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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 40

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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“Maybe we’ll have one or two executions each year, just to prove that we still can.” — Activist Stephen Elliot on new challenges to capital punishment nationwide (see “Crime & Punishment,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Kurdish vote puts pressure on Arabs
Bhutto promises nuclear access
Refugees take a risky route to Yemen
*Energy*
A nuclear “renaissance”
*Crime & Punishment*
The death sentence on trial? *World*
Russia and the Muslims

TOP STORIES
* Kurdish Vote Puts Pressure on Arabs
Kurdish officials are beginning the process of sending Arab residents of Kurdistan back to their cities of origin ahead of a referendum on whether to absorb Kirkuk into the Kurdistan Regional Government area.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 38

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Dear readers:
In light of the ongoing protests in Burma/Myanmar, we bring you a special edition of News You Might Have Missed this week. Instead of several shorter roundups of world news, we’re focusing on Newsdesk’s previous coverage of the oil industry and the money that keeps the Myanmar junta in power. This special feature also brings together the latest coverage of oil and gas development there, which promises billions more in profits for the junta. It’s all the context and depth you’re not getting from mainstream media — a hallmark of Newsdesk.org’s journalistic mission. * If you find our work of value, please tell your friends, family and co-workers, and invite them to subscribe to our free newsletter.

Featured

News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 37

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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.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 36

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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.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 35

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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.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 34

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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.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 33

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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“I’ll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about … Like I said, there’s no problem. We’d just like to get to the bottom of this.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 32

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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
*Top Stories*
“More than anything, this was a kidnapping. With it, the government is sending a political message: ‘Don’t protest.'”
— Julio Cesar Portillo, husband of Marta Lorena Araujo, who was arrested for terrorism after blockading a water-privatization conference in El Salvador (see “Water,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Young immigrants take a hard road north
Cargo security plan comes under fire
Green mandate sparks E.U. lawsuit
*Pollution & Health*
Back to the beach, with feces
*Water*
Buy me a river: Water privatization pushes forward
*Middle East*
Hezbollah: Talkin’ war and peace in Lebanon

TOP STORIES
Young Immigrants Take a Hard Road North
A growing number of youth and children throughout Central America are migrating on their own to Mexico and the United States, doing odd jobs and pickup work along the way. The Christian Science Monitor reports the number of migrant children increased from 3,000 in 2004 to 5,000 last year; many are repatriated, but often set out again, following parents and siblings who have already headed north.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 31

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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“Even today people call us the Janjaweed. They won’t say it to our faces, but when our backs are turned they call after us.” — Zakaria Yacoub, an Arab village chief in Chad, on the ripple effects of violence in Darfur (see “Sudan,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Iraqi politicians fear U.S. pullout
Pentagon delayed bomb-proof cars
Officials praise cabbie’s plan for China’s water
*Zimbabwe*
Crises in climax
*Sudan*
You can’t go home again

TOP STORIES
Iraqi Politicians Fear U.S. Pullout
While Congress debates (or refuses to debate) a withdrawal timeline for Iraq, most Sunni and Shia Arab parties in the Iraqi parliament are getting nervous at the prospect of losing the protective presence of U.S. troops.

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News You Might Have Missed * Vol. 6, No. 30

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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“All of these renewable sources of energy are incredibly invasive and aggressive with regard to nature. Renewables may be renewable, but they are not green.” — Prof. Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University, NY, says the industrialization of open space for biofuels and wind farms undermine the benefits of renewable power (see “Energy,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
A farewell to arms
Copyright expires on British Invasion
Mommy, I got the safe-sex merit badge!