NEWARK, N.J. — The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden’s driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, “about two weeks after” the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Under the military’s “up-or-out” promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing a 20-year career of military service.

How dare he do his job! (more…)

My daughter just started high school. This milestone was marked by the arrival in our home of a ream of paperwork. Along with the usual bureaucratic permissions, I found tucked into this package a seemingly innocuous form that carries extraordinary consequences: Failing to fill it out might result in my daughter being harassed, assaulted, or being fast-tracked to fight in Iraq. (more…)

HOUSTON — A group of illegal immigrants who worked for Wendy’s International Inc. is suing the restaurant chain because the company fired them after discovering it had missed a deadline for joining a federal program that would have helped them attain legal status. (more…)

Rigging row over Georgia poll

Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, has claimed victory in municipal elections, but the opposition accuses him of seeking to falsify results. (more…)

The Democrats look likely to make midterm gains as Bush tries to recover from scandals

The White House has been rocked by the resignation of a top aide to political guru Karl Rove after the official was implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

The revelation comes at a disastrous time for President George Bush as crucial mid-term elections have already been hit by sleazy sex allegations that Republican Mark Foley was sexually preying on young congressional pages. (more…)

It is one of the hardest things about being a military family. How to cope when a husband and father, or wife and mother, is posted abroad, especially to combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

Now the United States army has come up with a bizarre solution: Flat Daddy and Flat Mommy.

What the hell? This better be some sick joke… (more…)

Russians and Chechens alike mourned journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin Anna Politkovskaya on Sunday, saying her murder was a political killing to stifle the free press. (more…)

Iran insisted on Sunday that it would not suspend sensitive atomic work despite signs that world powers were close to agreeing on sanctions against Tehran.

“We believe that suspension is totally rejected and is unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.

Some media reports had suggested Iran may be prepared to freeze atomic fuel manufacturing work for 90 days to allow direct negotiations with the United States and other major world powers to take place. (more…)

Identity cards are to be presented as a crucial weapon in the fight against illegal immigrants in a significant change of tack by ministers.

Until now, senior figures led by Tony Blair have insisted that the main reason for pressing ahead with the controversial programme is that ID cards will help win the war on terrorism. (more…)

The nuclear weapon that North Korea intends to detonate in an underground test is big enough to kill up to 200,000 people were it ever to be used against a city such as Seoul or Tokyo, Russian military experts have revealed. (more…)

Australians want their personal, financial and employment details better protected from telemarketing firms, but their health information more freely available to hospitals, a new privacy report reveals. (more…)

North Korea warned of catastrophic consequences on Sunday if South Korea’s military engaged in “unforgivable military provocation” like the weekend skirmish at a heavily fortified border between the two Koreas.

South Korean troops fired warning shots on Saturday after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed over the border, adding to mounting tension after Pyongyang said on Wednesday it planned to conduct a nuclear test. (more…)

Rising tides of untreated sewage and plastic debris are seriously threatening marine life and habitat around the globe, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned in a report Wednesday. The number of ocean “dead zones” has grown from 150 in 2004 to about 200 today, said Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesperson.

“These are becoming more common in developing countries,” Nuttall told IPS from Nairobi, Kenya.

Dead zones can encompass areas of ocean 100,000 square kms in size where little can live because there is no oxygen left in the water. Nitrogen pollution, mainly from farm fertilisers and sewage, produces blooms of algae that absorb all of the oxygen in the water. (more…)

The CIA used a military base in Germany to interrogate the man accused of masterminding the September 11 terrorist attacks and a fellow al-Qaeda leader, according to testimony from terrorism suspects.

The claims, reported by British lawyers of two detainees at Guantanamo Bay, are the latest twist in the controversy over allegations that the CIA held alleged terrorist operatives in clandestine jails on European soil as part of its so-called “extraordinary renditions” programme. (more…)

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

U.S. casualties during the Vietnam War rose sharply a few years into the conflict as well. (more…)