 Russian authorities pulled hundreds of opposition activists off buses and trains and detained them along with scores of others on Saturday ahead of a rare anti-government rally in Moscow, organizers said. The police action did not prevent more than 2,000 people from gathering in a central square, where leftist and liberal groups demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin stop what they called Russia's retreat from democracy. "In 15 months political power will be changed," said Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who is now an opposition leader, referring to the March 2008 presidential election. "Next year everyone should make a personal decision about what to do with our country whether we allow these people to continue their illegal undertakings … or we finally make our main goal to build a democratic and socially oriented state," Kasyanov told demonstrators...
http://abcnews.go.com
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Editor - 12:52:00 12-16-06
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 More Americans hungry, homeless in 2006- mayors |
More Americans went homeless and hungry in 2006 than the year before and children made up almost a quarter of those in emergency shelters, said a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors."The face of hunger and homelessness right now ... is young children, young families," said the conference's president, Douglas Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey.The survey of 23 cities found civic and government groups received, on average, 7 percent more requests for food aid in 2006 than in 2005, following a 12 percent jump in 2005.Requests for shelter rose by an average of 9 percent in 2006, with requests from families with children rising by 5 percent. More than half the cities said family members often had to split up to stay in different shelters....
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14462540.htm
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Editor - 12:51:00 12-16-06
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| Robert Fisk: Different narratives in the Middle East No, Israelis are not Nazis. But it's time we talked of war crimes |
Oh how - when it comes to the realities of history - the Muslims of the Middle East exhaust my patience. After years of explaining to Arab friends that the Jewish Holocaust - the systematic, planned murder of six million Jews by the Nazis, is an indisputable fact - I am still met with a state of willing disbelief. And now, this week, the preposterous President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad of Iran opens up his own country to obloquy and shame by holding a supposedly impartial "conference" on the Jewish Holocaust to repeat the lies of the racists who, if they did not direct their hatred towards Jews, would most assuredly turn venomously against those other Semites, the Arabs of the Middle East.How, I always ask, can you expect the West to understand and accept the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 men, women and children from Palestine in 1948 when you will not try to comprehend the enormity done the Jews of Europe?...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2079304.ece
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Editor - 12:48:00 12-16-06
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| Tortured Canadian Still on U.S. 'Watch List' Muslim Cleared By Ottawa Inquiry |
Maher Arar, the Canadian Muslim who was whisked by U.S. agents from a New York airport to imprisonment and torture in Syria, remains on the U.S. "watch list" despite an exhaustive Canadian inquiry that found he is an innocent man, the U.S. ambassador to Canada said Friday. Ambassador David Wilkins said in an interview with CBC Radio that Arar "is on the watch list and has been since he was deported" in 2002 to Syria, where he was held for 10 months, much of it in a coffin-like dungeon. His transfer to Syria, part of a series of U.S. clandestine "extraordinary renditions" of terrorism suspects for interrogation in foreign countries, created a scandal in Canada. The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned last week after a two-year judicial inquiry found his officers gave U.S. agents false information to cast suspicion on Arar....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/15/AR2006121501227.html?referrer=emailarticle
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Editor - 12:38:00 12-16-06
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| Mass. Official Takes Control of Boston Election Division Over Widespread Ballot Shortages |
The state has taken control of the Boston Election Department because the city didn't stock enough ballots at dozens of precincts on Election Day, when some voters had to wait hours in line. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin and Boston election commissioners signed an agreement Friday giving Galvin's office supervision of the department through the 2008 election. Galvin will appoint a supervisor to oversee the department. Election commissioners acknowledged in the agreement that 38 of the city's 254 precincts ran out of ballots Nov. 7 for up to nearly two hours at a time. State law requires at least one ballot for every registered voter to be distributed to each polling place before an election. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2731589
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Editor - 10:57:00 12-16-06
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| Man kills 5, including 3 of his kids, before fatally shooting himself |
A man killed five people, including three of his children, before fatally shooting himself Saturday morning, and a fourth child was in the hospital with life-threatening wounds, police said.The man killed one woman around 8:30 a.m., then went to another home and shot his longtime girlfriend, their four children and himself, Capt. Rich Lockhart said.Police did not immediately identify the shooter or the women. Relatives identified the shooter's girlfriend as Shanika King, who was in her 30s.The slain children were a 1-year-old boy, 11-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl, police said. An 8-year-old boy was in critical condition.Witnesses identified the first victim, a woman in her mid-30s, as the shooter's cousin, Lockhart said. The woman's son told police a man came to the door and asked to see his mother. The boy said he heard a "pop," but thought it was fireworks....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-16-kansas-city-shooting_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 10:16:00 12-16-06
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