contributions

British troops took turns abusing a group of Iraqi detainees, dousing them in cold water, kickboxing them against a wall and ordering them to "dance like Michael Jackson," one of the detainees said in a chilling statement read out in a London court.
Kifah Taha al-Mutari’s graphic allegations emerged at the start of a three-day high court hearing in London into whether independent inquiries should be called into the alleged deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of British troops based in (…)

British soldiers killed a 26-year-old Iraqi civilian by repeatedly beating him on the neck, chest and genital areas, High Court judges have heard.
Baha Mousa was one of six Iraqis whose families are challenging the UK Government’s decision not to hold an independent inquiry into their deaths.
Fellow hotel worker Kifah Taha al-Mutari said soldiers competed to see who could kick detainees the furthest.
The six test cases include the shootings of four Iraqi civilians.
The victims were (…)

By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
A British court heard for the first time yesterday allegations that British soldiers beat to death an innocent Iraqi citizen and shot dead five others.
The test case could have far-reaching implications for the discipline of the British Army operating in foreign territories and eventually lead to compensation claims from Iraqi civilians.
Rabinder Singh QC, counsel for the Iraqi families, told the High Court in London of the dying moments (…)

By Myra P. Saefong & Lisa Sanders
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) — Crude-oil futures closed just pennies short of $43 a barrel Wednesday, with the threat of a production halt at Russian oil giant Yukos and signs of strong U.S. demand driving prices to the highest level ever recorded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"Demand outpaces supplies; OPEC may be near full production capacity; and Russia, which was not on traders’ radar screens one month ago, may be the straw that breaks the (…)

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor and Andrew Clennell
The opium harvest in Afghanistan this year will be one of the biggest on record, the Foreign Office said yesterday, and it has triggered a flood of heroin on Britain’s streets.
The revelation will prove highly embarrassing for Tony Blair, who cited cutting the supply of heroin as one of the main reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, in addition to removing the Taliban regime and rooting out al-Qa’ida from the (…)

An armed group holding two Pakistani hostages in Iraq had announced their execution, al-Jazeera satellite news channel reported Wednesday evening.
The Qatar-based TV station said it had received a videotape showing the killings but would not air it as it was too gruesome.
On Monday, the kidnappers said they had kidnapped two Pakistanis and one Iraqi, also reported by the al-Jazeera satellite TV.
The Arab-language channel showed identity cards with pictures which are believed (…)

By John Ryle
Darfur is a 150,000-square-mile expanse of desert and savannah, with five or six million inhabitants, spreading out from the fertile slopes of Jebel Marra, the mountainous zone in Sudan’s far west. Remote from the country’s political heartland on the Nile, it is linked to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, by seven hundred miles of dirt road and a single-track railway. Over the last sixteen months a disas-ter has been unfolding in Darfur, one that is agonizingly familiar to (…)

Spain summoned the Australian ambassador in Madrid to protest against her country’s view that the pullout of Spanish troops from Iraq has given al-Qaida the upper hand.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had criticised Spain on Sunday for pulling its troops from Iraq, saying it encouraged "terrorists" to continue their agenda.
His comments came soon after a group claiming to be the European wing of al-Qaida threatened attacks on Australia and Italy if they did not withdraw (…)

Posted by Andy Stern
There were several press reports in today’s newspapers regarding my views about the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO. These reports reflect a mixture of comments made in several different interviews. Let me be clear...
There’s nothing I want more than a John Kerry victory. He’s spent a lifetime fighting for good jobs and strong families, and a Kerry victory is the biggest goal of our union right now. We will spend $65 million and are sending over 2,004 workers to (…)

Stern Asserts That a Kerry Win Could Set Back Efforts to Reform the Party
By David S. Broder
BOSTON Breaking sharply with the enforced harmony of the Democratic National Convention, the president of the largest AFL-CIO union said Monday that both organized labor and the Democratic Party might be better off in the long run if Sen. John F. Kerry loses the election.
Andrew L. Stern, the head of the 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), said in an interview with (…)