The US should close the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba and any secret "war on terror" detention facilities abroad, a United Nations report has said. The UN Committee against Torture said that detaining persons in such conditions was a violation of the UN Convention against Torture. It also urged the US to put in place "immediate measures" to eradicate torture of detainees by its troops. The committee's report follows a hearing in early May into US conduct. ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk
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Editor - 02:05:00 05-19-06
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 US may offer treaty to end Korean war |
The US is considering whether to negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea that would formally end the 1950-53 Korean war as part of an attempt to persuade the secretive Communist state to end its nuclear programme. No decision has yet been taken by the White House, officials said. But the idea is being closely examined as a means of breaking the stalemate over Pyongyang's nuclear capability - thought by US intelligence agencies to include fissile material for half a dozen or more nuclear devices.Negotiations with the North have been at a standstill since last September, when six-nation talks in Beijing - involving the US, Russia, China, the two Koreas and Japan - yielded an outline deal for the North to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for security guarantees and economic assistance.The problem is that both parties insist that their demands must be met as a pre-condition to any final deal. ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article548099.ece
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Editor - 02:01:00 05-19-06
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| Violence escalates in Afghanistan |
The storming of Musa Qala was ferocious. Hundreds of Taliban fighters poured incessant fire into the government buildings and police station. The ensuing battle was the longest and fiercest since the end of the war four years ago. As homes and shops were set alight, Qari Mohammed Yousef, a Taliban commander, used his satellite telephone to announce to a news agency that the town in Helmand had fallen to the "forces of Islam". The Taliban were eventually forced to retreat, but the scale of the offensive was a symbolic declaration of intent as British troops pour into the province for their new mission in Afghanistan. British forces evacuated the injured from Musa Qala, leaving the actual fighting, they insisted, to Afghan forces. The interior ministry, in Kabul, declared that 40 Islamists had been killed, although police said they had recovered only 14 bodies. The official body count registered 13 police killed and five wounded. ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article548102.ece
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Editor - 01:57:00 05-19-06
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| Opposition to Iraq War at 62% in U.S. |
More adults in the United States are disappointed with their government’s decision to go to war in Iraq, according to a poll by TNS released by the Washington Post and ABC News. 62 per cent of respondents think the conflict was not worth fighting, up five points since March.For the first time since the conflict began, fewer than four-in-ten Americans believe the war with Iraq was worth fighting.The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,454 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 17,900 troops have been wounded in action. 76 per cent of respondents think there have been an unacceptable number of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.In December 2005, Iraqi voters renewed their National Assembly. On Apr. 21, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance nominated Jawad al-Maliki for the position of prime minister....
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/11939
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Editor - 01:54:00 05-19-06
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| Dead soldiers flown home as British presence in Basra is questioned |
Five military coffins, bearing the latest British dead from Iraq, arrived home yesterday. At the same time, 105 people died during two days of carnage in Afghanistan the next battleground for British forces. The bodies returning were of five personnel killed when their helicopter was shot down north of Basra. They included Flt-Lt Sarah Mulvihill, 32, the first British woman to be killed in the conflict. Her husband, Lee, watched as the coffins, covered in Union flags, which had left Iraq after a ceremony at sunset in Basra in a C-17 Globemaster, were carried to waiting hearses at RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, with the band of Britannia Royal Naval College playing laments. He described her as a "best friend" and "beloved wife", whose loss "has greatly affected and impacted on more people than anyone can comprehend." ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article548113.ece
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Editor - 01:50:00 05-19-06
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| Tribal rebels blow up two gas pipelines in Pakistan |
Suspected tribal militants blew up two natural gas pipelines in Pakistan's troubled southwest province of Baluchistan overnight, officials said on Friday.One pipeline was blown up at Goh, around 9 km (6 miles) from Sui, the town where the main production plant for Pakistan's largest gas field is located. The second was attacked an hour later on the Loti gas field supplying the Sui plant. Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest but poorest of four provinces, is home to the country's largest gas and oil reserves. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks on the pipelines, but officials said they believed Baluch militants were responsible. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1979946
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Editor - 01:48:00 05-19-06
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