Canadian General Rick Hillier and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor have dismissed calls that they be investigated for war crimes over Canada's role in handing over to Afghan security forces detainees who were subsequently tortured. Criticism of the Canadian forces is being driven by the revelation in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper that up to 30 detainees had been abused or tortured in Afghanistan prisons by Afghani guards after being transferred from Canadian custody. O'Connor announced that a new agreement was reached Wednesday which would allow Canadian officials full access to the National Directorate of Security facility, focus of the most vehement criticism and stories of prisoner abuse by Afghan forces. Canadian lawmakers have been caught up in the Afghanistan issue most of this week. The Conservative government narrowly blocked a motion calling for Canadian troops to return home by 2009. ...
http://www.ipsnews.net
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Editor - 21:09:00 04-28-07
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 Rebuilt Iraq Projects Found Crumbling |
In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle. The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly. The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport. ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/world/middleeast/29reconstruct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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Editor - 21:07:00 04-28-07
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| Wildfire jumps U.S. 1 in spots |
A few spot fires ignited Saturday afternoon across a highway from a massive wildfire, and firefighters struggled to put them out before they could spread in the miles of tinder-dry forest beyond. Several rural homes near the new fires were being evacuated Saturday evening, Georgia Forestry Commission spokesman Eric Mosley said. About 30 miles from Waycross, another fire broke out late Saturday in Atkinson County and burned at least 700 acres, said Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. It posed no immediate threat to people living in the area. The larger fire has consumed nearly 100 square miles of drought-parched forest and swampland in southeast Georgia since it ignited April 16. Firefighters were patrolling a closed 16-mile stretch of U.S. 1, which links Waycross with Jacksonville, Florida. They set controlled burns to prevent the blaze from spreading into acres of forest beyond the road....
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/28/georgia.wildfires.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us
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Editor - 20:28:00 04-28-07
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| Tensions hit peak over Gaza clashes |
TENSIONS IN the Gaza Strip reached 'an unprecedented high' yesterday as Palestinians prepared for an expected Israeli military onslaught. In an overnight operation three members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed at the border fence while trying to plant bombs along a security road on the outskirts of Gaza city. At yesterday's funeral of two of them, Abdel Khalim Al-Sayoumi and Said Helas, thousands of demonstrators took to the street, shooting guns in the air and throwing hand grenades into an open field vowing revenge against Israel. Israeli tanks were massing at the border, fresh from a huge exercise to practise reoccupying the strip, while the Palestinians were making preparations of their own. Militants were flooding into the border town of Beit Hanoun, building bunkers, stretching tarpaulins across streets to block Israeli reconnaissance drones and planting roadside bombs....
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2068232,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12
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Editor - 20:19:00 04-28-07
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| Turkey faces military crisis |
Turkey came under mounting pressure from the European Union last night to rein in the influence of its generals, after the country's powerful pro-secular military threatened to intervene in the Islamic-oriented government amid growing turmoil over the election of a new President.Olli Rehn, the European Union enlargement commissioner, who has been a keen supporter of Ankara's eventual accession to the bloc, warned the military to stay out of politics, saying the election was a 'test case' for the Turkish military's respect for democracy. Rehn issued the salvo after Turkey's general staff weighed in on the dispute, saying they would not flinch at intervention if it meant upholding the Muslim state's cherished secular values. ...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2067955,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12
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Editor - 20:15:00 04-28-07
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| Calif. Democrats warm for Clinton, wild for Obama |
Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois wowed California Democrats at their annual convention on Saturday, drawing a more passionate welcome than Sen.Hillary Rodham Clinton received hours earlier in this state that carries new clout in the presidential primaries. More than 2,000 party activists frequently rose to their feet in cheers as Obama, who has served just two years in the U.S. Senate, talked about his desire to end the war in Iraq and usher in a new political era in Washington. "It is time to put an end to this war," Obama, of Illinois, said at the convention center in San Diego shortly before many started chanting his surname. Even Clinton supporters recognized Obama's speech -- full of generalities such as the need to "turn the page" -- had tapped into the crowd's emotions. "It was the same thing in 2003 for Howard Dean," said Andrea Dew Steele, 38, referring to the former Vermont governor who made a strong showing early in ...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070428/pl_nm/usa_politics_california_dc
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Editor - 20:13:00 04-28-07
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