Police are seeking 10 men, including several tribal elders, accused of pressuring a Pakistani woman to hand over her teenage daughter as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt. Nooran Umrani of Hyderabad says that, despite paying off her late husband’s… Read morePakistan: girl was poker debt bride
The US and Italian ambassadors to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake and Pio Mariani, were slightly injured in an artillery attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on an air force base at Batticaloa, in the island’s east Feb…. Read moreUS ambassador wounded in Sri Lanka; near miss for Cheney in Afghanistan
Thousands of Serbs protested in front of the US embassy in Belgrade Feb. 27 against independence for Kosova, which has been under United Nations control since 1999. The protest, organised by the Serb National Council of Kosovo (SNV), drew some… Read moreSerbs protest Kosova independence; Bosniaks protest Serbia genocide acquittal
Anti-war marchers took to the streets in London and Glasgow Feb. 24 to demand the return of all troops from Iraq, and an end to plans to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system. Organizers from the Stop the War… Read moreMuslim alliance in UK peace marches
Oil rose above $61 Feb. 26 as UN Security Council plus Germany met in London to discuss tightening sanctions on Iran, the world’s fourth largest exporter. Oil prices reached a high of $78.40 on the Lebanon fighting last July, and… Read moreOil prices rise as Iran nuclear deadline passes
In the last weeks of 2006, just before Washington’s new escalation of the propaganda offensive against Iran, the Tehran government announced it is shifting its foreign currency reserves from the dollar to euro—and switching to the euro for oil deals—in… Read moreIran drops dollar for oil deals
Archeologists warn that if the Sivand Dam in Iran’s southern Fars Province is completed, precious relics from antiquity will be lost. The dam is projected to flood a gorge and an archaeological area called the Tangeh Balaghi. By increasing humidity… Read moreIran: ecologists, archaeologists protest dam project
Iran’s successful launch of its first space rocket Feb. 25 made global headlines. Iran’s Space Research Center said the rocket returned to earth by parachute, and did from where in Iran it had been launched or where it landed. The… Read moreRocket launches reveal Iran-Israel arms race
US military officials displayed another cache of “explosively formed penetrators” (EFPs) to reporters at a base outside Baghdad Feb. 26, saying the weaponry was clearly made in Iran. They admitted, however, there was no way to know if the Iranian… Read moreIran, al-Qaeda roles disputed in confused Iraq conflict
Religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq are facing unprecedented levels of violence, and in some cases risk being eradicated entirely, according to a new report from the London-based Minority Rights Group International. In a major survey of the plight of… Read moreReport: Iraq minorities face extinction
The International Federation of Journalists has condemned as “outrageous and inexcusable” an armed raid by US troops on the Baghdad offices of the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists. The soldiers ransacked the offices of the Syndicate—a member of the IFJ’s global… Read moreIraq: US troops raid journalists’ union
On Nov. 9, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) sent an “Open Letter to the People of the United States.” It was specially addressed to Hollywood figures Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver Stone; leftist academics Noam Chomsky, Angela… Read moreJames Petras replies to FARC appeal
