 Indonesia has strongly criticised a decision by Australia to grant temporary visas to dozens of asylum seekers from the province of Papua. The Indonesian government said the move ran counter to the spirit of co-operation between the two countries. It said it "regretted" the decision taken by Australia. Forty-two Papuans, who arrived in Australia saying they were fleeing abuses by Indonesia's military, were granted the temporary protection visas. Jakarta said they had nothing to fear and had warned that granting asylum could strain its relations with Australia. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk
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Editor - 20:14:00 03-23-06
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 US-led forces round up whole Iraq village in security sweep |
The entire adult male population of a village west of Baghdad was rounded up in a major joint US-Iraqi operation against insurgents that netted two "high value targets." Operation Northern Lights, which involves more than 1,100 US soldiers and marines as well as Iraqi army units, is targeting bomb-making cells and weapon caches in the vast rural fields west of the capital."This whole area is a hotbed for insurgents, and is a major (arms) cache and transport zone," said First Lieutenant Caleb Singer, acting commander of Bravo Company, which had a leading role in the search operation.The raid on the village of Ibrahim bin Ali began at 1 am (2300 GMT Wednesday) and is expected to last 24 hours.US troops were airlifted in to lay a cordon around the village and then went house-to-house, rounding up men and questioning them. In one case more than 100 detainees were taken to a nearby school....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060323/pl_afp/iraqusunrestoperation
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Editor - 19:46:00 03-23-06
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| Scholars' Attack on Pro-Israel Lobby Met With Silence |
In the face of one of the harshest reports on the pro-Israel lobby to emerge from academia, Jewish organizations are holding fire in order to avoid generating publicity for their critics. Officials at Jewish organizations are furious over "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a new paper by John Mearsheimer, a top international relations theorists based at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the academic dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In their report — versions of which appear on the Kennedy School Web site and in the March 26 issue of the London Review of Books — the scholars depict "the Israel lobby" as a "loose coalition" of politicians, media outlets, research institutions, Jewish groups and Evangelical Christians that steers America's Middle East policy in directions beneficial to Israel, even if it requires harming American interests. ...
http://www.forward.com/articles/7548
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Editor - 14:18:00 03-23-06
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| Ill-equipped Guard units alarm states |
The conflict in Iraq, launched three years ago as bombs began lighting up Baghdad's midnight skies, has left America's National Guard as one of the most critically wounded casualties of the war.Since the war began, the Guard has been badly stripped of equipment and resources even as it is tasked with one of the most important on-call jobs on American soil: to be the first line of homeland defense and security in the event of a catastrophic terror attack or a devastating national emergency such as Hurricane Katrina.Statistics, compiled last year by the Government Accountability Office, are startling:Non-deployed Guard units have just 5 percent of the lightweight rifles and 14 percent of the machine guns they are authorized to have.Units nationwide have just 8 percent of the flatbed semi-trailers they are authorized to have and 10 percent of the Humvees....
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/14158681.htm
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Editor - 14:03:00 03-23-06
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| Pastor shot dead; wife, children missing Body was found in bathroom, no signs of forced entry |
A church minister was found shot to death in his parsonage, and authorities were searching for his missing wife and three young daughters Thursday.Church members went searching for Matthew Winkler late Wednesday when he didn’t show up for an evening service at Fourth Street Church of Christ, police said. They used a key to enter the parsonage and found him dead in a bedroom. His family was gone.Selmer Police Chief Neal Burkes said Thursday that Winkler, 31, had been shot. According to Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson, there were no signs of forced entry at the home....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11975002/from/RSS/
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Editor - 09:50:00 03-23-06
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| Dead Pakistanis 'were innocent' |
Pakistan says 16 of its nationals travelling in Afghanistan were arrested and then killed by Afghan security forces. A Pakistani embassy spokesman in Kabul told the BBC that the men "were innocent Pakistani civilians". The Afghan foreign ministry said on Thursday the dead were all "Taleban... from Pakistan". The Afghan authorities say they are investigating the deaths, reported near the border town of Spin Boldak. The dispute over the killings comes as relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan over cross-border security have worsened. The Afghan government has repeatedly accused Pakistan of failing to prevent Taleban militants from taking refuge on its territory, while the Pakistani authorities have criticised the quality of Afghan intelligence. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4836244.stm
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Editor - 09:46:00 03-23-06
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