contributions

By WILL LESTER
WASHINGTON - Democrats say they will have a rapid and simple response to the Republican National Convention that starts next week: Mission not accomplished.
It’s a play on President Bush’s flight in May 2003 to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, where he addressed U.S. troops standing beneath a banner that said "Mission Accomplished" and declared an end to major combat in Iraq. The banner has been criticized as the fighting in Iraq continues and the U.S. death toll (…)

By ABBAS FAYADH
BASRA, Iraq - Saboteurs have attacked about 20 oil pipelines in southern Iraq, reducing exports from the key oil producing region by at least one third, a top oil official said Thursday.
The cluster of pipelines was attacked late Wednesday in Berjasiya, 20 miles southwest of the southern city of Basra, an official with the state-run South Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity. The pipelines, which connect the Rumeila oilfields to Berjasiya, were still ablaze Thursday. (…)

By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Arab news channel Al Jazeera reported early Friday that it had received a videotape from a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq showing the killing of an Italian journalist, Enzo Baldoni, who disappeared last week while traveling to Najaf. Italy’s Ansa news agency quoted Italian officials in Iraq as confirming the Al Jazeera report.
A spokesman for Al Jazeera, Jihad Ballout, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the satellite (…)

By Louise Egan
SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile’s Supreme Court has stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution in a notorious human rights case, raising hopes of victims that he may finally face trial for abuses during his 17-year regime.
The 9-8 ruling on Thursday upheld a lower court decision in May that removed the immunity granted Pinochet as a former head of state.
The lower court said the retired general, 88, could be charged in connection with the (…)

by Erskine McCullough
Athens - Top International Olympic Committee officials are furious at what they see as US President George Bush’s hijacking of the Olympic name for his re-election campaign.
IOC marketing head Gerhard Heiberg tried to play down the controversy on Wednesday, saying simply that they would like the ads running on American television to stop.
"We are following what is happening and hope the campaign will stop," said Heiberg.
"The United States Olympic Committee is (…)

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | August 25, 2004
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior generals share responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and failed to ensure that overseas military prisons were running smoothly, a review panel said yesterday in a final report that portrays the extent of prisoner abuse at military camps around the globe as greater than previously known.
But while failures of leadership and poor planning extended to Rumsfeld (…)

By SIMON COLLINS
One of the country’s top Maori academics says parts of New Zealand will see the same kind of bloodshed as seen in Palestine and Israel if the Government nationalises tribally owned parts of the coastline.
Professor Margaret Mutu, the head of Maori Studies at Auckland University and chairwoman of the Ngati Kahu tribe of the Far North, told the parliamentary committee on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill in Auckland yesterday that Ngati Kahu would stop the bill being (…)

By DEXTER FILKINS and ALEX BERENSON
NAJAF, Iraq - Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric returned to the country on Wednesday from a hospital stay in London, calling for a mass demonstration here to end three weeks of fighting, and hours later American forces made their way almost to the gate of the Shrine of Imam Ali, where Shiite insurgents had established a base.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who commands the loyalty of millions of Shiite Muslims, came across the border in a convoy from (…)

A group of British lawmakers plan to invoke a parliamentary procedure last used more than 150 years ago to impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair over the war in Iraq, British newspapers report.
Eleven Members of Parliament (MPs), mainly Welsh and Scottish nationalists who opposed the war and two opposition Conservatives, want to use the dated practice to force Mr Blair to defend himself over his decision to go to war.
The newspapers report it has almost no chance of success and is likely to (…)

By FRAN SCHOR
The recent controversy surrounding the "Swift Boat Veterans" ad challenging John Kerry’s Vietnam record and his later statements as a leader of Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW) have fallen into predictable partisan perspectives. Republicans and their media attack machine still insist that Kerry’s medals are suspect and his VVAW activities were treasonous. Kerry and the Democrats, in turn, have found further documentary evidence and eye-witness accounts to support his (…)