World News
Sydney Morning Herald | The Taser was introduced in NSW in 2001 but was used only about 50 times by two specialist units until the start of the trial when sergeants and inspectors at each of the 80 police commands were given access. Today 8000 police officers are trained to use the weapon.
Haaretz | At least seven Israeli arms dealers are currently in jail in four countries - the United States, Russia, France and Britain - on charges of illegal arms dealing. Some of them are also suspected of crimes such as forgery, bribery, money laundering and violating UN Security Council embar...
Finding Dulcinea | Previously stationed in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, the USS Vincennes was in the Straight of Hormuz, a body of water that the aircraft would have to pass over on its route. The USS Vincennes was sailing in Iranian waters, along with the USS Sides and USS Elmer ...
Telegraph| Officials have accepted that the country is being used as a transit point for smuggling both money and illegal goods. The admission follows a drive to crack down on underground trade ties with Iran. In the last week, the authorities have confirmed they have staged raid...
BBC | At least 21 people have been killed in a gunfight between two of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels near the border with the US, officials have said.
CBS | The bill Mr. Obama signed Thursday evening in an East Room ceremony targets exports of gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran. It bans U.S. banks from doing business with foreign banks providing services to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
Torrent Freak | After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site switched to a new ISP. That host, the Swedish Pirate Party, made a stand on principle. Now they aim to take things furth...
io9 | The computer program relies on a few basic assumptions in order to make intuitive guesses about the language's structure. Most importantly, the lost language has to be closely related to a known, deciphered language, which in the case of Ugaritic is Hebrew. Second, the alphabets of the two...
Telegraph | The study, which has created excitement in the academic world, also suggests he anticipated the scientific revolution of Galileo and Sir Issac Newton by about 2,000 years after “discovering its most important idea (that) the book of nature is written in the language of ma...
Mail.com | The bill was first introduced in 2008 in response to a high-profile case in which a 58-year-old man raped and assaulted an 8-year-old girl. The attack caused widespread revulsion and left the victim with lasting physical injuries.
Daily Mail | Thousands of French people who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II are set to be unmasked as official reports from the era are finally made public. All of the files will be scanned and published online.
New York Times | A popular candidate for governor who had made increased security his prime campaign pledge was killed along with at least four others Monday morning in a brazen attack, rattling a nation already alarmed by surging drug violence.
Discovery News | Amelia Earhart, the legendary pilot who disappeared 73 years ago while flying over the Pacific Ocean in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator, may have survived several weeks, or even months as a castaway on a remote South Pacific island, according to prelimin...
Haaretz | According to the indictment filed at a district court in Florida, the suspect, Hanoch Miller, and several others attempted to bypass a United Nations Security Council resolution and U.S. law, both of which have an embargo on weapons trade with Somalia.
Huffington Post | Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school.
Mondoweiss | In a May 7 article, Haaretz reporter Ilana Hammerman described in dramatic detail a crime she had methodically planned and committed. In defiance of laws supposedly related to Israel's security, Hammerman picked up three teenage Palestinian girls in their village in the West Bank, t...
Associated Press | Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez announced that Venezuela would nationalize the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company's rigs. He said in a statement Wednesday that Helmerich & Payne had rejected government demands to resume drilling operations for more than a year.
Palestine Note | Israeli legislators increase their efforts to put limits the work of human rights organizations, and even ban them altogether. Last month I reported here on a new Knesset bill which, if passes, will enable the state to shut down any association or organization which provides i...
BBC | Niger is one of the world's poorest countrie. Two major aid agencies have launched $10m (£6.7m) appeals for drought-stricken Niger in West Africa. About seven million people - half of the country's population - face food shortages after crop failures last year.
Huffington Post | Israel's government decided Sunday to draw up a list of items banned from Gaza limited to weapons and materials deemed to have military uses and said the easing of the three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory would be implemented immediately.
BBC | Canadian police officers were not justified in using a taser gun on a Polish immigrant who later died, an inquiry has found. Robert Dziekanski, who did not speak English, died after being stunned five times with a Taser gun at Vancouver airport in 2007.
The National | Health officials in Israel are subjecting many female Ethiopian immigrants to a controversial long-term birth control drug in what Israeli women’s groups allege is a racist policy to reduce the number of black babies.
Truth Out | Jonas Deronzil from Verrettes has been farming since 1974. Like small producers throughout Haiti, his meager income from corn, rice and beans is threatened by new competition from Monsanto. (Photo: Beverly Bell)
ZD Net | Telecommunications industry sources have called the claims by Attorney-General media relations that web browsing history would not be recorded in a controversial data retention proposal "a bit cute" and a question of terminology and semantics.
Global Research | Public prosecutors in Germany are looking into a war crimes complaint filed against Israel by two members of parliament with the Left Party and a human rights activist who were on board the Mavi Marmara when Israeli troops stormed it 11 days ago.
International Committee of the Red Cross | As the ICRC has stressed repeatedly, the dire situation in Gaza cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian aid. The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development.
PR Newswire | The European Court of Human Rights will consider the case of a German citizen who was kidnapped and beaten in connection with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the Open Society Justice Initiative revealed today.
BBC | Police in the Indian capital, Delhi, say a teenage girl and her boyfriend have been murdered in what they suspect is a gruesome case of "honour killing". Aisha Saini and Yogesh Kumar, both 19, were beaten with metal rods and then electrocuted, police say. The girl's father and uncle h...
Palestine Telegraph | UK, March 13, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) - I have decide to reveal the Hollie Greig's story in fine detail so that you the public can read for yourself exactly how this sordid story came about and how the Scottish Government suppressed this terrible crime.
Jerusalem Post | In her eighth month of pregnancy, Atar was rushed to the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot in critical condition, where doctors unsuccessfully battled to save her life – although they did save her unborn child with an emergency c-section procedure.
Haaretz | An Italian journalist who was detained by the Israel Defense Forces following the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla says his credit card was used to purchase items after it was confiscated by the Israeli authorities.
Star Tribune | A Saudi court convicted a man and sentenced him to four months in prison and 90 lashes for kissing a woman in a mall, a government-owned daily reported Thursday. Saudi religious police arrested the man and two women after seeing them on mall cameras "engaging in immoral move...
Haaretz | Uri Brodsky arrested in Warsaw for allegedly obtaining forged German passport involved in Hamas strongman hit, AFP reports; Foreign ministry confirms Israeli citizen arrested in Poland. An alleged Mossad spy from Israel wanted in connection with the hit-squad slaying of a Hamas ag...
Think Progress | This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.
Haaretz | Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. Jewish leaders on Wednesday that he would never deny Jews their right to the land of Israel, according to participants of the two-hour roundtable discussion.
Daily News | Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old from Thousand Oaks aiming to become the youngest sailor ever to circle the globe, is feared lost at sea today amid strong winds and waves in the southern Indian Ocean, according to reports.
Democracy Now | In a Democracy Now! exclusive, we bring you a sneak preview of previously unseen raw footage from the Mavi Marmara that will be formally released at a press conference at the United Nations later in the day. The footage shows the mood and the activities onboard the Mavi Marmara i...
Ynet | A storm has been kicked up in Egyptian media after experiences on the flotilla are recounted. The version of events on the Gaza-bound flotilla as heard by an Egyptian member of parliament have evoked the ire of a number of state-run media outlets in the country because, they claim, the ...
Little Alex in Wonderland | Ali Motlaq, who is under arrest in Iran for “planting bombs and orchestrating the assassination of top Iranian figures”, was put in touch with the Los Angeles-based Royalist Association of Iran (TONDAR) through the U.S. State Department, he recently told Press TV:
Truthout | The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and motor torpedo boats, on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers...
New York Times | Screwdrivers held tiny poison-filled cylinders, rings had spring-loaded compartments hiding deadly powders, vials of whisky were laced with the toxic herbicide paraquat, even peppermints were spiked with botulism.
Informed Comment | The German-Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East is preparing a Jewish flotilla to the Gaza Strip. "We intend to leave around July," a member of the organization, Kate Leitrer, said to Ynet. "We have one small craft so far, in which there will be betwe...
Ynet | Flotilla organized to aid Turkey's oppressed Kurds, Armenians; show up world's hypocrisy after sharp criticism of Israel's raid on Gaza flotilla
India4expats.com | Early in our first India assignment my boss sent me an urgent warning: "I've just learned that another Chicago company has been sued by the wife of an executive who contracted a venereal disease while on a business trip in Southeast Asia.
Associated Press | ANKARA, Turkey – An Islamic charity released photos on Sunday of Israeli commandos wounded in the deadly raid on a Gaza-bound ship. Several of the images, taken by an unidentified person or people aboard the ship Mavi Marmara, show an Israeli soldier surrounded by people ...
Politico | Leftist and rightist demonstrators clashed Saturday night in Tel Aviv as more than 6,000 Israelis gathered to protest the Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship earlier this week, in which nine activists were killed.
BBC | Israel says its troops will board an Irish-owned aid ship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza if it does not change course.
Republica.it | Latma TV (a comedy troop) produced a viral video entitled We Con the World satirizing the political intentions of activists aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, the Turkish-owned flagship that led the "blockade busting" Free Gaza Gaza flotilla
New York Times | On Thursday, Al Jazeera English broadcast an interview with Jamal Elshayyal, one of the channel’s journalists who was on board the Mavi Marmara on Monday when it was intercepted by Israeli commandos enforcing a naval blockade on Gaza.
AFP | Deadly fighting broke out on Thursday between Sudanese government forces and Darfur's most militarised rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the insurgents said. "There was major fighting at Adula in South Darfur and also in North Darfur. The army attacked us at midda...