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Civilians fleeing Ethiopia’s Ogaden region say troops are suppressing a separatist movement with rape, beatings and murder. Officials say no such incidents are taking place, but experts fear the crackdown could mirror violence in Darfur.
Photo: Ogaden camel drivers/CharlesFred
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“We use the same methods that we used during Saddam. Instead of Baathists and generals, it is now Shia militias and their cronies who are doing the business.” — A veteran smuggler in Iraq on the booming underground oil trade (see “Petroleum Politics,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Taliban weapons traced to Iran and China
Experts fear ‘another Darfur’ in Ethiopia
Swiss citizenship hurdles called racist
*Environment & Health*
The chemical legacy today
*Petroleum Politics*
Smuggler’s paradise for Iraqi oil runners
*Afghanistan*
Canada Ponders a Quagmire
TOP STORIES
* Taliban Weapons Traced to Iran and China
A weapons cache found in Afghanistan’s Herat province was traced back to Iran and China, prompting U.S. and British concerns over weapons sales to the Taliban.
UNICEF estimates that 800,000 Iraqi students, 63 percent of them girls, did not attend school in 2005-2006. Children are regularly kidnapped, and more than 600 teachers were killed, making this schoolroom photo, taken by an active-duty U.S. soldier, something of a rarity.
Photo: YourLocalDave
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“I believe these men were kidnapped by the First Kuwaiti Company to work on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.” — Roy Mayberry, an American medical worker, in Congressional testimony about forced labor in Iraq (see “Labor,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Thousands still sick from Cold War radiation
Big Brother’s just a mouseclick away
In Iraq, school is out
*Rwanda*
Genocide inquiry stumbles on French Connection
*Labor*
Slavery (and emancipation) for the new millennium
*Immigration*
Labor Day highlights immigrant dilemma
TOP STORIES
* Thousands Still Sick from Cold War Radiation
Government records show 36,500 Americans were sickened from exposure to uranium, plutonium and beryllium since 1945, most from building or transporting atomic weapons. At least 4,000 people have died from related illnesses, although an investigation by the Rocky Mountain News suggests many more were affected than the government is willing to compensate.
Biodiesel may be the hot new eco-fuel, but the production of soybean oil, a primary component, remains energy-intensive and too expensive to sustain a profit in many Midwest farming communities.
Photo: Rob Elam
The far-right Jobbik Party’s Magyar Garda (“Hungarian Guard”) has a flag and coat of arms (at right) similar to the Nazi-aligned Arrow Cross party of World War II, a fact that caused Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to denounce the group as “Hungary’s shame.”
Photo: melyviz
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“One day it’s from Fatah, and another day the threats come from Hamas. For the past month, I haven’t been able to write anything under my name out of fear for my life.” — A Palestinian journalist on devolving civil society in Jenin (see “Middle East,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Pakistan: Unregulated donations fund terror
Hungarian militia casts fascist shadow
The toll of fake AIDS drugs
*Energy*
Biodiesel’s mixed blessings
*Middle East*
A house divided: Palestinians trapped by warring factions
*Afghanistan*
A fundamentalist surge gains ground
TOP STORIES
Pakistan: Unregulated Donations Fund Terror
Black-market money transfers in Pakistan, known as Hawala, are done verbally, leave no paper trail, and fund much of the Islamist violence in northern Pakistan; Osama bin Laden used it to fund his terror operations, according to the 9/11 Commission.
Around the world — including South Carolina, at right — neo-Nazis are testing free speech limits, attracting sometimes raucous counter-protests, and, in Russia, pushing violence on the Web.
Photo: KOMU
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“Politically, neo-Nazi groups are not a big force. But worryingly, they reflect widely held views across society.” — Hate-crimes analyst Alexander Verkhovsky, on Russia’s surge of anti-immigrant violence (see “Fascism,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Ten chapters to jihad
The atrocity illustrations
Hate crimes and the homeless
*Religion*
Spreading the gospel of intolerance
*Fascism*
A neo-Nazi resurgence tests speech limits
*Drugs & Society*
Mexico’s drug war crosses the border
TOP STORIES
Ten Chapters to Jihad
A military manual put together by Taliban militants and clerics shows how organized the group really is, and underlines its geographic power base along the southern Pakistani border.
Iranian reformist and former president Mohammad Khatami’s inopportune handshake with an Italian woman has outraged religious conservatives, prompting him to withdraw from the 2009 presidential race.
Photo: Khatami in Cuba/Carlos Coutinho