Defying a government-imposed curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in central Iraq today, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for a series of devastating car bombs that killed hundreds of people the previous day in a Shiite slum, residents and police officials said.
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A series of car bombs killed 202 people in a Shi’ite stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday in the bloodiest single attack since the U.S. invasion of 2003.
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Two Italian aid workers were kidnapped in the chaotic Gaza Strip as three Palestinians were killed in Israeli incursions.
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The Homeland Security Department has decided it will require virtually all air travelers entering the United States after Jan. 23 to show passports, even U.S. citizens.
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U.S. President George W. Bush will meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan next week with grim new statistics showing record numbers of Iraqis were killed last month and many more fled the country.
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The AIDS pandemic is growing in all areas of the world, with worrisome signs of resurgence in some countries that were trumpeted as successes in combating the disease, the United Nations said yesterday.
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The cabinet minister of Lebanon was assassinated.
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In Mexico, at least 100,000 people packed Mexico City’s central square Monday to mark the launch of a parallel government led by defeated Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
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A new study from the Israeli group Peace Now says nearly forty percent of Israeli settlements in the West Bank are built on privately-owned Palestinian land. Israel’s largest settlement — Ma’ale Adumim — is built on eighty-five percent private land.
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A team of United Nations investigators has concluded that Israel engaged in “a significant pattern of excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate force†against Lebanese civilians that amounted to “a flagrant violation†of international law during its war against Hezbollah last summer.
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Pentagon officials conducting a review of Iraq strategy are considering a substantial but temporary increase in American troop levels.
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In response to widespread public criticism, Rupert Murdoch announced that he would not publish If I Did It, a book by O. J. Simpson in which the former football star describes how he carried out the 1994 killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
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On Capitol Hill, a leading Democratic Congressmember has announced plans for legislation to re-introduce the military draft. New York Democrat Charles Rangel, the incoming chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, says he believes mandatory conscription would deter politicians from launching wars. Rangel said:
“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq… [if] members of Congress and the administration thought their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way.”
Human Rights Watch is calling the recent trial of Saddam Hussein “fundamentally unfair.†In a new report released today, Human Rights Watch says the trial was undermined by interference from the Iraqi government and failure to allow an open hearing of evidence and witnesses.
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The CIA has reportedly found no conclusive evidence Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
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Gunmen kidnapped Iraq’s deputy health minister from his home in a Sunni district of Baghdad as at least 54 people were killed in attacks across the war-torn country.
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The Israeli army cancelled a planned air raid on the home of a Gaza militant on Sunday after several hundred Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the building, an Israeli military spokesman and witnesses said.
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Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who regularly advises President Bush on Iraq, said today that a full military victory was no longer possible there. He thus joined a growing number of leading conservatives openly challenging the administration’s conduct of the war and positive forecasts for it.
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The Dutch decided that you can’t cover your face, especially with a burqa.
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A recently-freed prisoner from Guantanamo Bay has come forward with allegations of torture at the hands of the US military. In an interview from his home in Turkey, the former prisoner, Murat Kurnaz, said he was beaten, given electric shocks, submerged in water, starved, and chained to a ceiling for days. He said he saw several people die and often thought he would die himself. Kurnaz was held for four years before his release in August because of a lack of evidence against him.
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