two 14-year-old students accused of plotting a killing spree at their middle school were ordered held without bail Tuesday after a judge ruled there was enough evidence to support the charges.
WW3 - Human Right
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday his government will move to ban gay marriages and same-sex couples from adopting children from overseas.
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Amnesty International charged Wednesday that Brazilian police killed hundreds of suspects over the past year, despite a commitment by the government to set higher standards for public security.
SINGAPORE (AP) - Ultra-tidy Singapore is lifting its notorious ban on chewing gum after 12 long years - but only for registered users. Gum dealers face jail if they break the rules.
Cold War - Still with us
SEOUL (Reuters) - Generals from opposite sides of the world's last Cold War frontier sat down for talks on Wednesday in the highest-level meeting between military officers from North and South Korea since the 1950-53 war.
WW3 - Threats
Greece has vowed to shoot down any aircraft trying to wreck the Olympics with a 11 September-style attack. (BBC)
Amid fears of an imminent Islamist attack, the Bush administration has tried to energize the hunt for terrorists by reissuing months-old data about two Canadians thought to have trained as pilots. (Globe & Mail)
WW3 - Battles
[flag]Army Spc. Alan N. Bean Jr., 22, of Bridport, Vt. Army Sgt. Kevin F. Sheehan, 36, of Milton, Vt. died May 25 in Forward Operating Base Kalsu (Iskandariyah, Iraq,) when their unit came under mortar attack.
[flag]Army Pfc. Owen D. Witt, 20, of Sand Springs, Mont., died May 24 in Ad Dawr, Iraq, when his armored high-mobility-multipurpose-wheeled vehicle rolled over.
[flag]Army Spc. Beau R. Beaulieu, 20, of Lisbon, Maine, died May 24 in Taji, Iraq, during a mortar attack on Camp Cooke.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 -- American troops in Najaf captured a key lieutenant to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, during fierce fighting that killed "a very large number" of rebels (NYTimes)
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. warplanes struck a suspected Taliban camp during a battle with the militants in southern Afghanistan... At least eight fighters were killed, but no U.S. casualties were reported.
Hussain al-Shahristani, a Shiite nuclear scientist imprisoned in Abu Ghraib for years for refusing to help Saddam Hussein build a nuclear weapon, is being considered as prime minister of the interim government ... The head of Iraq's Governing Council said President Bush's idea of demolishing Abu Ghraib prison was "a waste of resources." ... Masked gunmen killed two Russian technicians and wounded at least five in an ambush on their convoy in Baghdad, prompting the company employing them to order its staff out of Iraq. ... Five people were killed and seven others injured by a roadside bomb in Baqouba, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad ... U.S. troops killed a man and injured his wife in their car five minutes after curfew in Kirkuk... The couple's baby was not hurt.
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Two cars exploded minutes apart Wednesday outside an English-language school near the U.S. consul's residence in the southern city of Karachi, killing one person and injuring 25
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A road accident south of Tikrit killed a U.S. soldier and injured two
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. warplanes helped Afghan forces pound Taliban militants in the mountains of southern Afghanistan Tuesday, killing some 20 suspected insurgents at a recently discovered camp, a senior Afghan commander said.
TUE 2004-MAY-25
INFORMATION
NEW ORLEANS, May 24 - A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia has died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle laced with ebola, the deadly virus for which there is no vaccine or treatment ... the accident occurred May 5 (NY Times)
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The sound of 40 kg (90 pounds) of finely tuned cucumbers, leeks, potatoes, radishes, peppers, aubergines and marrows entertained a German audience at a weekend concert by the Viennese Vegetable Orchestra. The nine-piece orchestra plays a range of original compositions on instruments constructed from vegetables -- including a flute made from a carrot, a saxophone carved out of a cucumber and a pumpkin converted into a double bass.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Several statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in an Australian hall have apparently begun weeping and bleeding rose oil, prompting the Catholic Church to launch an investigation, a church official said on Tuesday.
A German historian said Sunday a distant relative of Adolf Hitler could sue the state of Bavaria for royalties from the Nazi dictator's book "Mein Kampf" but the retired Austrian engineer said he wants no part of it.
WW3 - Repercussions
DENVER (AP) - Four U.S. soldiers will be reprimanded for forcing two Iraqi detainees to jump off a bridge into the Tigris River earlier this year... There have been questions about whether one of the Iraqis died, but Fort Carson spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Budzyna said no one was killed.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says that after the transfer of power on 30 June, Iraq's interim government will have a veto on operations by coalition troops. (BBC)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Iran will sign a deal soon with Russia obliging it to return spent fuel from a new nuclear reactor to Moscow, a Russian official said, in a move intended to ease U.S. fears the material could be used to make bombs.
President Bush's speech Monday evening on RealAudio
Four months ago, Ahmad Chalabi sat with first lady Laura Bush during President Bush's State of the Union address. At the time, the Iraqi banker-politician enjoyed the support of some of the Pentagon's highest ranking civilian officials. Today, Chalabi's defenders are more likely to be found in Iran, the country that Bush famously described as part of the "axis of evil." The government and the online press in Iran are coming to the defense of Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim, whose Baghdad headquarters were raided by U.S. troops last week. Several of Chalabi's associates have been charged with providing U.S. intelligence information to Iran. The Islamic Republic News Agency called the espionage allegations "baseless." (Wash Post)
WW3 - Threats
"I'm more worried than I was at Christmastime," said one senior U.S. intelligence official, comparing the "election threat" to the cancelling of specific airline flights around the holidays. He said the U.S. government is convinced there are still as yet unidentified al Qaeda operatives residing in the United States, waiting for the word to launch plots. "They are here, and there are indications they are preparing" attacks, said the official, who government policy bars from being named. (Wash Post)
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials have obtained new intelligence deemed highly credible indicating al-Qaida or other terrorists are in the United States and preparing to launch a major attack this summer... among the most disturbing received by the government since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001
WW3 - Battles
[flag]Army Spc. Jeremy L. Ridlen, 23, of Paris, Ill., died May 23 in East Fallujah, Iraq, from small arms fire after a dump truck on the side of the road was detonated while his military convoy passed by.
[flag]Marine Staff Sgt. Jorge A. MolinaBautista, 37, of Rialto, Calif., died May 23 as a result of hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - A parcel bomb exploded Tuesday at a checkpoint in the port area of the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, killing at least two people and injuring five, police and an emergency worker said.
BAGHDAD, May 25 (Xinhuanet) -- A suspected car bomb exploded early Tuesday outside a Baghdad hotel close to the Australian embassy, wounding at least five people
MON 2004-MAY-24
CURRENT
NEW YORK More than half of all national journalists (51%) and almost as many local journalists (46%) believe that their profession is off the mark and headed down the wrong path, according to a comprehensive study released today by The Pew Research Center, The Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Committee of Concerned Journalists. (E&P)
The self-styled "toughest sheriff in America" loved and loathed as the larger-than-life embodiment of law enforcement in Davidson County N.C. facing 15 felony counts in a corruption and abuse investigation pleaded guilty last week to two counts of obstruction of justice in a deal that kept him out of prison. ...a sheriff who misused county funds, intimidated and threatened his own officers and endangered the public with his recklessness. ... three of his officers were sent to federal prison for their involvement in a drug ring.
Michael Moore, ...in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. ...wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group... the next day he said he called me. ...none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It's a fabrication on two levels. ...(Weekly Standard)
Wielding baseball bats and sticks, a mob in northwest Houston today chased down a man suspected of preying on neighborhood children in recent weeks. "We know him. The whole neighborhood knows him." ... "The little kids spotted him. The little kids started the chase.... All the little kids in the neighborhood -- they had sticks an everything."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vermont was designated an "endangered place" on Monday by preservationists who say Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, threatens the picturesque state with huge new stores that smash rural life.
"Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, 'Did the training wheels fall off?' " Mr. Drudge reported on his Web site, www.drudgereport.com. Interviewed by The Washington Times yesterday, Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter would say only that the words Mr. Drudge reported were "off the record." (Wash Times)
Girls as young as 11 are stacking colorful rubber "sex bracelets" up their arms while their parents are unaware that each piece of the cheap jewelry represents a different sex act, according to a secret-code the kids share. ... A black bracelet indicates sexual intercourse, blue is oral sex, red is a lap dance or French kiss and white is a homosexual kiss - and it gets more in depth. Green represents having sex outside. Some of the bracelets stand for specific sexual positions, and there's even a light-green glow-in-the-dark version that means "using sex toys." Megan Stecher, 11, a fifth-grader who sells the $1 bracelets to her classmates at Holy Child Jesus School in Richmond Hill, Queens, for $1.25 said her teachers are not aware of what they symbolize. (NY Post)
KOREAN WAR - Still with us
[flag]Nineteen sets of remains believed to be those of American soldiers missing in action from the Korean War were recovered by two teams of U.S. specialists and will be repatriated to U.S. control at Yongsan Military Compound in Seoul May 27.
WW3 - Human Right
Ben Shapiro attended the University of California at Los Angeles and came out dismayed by much of what he heard and saw. Professors there, he laments, routinely spouted liberal propaganda and rarely had their biases challenged. Conservative thinkers, on the contrary, Mr. Shapiro says, were generally shrugged off as not too bright. As a columnist for UCLA's student paper The Daily Bruin, he was able to voice his outrage until, he claims, he was fired for his views. Now - having already graduated from UCLA at 20 - Shapiro has written "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth" (WND Books), alerting the world to what Shapiro sees as the sorry state of US higher education.
WW3 - Repercussions
WASHINGTON, May 24 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States will demolish Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad if the Iraqi interim government that is to take over sovereignty on June 30 agrees, the White House said in a statement on Monday. "Under Saddam Hussein, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values," the statement said. A new Iraq will need "a humane, well supervised" prison system and the United States will pay to build "a new maximum security prison," the statement said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - More than 5,500 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces in the first 12 months of the occupation
There is increasing evidence of Saddam Hussein's complicity in bringing West Nile virus to the U.S.... some American intelligence sources believe Saddam Hussein unleashed his active chemical and biological weapons program on the U.S. in the form of West Nile virus.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will seek to convince skeptical Americans that he has a plan to bring stability to Iraq in a prime-time speech on Monday night
Israeli Justice Minister Yosef "Tommy" Lapid stunned Cabinet colleagues on Sunday by saying a picture of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through rubble reminded him of his grandmother. Mr Lapid is a Holocaust survivor. His grandmother was not. She died in Auschwitz.
RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - A videotape obtained by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say U.S. planes later attacked, killing up to 45 people. ... Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt showed photographs of rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes possibly for illegal drugs as well as other items that he said suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.
May 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and U.K. presented a resolution to the United Nations Security Council that, while granting Iraqis ``governing authority'' by June 30, gives U.S. military forces full control over the nation's security. The five-page text says that a multinational force under U.S. command ``shall have the authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq by preventing and deterring terrorism.'' It calls for a ``partnership'' between the troops and the interim government to ``ensure coordination between the two.''
...evidence North Korea secretly supplied Libya with 1.7 tons of uranium for its nuclear weapons program in 2001 (WND)
WW3 - Battles
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A roadside bomb killed two British civilians traveling in an armored car near coalition headquarters on Monday one of a series of blasts that rocked the center of the Iraqi capital. After the bombing, insurgents fired mortar rounds around Baghdad. One projectile landed in the Green Zone, which houses coalition headquarters, the U.S. command said, but there were no reports of casualties or damage. Another mortar shell damaged the roof of a primary school; classes had ended for the day, and no injuries were reported. Another mortar round exploded in the Karrada district.
A popular folk singer who lived for more than 20 years in Brooklyn has been arrested in Haiti by U.S. marines who accuse her of plotting against American troops there. (Newsday)
[flag]Marine Lance Cpl. Andrew J. Zabierek, 25, of Chelmsford, Mass., died May 21 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
Common wisdom in the Iraqi capital is that nearly all the Mahdi army fighters in the holy cities are poor and ignorant Shias from the sprawling Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. But most of those fighting the Americans this weekend were local. Some were educated and from well-off families. Many of them have joined the uprising in the last two months, revolted by what they see as American arrogance, brutality and callousness. The torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans has also served as a recruiting sergeant. (Telegraph)
BAGHDAD : Several blasts rocked Baghdad, killing seven people, including two Britons, while clashes between US troops and Shiite militiamen left 18 people dead in the populous Sadr City neighborhood.
NABLUS, West Bank -- Three members of the Hamas militant group were killed Sunday while handling explosives, Palestinian security sources said. The men had pulled their car up alongside an abandoned vehicle used to store their explosives, and the storage vehicle blew up while one of the militants was handling materials inside, the sources said.
SUN 2004-MAY-23
INFORMATION
A new, subscription-based service called DidTheyReadIt... will notify its users via e-mail when recipients open a message sent using its technology -- including the time and geographic area in which each e-mail was read. ... Each message sent through DidTheyReadIt contains a link to a tiny, invisible "Web beacon" image file hosted on the company's Web site. DidTheyReadIt will then log when the message is opened and the beacon is viewed -- assuming the recipient's mail program can display Web-formatted e-mail, as most do. SET YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM TO NOT HAVE WEB-FORMATTED DISPLAY!!
Rats with spinal cord injuries regained 70% of their normal walking function with a three-part treatment aimed at regrowing nerve cells, researchers have shown.
The Blue Rose (Telegraph)
The Black Death, which killed 23m people in the middle ages, could be lying dormant and could strike again, say researchers. ... research led them to conclude that the deaths were not caused by bubonic plague but by some other viral disease. ..."Although the last known outbreak of plague occurred over three centuries ago, we believe the virus is merely lying in wait, ready to strike again."(BBC)
...preventable medical errors in hospitals contribute to thousands of deaths in Canada every year.
CURRENT
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Friday Riyadh had already decided to raise output to nine million barrels daily next month, up from about 8.3 million bpd in April. World oil prices eased on news of the Saudi plan, U.S. crude ending Friday trade off 87 cents at $39.85 a barrel, the first close below $40 in 10 days. (Reuters)
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe was mobbed by a legion of screaming teenage girls as he arrived for the New York premiere of his latest adventure. "It's astonishing - it's really, really, really scary but it's brilliant," the 14-year-old enthused. (BBC)
DHAKA (Reuters) - Two river ferries capsized or sank in Bangladesh's storm-hit south Sunday and 240 passengers were reported missing as divers began a desperate search for survivors.
President Bush... fell off a bicycle. ..."It's been raining a lot, and the topsoil is loose," he said. In addition, Duffy reasoned, "He likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes." Fortunately, Duffy reported, Bush was wearing a helmet and mouth guard. (Wash Post)
WW3 - Sideshows
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau apologized and several newspapers cautioned readers or refused to run Sunday's "Doonesbury" strip, which showed a man's head on a platter, two weeks after an American was beheaded in Iraq.
CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - For the first time in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, the jury on Sunday met the international press to explain why and how it chose this year's winners, including Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." ... jury members said it was a unanimous choice based purely on its strength as a film, not a political statement. ... it's what goes "through the projector" that mattered, not politics, as far as the jury was concerned.
MADONNA has axed three gigs in Israel -- after terrorists threatened to kill her and her kids. (Sun)
E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.
WW3 - Human Right
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) - What do you do when you sue U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and win? Fifty-one-year-old Valerie Corral, a sinewy 5-foot tall great-granddaughter of Italian immigrants, throws back her head laughing, her hands reaching to the clouds, hips wiggling, feet stomping. "It's my happy dance!" she says, throwing her arms around her husband Mike. She has also planted an acre of marijuana.
WW2 - Still with us
...next month President Vladimir Putin will become the first Russian leader to travel to Normandy for a D-Day anniversary ..."It's a sign of the new relations between Russia and the West," said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Heritage Foundation's Moscow office. "The importance of D-Day has always been downplayed in Russia. Putin's intention to pay tribute to it shows a new vision."
WW3 - Repercussions
HOUSTON -- Nine years ago in Abu Ghraib prison, on the night before doctors were to cut off his right hand, Nazaar Joudi wrote a letter to his wife. It was the final act he was to perform with the hand, which was to be methodically removed on Saddam Hussein's orders as punishment for the crime of doing business in American dollars. ... "Do not be sad," Joudi wrote to Um Fuqaan that night. "Hopefully Allah will replace my hand with an even better one. . . . God will reward you for standing next to your husband and being my right hand." ...Thanks to a Fairfax-based film producer, a half-dozen health care providers and businesses in Houston, and a legendary "white knight in blue spectacles," Joudi's promise to his wife came true last Monday. ... Doctors and prosthetists moved by the plight of Joudi and six other Iraqi merchants whose right hands were amputated at Abu Ghraib finished fitting each of the men with $50,000 "bionic" hands. Black tattoos of crosses that had been carved into the men's foreheads to label them criminals were removed by a Houston plastic surgeon a few weeks earlier. All the services and products were donated. (Wash Post)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) The United States plans to introduce on Monday its long-awaited U.N. resolution on issues raised by the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30, an American official said.
A videotape has been broadcast which purports to show before-and-after footage of a wedding which Iraqis say the US attacked, killing about 40. (BBC)
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- A military intelligence unit that oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was also in charge of questioning at a detention center in Afghanistan where two prisoners died in December 2002 in incidents that are being investigated as homicides. (NY Times)
Gen Zinni: The current situation in Iraq was destined to happen... because planning for the war and its aftermath has been flawed all along. "There has been poor strategic thinking in this...poor operational planning and execution on the ground..." Zinni blames the poor planning on the civilian policymakers in the administration, known as neo-conservatives, who saw the invasion as a way to stabilize the region and support Israel. He believes these people, who include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, have hijacked U.S. foreign policy. "They promoted it and pushed [the war]... even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs. Then they should bear the responsibility,"
Nicholas Berg... according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged. ... highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. ...apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.
(CBS/AP) A civilian interpreter named as a suspect in the abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners has been fired, but his wife said he has not left Iraq. Adel L. Nakhla worked for Titan Corp. as an Arabic translator at the facility near Baghdad. He told Army investigators he was present during some of the abuses, including the now-infamous human pyramid of naked, hooded detainees.
The coalition in Iraq wants its troops to remain immune from prosecution by Iraqis after the handover of power, it is reported. Creating a sovereign Iraq should mean forces become subject to Iraqi laws. But BBC Correspondent Jonathan Beale says UK and US forces want to remain under their own jurisdictions.... (BBC)
WW3 - Battles
[flag]Staff Sgt. Jeremy R. Horton, 24, of Carneys Point, Penn., died May 21, 2004 in near Al Iskandariyah, Iraq when an improvised explosive device exploded.
KARBALA, Iraq, May 23 -- U.S. forces expanded an offensive against rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr on Sunday by pushing into his stronghold of Kufa for the first time, as his armed followers vanished from the streets of this Shiite holy city. The battle for southern Iraq, which has occupied U.S. soldiers for weeks, appears to have shifted from a broad engagement across several fronts to a sustained battle aimed at a single elusive objective: Sadr, who leads thousands of militiamen, known as the Mahdi Army.
The Israeli army has ended a six-day siege of Tel Sultan in the Gaza Strip.... fighting left more than 40 Palestinians dead, and dozens of houses were demolished... A military source said the redeployment was to "ease conditions for Palestinians", although Israeli troops remain in nearby Rafah. (BBC)
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A bomb planted by suspected rebels exploded in a crowded discotheque in northwest Colombia, killing at least six people and wounding 82... Another bomb blew up early Sunday at a pool hall in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, killing one person and wounding three. It was not immediately clear who was behind that attack. At least 13 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began its wave of attacks Thursday, apparently to mark the 40th anniversary of its founding this week.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - International peacekeepers in the Afghan capital suffered two "casualties" in a rocket attack on one of their vehicles Sunday, a spokesman said. He would not say if the victims were killed or wounded.
KUFA, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces launched their first incursion into the center of the holy city of Kufa, raiding a mosque for weapons and killing at least 32 fighters loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in clashes early Sunday.
At least 33 people have been killed in an landmine attack on a bus carrying Indian soldiers and their relatives in Indian-administered Kashmir. About 15 others were injured in the attack, which happened in Lower Munda, about 75km from Srinagar. (BBC)
GAZA, May 23 (Xinhuanet) -- An Israeli F16 warplane on Sunday fired a rocket at a local Palestinian car driving in the center of the northern West Bank town of Nablus and killed at least two Palestinians, medical sources and witnesses reported.
Palestinian Authority police are transferring weapons to terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip to assist in their fight against the Israeli army, according to a senior official quoted on Army Radio Sunday. (Jerusalem Post)
BLANTYRE (Reuters) - Armored vehicles mounted with machineguns were driven at anti-government protesters in Malawi Saturday to disperse them, and main opposition challenger Gwanda Chakuamba claimed election as president.
SAT 2004-MAY-22
CURRENT
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration is expanding its recall of raw almonds distributed by a California company to a total 13 million pounds because of the possibility of salmonella.
INFORMATION
IT'S the ultimate in invasive and targeted marketing - and a world first for a magazine cover. More than 40,000 subscribers to Reason, a high-brow political magazine based in Los Angeles, will find their own name on the front cover this week along with an aerial photograph of their home, circled in red. Beneath is the headline "They Know Where You Are!" The editor's letter, by Nick Gillespie, is personally addressed to each subscriber, and includes references to the postal area in which they live, including the average commuting time, the percentage of neighbours who have college degrees and how many children are cared for by their grandparents. "I would say the reaction so far from about 97 per cent of our subscribers has been incredibly positive," Gillespie said of the personalised front covers. "They're saying it's incredible and interesting, or 'I almost soiled my pants'. Maybe 2 per cent are saying 'You missed my house by a mile' and then there's the 1 per cent who say we've invaded their privacy and they're cancelling their subscriptions." (Australian)
Countries are failing to protect thousands of species threatened by extinction, environmentalists say. Only nine countries were marking International Biodiversity Day on Saturday, to the dismay of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It called on the government to do more, including fulfilling pledges to set up a network of wildlife sites. The benefits of biodiversity for human health should also be emphasised, particularly in developing countries. (BBC)
WW3 - Human Rights
BOSTON (Reuters) - Clerks in four Massachusetts communities must stop issuing marriage licenses to certain same-sex couples from out of state or face legal action, the state's top prosecutor said on Friday.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Wearing a Muslim hijab, or head scarf, cost a woman both her jobs at Walt Disney World, she says in a lawsuit. "To stop you from working for practicing your religion doesn't seem right to me," Aicha Baha said Friday, several days after her civil-rights suit was served on the company. "There is a family here that is almost out on the street because of Disney."
WW3 - Battles
BAGHDAD, May 22 -- A car bomb exploded outside the home of a top Iraqi security official Saturday morning, wounding the man and his wife and killing at least five people, including the suicide bomber... (Wash Post)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomb in Baghdad killed at least five people on Saturday and wounded a senior Interior Ministry official
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - A four-year-old Palestinian girl has been shot dead in a Gaza refugee camp where Israeli troops are mounting raids against militants and a suicide bomber exploded at a West Bank checkpoint.
A German man has been shot dead in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh ..."A car pulled up. They shot him in the head and body and escaped," ...Another witness said the German had just left the Arab National Bank ...Last year 50 people died in such attacks in Riyadh. (BBC)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an attack south of Baghdad, the military said Saturday. The military said the soldiers' vehicle was "ambushed by a vehicle-born improvised explosive device" in Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The statement did not say when the attack occurred.
[flag] Marine Cpl. Rudy Salas, 20, of Baldwin Park, Calif., died May 20, due a non-combat related vehicle accident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
WW3 - Repercussions
"The decision to 'cut Chalabi down to size' was taken in Washington," former Pentagon official Michael Rubin said, "but the operation against Chalabi originated in Baghdad. There is no doubt that Bremer signed off on this. Basically, Bremer has gone mad. This raid shows the U.S. has not learned the lessons of Abu Ghraib, and is still trying to humiliate" perceived opponents... (WND)
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Dozens of Palestinians, angry over Israel's bloodiest raid in the Gaza Strip in years, smashed the windows of a U.N. car Saturday and mobbed a shipment of humanitarian aid. "Where have you been?" one man screamed as others pounded on the cars in the U.N. convoy as it entered a sealed-off neighborhood in Rafah refugee camp to survey damage and deliver aid supplies, including powdered milk.
WASHINGTON - Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.
WASHINGTON - Many of the worst abuses that have come to light from the Abu Ghraib prison happened on a single November day amid a flare of insurgent violence in Iraq (news - web sites), the deaths of many U.S. soldiers and a breakdown of the American guards' command structure. ...Nov. 8 was the day U.S. guards took most of the infamous photographs: soldiers mugging in front of a pile of naked, hooded Iraqis, prisoners forced to perform or simulate sex acts, a hooded prisoner in a scarecrow-like pose with wires attached to him. (AP/Yahoo)
Col Gaddafi walked out of the conference hall in Tunis during a speech by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. Diplomats said Mr Gaddafi was apparently annoyed by Mr Moussa's criticism of Arabs who act unilaterally - an apparent reference to Libya's decision to scrap programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction. (BBC)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saying "bad people have parties too," a U.S. general told a news conference on Saturday there was strong evidence of illegal activity at a house in the remote desert where U.S. forces killed about 40 Iraqis this week.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fragments of musical instruments, tufts of women's hair, and a large blood stain are among the scenes in Associated Press Television News film of a destroyed house that survivors say U.S. planes bombed during a wedding party. ... an Associated Press reporter in the Ramadi area, at least 275 miles east of Mogr el-Deeb, was able to identify at least 10 of the bodies as those of children. ...At the Bou Fahad cemetery outside Ramadi, where the tribe is based, each of the 28 fresh graves contain one to three corpses, mostly of mothers and their young children. (AP)
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Thousands of Shiite Muslims demonstrated in Beirut Friday to warn the United States against attacking holy sites in Iraq. Smaller groups rallied in three other Mideast nations, with protesters in Bahrain clashing with police.
FRI 2004-MAY-21
CURRENT
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Four months after Janet Jackson outraged the United States by bearing her breast on TV, Ireland has banned a video to encourage voting in next month's European elections because it shows a bare nipple.
WW3 - Repercussions
Iraqi police detained four people in connection with the beheading of American Nicholas Berg. The four were former members of Saddam Hussein's Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary organization and were led by a relative of the ousted Iraqi dictator... (WND)
The Navy and Northrop Grumman Newport News (NGNN) have successfully negotiated the construction preparation (CP) contract for CVN 21, the next generation aircraft carrier. CVN 21 will be the centerpiece of tomorrow’s carrier strike groups and a contributor to the future expeditionary strike force as envisioned in Sea Power 21.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Arms control advocates are warning the Bush administration that proposed research for a new Homeland Security center may violate an international ban on biological weapons and encourage other countries to follow.
The scale of the destruction in the town of Rafah in southern Gaza has become apparent after Israeli troops pulled out of two key areas. During their three-day raid Israeli troops demolished homes and ripped up streets; the local zoo lies in ruins. The BBC's Gaza correspondent says local residents, who are venturing onto the streets once more, are furious.
FORT STEWART, Ga. (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who said he saw prisoners being abused in Iraq was convicted of desertion on Friday for failing to return to his unit after taking leave to the United States last year.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military, embroiled in a scandal over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, is investigating as homicides the deaths of eight more prisoners held by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI agents who interviewed detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq did not witness any abuse or take part in any mistreatment, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Thursday. "In the cases where we have been handling interviews, particularly over in Iraq, it has been done according to our standards and there has been no waiver of that..."
May 21, 2004 -- New photos, videos and prisoner statements describe abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that goes far beyond what has been made public -- including a boy being raped by guards, and inmates being forced to retrieve their food from toilets and being beaten if they didn't bark like dogs. One particularly disgusting photo shows a U.S. soldier holding a black baton as a naked prisoner -- smeared with a brown substance and cuffed at the ankles -- stands with his arms outstretched.
WW3 - Battles
[flag]Army Spc. Michael C. Campbell, 34, of Marshfield, Mo., died May 19, in Samarra, Iraq, when his convoy hit an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Army Pfc. Leslie D. Jackson, 18, of Richmond, Va., died May 20, in Baghdad, Iraq, when her military vehicle hit an improvised explosive device as it was returning to Camp Eagle.
[flag]Army Sergeant First Class Troy L. Miranda, 44, of DeQueen, Ark, died May 20, on Hipha Street in Baghdad, Iraq, when a grenade was thrown near his foot patrol.
[flag]Marine Pfc. Michael M. Carey, 20, of Prince George, Va., died May 18 in Iraq. He apparently fell into a canal and did not resurface. His remains were recovered on May 18.
KARBALA, Iraq (AP) - American AC-130 gunships and tanks battled militiamen near shrines in this Shiite holy city Friday, and fighting was heavy in two other towns south of Baghdad. More than 450 Iraqis were released from the notorious Abu Ghraib jail - some emerging with fresh claims of abuse. Four people were detained in Baghdad in the killing of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American whose videotaped beheading was shown on an al-Qaeda-linked Web site, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Two of them were released after questioning, he said.
US troops fought battles with forces of Iraq's radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr in Najaf and elsewhere on Friday. One person was killed and at least 13 injured in heavy clashes in Najaf (BBC)
DHAKA, May 21 (Xinhuanet) --The Bangladeshi government has expressed deep shock and anger at the bomb blast occurred in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Friday which injured the British High commissioner to Bangladesh.
CHICAGO (AP) - Federal and local law enforcement officers raided open-air drug markets on the city's West Side, seizing $37,000 and several weapons. Fifty-seven alleged gang members were arrested on federal and state drug charges, and more were being sought.
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Four people were killed and 17 others injured late on Thursday when a bomb, possibly packed into a street vendor's cart, detonated in the western Colombian city of Medellin, ...not immediately clear who was behind the blast, but authorities had earlier blamed Marxist rebels for three, smaller explosions earlier in the day that injured two people in the southwestern city of Cali. The bombings came a week before the 40th anniversary of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a 17,000-member guerrilla army known by its Spanish initials FARC. The 4-decade-old conflict claims thousands of lives a year.
THU 2004-MAY-20
CURRENT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York insurance executive slapped an upscale strip club with a lawsuit after it charged him $28,000 for a night of champagne and partying with a dozen exotic dancers.
Economic indicator? On April 24, 2003, President Bush visited a Timken Co. bearings plant in Canton, Ohio, where he praised Timken's productivity and said his plan to end the double taxation of stock dividends would mean "companies like Timken have got a better capacity to expand, which means jobs." The dividend tax was cut. And Timken? The Post's Dana Milbank reports that company, run by a big Bush supporter, announced last week that it's shutting down the Canton operation, which employs 1,300. (Richard Leiby/Wash Post)
DEL CITY -- An 8-year-old boy overdosed at school, reportedly on 25 Ritalin pills.
DELTONA, Fla. -- A 12-year-old boy fought off a 7-foot alligator that clamped down on his head and dragged him underwater ..."I thought I was going to get swallowed up,"
INFORMATION
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of people may unwittingly be carrying the agent responsible for the human form of mad cow disease, according to research by British scientists, media reports said on Friday.
In the presence of NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and other African-American leaders, comedian Bill Cosby took aim at blacks who don't take responsibility for their economic status, blame police for incarcerations and teach their kids poor speaking habits.... "They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' ... They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth! ... [Imprisoned blacks] are not political criminals... These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?" (Richard Leiby/Wash Post)
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Amalgam tooth fillings made with mercury should be pulled out before people are cremated to cut emissions of the highly toxic metal, a Swedish government agency report proposed on Wednesday.
VALLETTA (Reuters) - A small moon rock donated to Malta in 1970 by then U.S. President Richard Nixon has been stolen from the island's National Museum of Natural History.
WW3 - Wedding Slaughter?Did you ever try to have a wedding party in the middle of the desert during the DAY?A marine general accused critics of the air strike of being “naive.” “How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?” said a General James Mattis. ...Military officials said a pre-dawn attack...targeted a suspected safe house for foreign fighters from Syria. ...Iraqi police and witnesses said the attack killed dozens of innocent people, many of them women and children. Some said the bride and groom also were killed ...A shepherd who attended the wedding, Madhi Nawaf, said his daughter and at least one of his grandchildren were killed. “Mothers died with their children in their arms. One of them was my daughter. I found her a few steps from the house, her two-year old son Raad in her arm. Her one-year-old son, Ra’ed, was lying nearby, his head missing,” he said. “Where are the foreign fighters they claim were hiding there? asked Nawaf. “Everything they said is a lie.” US military officials disputed those accounts.... “Ten miles from Syrian border and 80 miles from nearest city and a wedding party? Don’t be naive,” said Marine Major General James Mattis in Fallujah. “Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?” Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the attack was launched after US forces received “specific intelligence” about foreign fighters slipping into the country. “We sent a ground force in to the location,” he said. “They were shot at. We returned fire.” US soldiers recovered satellite communications gear, foreign passports and about £550 worth of Iraqi cash at the site, he said. Kimmitt said the incident will be investigated even though the military remains convinced it attacked a legitimate target. “This operation is not something that fell out of the sky,” he said. “We had significant intelligence ... This is one of the routes we have watched for a long time as a place where foreign fighters and smugglers go.” ... (Scotsman)
Iraqis have been burying more of the victims of a US air strike which they said hit a wedding party. Mourners said an Iraqi wedding singer and his musician brother were among more than 40 people killed. Television footage has shown bodies, including those of children, wrapped in blankets and loaded onto trucks. The US military has insisted it targeted a safe house used by foreign fighters near the Syrian border (BBC)
WW3 - HUMAN RIGHT
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Vermont will become the ninth state to let very sick patients use marijuana to alleviate pain, nausea and other symptoms without fear of state prosecution. Gov. James Douglas will let the bill become law without his signature. "I will not oppose this decision by the elected representatives of the people, nor will I support it by signing it into law," Douglas said Wednesday.
WW3
Michael Berg: A mourning father's misplaced outrage (Larry Elder/WND)
Over the last few months, the U.S. intelligence community has received new evidence a sizable amount of Iraqi WMD systems, components and platforms were transferred to Syria in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. (WND)
BAGHDAD - With attention focused on the seven soldiers charged with abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. military and intelligence officials familiar with the situation tell NBC News the Army’s elite Delta Force is now the subject of a Pentagon inspector general investigation into abuse against detainees.The target is a top-secret site near Baghdad’s airport.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, once a darling of the American government, may have passed classified U.S. information to Iran, Fox News has confirmed.
FBI BULLETIN: LOOKOUT FOR SUICIDE BOMBERS INSIDE THE U.S. Thu May 20 2004 19:09:51 ET Warns Officials To Look for People Wearing Bulky Jackets on Warm Days; Smell of Chemicals; Trailing Wires from Jackets Bombers May Disguise Selves As Pregnant Women (Drudge)
The Unexamined Life of Nicholas Berg NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 21 May 2004 Nicholas Berg died horribly in Iraq. Why? His killers don’t say. They complain, but not about Berg. Of all Iraq’s hostages, only Berg was decapitated. And very inexpertly. Suspects have already been rounded up. One wonders how, since all five were masked and unidentifiable. Why would the infamous, already-photographed Zarqawi hide? (Sarah Whalen, Arab News)
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - McDonald's was targeted in bomb plots Thursday in Turkey and Italy, with a small bomb damaging cars in a parking lot in Istanbul and firefighters defusing two explosives outside an outlet in Rome.
A U.S. senator's charge that Israel is behind the Bush administrations's decision to invade Iraq has rattled American Jewish leaders ... "In the Mideast, terrorism is a separate problem to be defeated by diplomacy and negotiation, not militarily," Hollings said
FORT STEWART, Ga. (AP) - A U.S. soldier who said he refused to report to duty because he opposes the war in Iraq walked away from his unit "when they needed him the most," a prosecutor told a military jury Thursday. ... claims he deserted his unit in part to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners.... lead prosecutor, argued that even if Mejia saw prisoners abused in Iraq that would not justify fleeing the Army for five months.
The U.N. Security Council has adopted a resolution condemning the killing of Palestinian civilians at the Rafah refugee camp. The United States -- which has vetoed similar measures in the past -- abstained. The Arab-sponsored measure was approved by a 14-to-0 margin. The United States was the only country not joining the majority. (VOA)
[flag]Army Staff Sgt. William D. Chaney, 59, of Schaumburg, Ill., died May 18, in Landstuhl, Germany due to a non-combat related injury. Initial reports indicate that Chaney was medically evacuated from Iraq to Germany for surgery due to a sudden medical condition. He died from complications after surgery.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials said Thursday that photos of an Iraqi corpse packed in ice that recently have been made public are of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died after questioning by CIA personnel in Iraq.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops and Iraqi police raided the home and party offices of Washington's former top Iraq ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday, whipping up fresh turbulence in the run-up to a U.S. handover of power.
A column hailing a U.S. warrior in Iraq is making its way around the Internet ... "I was just doing my job; I did the same thing every other Marine would have done"... (WND)
(CNSNews.com) - The 1970 meeting that current Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry conducted with North Vietnamese communists may have violated several U.S. laws, according to an author and researcher who has studied the issue.
The number of Christians killed by the Vietnam's communist government in an Easter crackdown has risen to 280, with 26 people still missing, reports International Christian Concern. (WND)
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - A government scientist lied when he claimed that ammonium nitrate crystals found on Oklahoma City bombing debris had been embedded by the force of the blast, an FBI whistleblower testified Wednesday at bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' state murder trial. ... a shredded piece of plywood recovered two days after the bombing ...found in a parking lot across the street ...is the only direct evidence of the explosive used. ...Burmeister began referring to the crystals as embedded following a meeting with federal prosecutors involved in McVeigh's trial....
WED 2004-MAY-19
CURRENT
LONDON (Reuters) - The world's first Internet church has fallen victim to a plague of virtual demons, some of whom have been logging on as Satan and unleashing strings of expletives during sermons.
A rare 320-year-old stolen Stradivarius cello had a narrow escape - from being converted into a CD holder.
INFORMATION
A rise in consumption of fizzy drinks could be to blame for some cancers of the gullet, research suggests.
WW3 - Wedding Slaughter?
...wedding guests ...joyously firing shots into the air. According to Iraqi officials, US military helicopters or warplanes launched a deadly attack that killed more than 40 people, apparently after some of the bullets arcing up from below got too close to the aircraft. But the US military was insisting last night the casualties followed an attack by its forces on suspected foreign fighters, and disputed reports the victims were members of a wedding party. (Scotsman)
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed dozens in an attack in Iraq's western desert, ...reports the victims were civilians at a wedding sparked outrage.... (Reuters)
A senior Iraqi police officer told the Associated Press that a helicopter fired at the party early yesterday morning in a remote village close to the Syrian border, killing between 42 and 45 people. Television footage showed a truck carrying the bodies of the dead arriving in Ramadi, the nearest big town. Many of the dead were clearly children. (Guardian)
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 19 — About 40 Iraqis were killed Wednesday by American forces in an attack near the volatile border with Syria. American officials said they had fired on a suspected guerrilla safe house, but Iraqis said the Americans had strafed civilians at a wedding party. (NYTimes)
WW3 - Battles
This week the Army, Navy, and Air Force each report increases in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization. The Marine Corps reports a slight decrease. The net collective result is 3,044 more reservists on active duty than last week.
[flag]Army Spc. Marcos O. Nolasco, 34, of Chino, Calif., died May 18 in Baji, Iraq, as a result of an electrocution accident.
[flag]Army Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Garyantes, 34, of Rehoboth, Del., died May 18 by sniper fire in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, while on a combat patrol.
A sixth-grade Muslim girl in Oklahoma can wear a head scarf to school under a settlement between the school district and the Justice Department, officials announced Wednesday. The six-year agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma, also requires the Muskogee Public School District to change its dress code to allow exceptions for religious reasons.
Every minute, two people are killed in conflicts around the world. Often very little is known about the people who are fighting and dying. The BBC programme One Day of War follows individual fighters in 16 of these wars, over the same 24 hour period.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on protesters in a refugee camp on Wednesday, killing 10 Palestinians and raising a two-day death toll to 33 in Israel's bloodiest Gaza raid in years, witnesses said.
Baghdad, Iraq -- Iraq's most respected Shiite cleric is urging both U-S troops and a radical cleric's militia to leave two holy cities where fighting has raged. (KFOR/AP)
WW3 - Repercussions
The prosecution's star witness in bombing conspirator Terry Nichols' murder trial received a cache of weapons at his Arizona home before the Oklahoma City explosion that killed 168 people, a former neighbor testified Tuesday. (MyWay/AP)
NEW YORK — An artillery shell recently found in Iraq that contained three to four liters of the deadly nerve agent sarin is "old and unmarked," senior defense officials told Fox News on Wednesday. Officials said efforts to determine the exact age and origin of the sarin shell are picking up steam and that samples collected following Saturday's explosion of the shell are being sent out to several laboratories in the United States and the United Kingdom. (Fox)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A tearful U.S. soldier was sentenced to a year in jail on Wednesday after confessing he and colleagues abused Iraqi prisoners
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez approved the use of sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise and inducing fear as interrogation methods against a single Iraqi inmate at Abu Ghraib prison, according to a description in the classified annex of a military report on prisoner abuse in Iraq. (USA Today)
Dozens of soldiers — other than the seven military police reservists who have been charged — were involved in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and there is an effort under way in the Army to hide it, a key witness in the investigation told ABCNEWS. ... "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."
TUE 2004-MAY-18
CURRENT
The Department of Defense announced today that its Task Force on Care for Victims of Sexual Assaults has completed its review of the Department’s policy, programs and effectiveness to provide the best possible care to victims of sexual assault. ... 35 findings, broadly characterized, indicate that: DoD policies and standards focus on sexual harassment, not sexual assault... nine recommendations are divided into three categories – actions to be taken immediately, in the near-term and in the long-term... (DoD)
Sonia Gandhi, who led her party to an unexpected election victory last week over India's ruling Hindu nationalists, stunned the nation on Tuesday night by announcing that she would "humbly decline" to be its prime minister, saying that had never been her aim. (NY Times)
A North Korean missile shipment to Syria was halted when a train collision in that Asian country destroyed the missile cargo and killed about a dozen Syrian technicians. (World Trib)
WW3
ATLANTA - A military rocket launcher was found Tuesday near a rail-transit station, but the FBI said it looks to be a less-powerful model commonly used to train soldiers and would be unable to bring down an aircraft or destroy a train. ... no cause for public alarm and the city's rail-transit system was not interrupted by the discovery... (Ledger-Enquirer)
Israeli forces attacked Rafah refugee camp yesterday ...killed at least 20 people, including children, one of the highest death tolls in a single day of the present intifada.... (Guardian)
Tests on an artillery shell that blew up in Iraq on Saturday confirm that it did contain an estimated three or four liters of the deadly nerve agent sarin ... Another shell filled with mustard gas...was discovered on May 2 (Fox)
Four people have been arrested in connection with the beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg ... Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked Jordanian terrorist believed to be in a video of the slaying, is not among the four (WND)
WW3 MILITARY DEAD
[flag]Marine Lance Cpl. Bob W. Roberts, 30, of Newport, Ore., died May 17, due to hostile fire in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
[flag]Army Sgt. James W. Harlan, 44, of Owensboro, Ky., died May 14 at Camp Anaconda, Iraq, when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb next to his vehicle.
[flag]Army Spc. Mark J. Kasecky, 20, of McKees Rocks, Pa.
[flag]Army Spc. Carl F. Curran, 22, of Union City, Pa.
died May 16 in Al Karmah, Iraq, when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Marine Pfc. Brian K. Cutter, 19, of Riverside, Calif., was found unconscious on May 13, and was later pronounced dead in Al Asad, Iraq. Cause of death is under investigation.
[flag]Marine Pfc. Brandon C. Sturdy, 19, of Urbandale, Iowa, died May 13 from hostile fire in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
[flag]Army Chief Warrant Officer Bruce E. Price, 37, of Maryland, died May 15, in Kajaki, Afghanistan, when individuals using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire ambushed his unit.
[flag]Air Force Senior Airman Pedro I. Espaillat Jr., 20, of Colombia, Tenn., died May 15 as a result of non-hostile injuries in Kirkuk, Iraq.
[flag]Army 2nd Lt. Leonard M. Cowherd, 22, of Culpeper, Va., died May 16 in Karbala, Iraq, when he received sniper and rocket propelled grenade fire while securing a building near the Mukhayam Mosque.
[flag]Army Staff Sgt. Rene Ledesma, 34, of Abelene, Texas, died May 15 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device exploded near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
[flag]Army Pfc. Michael A. Mora, 19, of Arroyo Grande, Calif., died May 14 in An Najaf, Iraq, when his military vehicle slid off the road and turned over.
[flag]Army Spc. Philip I. Spakosky, 25, of Browns Mill, N.J., died May 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained on May 13, in Karbala, Iraq when he was shot by a suspected sniper.
[flag]Army Command Sgt. Maj. Edward C. Barnhill, 50, of Shreveport, La., died May 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries.
[flag]Army Sgt. Brud J. Cronkrite, 22, of Spring Valley, Calif., died May 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries he sustained on May 13, in Karbala when a rocket-propelled grenade fired into a building near him during a security patrol.
[flag]Marine Lance Cpl. Jeremiah E. Savage, 21, of Livingston, Tenn, died May 12 of wounds received due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
[flag]Army Spc. Jeffrey R. Shaver, 26, of Maple Valley, Wash., died May 12 in Baghdad, Iraq, when his convoy vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Army Spc. Kyle A. Brinlee, 21, of Pryor, Okla., died May 11 in Al Asad, Iraq, when his convoy vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.
More than 88,000 Americans are missing in action from all conflicts. Of these, 1,859 are from the Vietnam War.
[flag]The remains of Air Force Col. Lester E. Holmes of Plainfield, Iowa, missing in action from the Vietnam War, since May 22, 1967, has been identified and returned to his family for burial.
The Radical Blogger was on vacation May 13-May17
WED 2004-MAY-12
WW3 - repercussions
COVINGTON, La. (AP) - A soldier reportedly absent without leave from a unit sent to Iraq is accused of shooting his way into his estranged wife's Georgia apartment, kidnapping her and taking her in the trunk of a car to Louisiana.... had served divorce papers on her husband at the end of April, when his unit was scheduled to leave Fort Hood, Texas, for Iraq.... (TBO)
WASHINGTON, May 12 — The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials. (NY Times)
Link Lost
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The FBI saw Nick Berg, the American civilian beheaded in Iraq, three times while he was being detained by Iraqi police, the U.S.-led occupation authority said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New images of Iraqi prisoner abuse contain awful scenes of violence and sexual humiliation, members of Congress said after a viewing on Wednesday that one lawmaker likened to a descent into "the wings of hell."
FORT LEWIS, Washington (Reuters) - A U.S. Army enlisted man, Specialist Ryan Anderson, shared his plans to join al Qaeda and attack U.S. forces in Iraq with a Montana woman posing as a Muslim sympathizer, she told a military court on Wednesday.
Syria denounced U.S. economic sanctions today and other Arab countries — including close American allies — joined in the criticism. Europe ignored the penalties by dispatching a trade delegation to Damascus.
Rumsfeld: U.S. interrogation techniques don't violate Geneva Conventions (USA Today)
WASHINGTON - At least two top al-Qaida leaders in U.S. custody are being questioned by the panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as part of its quest to determine the root cause of the disaster and whether it could have been prevented. (Balt.Sun)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Military officials say the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were taken with soldiers' personal cameras, not for intelligence-gathering or other official purposes. A leading senator said, however, their purpose was to obtain leverage while interrogating Iraqi prisoners.
A British Muslim trained to be a 9-11 hijacker told an FBI counterterrorism taskforce in 2000 of a plot by terrorists to fly passengers planes into buildings, but the agents did not believe him. (WND)
A document leaked by U.S. inspectors presents hard evidence Saddam Hussein could have unleashed biological and chemical weapons on foreign nations "at short notice."
WW3 - American hostage beheaded
If for a moment some of us had forgotten the nature of the enemy that threatens us in the war on terror, we had a reminder this week when Islamic killers released a videotape showing the beheading of an American, Nick Berg of West Chester, Pa. (Editorial, Nables Daily News)
Statements by American officials in Iraq leave many unanswered questions, including why Iraqi police jailed Nicholas Berg for nearly two weeks and why U.S. officials repeatedly questioned him in custody. Also unknown is where and under what circumstances Berg disappeared. (Boston)
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Wednesday "was horrified by the gruesome murder..."
...was never in U.S. custody despite claims from his family, a coalition spokesman said Wednesday. (AP/MyWay)
Hizbollah condemns this horrible act that has done very great harm to Islam and Muslims by this group that claims affiliation to the religion of mercy, compassion and humane principles"... (Reuters/Yahoo)
INFORMATION
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Australian scientists have found the Earth may be more resilient to global warming than first thought, and they say a warmer world means a wetter planet, encouraging more plants to grow and soak up greenhouse gases.
A collection of mystery DNA segments, which seem to be critical for the survival of many animals, are causing great interest among scientists. (BBC)
radar pic of ufosFootage released by the Mexican air force is further proof of the existence of UFOs... "We are not alone! This is so weird," one of the pilots can be heard saying after the radar picked up the objects. (BBC)
...recorded by a plane looking for drugs trafficking near the Gulf of Mexico, shows 11 objects as blobs of light that hover in formation or dart about, sometimes disappearing into cloud. (Reuters)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s almost universally used Windows operating system could allow hackers to take control of a PC by luring users to a malicious Web site and coaxing them into clicking on a link, the company warned on Tuesday.
The Mexican air force has released video footage of 11 unidentified flying objects that were only visible via an infrared camera. The objects reportedly flew around a military surveillance plane, Reuters reported. Jamie Maussan, a journalists and UFO enthusiast, told reporters yesterday the objects seemed "intelligent" because at one point they changed direction and surrounded the plane that was chasing them. (WND)
WINNIPEG (CP) -- A Winnipeg man who was born a boy but raised as a girl in a famous nurture-versus-nature experiment has died at the age of 38. David Reimer, who shared his story about his botched circumcision in the pages of a book and on the Oprah TV show, took his own life last Tuesday.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) - A high school student was taken into custody for allegedly altering computer data, including students' grades, police said. (SacBee)
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A missing unmanned submarine that eluded the U.S. Navy for a week was found Tuesday by a man strolling along a beach in western Norway. (CNN)
A WOMAN of 102 escaped unscathed yesterday after falling 60ft from her balcony and landing on a children’s inflatable playhouse. (Scotsman)
LONDON (Reuters) - Europe, the Middle East and much of Asia and Africa will offer prime viewing next month for an astronomical event that has not occurred for 122 years -- the transit of the planet Venus across the sun.
80% of people with cell phones have not sent any multimedia messages.... 45% did not have the right type of mobile... even among those with the latest phones, many were confused about costs of picture messaging, while 17% admitted they did not know how to send multimedia messages.... Of the 21% of mobile users who have dipped their toes in the world of multimedia messaging, the majority used their phones to send pictures of friends and family.... (BBC)
WW3 - battles
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Israel ended an incursion in the Gaza Strip, where 11 soldiers were killed in separate attacks over the past two days, the Israeli military command said.
[flag]Pfc. Andrew L. Tuazon, 21, of Chesapeake, Va., died May 10, in Mosul, Iraq, from hostile fire while on guard duty.
GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian militants blew up an armored vehicle killing five Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday in the second deadly ambush against the Middle East's strongest army in as many days.
KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops backed by tanks and armored vehicles killed at least 20 militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fierce fighting in the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, a senior U.S. military officer said.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Taliban guerrillas killed two Afghan soldiers on a U.S.-funded highway in a troubled southeastern province where American troops continue to arrest suspected militants, a senior Afghan commander said. (TBO)
WW3 - battles
German gardeners and entrepreneurs of relatively harmless cannabis herb incarcerated by Puritaliban priesthood
BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a green-fingered pensioner harvesting cannabis plants in her Hamburg home after someone tipped them off to a strong smell... 68-year-old... marijuana plants in her bathroom, bedroom and living room.... approximately 170 cannabis plants as well as a special lighting and ventilation system... "It was very professional."
WW3 - suspicions
MARS HILL - Federal agents investigating two Israeli men charged with eluding Tennessee authorities found only furniture in searching a storage unit... arrested Saturday after a chase.... authorities sought to verify their passports. ...officers found a fake Florida driver's license ...and a business card from a Florida flight instructor in one of the men's wallets. ... Some people attending a cookout on Old U.S. 23 reported seeing someone in the truck toss out a brown, plastic container during the chase... The bottle contained a "gooey liquid" and some sort of pellets... "We don't know exactly what's in it yet..." ...Florida flight instructor...said he met Naor at a moving company where the Israeli man works... gave Naor one of his cards, but the man didn't express interest in flying lessons.
TUE 2004-MAY-11
OperationIraqiChildren.org ... Moved by the plight of these children, many American soldiers have taken it upon themselves to help.
WW3 - Repercussions
An Army reservist who was photographed smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners was unhappy about following orders to humiliate the inmates... "You don't see my client doing anything abusive at all... I think she was ordered to smile." ...her superiors gave her specific instructions on how to pose for the photos. Asked who gave the orders, she would say only, "Persons in my chain of command."... "The spooks took over the jail".... (AP)
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (Reuters) - A lawyer for a Syrian-born U.S. airman accused of espionage said on Tuesday that potentially damaging evidence of how detainees were treated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba may surface during his client's court-martial hearing.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal ...Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.
NEW YORK - A video that shows a young American soldier saying "who cares?" about Iraqi prisoners who died will air on "60 Minutes II."
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- British soldiers in Iraq have killed civilians in situations where they weren't under any threat of attack, the human-rights group Amnesty International said.
the United States has pledged to hand over Saddam Hussein and about 100 other suspects to Iraqi authorities before July 1 (AP/MyWay)
Hair stylists saw John Doe No. 2 Witnesses: McVeigh was in salon with dark-haired man before blast (WND)
"We knew what went on at Abu Ghraib," Abdul-Kareem Khalil, the artist, said Saturday. "The pictures did not surprise me." The nature of America's occupation of Iraq -- which many Iraqis increasingly perceive as intolerable -- is finding its way to the local art scene. (AP/Yahoo)
CURRENT
Study: low doses of caffeine throughout the day is more effective than the traditional method of having a large dose in the morning. (CBS)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A woman has no parental rights over the twins she was raising with her lesbian partner - even though she is the childrens' genetic mother, an appeals court ruled. Upholding a lower court ruling, the 1st District Court of Appeal decided only the woman's partner - who gave birth to the twins after artificial insemination with eggs provided by her lover - has full parental rights.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's election foe claimed he was being cheated out of a victory, and police said Wednesday that gunmen attacked two northern town halls, killing a policeman and burning presidential ballots.
Four people have died after a huge blast devastated a plastics factory in the west end of Glasgow
German authorities arrested a second alleged virus author last week, but the arrest was unrelated to the alleged author of the Sasser worm's arrest. The second arrest concerns the alleged author of the Agobot worm, which attackers can use to gain control of remote computers. (IT News)
INFORMATION
Best known as Mr. Spock in "Star Trek," Nimoy left the screen to pursue other interests - most notably, photography. In 2002, he published "Shekhina," a book of about 40 photographs that explore his interest in the feminine aspects of Jewish divinity.
A World Health Organization (WHO) report says tackling HIV/AIDS is the world's most urgent public health challenge. (VOA)
PRAGUE (Reuters) - EU entry has not brought everyone in the Czech Republic the promised economic advantages. Sex workers in the border regions of the country have seen a sharp drop in business
LONDON (Reuters) - Christians in Britain opened a zany 3D Internet church on Tuesday, billed as a first chance for believers to log on and worship interactively. ...
"Church of Fools" at www.shipoffools.com.
Twenty-five years of research fail to find the cause of a mysterious natural phenomenon... Rings known as "fairy circles" that pockmark vast areas of desert in Namibia and South Africa... The findings of her team's research was published in a 19-page article in The Journal of Arid Environments. "What we need to do now is more research on the detailed breakdown of that soil using a mass spectrometer to find out what is different about that soil...
chemguide Helping you to understand Chemistry
How a mass spectrometer works (Chemguide)
With photo at Sunday Times suntimes.co.za
WW3 Battles
The northern Nigerian state of Kano has imposed a dusk to dawn curfew after mob violence by Muslim youths against Christians left up to 10 people dead. (VOA)
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. Army general battling rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Tuesday he would consider accepting al-Sadr's top militia deputies and other fighters in a new security force he is forming to patrol the holy Shiite city of Najaf.
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. will track down and punish those who beheaded an American hostage in Iraq, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.... [Hostage] identified himself on the video as Nick Berg from Philadelphia, a civilian U.S. contractor. His body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad Saturday... (ANIMALS!)
[flag]Sgt. Rodney A. Murray, 28, of Ayden, N.C., died May 9, in Iraq, in a vehicle accident between Baghdad and Scania when a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and his military vehicle collided.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq beheaded an American civilian and vowed more killings in revenge for the "Satanic degradation" of Iraqi prisoners, an Islamist Web site said Tuesday.
The US military in Iraq is aiming for a political outcome in its battle with the forces of rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, as it seeks to win six weeks of calm before it hands over sovereignty on June 30 (FT)
A PALESTINIAN was killed by Israeli troops in the Zeitun district of Gaza City early today, the eighth to die in fighting there during the day.... Six Israeli soldiers also lost their lives when their armoured personnel carrier was blown up in an ambush claimed by the Islamic group Hamas. More than 120 people have also been wounded in the fighting.
Six Israeli members of the Givati infantry brigade’s engineers platoon were killed Tuesday, May 11 when their armored personnel carrier was blown up by a roadside bomb at the end of an operation to demolish rockets and arms manufacturing facilities in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district. The bomb detonated the 130 kilos of explosives in the Israeli vehicle. Masked Islamic Jihad and Hamas gunmen snatched the fragmented bodies, paraded them through Gaza streets, firing off victory salvos, and then announced they were open for negotiation for their return. (DEBKA)
THE US said it was "very concerned" and "shocked" by today's killings of six Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip (Herald Sun)
Security forces said they thwarted a suicide bomb attack with the arrest of Amal Juma'a, 35, in the Askar refugee camp near Nablus on Sunday night. According to Palestinian sources, Juma'a is a hermaphrodite who also goes by the name of Ahmed, and planned a suicide-bomb attack in Tel Aviv on Monda (Jerusalem Post)
MON 2004-MAY-10
INFORMATION
TERRIFIED postmen are refusing to deliver mail to a house — because they are scared of a dangerous CAT. (The Sun)
Dali was the pioneer of surrealist art, and some of his images - such as melting clocks, spindle-legged elephants and ants marching across hot deserts - are world-famous icons. But there are many different reasons why Dali is such a global name. (BBC)
Slide show (BBC)
CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) - A seven-year-old Australian boy will be nominated for a bravery award after walking 1.3 miles through rugged bush with broken ribs and collapsing lungs to get help for his injured father
Variety of Disguises Hide Unsightly Cell Towers
WW3 Battles
Israeli military raids in Gaza this month have left 1,100 Palestinians homeless, a United Nations agency says. (BBC)
[flag]Cpl. Ronald R. Payne Jr., 23, of Lakeland, Fla., died May 7th due to hostile action in the vicinity of Tawara, Afghanistan.
[flag]Spc. Philip D. Brown, 21, of El Paso, Texas, died May 8 in Balad, Iraq, from injuries sustained west of Samarra by an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Spc. Isela Rubalcava, 25, of El Paso, Texas, died May 8 in Mosul, Iraq, when a mortar round hit near her.
[flag]Spc. Chase R.Whitman, 21, of Oregon died May 8, in Mosul, Iraq, while he was in a swimming pool when an electrical current charged the water.
[flag]Spc. James J. Holmes, 28, of East Grand Forks, Minn., died May 8 in Landstuhl, Germany, from injuries sustained on May 3 in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near the driver side of his military vehicle.
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine convoy entered Falluja for the first time in more than a month on Monday, testing a shaky truce with insurgents in Iraq's most rebellious town, witnesses said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents bombed an oil pipeline in southern Iraq, setting off a huge blaze and slashing daily Iraqi oil exports by about 25 percent, or 450,000 barrels per day
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF A DIGITAL CAMERA: SOLDIER AS HERO TO FREED IRAQIS (Drudge)
WW3 Scare
Palestinian security officials said the young man appeared at their Ramallah office late last week and stripped off his jacket - revealing an explosives vest with a detonation switch at his neck. ...turned out that the he wanted someone to disarm the explosives. ..."I kept thinking of myself, of my family, and to be honest - I don't want to die," one of the officers quoted the man as saying. (AP/TBO)
WW3 Prisoner Abuse
LONDON (Reuters) - The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail last October and was told by an intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process," a report leaked on Monday said.
SUN 2004-MAY-9
INFORMATION
Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found. (Observer)
Oral sex positions illustrated (SexualPositionsFree)
The Art of Oral Sex
The Art of Oral Sex (Sexuality.org)
How to Perform Safer Oral Sex
Oral Sex Information (ManagingDesire.org)
Altoids Lore: Does chewing this 'curiously strong' mint before fellatio (oral sex) enhance the pleasure? (UrbanLegends.com)
QUETTA: At least 32 people were injured when an earthquake jolted Quetta before dawn on Sunday, most of them injured after jumping out of windows in panic (Pak Daily Times)
An 18-year-old German high school student has admitted creating the Sasser internet worm (BBC)
WW3 Battles
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces stepped up pressure on Shiite gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, pushing with tanks into the holy city of Kufa and assaulting militia positions in the narrow streets of a Shiite enclave in Baghdad. At least 34 Iraqis were killed.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside a small hotel in Baghdad on Sunday night... Two Britons, two Nepalis and two Iraqi civilian security guards were very lightly injured.
A gun battle has broken out in the Gaza Strip between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at a memorial ceremony for a pregnant Israeli settler. Some 300 Jewish settlers had gathered for the religious ceremony when the shooting began. A Palestinian gunman has reportedly been killed. Two Palestinian militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, have claimed responsibility for last week's attack that killed the 34-year-old mother and her four daughters. (ABC)
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers on Sunday killed two Palestinian gunmen disguised as women who opened fire at Jewish settlers attending a memorial for a family gunned down on a Gaza Strip road last week... No Israelis were hurt in the attack
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's top man in Chechnya was assassinated in a bomb attack on Sunday that killed at least six others and dealt a huge blow to the Kremlin leader's plans to stamp out rebellion there. Moscow's senior soldier in the rebel province was also fighting for his life after being seriously wounded by the blast that tore through the VIP section of a stadium in Grozny where dignitaries gathered to mark the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany. After conflicting reports of the death toll, Russian news agencies said seven people, including an eight-year-old girl, had been killed and more than 50 people injured.
The head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration on Sunday denied reports that regional president Akhmad Kadyrov and other top officials had been killed in a blast at a stadium. (Reuters)
The pro-Moscow President of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, has been killed in a bomb attack in the capital, Grozny. (BBC)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least seven people, including three policemen, were killed and 13 others wounded on Sunday when an explosion ripped through a crowded market in Baghdad
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - A roadside bomb wounded three British soldiers in the Iraqi southern city of Basra on Sunday...
WW3 Worries
The United States has been examining the prospect that Israel will attack Iranian nuclear facilities in an attempt to prevent the Islamic republic from completing an atomic bomb as early as this year. (MENL)
VIENNA — Concerns are growing that Al Qaeda or a related group could detonate a "dirty bomb" that would spew radioactive fallout across an American or European city, according to intelligence analysts, diplomats and independent nuclear experts. (Yahoo/LATimes)
WW3 Prisoners AbuseThe military policeman who blew the whistle on fellow soldiers who were photographed abusing Iraqi detainees has an independent streak and knew "right from wrong," say people who know him. (AP/TBO)
A furious President Bush has demanded to see all photos and videos showing abuse of Iraq detainees, a senior White House source said late Sunday. "The president was blindsided by the first TV images, he will not be blindsided again," the source, who demanded anonymity, explained to the DRUDGE REPORT.
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinsk video (Real or WMP) on her responsibility at Abu Ghraib (OReilly Factor/Fox)
Uproar Over Abu Ghraib Brings Out Stories of Relatives, Former Prisoners - and Some Fakes (AP)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Torture, abuse and humiliation of prisoners is widespread in U.S.-run detention centers in Iraq, and not limited to a few cases, non-governmental organizations in Iraq and an American Christian group said Sunday.
The M.P.s at Abu Ghraib were failed by their commanders—both low-ranking and high. The system is broken—no doubt about it. (Drudge)
in the May 17, 2004, issue of The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh describes new photos he has obtained of a dog attacking a naked Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib prison on December 12, 2003 (Drudge)
Ret. Col. David Hackworth, one of the most decorated living U.S. soldiers and a WorldNetDaily columnist, helped expose the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal after learning about it from U.S. troops on the ground. Hackworth pledges to discuss his role in the international controversy in his next column, scheduled for publication Tuesday. (WND)
SAT 2004-MAY-8
-pointless graphic-
WW3 Battles
Nineteen Iraqi insurgents were killed in four separate clashes with US-led forces in Baghdad yesterday (Gulf Daily News)
Fighting spread to Basra, where hundreds of men belonging to the Mehdi Army attacked British soldiers and fired rockets at the coalition headquarters in the southern city. British forces used tanks and armored vehicles to secure the area. Two Iraqis were killed in the violence. ...Further north in Amara, British troops killed three militiamen in a gunfight that erupted when the soldiers stormed a al-Sadr office. Following the attacks in the south, U.S. forces encircled the Baghdad offices of Moqtada al-Sadr and detained at least three of his aides. U-S troops also clashed with al-Sadr militiamen in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala. (VOA)
One US Marine was killed and another injured in a firefight with suspected Taliban in Afghanistan as coalition forces opened up a new front against Al-Qaeda-backed extremists (Spacewar)
KARACHI: A suicide bombing at a mosque triggered sectarian clashes in this volatile city in southern Pakistan yesterday, as rival Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims exchanged gunfire, killing at least one passer-by (Gulf Daily News)
Charges have been filed in the Baltimore-area shooting that injured four students, including two seriously.. a senior football player in critical condition and another student in serious condition (WKKJ)
JERUSALEM -- An explosion went off in a grocery store in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on Saturday, injuring at least five Palestinians, police said. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear. The explosion caused considerable damage to the grocery, located near Damascus Gate, one of several entrances to the walled Old City... five Palesintians were injured, three seriously (Wash Post)
WW3 Prisoners Abuse
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison includes more photographs and videos that are potentially worse than the photos shown around the world of smiling American soldiers next to naked Iraqi prisoners in humiliating positions, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq said Saturday the military will continue to operate the Abu Ghraib prison despite calls from some U.S. lawmakers to close it because of a scandal over the abuse of Iraqi inmates. ... United States plans to reduce the prison population. He said 300 inmates had been released last week and about 350 will be released next week. ... insisted that Iraqis were now being held in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and that the abuses recorded in photos distributed around the world were due to the acts of a few individuals. (MSNBC)
FRI 2004-MAY-7
INFORMATION
BAGNAIA, Italy (AP) - International editors and publishers warned Friday that nontraditional communications - such as cell phone text messages - are rapidly outflanking radio, television, and print media because of their immediacy and proximity to the public. ...The growing "thumb generation" posed the greatest new challenge to traditional media, with cell phone text messages conveying news, rumors and gossip, said Pedro J. Ramirez, editor of Spain's El Mundo. (TBO)
WW3 Repercussions
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) A McDonald's manager testified Friday that Timothy McVeigh and a dark-skinned man were part of a group that piled out of a Ryder truck and entered her restaurant just days before the Oklahoma City bombing.
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - An Oklahoma soldier stationed in Iraq hot-wired Odai Hussein's Lamborghini sport utility vehicle, military records say, and the soldier goes on to claim his action lured the son of the former Iraqi dictator into a U.S. trap. (TBO)
Two Different Pictures Emerge of Portland Lawyer Arrested in Madrid Bombing
PORTLAND, Ore., May 7 — The authorities arrested a Portland lawyer in connection with the Madrid railway bombings before they had a clear idea about the strength of their case and they cut short a planned covert surveillance of him because of concerns that information was leaking out to the news media (NYTimes)
New evidence about a meeting in Prague between September 11 plot leader Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani has been uncovered, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service. (WND)
WWs Past
ORTING, Wash. (AP) - Abe Caylor, an Army cavalry soldier during World War I and one of the nation's oldest military veterans, died Wednesday, relatives said. He was 104.
GARDENA, Calif. (AP) - Clifford Holliday, the last surviving Canadian combat veteran of World War I, died Tuesday, according to Veterans Affairs Canada. He was 105.
WW3
RANDALLSTOWN, Md. (AP) Four students were wounded Friday in a drive-by shooting at a high school outside Baltimore, authorities said.
May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Five people were critically injured after a shooting at Randallstown High School in Randallstown, Maryland, this afternoon
KUFA, Iraq (AP) A defiant Muqtada al-Sadr delivered Friday prayers at a Kufa mosque, denouncing U.S. abuse of Iraqi prisoners, while the radical Shiite cleric's militiamen battled American troops in two cities. At least 23 Iraqis died, including six members of one family.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli troops raided a West Bank village near the town of Tulkarem on Friday, surrounding a house and killing two Palestinian militants, witnesses and the army said.
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian security forces seized nearly 375 pounds of a radioactive material seen as a likely ingredient for a "dirty bomb" (Fox)
A bomb attack on a packed Shia mosque in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi has left at least 15 people dead (BBC)
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - A bomb exploded in the parking lot of a provincial court in this southwestern Pakistani city on Friday, wounding two people. The explosion came after a homemade bomb blew up at Quetta's railway station late Thursday, shattering windows of offices but causing no injuries.
BEIJING (AP) - China has shut down more than 8,600 Internet cafes since February, many of them for illegally admitting juveniles
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A laser beam under joint Israeli-U.S. development destroyed a long-range rocket for the first time in a test in the skies over the American Southwest, Israel's Defense Ministry said on Friday.
WW3 - US Dead
[flag]Pfc. Brandon J. Wadman of West Palm Beach, Fla., died May 5 in Afghanistan when his vehicle rolled over.
[flag]Staff Sgt. Hesley Box, Jr, 24, of Nashville, Ark., died May 6 in Baghdad, Iraq, when a car bomb detonated near his guard post.
[flag]Spc. James E. Marshall, 19, of Tulsa, Okla.
[flag]Pfc. Bradley G. Kritzer, 18, of Irvona, Penn.
died May 5 in Baghdad, Iraq, when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Cpl. Dustin H. Schrage, 20, of Brevard, Fla., was found deceased on May 6 in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Cause of death is under investigation.
[flag]Cpl. Jeffrey G. Green, 20, of Dallas, Texas, was found deceased on May 5 in the Euphrates River, in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Cause of death is under investigation.
WW3 Prisoners Abuse
U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington ignored human rights monitors' repeated pleas for official investigations of American abuse, torture and killings of Iraqi prisoners over the past year, international and Iraqi human rights officials said Friday. And human rights groups rejected Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's assertion that such abuses are "an exception," saying they are widespread in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terror.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who shot dead two Iraqis during a riot at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and fired rubber bullets at inmates said on Friday some force was needed to run a wartime prison.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Her job was to "make it hell" for Iraqi prisoners so they would talk, one of the six U.S. soldiers accused of prisoner abuse was quoted as saying on Friday. The Washington Post reported that Spec. Sabrina Harman told it in e-mail interviews that detainees were handed over to her military police unit at the Abu Ghraib prison by military intelligence officers, or by civilian contractors who conducted interrogations.
WASHINGTON - An American general recommended that Army prison guards in Iraq become more involved in "softening up" prisoners for interrogations shortly before abuses occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison last fall (AP/Yahoo)
Dubai - Islamic websites were being flooded on Wednesday with reports on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US guards, with many people calling for revenge against the "new Crusaders." (News24)
FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) - Army Reserve Pfc. Lynndie England, shown in photographs smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, was charged Friday by the military with assaulting the detainees and conspiring to mistreat them (MyWay)
MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier photographed holding a naked prisoner on a leash at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was charged on Friday with abusing prisoners
How Could Seemingly Solid Citizens Become Brutalizers in Iraq? (AP/TBO)
The US military has said it will investigate claims by a former inmate of Abu Ghraib prison that a girl as young as 12 was stripped and beaten by military personnel. "She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could only hear her cries. This affected all of us because she was just a child...." (ITV)
A text of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's opening remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday... "...in recent days there has been a good deal of discussion about who bears responsibility for the terrible activities that took place at Abu Ghraib. These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility." (AP/TBO)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has taken responsibility for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops, offering his "deepest apology" to the victims, but says he will not resign just to satisfy his political enemies.
(CBS/AP) Amid calls for his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld apologized on Friday to Iraqis abused by U.S. troops, saying he feels "terrible" over mistreatment at the Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld extended his “deepest apology” Friday to Iraqi prisoners abused by U.S. military personnel, telling Congress that he accepted full responsibility for the shocking events. But he warned that worse was yet to come. (MSNBC)
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - The former commander of American prisons in Iraq acknowledged that several soldiers under her command were "clearly guilty" of abusing prisoners, but predicted she would be cleared of all wrongdoing. (TBO)
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) _ The former commander of American prisons in Iraq told a newspaper an Army report on the abuse of Iraqis by American GIs gives only one side of the story. (Newsday)
May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Abuses on Iraqi prisoners by U.S.-led forces weren't isolated acts, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The Red Cross discovered "serious violations" of the rights of Iraqi prisoners, with abuse so widespread it may be considered to have been tolerated by the U.S.-led coalition, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday.
THU 2004-MAY-6
INFORMATION
A study by an Italian researcher shows that when couples fall in love their testosterone levels alter. It falls in men and rises in women so they become more like each other. (Reuters)
Harvard scientists... a basic assumption about the biology of diabetes the pancreas is wrong - and that one of the most active areas of diabetes research today could be misguided. (Boston.com)
WW3
FBI agents arrested a Portland, Ore., lawyer Thursday as part of the investigation into the deadly multiple train bombings in Spain (Fox)
[flag]1st Lt. Christopher J. Kenny, 32, of Miami, Fla.
[flag]Sgt. Marvin R. Sprayberry, III, 24, of Tehachapi, Calif.
[flag]Sgt. Gregory L. Wahl, 30, of Salisbury, N.C.
[flag]Pfc. Lyndon A. Marcus, Jr., 21, of Long Beach, Calif.
died May 3, in Balad, Iraq, when their military vehicle left the road and flipped over in a canal.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed, but a supervisor destroyed the tape (TBO)
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces battled militia loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr near the holy city of Najaf Thursday, seizing the governor's mansion and killing 41 militia fighters in a lightning operation.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush apologized Thursday for the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, saying the scenes of mistreatment had made Americans "sick to our stomachs."
DUBAI (Reuters) - A recording described as the voice of Osama bin Laden, posted on the Internet on Thursday, offered bounties in gold to anyone who kills U.S Iraq administrator Paul Bremer or U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. (Ah, Os, what an a$$h@l#!)
Military Says It Dealt With Prisoner Abuse Complaints Swiftly at Guantanamo (AP)
Family Says American Held Hostage in Iraq Wanted to Help Ravaged Homeland (AP/TBO)
Gunmen travelling in a speedboat have shot and killed two villagers and wounded others in Indonesia's Moluccan islands (BBC)
[flag]Pfc. Jesse R. Buryj, 21, of Canton, Ohio, died May 5, in Karabala, Iraq, when his military vehicle was struck by a dump truck whose driver had been shot while trying to run through a control point.
KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - Gunmen assassinated the head of the local Agriculture Department in this northern city Thursday in a drive-by shooting that also killed his driver and wounded his wife, police said.
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - U.S.-led forces launched their biggest assault yet against militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric, raiding hideouts in several cities Wednesday and clashing with gunmen in the world's biggest cemetery. At least 15 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier were killed.
Pres hugging girl
"This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11."
"I thought, 'Here is the most powerful guy in the world, and he wants to make sure I'm safe.'
(Cinn. Inq.)
One of the Iraqi men who says he was photographed in degrading poses by American prison guards in Abu Ghraib jail is unemployed father-of-five Haydar Sabbar Abed. He told his story to the BBC Arabic Service. ..."They told us to masturbate towards this female soldier. But we didn't agree to do it, so they beat us."... ..."beat me so hard that they broke my jawbone"...
GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at a Baghdad jail at the centre of a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Senior sources on the Daily Mirror privately acknowledged yesterday that the newspaper had serious problems with its publication of photographs purporting to show British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. But they said the newspaper's editor, Piers Morgan, was preparing to "front it out" in the hope that the news agenda would move on and he could save his job.
[flag]Gunnery Sgt. Ronald E. Baum, 38, of Hollidaysburg, Pa., died May 3 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
[flag]Staff Sgt. Erickson H. Petty, 28, of Fort Gibson, Okla., died May 3 in Salman Al Habb, Iraq, from an attack by small arms fire while conducting security of a weapons cache.
[flag]Staff Sgt. Todd E. Nunes, 29, of Chapel Hills, Tenn. died May 2 in Kirkuk, Iraq, when his convoy encountered an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.
[flag]Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael C. Anderson, 36, of Daytona, Fla.
[flag]Petty Officer 2nd Class Trace W. Dossett, 37, of Orlando, Fla.
[flag]Petty Officer 2nd Class Scott R. Mchugh, 33 of Boca Raton Fla.
[flag]Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert B. Jenkins, 35 of Stuart, Fla.,
[flag]Petty Officer 3rd Class Ronald A. Ginther, 37 of Auburndale, Fla.
died May 2 in the Al Anbar Province as a result of hostile fire.
[flag]Capt. John E. Tipton, 32, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., died May 2 in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, from an explosion while conducting combat operations.
[flag]Staff Sgt. Kendall Thomas, 36, of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, died April 28 in Baghdad, Iraq, as the result of a vehicle accident.
[flag]Sgt. Joshua S. Ladd, 20, of Port Gibson, Miss, died May 1 in Mosul, Iraq, when his convoy vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
FORT ASHBY, W.Va. -- Family members of an Army reservist photographed with naked Iraqi prisoners said Tuesday she was merely a "paper-pusher" who was in the "wrong place at the wrong time." (AP/Balt Sun)
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Several Iraqis were killed and many people wounded, including three U.S. soldiers, by a suicide car bomb at the entrance of the Green Zone government complex in central Baghdad
Two Britons and an Afghan interpreter working for UK-based Global Risk Strategies on a programme to support the country's elections were killed yesterday in the eastern province of Nuristan (FT)
Cited in FBI file on Vietnam Vets Against the War "Kerry is in support of the U.S. government and is only using V.V.A.W. to further his political desires." (NYTimes)
The White House yesterday asked Congress for an additional $25 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year that begins in October
New York governor George Pataki announced the groundbreaking of Freedom Tower at the site of the World Trade Center will begin July 4
WED 2004-MAY-5
INFORMATION
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - In 1914, William Cantwell Walters was convicted of kidnapping a 4-year-old boy. Nine decades later, science has cleared his name. (TBO)
Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time "saviour siblings" have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team. (New Scientist)
WW3
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - One American soldier was killed and 16 others injured Wednesday when their truck veered off the road and rolled over near the Afghan capital (TBO)
The doctor who treated [John] Kerry, Louis Letson, is today a retired general practitioner in Alabama. Letson says he remembers his brief encounter with Kerry 35 years ago because "some of his crewmen related that Lt. Kerry had told them that he would be the next JFK from Massachusetts." ... "The story he told was different from what his crewmen had to say about that night. ... The crewman thought that the injury was caused by a fragment ricocheting from that mortar round when it struck the rocks. That seemed to fit the injury which I treated. (Natl Review)
WASHINGTON, May 5, 2004 – Detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are being fed, have and wear clothes, and do not sleep on the ground, asserted a coalition military spokesman at a Baghdad press briefing today. (DoD)
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) U.S.-led forces launched their biggest assault yet against militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric, raiding hideouts in several cities Wednesday and clashing with gunmen in the world's biggest cemetery. At least 15 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier were killed.
Nigerian security forces are restoring order in remote areas of central Plateau State, where recent sectarian violence has left scores of people dead. ...hundreds of police reinforcements started arriving to quash revenge attacks by Christian ethnic-Tarok fighters against the mainly Muslim-ethnic Hausa community. (VOA)
A terrorist bomb plot to kill President Bush was thwarted yesterday when Turkish police nabbed 25 members of an al Qaeda-linked cell who planned to assassinate world leaders in Istanbul next month - then flee to Iraq. ,,,seized 16 of the men in the Turkish town of Bursa last Thursday, along with guns, explosives, forged ID documents, bomb-making booklets - and 4,000 CDs featuring training instructions from Osama bin Laden.... (NYPost)
WASHINGTON – The senior American commander in Iraq last year ordered interrogators to stop using humiliation techniques on Iraqi detainees without his permission, according to military intelligence officials who have seen the classified order. (WND)
Who is behind global Islamic terrorism? A new book by Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, makes a persuasive case that the guilty party is the United States. For Mamdani, director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, the seeds of 2004 were planted in 1979. To be more precise, in July 1979, when Jimmy Carter, smarting from US setbacks in Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua, decided to fight back against the expansion of global communism by providing secret aid to opponents of the new pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. (AlterNet)
TUE 2004-MAY-4
INFORMATION
In pictures: Return to Dien Bien Phu... This week marks the 50th anniversary of the battle at Dien Bien Phu... The Viet Minh, Vietnam's guerrilla army, started its insurgency against French occupation in 1946. Until the battle at Dien Bien Phu, France believed it was winning; however, this encounter ultimately led to the end of France's colonisation of Indochina. The stunning victory by a peasant Vietnamese army, led by General Vo Nguyen Giap, against one of the modern world's military giants served as a historic wakeup call, one that the US ignored during its own involvement in Vietnam. (BBC)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A relatively high amount of fat in the diet may be a boon to a healthy person's cholesterol levels, a small study suggests. On the other hand, limiting fat intake too much could have the opposite effect.
CURRENT
Is this actually a WW3 item?
PLAYGIRL to Launch First Adult Television Network for Women
One for the I don't get it file
COLDBLOODED GREED-MOTIVATED CALCULATED PRE-MEDITATED ATTEMPTED MURDER ALLEGED AND TEXAS MAN GETS OUT ON BOND AND WOULD ONLY GET 20 YEARS IF CONVICTED??? AREN'T THERE, LIKE, SECOND-TIME POT POSSESSION FOLKS WHO DON'T GET OFF THAT LIGHT?
DALLAS (Reuters) - A Texas man... arrested for attempted murder... tried to electrocute his wife in the bathtub by dropping a radio into her bathwater -- a method of execution he researched on the Internet.... The wife was able to bump the radio before it hit the water... she found... that her husband had recently visited Web sites that detailed bathtub electrocutions. ...an examination of the computer by a cyber crimes police unit confirmed that he visited these sites before the incident... took out a life insurance policy for his wife a few months ago, for a "considerable amount of money...." wife was not harmed in the incident.... arrested and has been released on bond. He faces a second-degree charge of attempted murder and could spend up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
STILL CLUELESS ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PUBLIC OFFICIAL
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Having a doll with a bobbing head in your own likeness may be all right for Abraham Lincoln, Al Capone, Hilary Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Jesus. But California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is outraged and wants out, distinguished company or not. Schwarzenegger has sued a family business objecting to its sale of a "bobblehead" doll featuring the former Hollywood action hero's likeness, his attorney said on Monday.
WW3
BAGHDAD, May 4 -- Some of Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim leaders, seeking to avoid a potentially devastating U.S. attack on two holy cities, called Tuesday for cleric Moqtada Sadr and his armed followers to abandon their strongholds in Najaf and Karbala. (Wash Post)
A group of Vietnam-era Navy veterans yesterday criticized Sen. John F. Kerry's conduct during the war, and called on him to release all of his military and medical records. ...about 215 former officers and enlisted men who served in Kerry's wartime division -- declared Kerry unfit to be president because of his statements in 1971 alleging that U.S. soldiers committed routine atrocities during the war. Kerry raised the allegations in testimony to a Senate committee investigating the war that year. (Wash Post)
WASHINGTON, May 4 (UPI) -- Sen. John Kerry's accounts of his service in Vietnam and his statements that he witnessed atrocities were attacked as fabrications and political opportunism
WASHINGTON - Vietnam crewmates of Sen. John F. Kerry rallied to his defense yesterday (Boston Herald)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Iraqi prisoners were murdered by Americans and 23 other deaths are being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States revealed on Tuesday as the Bush administration tried to contain growing outrage over the abuse of Iraqi detainees. President Bush was set on Wednesday to appear on two Arab television networks to say that he views the abuse as "shameful and unacceptable," said his spokesman, Scott McClellan.
May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Three bombs exploded outside a police station in Athens before dawn today, damaging the building and its garage and slightly injuring one officer, Reuters reported
[flag]Staff Sgt. Oscar D. Vargas-Medina, 32, of Chicago, Ill.
[flag]Spc. Ramon C. Ojeda, 22, of Ramona, Califf
died, May 1, in Al Amarah, Iraq when their convoy was attacked.
[flag]Spc. Ervin Caradine, Jr., 33, of Memphis, Tenn.
[flag]Pvt. Jeremy L. Drexler, 23, of Topeka, Kan.
died May 2, in Baghdad, Iraq, when their convoy vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
U.S. to Stop Certain Interrogation Practices new U.S. commander overseeing Army-run prisons in Iraq to reduce Abu Ghraib prison population ...has ordered military intelligence operatives to stop using sleep deprivation as an interrogation tactic and placing hoods over the heads of detainees.(Wash Post)
NAJAF: Four US soldiers died after their Humvee overturned during a combat patrol north of Baghdad , officials said. Meanwhile, Shia militiamen also fired several mortar shells at a US base here early on Tuesday and at a city hall guarded by Bulgarian troops in another Shia city. (Times of India)
MOSCOW, May 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Adzharian leader Aslan Abashidze has turned down the ultimatum of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who wants Adzharia to start disarming illegal units within ten days.
Criminal investigations have been launched since December, 2002 into 35 cases of alleged detainee abuse in military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan -- including 25 deaths in custody, a senior U.S. army official said Tuesday. (Drudge)
A husband chopped off his wife's ear and shaved her head on suspicion that she had illicit relations with a man in a remote town in northern Pakistan (Drudge)
A sizable minority of Pentagon workers and Ground Zero cleanup crew still have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression symptoms after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and many are not getting treatment, suggest reports out Monday. Workers who were injured at the Pentagon and those who saw the injured or dead are in the worst shape, according to an online study two years after the attacks. (USA Today)
JERUSALEM (AP) - An Israeli army officer was sentenced to six months in prison Monday for shooting dead a 16-year-old Palestinian bystander, the army said.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - Israeli military jeeps sealed off the entrances to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian official told AFP.
A former Manhattan jail guard who was stabbed in the eye with a sharpened comb by a top aide to Osama bin Laden in 2000 was ejected from his attacker's sentencing hearing yesterday after he repeatedly shouted at the defendant and the judge. Dozens of his fellow correction officers walked out in protest from the hearing, at which the defendant was sentenced to 32 years in prison. (NYTimes)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 3 - A powerful explosion hit a van carrying Chinese engineers working on a multibillion-dollar port project in southwestern Pakistan on Monday morning, killing three of them, government officials said. The blast, apparently from a car bomb, injured nine Chinese and two Pakistani workers. No one took responsibility for the explosion. (NYTimes)
MON 2004-MAY-3
INFORMATION
Technology to grow replacement teeth could mean the end of dentures. Scientists at King's College London have been awarded £500,000 to help them develop human teeth from stem cells.
WW3An internal Army investigation has found that key military intelligence officers and civilian employees may have spurred acts of abuse and humiliation by American enlisted personnel against Iraqi detainees at an overcrowded prison outside Baghdad. A report on the investigation, seen yesterday by The New York Times, as well as other documents seen by The Times, also reveal a much broader pattern of command failures than initially acknowledged by the Pentagon and the Bush administration in responding to outrage over the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. (NY Times)
[flag]Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason B. Dwelley, 31, of Apopka, Fla
[flag]Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher M. Dickerson, 33, of Eastman, Ga.
died April 30 in Al Anbar province, Iraq, when their military vehicle hit an improvised explosive device while traveling in a convoy.
Hostages in Iraq Who Remain Missing (AP)
Violence Inflames Protesters in Gaza (Wash Post)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. airstrikes killed four alleged militants following an attack on a military convoy in eastern Afghanistan, but local officials said Sunday the victims were policemen killed in a case of mistaken identity.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - The world's oldest profession should be decriminalized and treated like any other business, international activists at a Hong Kong conference on prostitution said Sunday.
YANBU, Saudi Arabia (AP) - American and European families packed their bags Sunday after a deadly attack on foreigners, and traumatized Saudi schoolchildren recounted how the attackers proudly summoned them to watch them drag a victim's body through the streets.
ISLAMABAD (BBC)-- The Pakistani government has strongly denied allegations that it has struck a deal which would allow U.S. troops to hunt for Osama Bin Laden on its soil.
President Bush contradicts Clinton about emphasis placed on terrorism during transition (Time)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - American hostage Thomas Hamill, kidnapped three weeks ago in an insurgent attack on his convoy, was found by U.S. forces Sunday south of Tikrit after he apparently escaped from his captors, the U.S. military said. An official said he was in good health.
The top U.S. military officer said Sunday there is no widespread pattern of abuse of Iraqi prisoners and that the actions of "just a handful" of U.S. troops at a Baghdad prison have unfairly tainted all American forces. (AP/MyWay)
The claim that the "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" by at least six US military police were actively encouraged by intelligence officers came in a confidential military report leaked to The New Yorker magazine. ...when one Iraqi prisoner was so stressed by questioning – possibly by CIA officers – that he died, his body was packed in ice for a day and then taken from the jail with a mock intravenous drip in his arm to disguise his death. (Australian)
Israeli helicopters have fired missiles into Gaza City hours after Palestinian gunmen killed a pregnant Jewish settler and her four children. (BBC)
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Covering their faces with checkered headscarves, militiamen loyal to a former Iraqi Army general jubilantly took to the streets of this battle-scarred city yesterday to celebrate what they called a triumph over withdrawing US Marines. (Boston.com)
As alarming details surface in a growing prisoner-abuse scandal, the U.S. general who was in charge talks about what went wrong... Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is angry. She says she warned her superiors from the first about the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners. (Newsweek/MSNBC)
President Bush has denounced the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, saying he is disgusted by the way they were treated.
American officials are "appalled" by photos of U.S. soldiers allegedly mistreating Iraqi prisoners, and are urging the Iraqi people to not let the images taint their view of coalition forces.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain launched an inquiry after a newspaper published photographs apparently showing British soldiers abusing an Iraqi detainee, and Prime Minister Tony Blair said any abuse was "completely and totally unacceptable." A Sunday newspaper said six British soldiers were being questioned in connection with the allegations, but sources close to the regiment concerned raised doubts over the authenticity of the images.
Sources close to the army have questioned the authenticity of photographs appearing to show British soldiers torturing an Iraqi prisoner. (BBC)
May 1 (Bloomberg) -- European leaders are ``appalled'' at alleged abuse of Iraqi captives by American occupying forces and call on the U.S. to respect the Geneva conventions on treatment of prisoners of war, Ireland's prime minister said.The Allied occupation of Iraq was under fresh scrutiny tonight as shocking pictures of United States troops torturing prisoners prompted a wave of revulsion across the world. (Scotsman)
WW3
America's top soldier has contradicted officers on the ground in Iraq by denying a Saddam-era general has been given control of the city of Falluja. (BBC)
ANKARA, Turkey -- Police foiled a suspected al-Qaida-linked plot to bomb a NATO summit in Istanbul next month that President Bush is scheduled to attend, and insisted Monday the city is safe. (Seattle PI)
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines besieging Falluja brought in a new Iraqi general with a history of standing up to Saddam Hussein Monday to lead a force they have charged with putting down insurgency in the city. Their initial choice, who outraged victims of the Baathist regime because of past service in Saddam's feared Republican Guard, said he was stepping aside, leaving command of the new Falluja Brigade to former intelligence officer Mohammed Latif.
(CNSNews.com) - Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.
A former commander of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment has dismissed the Iraq abuse photographs as having "too many inconsistencies". Colonel David Black argued that the images, apparantly showing soldiers from his old regiment beating and urinating on an Iraqi captive, published in the Daily Mirror, were probably not even taken in Iraq. (ThisIsLondon)
Police in Nigeria say clashes between Muslims and Christians have left at least 67 people dead. The deaths occurred as Christian Tarok militia attacked Muslim Fulanis in Yelwa town, in the country's remote central highlands, reports say. (BBC)
[flag]Staff Sgt. Esau G. Patterson, Jr., 25, of Ridgeland, S.C.
[flag]Staff Sgt. Jeffrey F. Dayton, 27, of Caledonia, Miss.
[flag]Sgt. Ryan M. Campbell, 25, of Kirksville, Mo.
[flag]Spc. James L. Beckstrand, 27, of Escondido, Calif.
[flag]Spc. Justin B. Schmidt, 23, of Bradenton, Fla.
[flag]Pfc. Ryan E. Reed, 20, of Colorado Springs, Colo.
[flag]Pfc. Norman Darling, 29, of Middleboro, Mass.
[flag]Pfc. Jeremy Ricardo Ewing, 22, of Miami, Fla.
died on April 29, in Baghdad, Iraq, while part of a dismounted improvised explosive device sweep patrol, when a vehicle approached their unit, and the driver detonated a bomb.
[flag]Spc. Trevor A. Wine, 22, of Orange, Calif., died May 1, in Tikrit, Iraq, from injuries sustained on April 30 when his convoy vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
[flag]Spc. Phillip L. Witkowski, 24, of Fredonia, N.Y., died May 1, in Homberg, Germany, from non-combat related injuries sustained on April 30, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
[flag]Cpl. Scott M. Vincent, 21, of Bokoshe, Okla. Cpl. Joshua S. Wilfong, 22, of Walker, W.Va. Both Marines died April 30 due to hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
Washington (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A joint USA Today, CNN and Gallup poll survey of 3444 Iraqis reveals that 42% of people believe the situation is better now than it was one year ago when the country was first invaded; 46%, however, say the war has done “more bad than good” for Iraq. Yet there is major consensus on one issue: getting rid of Saddam Hussein “has been worth all the problems” dealt with until now and 61% of Iraqis say they would like to see the former leader tried and condemned to death.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA inspector general is conducting an investigation of the death of an Iraqi prisoner while being held at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, a senior CIA official said on Monday. But the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he was not aware that any CIA officers involved in interrogating prisoners there participated in the abuses depicted by recent photographs.
SAT 2004-MAY-1
CURRENT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter was assaulted while jogging and sustained minor injuries...
The EU expanded at midnight last night to take in a region isolated during the Cold War. Church bells rang and fireworks lit up the sky over Eastern Europe... created a collective economic giant... Hundreds of thousands of jubilant revellers... hailed by EU leaders as "the end of the artificial divisions of the last century." ...brings in ...the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- along with Cyprus and Malta. (AP/Calgary Sun)
The EU now has a combined population of 455 million... a millennial event, comparable to the creation of great empires... One of the fathers of European reunification, Helmut Kohl, spoke through tears... "The message is there will never again be war in Europe," the former German chancellor said. (BBC)
INFORMATION
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Secretive, totalitarian North Korea showed two faces to the world after a deadly train explosion, using the catastrophe to reinforce the personality cult of its leader while giving an unusual degree of access to foreign aid workers.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - The University of Chicago on Saturday returned 300 ancient clay tablets taken from Iran on loan 67 years ago, marking the first U.S. return of borrowed Iranian artifacts since the Middle Eastern state's 1979 Islamic revolution.
A Missing H-Bomb Lies off Georgia's Coast - but Is It a Danger?... one of 11 "Broken Arrows" - nuclear bombs lost during air or sea mishaps, according to U.S. military records. (AP/TBO)
Google search on Tybee Bomb
WW3
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to impress the United States, authorities said Friday.
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Attackers sprayed gunfire inside an oil contractor's office Saturday, killing at least six Westerners - including two Americans - and wounding at least 25 others before leading police on a bloody chase with the naked body of one of the victims dragging behind the car.
WANA, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan on Saturday released 78 Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen arrested during a recent counterterrorism operation near the Afghan border and extended a deadline for suspected fugitives to surrender.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraqi prisoners faced numerous "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" by U.S. soldiers, including sodomy and beatings, according to a U.S. Army report quoted by the New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker said it had obtained a 53-page, internal U.S. military report into alleged abuses at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
RIYADH, May 1 (Xinhuanet) -- Two Americans, two Britons and an Australian were killed in an attack on an engineering firm in the Saudi Red Sea port of Yanbu on Saturday...
Canada agreed yesterday to extend the deployment of nearly 500 troops in Haiti, after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that will eventually send more than 8,000 peacekeepers and police officers to the Caribbean nation. (Globe & Mail)
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