Approval for Blair’s Government Down to 30% in UK(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Few adults in Britain express satisfaction with the administration headed by Tony Blair, according to a poll by YouGov published in the Daily Telegraph. 30 per cent of respondents approve of the government’s record to date, down three points since October.
In May, British voters renewed the House of Commons. The governing Labour party secured 356 seats, followed by the Conservatives with 197 and the Liberal Democrats with 62. Blair has served... (more)
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Hussein trial adjourned amid courtroom rancorDefendants complain about court-appointed attorneys
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's trial adjourned proceedings Monday until December 5 after defendants complained about their attorneys.
The defendants said they weren't pleased with court-appointed lawyers and they also wanted replacements for two attorneys who were killed recently.
The slayings of defense attorneys Sadoon Janabi and Adil Muhammed al-Zubaidi have made securi... (more)
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Nepal radio shut over BBC reportPolice in Nepal have closed a radio station and arrested five staff members for trying to rebroadcast a BBC interview with the Maoist rebel leader.
In the interview, Prachanda says the rebels may reconsider their opposition to the monarchy if the king holds free elections for a constituent assembly.
Radio Sagarmatha was about to broadcast when the station in the capital, Kathmandu, was raided late on Sunday.
Five staff members were arrested for what p... (more)
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Who’s Afraid Of ‘Dangerous’ Sidney Jones?Indonesia has barred American human rights advocate and terrorism expert Sidney Jones from entering the country for a year, claiming she is “dangerous” and could “disturb public order”.
It is the second time in as many years that Jones, the Southeast Asia project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG), has been banished from Indonesia.
The latest ban will be a severe embarrassment to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and perhaps al... (more)
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EU threatens sanctions for states operating secret CIA camps BERLIN (AFX) - EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has warned that any European Union nation found to have allowed secret CIA prison camps to operate on their soil could have their EU voting rights suspended.
'Should the accusations be accurate, I would be forced to draw serious consequences,' Frattini told a security conference in the German capital.
He said the operation of such camps on EU soil would violate the bloc's rules governing freedom and human right... (more)
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Advocate for Coca Legalization Leads in Bolivian RaceCHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - In nearly 50 years of growing coca, José Torrico has seen army soldiers swarm across his fields to pull up his plants and heard threats from successive Bolivian governments determined to destroy his crop.
And like thousands of other coca farmers in this verdant, tropical region of central Bolivia, Mr. Torrico has refused to stop growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, even in the face of a relentless United States-financed effort to stamp it out.<... (more)
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Airliner Scare Over Turkey From what we can make of a Turkish news report, warplanes from that country were scrambled to force down a German airliner that passed over on its way from Egypt to Munich -- but they apparently failed to intercept it. According to a somewhat sketchy translation of the Zaman Daily News, the A321 (airline unknown) reportedly crossed over Turkey without contact with air traffic control. The fighters were scrambled but, for reasons yet unexplained, didn't find the airliner. The news service quo... (more)
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Iran encourages North Korean nuclear work with free oil and gas offerIran encouraged North Korea to pursue its nuclear programme with an offer of free oil and natural gas, according to a press report quoting Western intelligence officials.
A senior Iranian official who presides over a group called the Iranian-North Korean Friendship Society made the offer during a visit to North Korea in mid-October, German magazine Der Spiegel reported in its latest issue to be released Monday.
Intelligence officials were not sure how to react to th... (more)
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Chavez's TV drama touches off Fox fightA weekly television show is probably not the best place to conduct foreign policy, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez likes to make his own rules.
Plus, he has a weekly television show.
The program is called Alo, Presidente ("Hello, President") and it dominates the Venezuelan airwaves every Sunday, as South America's most voluble and least predictable leader takes phone calls, talks politics, screens videos, muses about his alimentary system, and pretty much does ... (more)
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Chavez's cheap oil for US poor angers WashingtonVenezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, has pulled off his greatest public relations coup yet in his campaign to irritate the Bush Administration with a deal to supply cheap fuel to thousands of poor residents of Boston and New York.
To the anger of many in Washington, Citgo Petroleum Corporation, a company controlled by the Venezuelan Government, will supply more than 45 million litres of oil at 40 per cent below market prices.
The deal is one of the most spectacular m... (more)
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U.S. forces shoot Iraqi civiliansU.S. occupation forces opened fire on a crowded minibus near the Iraqi city of Baquba on Monday, killing five members of an Iraqi family, including three children, and wounding three others, witnesses and police said, according to Reuters news agency.
A U.S. military spokesman claimed that the minivan carrying the Iraqi family failed to stop as it approached a roadblock at about 0800 (0500 GMT) outside Baquba.
According to Reuters, the Iraqi family was traveling fro... (more)
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Israel and Hizb Allah clash on borderIsraeli warplanes have struck southern Lebanese targets in what Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz described as the largest-scale Israeli response to cross-border attacks by Lebanese fighters since 2000.
Mofaz spoke just hours after Israeli fighter jets attacked a command post of resistance group Hizb Allah in south Lebanon and army bulldozers entered Lebanon to demolish a Hizb Allah post just north of the community of Ghajar.
The Israeli military and Hizb Allah b... (more)
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Chavez and Fox recall ambassadorsMexico and Venezuela have recalled their ambassadors amid a diplomatic spat between the two countries.
Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the move minutes after Venezuela said it was ordering home its envoy.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez refused to bow to Mexican demands to apologise for warning off Mr Fox - after describing him as a "puppy" of US imperialism.
The row began last week, after Mexico supported a failed US bid to relaunch regional free tra... (more)
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UK Helped Terror Bombers Says IranBRITAIN is involved in bombings in southern Iran, the country's spy chief claimed yesterday.
Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Ejehi said: "Involvement of some terrorist networks and their foreign ties, especially with Britain, has been proved."
He said there was a link to two bombings last month at a shopping centre in the southern city of Ahvaz - which killed six people and wounded more than 100 - and four in June, when eight died.
More than 30 su... (more)
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UK troops out of Iraq 'next year'British troops could leave Iraq by the end of next year, the country's president Jalal Talabani has predicted.
But he warned an immediate withdrawal of multinational forces rather than a gradual one would be a "catastrophe" for Iraq and would lead to civil war.
He told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme Iraqis did not want foreign troops to remain indefinitely.
"Within one year....Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British forces in the south," he ... (more)
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Bush, Chavez clash on trade as violence mars opening of hemispheric summitMAR DEL PLATA, Argentina – President Bush pressed his free trade agenda on Friday at the opening session of a hemispheric summit in the face of a challenge by Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chavez and street violence by anti-American protesters.
The disagreement between Bush and Chavez over trade unfolded against the backdrop of a daylong protest that turned from peaceful to unruly and lawless by evening as about a thousand rock-throwing militants burned an American flag an... (more)
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U.S. Should Repay Millions to Iraq, a U.N. Audit FindsAn auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.
The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work.
Some of the work involved postwar fue... (more)
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`Sound bombs' hurt Gaza civilians Israel is deploying a terrifying new tactic against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip by letting loose deafening "sound bombs" that cause widespread fear, induce miscarriages and traumatize children.
The removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip opened the way for the military to use air force jets to create dozens of sonic booms by breaking the sound barrier at low altitude, sending shockwaves across the territory, often at night.
Palestinians liken the... (more)
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