New York - The United Nations should avail itself as an instrument for a "new world order of the 21st century," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly. Sarkozy, who won the presidency this year on a strong reform platform to modernize France, urged the world body to embark on programmes ranging from equal wealth distribution to fighting corruption in his speech full of references to France's past revolutionary ideals.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide bombing in Iraq's volatile Diyala province ripped through a "reconciliation meeting" on Monday night attended by Sunni and Shiite militia leaders -- a brazen attack that killed and wounded dozens and fractured an effort to foster amity between the rival sects.
Iraq's Interior Ministry and the U.S. military counted 24 dead and 37 wounded.
The attacker detonated a suicide belt inside the Shifta Shiite mosque in western Baquba during t... (more)
THE United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran.
Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.
It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with rea... (more)
MOSCOW, September 20 (Itar-Tass) - Two Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers, within the scope of a long-range aviation drill, flew along the coasts of Alaska and Canada and returned to their home airfield via the North Pole on Thursday, Air Force spokesman Col Alexander Drobyshevsky told Itar-Tass.
"A pair of Tu-95MS planes flew along a large range along the coasts of Alaska and Canada and, returned home via the North Pole. The bombers were refueled in mid air by a... (more)
President Bush's former United Nations ambassador John Bolton said the United States would stand behind a pre-emptive strike by Israel against countries developing "WMD facilities."
In his remark, printed in Tuesday's edition of the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, Bolton directly referenced Iran.
"The greatest concern is to prevent Iran and other countries in the region from acquiring nuclear weapons," Bolton said, according to JTA.org, a Je... (more)
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said the U.S. government misinformed Americans and the world about 9/11, echoing conspiracy theories about the terror attacks against the United States six years ago.
In an essay read by a Cuban television presenter on Tuesday night, Castro said the Pentagon was hit by a rocket, not a plane, because no traces were found of its passengers.
"Today one knows there was deliberate misinformation," wrote Castro... (more)
The RAF carried out its biggest operation to protect British airspace since the Cold War when four Tornados were scrambled to intercept eight Russian bombers approaching over the Atlantic.
An early warning aircraft and a VC-10 tanker were also launched to support the British fighters responding to apparent sabre-rattling by President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian aircraft, all Tupolev 95s, codenamed "Bears" by Nato, turned back before reaching British airspace.
... (more)
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military... (more)
Anyone who thinks that racist rules are a thing of the past is wrong, according to the mother of a four-and-a-half year old child who was rejected from a Talmud Torah school because of his grandfather’s ethnicity.
“They are alive and kicking in all their ugliness in Ashkenazi haredi educational institutions,” the mother said.
The child was denied admission to a Talmlud Torah school in Beit Shemesh because of what its principal called a “stai... (more)
The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.
WASHINGTON, Aug 28 (IPS) - Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.
Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted imme... (more)
Leaders of Bilderberg have gathered the appropriate flunkies at the Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello, about 50 miles outside Quebec, to accomplish a North American Union without congressional action.
Bilderberg met at the same site in 1983. The Aug. 20-21 session of the unknown Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is struggling to define its goal of a borderless union of the United States, Mexico and Canada as something Americans will welcome, after it has... (more)
A coalition of Canadian, American and Mexican energy workers' unions and nine lobby groups yesterday denounced the Security and Prosperity Partnership discussed by leaders of the three countries in Montebello, as a threat to each nation's energy sovereignty.
The Montebello meeting is a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater co-operation and information sharing.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day.
Suha, 37, is a mother of three. She says her husband thinks she is cleaning houses when she leaves home.
"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears ... (more)
When a top U.S. commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shiite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73 percent of all July attacks that had killed or wounded U.S. forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to “intelligence reports” of a “surge” in Iranian assistance.
But the obvious reason for the rise in Shiite-related U.S. casualties, — ignored in U.S. media co... (more)
Nearly one million and a thousand Iraqi civilians have lost their lives since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The figure is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on the only scientifically valid study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to JustForeignPolicy.org.
The estimate is a rough update of a scientific study conducted by researchers at Johns ... (more)
The statement could not have been clearer. On ratifying a new European constitution, Labour said in its 2005 manifesto, “We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign wholeheartedly for a yes vote.”
Tony Blair added: “That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate.” Nor would there be any fudging over the abortive 2004 constitution rejected by the French and the Dutch. Blair said, “You can’t h... (more)
Gordon Brown is facing increasing pressure to honour Labour's election manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the 'new' EU Treaty - which bears an overwhelming resemblance to the old, rejected EU constitution.
The Treaty, which is largely unintelligible, would transfer many of Britain's powers over migration, energy and transport to Brussels.
So, what would happen if the Treaty were brought in through the back door?
President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.
At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.
... (more)
Advancing the movement toward economic and political globalism, the African Union is moving down the path of regional economic integration, with the expected end result of continental economic and political integration.
On July 11, 2000, at the Lome Summit in Togo, the states constituting the Organization of African Unity, signed a declaration to form the 53-nation African Union.
Britain and Israel face a diplomatic and legal showdown this week over the death of James Miller, an award-winning British film-maker who was shot by Israel soldiers while working on a documentary in the Gaza Strip more than four years ago.Israel has failed to respond to an ultimatum issued by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, to his opposite number, Meni Mazuz, on 26 June to launch a criminal investigation within six weeks against the officer suspected of firing the fatal shot. The d... (more)
