Representatives of 118 Nonaligned Movement nations condemned Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and supported a peaceful resolution to the U.S.-Iran nuclear dispute in the final declaration Saturday of a summit that brought together some of the United States’ staunchest foes. (more…)

The radio industry keeps losing people like Danny C. Costa, a senior at Boston University who grew up listening to radio in New York and New Jersey.

For the last few years, Mr. Costa has tuned out radio in favor of Web sites where he can get access to downloads or videos he heard about from friends. He prefers these to the drumbeat of the Top 40. He burns his favorite songs onto CD’s or copies them onto his iPod.

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The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America’s electoral process is wide open to abuse. But as Paul Harris discovers, the system has actually worsened since then. (more…)

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for “imperative reasons of security” under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative’s review of Hussein’s work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system. (more…)

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes,” U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross. (more…)

Actually, Cuban government officials have been arguing for decades that Montaner is far from a liberal paladin of human rights and democracy. They say that he’s very close to known international terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. He’s an agent of the CIA, the Cubans insist. He has ties to the NGO, Reporters without Borders, which, last year, admitted it is financed by the CIA. (more…)

NEW YORK — A report today by veteran McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) reporters John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel warns that some of the same type of shaky intelligence that proved false in the run up to the Iraq war may be rearing its head again in regard to Iran.

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When passports talk

September 17th, 2006

In a Washington Post column, Bruce Schneier talks about the new RFID passports being issued by the Colorado passport office now, and by all US passport offices by year’s end. The new passports contain a chip with all kinds of data about you - and broadcast that information so they can be read without being inserted into a reader.

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Big Brother is shouting at you

September 17th, 2006

Big Brother is not only watching you - now he’s barking orders too. Britain’s first ‘talking’ CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

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Bombs kill 23 in Iraq’s Kirkuk

September 17th, 2006

KIRKUK, Iraq — Four blasts killed 23 people in Iraq’s ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk on Sunday, including a huge suicide truck bomb, a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged divided Iraqis to embrace reconciliation. (more…)

The commander of the British taskforce in southern Afghanistan said last week that UK troops could be in the country for as long as 10 years.

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Major Problems At Polls Feared

September 17th, 2006

Some Officials Say Voting Law Changes And New Technology Will Cause Trouble

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat — this time on a national scale — of last week’s Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

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Prior to the war, the administration stressed that the United States needed to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and had connections to al-Qaeda. None of that turned out to be true.

Now, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has introduced a new rationale for the invasion of Iraq, high gas prices. From a radio interview last week:

Again, no joke. (more…)

Fears over drug for troops in Iraq

September 17th, 2006

British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are being treated with an experimental drug that has not been fully tested.

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This week, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a document entitled “Ten Facts About Guantanamo”. The document contains relatively insignificant facts — all detainees receive a pair of “high-top sneakers” — and ignores the facility’s real problems.

I wish this was a joke, but it is not. (more…)