By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. military lawyer for a Kuwaiti detainee held at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay charged on Wednesday the Obama administration was hampering his efforts to clear his client's name.
Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki said the U.S. State Department would not issue him clearance to travel on Friday to Kuwait, where he planned to hold a news conference outlining the case involving his client, Fouad Al…
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Added by Tara on August 13, 2009 at 12:45pm —
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Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, who were in groups waving white flags during the Gaza war, a report prepared by the US-based Human Rights Watch says.
Civilians Killed Holding White Flags in Gaza, published on Thursday, is HRW's third publication in five months condemning Israel's actions during the Gaza conflict, following allegations over white phosphorous and drones.
For its part, the Israeli government…
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Added by Tara on August 13, 2009 at 9:55am —
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By Michael Scherer / Washington
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the medical ethicist and oncologist who advises President Obama, does not own a television, and if you catch him in a typically energized moment, when his mind speeds even faster than his mouth, he is likely to blurt out something like, "I hate the Internet." So it took him several days in late July to discover he had been singled out by opponents of health-care reform as a "deadly doctor," who, according to an opinion column in…
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Added by Tara on August 12, 2009 at 11:22am —
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Boycotted by activists, the Israeli company AHAVA is backed by one of Israel's most powerful families
http://therealnews.com/id/4095/August 11, 2009/Who+profits+from+Israeli+occupation%3F
After the Israeli attack on Gaza earlier this year, the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaing (BDS Movement) escalated all around the world. Now,…
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Added by Tara on August 11, 2009 at 12:33pm —
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In its war in Afghanistan, the US seeks to target 50 Afghan drug traffickers who help finance the Taliban instead of halting the country's increasing drug production.
The Pentagon says it has planned to 'kill or capture' Afghan drug traffickers to disrupt the flow of drug money to the Taliban, the New York Times reported Sunday.
According to a Congressional study to be released this week, US military commanders announced that the policy is legal under the military's rules…
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Added by Tara on August 10, 2009 at 10:40am —
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Iran has slammed West's double standards in dealing with terrorism a day after the US and France admitted their role in Iran's post vote unrest.
"We expect officials of Western countries to adopt an honest approach to terrorism and condemn activities of anti-Iran terrorists including members of the Monarchy Organization of Iran and the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO)," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters on Monday.
Muhammad-Reza Ali-Zamani,…
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Added by Tara on August 10, 2009 at 10:35am —
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By Nicholas Johnston and Roger Runningen
Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama and his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, discussed combating drug cartels, preparations for flu season and Mexican truck access to U.S. roads at the start of a two-day summit today.
Obama committed to resolving the trucking issue after it was raised by Calderon during a 45-minute meeting at the North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, said an Obama administration…
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Added by Tara on August 9, 2009 at 11:48pm —
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09 August, 2009, 11:32
According to the Russian Prosecutor’s office, the Georgian attack last August killed 162 Ossetians and wounded 250. For people who lost relatives in the attack, the grieving continues.
One year after the war, vigils are being held in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinval to remember those who were killed in the Georgian attack.
Local churches will be holding dozens of memorial ceremonies over the course of the next four…
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Added by Tara on August 9, 2009 at 12:08pm —
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By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: August 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts,…
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Added by Tara on August 9, 2009 at 11:25am —
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By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North American business groups urged leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada on Friday to rein in "buy local" provisions they called a threat to free trade and economic growth.
"In this global economic downturn, it is imperative that the three countries work together more intensively than ever to make the most of their strengths and set the stage for robust and sustained economic recovery," the North American Competitiveness Council…
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Added by Tara on August 7, 2009 at 10:31am —
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By Naomi Wolf
Hearings are under way in the United States Senate to assess what to do with the 240 detainees still behind bars at Guantanamo Bay, and what will become of the military tribunals and detention without trial that the Bush administration and a compliant Congress put into place. The US Congress is also debating what will happen to the detention camp itself, which was established in 2002 to house men who were allegedly “the worst of the worst,” in a setting deliberately…
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Added by Tara on August 6, 2009 at 10:22am —
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A former Israeli military commander has told the BBC that Palestinian youngsters are routinely ill-treated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, reports the BBC' s Katya Adler from Jerusalem and the West Bank.
"You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he's really shaking... Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.
"He doesn't understand a word of what's going on around him. He doesn't know what you're going to do with him. He…
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Added by Tara on August 6, 2009 at 10:09am —
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Two Russian nuclear attack submarines have been patrolling off the eastern coast of the United States in a rare move that has alarmed the Pentagon.
One of the two submarines has remained in international waters just 200 miles (320 kilometers) off the coast of New York City, while the second sub left and moved south to make a port call in Cuba, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The US government and the military have so far refused to comment on the…
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Added by Tara on August 5, 2009 at 9:42am —
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By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
A juxtaposition of several simultaneous events this week indicates just how difficult it is going to be to achieve any meaningful progress in Arab-Israeli peace talks, when the heart of the conflict is land that Israelis and Palestinians both claim as their ancestral patrimony. The four events are the American drive to secure confidence-building measures from the Arabs in return for Israel’s freezing of its…
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Added by Tara on August 5, 2009 at 9:22am —
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A poster depicting President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" has sparked controversy after it appeared on the streets of Los Angeles.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 6:37PM BST 04 Aug 2009
The poster shows the US president with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick above the caption "socialism", in an apparent attack on the US president's efforts to reform health care and stimulus…
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Added by Tara on August 4, 2009 at 6:24pm —
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A third man has died of pneumonic plague in north-western China where a town of more than 10,000 people has been sealed off, officials say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8183335.stm
The 64-year-old man was a neighbour of the first two people to die from the plague in Ziketan in Qinghai Province.
Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan, as medics are…
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Added by Tara on August 4, 2009 at 11:15am —
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Posted by: Eric Auchard
The resignation of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Apple’s board should come as no surprise to anyone with an inkling of what corporate governance means.
But then Silicon Valley’s idea of corporate boards has long consisted of cozy, interlocking directorships which would be considered collusion in most other industries.
Google’s CEO is not leaving Apple’s board voluntarily. He is only stepping down in response to the increased government…
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Added by Tara on August 3, 2009 at 6:41pm —
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By Rick Barrett of the Journal Sentinel
Wisconsin's dairy industry, still thousands of farms strong, is awash in trouble.
The average dairy farm in the state is losing about $100 per cow each month, according to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation.
With more than 1.25 million cows in the state, it means the industry is losing about $4 million a day.
That's largely because farmers, who received about $20 for every hundred pounds of milk they produced…
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Added by Tara on August 3, 2009 at 11:23am —
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By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is seeking to speed deployment of an ultra-large "bunker-buster" bomb on the most advanced U.S. bomber as soon as July 2010, the Air Force said on Sunday, amid concerns over perceived nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran.
The non-nuclear, 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, which is still being tested, is designed to destroy deeply buried bunkers beyond the reach of existing bombs.
If Congress agrees…
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Added by Tara on August 2, 2009 at 6:58pm —
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The Obama administration's plan to end production of the F-22 Raptor has received plenty of press coverage, but the Pentagon budget itself, even though it's again on the rise, hardly rates a bit of notice. In fact, amid the plethora of issues large and small -- from health care reform to Gates-gate, from energy policy to the culpability of Michael Jackson's doctor -- that make up the American debate in the media, in Washington, and possibly even in the country, what Chalmers Johnson has called…
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Added by Tara on August 2, 2009 at 1:55am —
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