contributions

By Severin Carrell
The Army has paid out £390 to the family of an eight-year-old Iraqi girl who was killed after being hit by a bullet fired by a British soldier, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Hanan Saleh Matrud died in an alleyway near her home in northern Basra after a British soldier with the King’s Regiment opened fire nearby. The ricocheting bullet left a deep wound across her stomach, and she later died in hospital.
The soldiers claim they fired a warning shot in the air (…)

By Neil Mackay
BRITISH forces are arresting children in Iraq and handing them to US forces who interrogate and detain them indefinitely in prisons including the notorious Abu Ghraib.
A Sunday Herald investigation has uncovered an internal Unicef report written in June that reveals that children in Basra, which is controlled by UK forces, are being "arrested for alleged activities targeting the occupying forces".
The investigation has also established that at least 100 children, some as (…)

by Kelly Wright and Anna Stolley and AP
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (search) raised the threat alert level Sunday for the financial sectors in Washington, D.C., New York and northern New Jersey.
Ridge said several targets have been specifically threatened: The World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., and the Citigroup building and New York Stock Exchange (search) in New York City.
Ridge said the information came (…)

By Edmund Blair and Maher al-Thanoon
BAGHDAD/MOSUL - Car bombs have exploded outside at least five Christian churches in Iraq, killing more than a dozen people and wounding many more in an apparently coordinated attack timed to coincide with evening prayers.
"We are expecting a huge number of casualties," an Interior Ministry source told Reuters on Sunday, saying there had been four blasts at churches in Baghdad and two in the northern city of Mosul. Police in Mosul said they knew of (…)

by Lamrani Salim July 30, 2004
According to its strategy of destabilization of Cuban society, the United States, in addition to financing and directing "independent journalists", and "human rights members" has created "independent libraries"(1). The main role of those organizations consists of carrying out a job of disinformation in the heart of the country, and in creating favorable conditions for weakening the nation, which is already in an extremely hostile geopolitical context. Those (…)

A car bomb has exploded in Iraq’s city of Mosul killing at least five people and wounding 51 while a roadside bomb in Baghdad has taken two lives.
The car bomb exploded at 8.05am (0405 GMT) on Sunday, in front of the police station at Somar in south-east Mosul, said Captain Nidam Muhammad.
Of the five dead, three were policemen and two civilians, reported Abd Al-Qahhar Jumaa, Aljazeera’s correspondent.
The driver of the car drove up at great speed. The police opened fire at him as it (…)

A Sunday Herald investigation has discovered that coalition forces are holding more than 100 children in jails such as Abu Ghraib. Witnesses claim that the detainees - some as young as 10 - are also being subjected to rape and torture By Neil Mackay
It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets," he said in a (…)

Officials of the British Foreign Office were investigating allegations that US soldiers assaulted and abused British detainees at the US Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, the Independent newspaper reported Sunday.
According to the paper, the Foreign Office has written to the US Defense Ministry after five Britons, detained in the camp for more than two years, were released in March and alleged they were kicked, punched and stood on by guards, interrogated at gunpoint, and taunted by (…)

Michael Moore got the facts wrong in his controversial film "Fahrenheit 9/11" and did not travel to Saudi Arabia to research his documentary, the Sunday Telegraph has quoted Saudi’s ambassador to Britain as saying.
Prince Turki al-Faisal said in an interview the documentary was "grossly unfair" to the Saudis.
Moore’s film has earned more than $100 million (55 million pounds) in the United States and become the most successful documentary ever.
Among its claims are that the Bush (…)

You got to feel bad for George W Bush on some level. Thanks for that warm welcome...
I don’t know what it is with right wingers and Republicans. They seem to have hijacked over the years the word "patriotism", the American flag, these things. And it’s an odd thing. I have been thinking about this lately. Because the true patriots are those who believe the important thing is to ask questions, you know. To dissent when necessary. And I know a lot of people have seen my film and the obvious (…)