United States lawyers will arrive in Fiji next month to take evidence from a former Fijian soldier who claims to have witnessed American private security guards shooting Iraqi civilians for target practice.The Daily Post reports that Isireli Naucukidi is in fear of his life if he goes to America to give evidence.Mr Naucukidi, who served with the American security company Triple Canopy in Iraq, has reported three instances of Iraqi civilians being killed by American security guards employed by the same company on July 8 last year.He says he has been informed that lawyers representing the company and the guards implicated in the shootings will be in Fiji from May 8 to take his evidence.... http://www.rnzi.com censor News |
Editor - 09:32:00 04-20-07 |
Copter flaw blamed for eight British soldiers' Iraq deaths |
EIGHT British soldiers died on the first day of the Iraq war due to the mechanical failure of a US helicopter - not because of human error, a coroner ruled yesterday. Andrew Walker's findings directly contradicted those of US investigators, who said spatial disorientation suffered by pilots on the aircraft was to blame. The assistant deputy coroner for Oxfordshire said he had reached his conclusions in spite of an "unacceptable" lack of co-operation with his inquiry by American officialdom. The helicopter, an American Sea Knight, went down south of the Kuwait border in March 2003. The eight victims from 3 Commando Brigade were the first UK casualties of the war. As well as the eight British servicemen, four US personnel died. After yesterday's inquest in Oxford, barrister Paul Spencer, representing the widow of Commando Sgt Les Hehir, said: "There is a litigation risk [for US authorities] now there has been a finding that mechanical failure, not human error, was to blame."... http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404&id=606872007
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Editor - 09:28:00 04-20-07 |
Foreign soldiers not to be prosecuted in Afghanistan |
KABUL: Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit has said the soldiers of the foreign military accused of crimes will not be prosecuted in Afghanistan. Answering questions from members of the audit and assessment commission of the lower house of parliament, the attorney general said Afghan prosecutor could not interfere in cases pertaining to foreign military. Representative of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said according to their agreement with the Afghan government, foreign soldiers, accused of crimes, would be prosecuted under the laws of their native country. However, parliamentarian Abdul Sattar Khwasi said it was against the law of the land that a soldier committing crime against the Afghan people would not be prosecuted here.... http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?175671
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Editor - 09:26:00 04-20-07 |
Dwarf stars emit powerful pulse |
A class of "failed" star called a brown dwarf emits beams of radiation that are thousands of times brighter than any released by the Sun. The brown dwarfs are behaving like an altogether different and exotic cosmic object called a pulsar. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that emit a flashing radio signal. When the rotating beams sweep Earth, astronomers detect the radio pulse, which has been likened to the rotating beacon of a lighthouse. Pulsars are created when a massive star explodes in a supernova and its core collapses into a rapidly spinning neutron star. Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, are stellar also-rans which lack the necessary mass to kick-start nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. Greg Hallinan from the National University of Ireland in Galway and his colleagues used the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico to observe a very cool, rapidly rotating brown dwarf called TVLM 513-46546. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6574433.stm
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Editor - 09:24:00 04-20-07 |
U.S. Republicans battle charge Iraq war is lost |
Bush and fellow Republicans struggled on Thursday with comparisons between the U.S. wars in Iraq and Vietnam as the Senate's top Democrat declared the Iraq war lost. A day after a White House meeting with lawmakers failed to resolve differences over whether to attach a troop withdrawal plan to a war funding bill, Bush and the Democrats continued their feud from afar. Asked to compare Iraq to Vietnam, a war that still weighs on the American psyche three decades after it ended, Bush told an Ohio audience a premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could lead to chaos and death the same way war broke out between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia after the fall of Saigon in 1975. "After Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life. My concern is there would be a parallel there," Bush said, adding that "This time around, the enemy wouldn't just be content to stay in the Middle East, they'd follow us here."... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19440243.htm
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Editor - 09:18:00 04-20-07 |
Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries |
The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went. In a long-awaited document, the Church's International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an "unduly restrictive view of salvation," according to the U.S.-based Catholic News Service, which obtained a copy on Friday. The thumbs-down verdict on limbo had been expected for years and the document, called "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised," was seen as most likely to be final since limbo was never formally part of Church doctrine. Pope Benedict authorized the publication of the document. According to the CNS report, the 41-page document says the theologians advising the Pope concluded that since God is merciful he "wants all human beings to be saved." It says grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect ... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/ts_nm/pope_limbo_dc
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Editor - 09:16:00 04-20-07 |
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