A British charity worker has been arrested in Jerusalem, the Foreign Office has confirmed.
A British worker for a Birmingham-based Islamic charity has been arrested by Israeli military authorities, and further detained without charge at two hearings yesterday.
And much fun was to be had at the BBC’s expense afterwards. Here, after all, was the emperor revealed brazenly in the altogether; News 24, with its constant parade of expert commentators pontificating upon important events — well, actually, who is to say they’re experts at all, that we should pay any attention to their perorations? Maybe they are all as divested of expertise as Mr Goma. It’s not journalism at all, really — just a cheap and mindless method of filling up airtime. People who know nothing interviewed badly by people who know even less.
Many years ago I was a youthful producer on BBC Radio Four’s World at One; it was a good time to be a journalist because the world was in joyous tumult with the end of the Cold War. I was extraordinarily proud of myself to have secured for my programme an interview with Georgi Arbatov, head of the Soviet Institute for American Studies and an adviser to every Soviet president from Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev. What a coup! As the Soviet Union dissolved and geopolitical relations were being turned on their head, I had tracked down and persuaded one of the five or six most crucial and significant people in the world to talk to us live on air, in the lead slot. It was a good interview, too. Georgi said he wanted better relations with the USA and was in favour of world peace and disarmament. ‘We must all now be frentz, yes?’ he asked at the end, with benevolent rhetoric. His broadcasted comments were duly written up in the following day’s broadsheet newspapers.
But as I discovered when I spoke to him after the interview, they were not the views of Georgi Arbatov, close adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev, but the views of Georgi Arbatov, an insurance salesman from Minsk. Thank God, I mused later, reading the delighted reaction to his comments from Western politicians, that he was not a hawkish insurance salesman from Minsk: the missiles might have been leaving the silos.
So thank you, Guy Goma and News 24, for reminding us of our infinite fallibilities and of the chasm between what is said and what is understood. We should treat everything we see, hear or read with measured scepticism — and when it emanates from people breathlessly described as experts, all the more so.
The submission attacks the BBC Trust, saying its independence and accountability is "largely illusory" and that there is a lack of truly independent safeguards to stop the corporation abusing its position to damage commercial operators.
Do you agree with me that if the BBC can't do better than this it is going to have difficulty justifying its licence fee?" he asked.
Mr Straw said he would pass his remarks on but editorial decisions were a matter for the BBC, not for MPs.
"On the issue of accuracy, all journalists, including the BBC, have a responsibility to ensure that quotations are attributed accurately," he said.
Who better than Europeans, who brought communism to life, exported it to the world, and then paid dearly for it over many decades, know about the torments inflicted upon the Cuban people?
Humanity will pay the price for communism until such a time as we learn to stand up to it with all political responsibility and decisiveness.
EU states meet in June to review policy on Cuba. They should weigh up the consequences of accommodating Castro and show they will not ignore his practices or neglect the suffering of prisoners of conscience. We must not forget seemingly anonymous victims of Castro's "acts of rejection".
"In order for me to perform a U-turn on inviting Fidel Castro to London (Diary, March 1), I would first have had to invite him. Of course, if Castro came to London he would be an honoured guest."
Ken Livingstone
London mayor
COLORADO SPRINGS - An Iraqi mayor stood before troops lined up on the lawn at Fort Carson on Friday morning and said only two words in English.
But those two words brought the crowd to its feet.
"Thank you."
It was a telling gesture from Tal Afar Mayor Najim Al Jibouri, who spoke for about 20 minutes in his native tongue praising the 3rd Armored Cavalry for saving his city from certain ruin.
Ten years ago, when the Clinton administration was rifling through the FBI files of former Republican officials, it was extremely distasteful to object. Here is Brian Williams in June of 1996, after the [Clinton] White House admitted collecting FBI reports on 338 GOP officials (later revised upward to more than 900) and after Bob Dole compared it to Nixon's enemies list: "The politics of Campaign '96 are getting very ugly very early. Today Bob Dole accused the White House of using the FBI to wage war against its political enemies, and if that sounds like another political scandal, that's the point."
At that time, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz admitted the press blew the FBI-files story. Why? There was a "feeling that ... a political snooping operation was not the kind of thing they expected from the Clinton White House, whereas if hundreds of files had been obtained by Ed Meese in the Reagan administration on Democrats, I think this story would have rocketed to the front page."
Now we're observing that role reversal. Granted, the scope of the NSA database is much larger. But it's also less personal than FBI files, full of raw personal allegations. How's that for a double standard: The Clintons built a treasure-trove of personal data on their political adversaries, and the networks called the Republicans who objected "ugly." But when NSA builds a database to discover terrorists in America, it's time to impeach the dictator.
The Clintons were absorbed in database creation -- not to protect the country, but to protect and perfect their grip on power. "Secret System Computerizes Personal Data," declared a June 26, 1996, front-page article in The Washington Times. Reporter Paul Rodriguez detailed how the White House Office Data Base tracked personal information on those who visited the Clintons, including their Democratic National Committee donation records. Network coverage? Not a word on ABC, CBS or NBC.
Seven months later, the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine "broke" the story again, discovering the Clintonites routinely turned over personal information of supporters to the DNC, mingling White House funds and party-building activities. Then CBS and NBC aired one story. ABC did not. But again, it was a Republican allegation, not a Los Angeles Times story.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush vowed on Saturday that Washington would stand by Baghdad as he joined world leaders in welcoming Iraq's new government.
"The United States and freedom-loving nations around the world will stand with Iraq as it takes its place among the world's democracies and as an ally in the war on terror," Bush said in a written statement.
Bush was the latest in a string of world leaders to welcome the formation Saturday of the new Iraqi government -- the first full-term administration since Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003 in a U.S.-led invasion.
The diplomats will seek over a three to six month period to reach deals on the repatriation of illegal immigrants similar to accords already concluded with Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Nigeria.
Illegal immigrants can only be expelled if such agreements exist and above all if their countries of origin can be determined. Otherwise the Spanish authorities have to free them after 40 days with a notice of expulsion that cannot be implemented.
The scale of the problem is illustrated by figures showing that with well over 1,000 arrivals in the Canary Islands this week alone, the total for the year to date is now 7,384. That compared with 4,751 for the whole of last year and 8,500 in 2004.
Richie says he was told Iraqis were playing "All Night Long," on the streets the night U.S. tanks rolled into the country in 2003.
Their mission is to retain these combat veterans and other experienced Marines despite the possibility of deployments and hardships while a conflict overseas continues.
Yet they still meet their goals and have since Headquarters Marine Corps established new mission goals five years ago. As of April 15, 1st Marine Division was at 84.4 percent of its goal for fiscal year 2006, said Gunnery Sgt. Patrick Whitaker, base career planner.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's parliament approved the country's new Cabinet Saturday, opening the way for the inauguration of a national unity government three years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
Incoming Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki told the 275-member parliament that he would make restoring stability and security the top priority of his new administration.
Approval of the Cabinet is the final stage in formation of a national unity government the United States hopes can calm the violence raging in the country.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: six.
Since my first encounter with Iraq almost 40 years ago, I have relied on several broad measures of social and economic health to assess the countrys condition. Through good times and bad, these signs have proved remarkably accurateas accurate, that is, as is possible in human affairs. For some time now, all have been pointing in an unequivocally positive direction.
The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraqin 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.
Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television setsand we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.
A second dependable sign likewise concerns human movement, but of a different kind. This is the flow of religious pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Whenever things start to go badly in Iraq, this stream is reduced to a trickle and then it dries up completely. From 1991 (when Saddam Hussein massacred Shiites involved in a revolt against him) to 2003, there were scarcely any pilgrims to these cities. Since Saddams fall, they have been flooded with visitors. In 2005, the holy sites received an estimated 12 million pilgrims, making them the most visited spots in the entire Muslim world, ahead of both Mecca and Medina.
A top Taleban leader, Mullah Dadullah, has been captured in Afghanistan, Afghan officials have told the BBC.
The senior military commander was said to have been detained by international troops in southern Kandahar province.
Mullah Dadullah was a member of the Taleban's 10-man leadership council before the US-led invasion in 2001.
Up to 100 people have died this week in some of Afghanistan's fiercest fighting since US-led forces ousted the Taleban.
Our correspondent says there is no doubt the strength of the insurgents has been increasing and the thousands of British and international troops moving into the south will have their hands full.
The news reports of a major Taliban offensive in southeastern Afghanistan are inaccurate, as Coalition offensives and Taliban attacks have been lumped together to give the impression of a coordinated Taliban assault in multiple provinces. A reading of the various reports indicates that while the Taliban has launched a major strike on a police station and government center in Helmand province and a small scale attack on a police patrol in Ghazni, as well as two suicide attacks against U.S. contractors in Herat and an Afghan army base in Ghazni, the fighting in Kandahar was initiated by Afghan and Coalition security forces during planned operations. Over 100 have been reported killed during the fighting, with 87 being Taliban. Well over half of those killed were killed during the Coalition offensives in Kandahar.
There were two separate major engagements in Kandahar province, and both were initiated by the Coalition. Coalition forces conducted a raid and subsequent air strikes against a Taliban safe haven in the village of Azizi. As many as 27 Taliban are believed to have been killed during the operation. A joint Canadian and Afghan security force conducted a sweep in the Panjwai district of Kandahar, and killed 18 Taliban and captured 26 in the process. One Canadian officer was killed and three Afghan police were wounded during the operation.
The Taliban have been taking a beating. Despite having the advantage of surprise, they have encountered a largely hostile, and well armed, population that fights back. The government security forces are not as well trained and equipped as American or NATO forces, but they are more than a match for the Taliban. Desperate for a major "victory" (like capturing a town long enough to make some propaganda videos), several large attacks have been launched. All have failed. The Afghan and Coalition forces have developed tactics that make it very difficult for the Taliban to succeed. The Afghan security forces have radios now. If the Taliban hit, one call brings in Afghan and Coalition "quick reaction forces." These units arrive via ground or air transportation, and don't give the Taliban enough time to capture a town, or do much of anything else except try to flee. Pursuit is not pleasant, not with all those UAVs, helicopters and warplanes up there. To make matters worse, the Afghans have made deals with Pakistani forces just across the border, and often there is a Pakistani army reception committee waiting for any Taliban survivors who make it across the border. All of this is hurting Taliban recruiting. But the Taliban have a lot more money this year, and can pay what it takes to get more fighters.
“For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority.”
Three quarters of respondents to a qualitative questionnaire stated that the British legal system was unfair and cited reasons such as anti-terrorism legislation and practices and double- standards.
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