Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested on Sunday he could release some Palestinian prisoners this week, even though Gaza militants have yet to free a captured Israeli soldier. Israel has been under U.S. and European pressure to take steps to bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a power struggle with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which ousted Abbas's Fatah faction in a parliamentary poll last year. At their first formal meeting on Saturday, Olmert pledged to release $100 million in withheld tax revenues to Abbas, bypassing the Hamas-led government. At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, three senior Israeli ministers supported the idea of freeing some prisoners as a gesture to Abbas before a Muslim holiday that starts this week. A cabinet source said Olmert responded by saying: "The time has come for flexibility and generosity, and it (Israeli policy) could be different than what has been said in past meetings." ...
http://news.yahoo.com
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Editor - 10:14:00 12-24-06
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 Iraqi police deaths 'hit 12,000' |
Some 12,000 police officers in Iraq have died in the line of duty since the US-led invasion in 2003, Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said. The figure is from a total force of about 190,000 officers, he said. The announcement follows a suicide bomb attack that killed seven policemen and wounded 20 others during a morning parade at a base north of Baghdad. Correspondents say despite the risks, young Iraqi men see the security forces as one of the few sources of work. The interior minister said 12,000 police officers have been killed since March 2003 - one death for every 16 officers. Iraq's police are a frequent target for attacks, and are widely thought to have been infiltrated by insurgents. Wave of attacks Sunday's suicide bombing happened at a police parade ground in Muqdadiya, about 90km (56 miles) north-east of Baghdad. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6208331.stm
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Editor - 10:11:00 12-24-06
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| Bethlehem Christmas Pilgrims Scarce Israeli-Palestinian Violence Keeps Many Tourists Away From Bethlehem During Christmas |
Marching bands, children dressed as Santa Claus and clergymen in magenta skullcaps gathered in the center of Bethlehem on Sunday to celebrate Christmas Eve, doing their best to dispel the gloom hovering over Jesus' traditional birthplace. In an annual custom, townspeople enacted Christmas rituals that seem out of place in the Middle East. Palestinian scouts marched through the streets, some wearing kilts and berets, playing drums and bagpipes. They passed inflatable Santas looking forlorn in the sunshine. Other acts, however, could take place nowhere else. To get to the West Bank town, Michel Sabbah, the Roman Catholic Church's highest official in the Holy Land, rode in his motorcade through a huge steel gate in the Israeli barrier that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem. Israel says it built the barrier to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli population centers. Palestinians view the structure, which dips into parts of the West Bank, as a land grab...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2749278
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Editor - 10:10:00 12-24-06
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| Explosions Kill 4 American Soldiers in Iraq; 7 Iraqi Policemen Killed in Suicide Attack |
Four American soldiers were killed in weekend explosions, the U.S. military said Sunday, and a suicide bomber killed at least seven Iraqi policemen north of the capital. Three soldiers from the 89th Military Police Brigade, were killed Saturday in east Baghdad when a roadside bomb detonated, the U.S. military said. The fourth, assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, died Saturday in an explosion in Diyala east of the Iraqi capital. With their deaths, at least 2,969 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. In Muqdadiyah about 55 miles northeast of the capital a suicide bomber killed at least seven policemen and wounded 30 at a police station. Insurgents then launched six mortar rounds. Shortly after the suicide bombing, two roadside bombs exploded next to one another in Khanaqin, about 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, close to the Iranian border, police said. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2749277
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Editor - 10:08:00 12-24-06
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| In Letter Released After Death, Chile's Former Dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet Justifies Coup |
In a letter to Chileans written to be published after his death, Gen. Augusto Pinochet said he wished he hadn't had to stage the bloody 1973 coup that put him in power, and called the abuses under his long regime inevitable. His fate was public shunning and unimagined loneliness, he said in the message made public Sunday. The former dictator, who died Dec. 10 of heart failure at age 91, insisted the military takeover avoided civil war and a Marxist dictatorship, and said his 1973-90 regime never had "an institutional plan" to abuse human rights. "But it was necessary to act with maximum rigor to avoid a widening of the conflict," Pinochet wrote. According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed for political reasons in the 17 years after Pinochet overthrew elected Marxist President Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973. Tens of thousands were illegally imprisoned, tortured and forced into exile after the coup, during which Allende committed suicide rather than surrender....
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2749272
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Editor - 10:05:00 12-24-06
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| Egyptian woman dies of bird flu |
An Egyptian woman has died of bird flu just hours after testing positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus. The 30-year-old was first treated on 17 December, before a brother and sister, aged 26 and 15, also fell ill. The World Health Organization confirmed the test results on the three, who live with 30 other family members raising poultry in a town north of Cairo. She is the eighth person to die of bird flu in Egypt. The positive tests raise to 17 the total number of human cases. The two siblings are in hospital in Cairo and have been treated. The rest of the family is under close medical surveillance, a WHO official said. The extended family share one house in the town of Zifta in Gharbiya province, about 80km (50 miles) north of Cairo. A WHO official said the family raised ducks, and the brother and sister had become infected after slaughtering the flock in an effort to stem the spread of the H5N1 virus....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6207797.stm
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Editor - 10:03:00 12-24-06
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