|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Israel: Palestinians may send forces to quell Gaza attacks (World, 23 articles)
|
Palestinians and Israelis moved closer to halting more than four years of violence on Sunday, with the new Palestinian leader saying he had made progress toward a truce with militants. INDEPTH: Middle East Israel is willing to stop attacks on Palestinian militants as long as the militants stop their attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday. Palestinian police checkpoints dotted this Gaza town near the border fence with Israel on Sunday, with officers patrolling main roads and guarding orange groves to stop militants from firing homemade rockets into southern Israel. Israeli officials said Thursday that the Palestinian Authority has proposed to deploy up to 1,000 members of its security forces in Gaza to prevent the firing of Qassam rockets and mortars at Israeli towns and settlements. Hundreds of Palestinian police fanned out across the northern Gaza Strip on Friday to prevent rocket fire on Israeli communities, part of an unprecedented deployment agreed to by military officials from both sides. FROM JAN. 19, 2005: Palestinian forces to crack down on violence, commander says The deployment, a first since fighting erupted in 2000, comes as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues negotiating with militant groups for a ceasefire.
|
|
|
|
U.S. Envoy Acknowledges Iraq Election Woes (World, 12 articles)
|
Eight days before Iraqis go to the polls, the government Saturday detailed sweeping plans to close borders, ban driving, shut down the country's major airport and impose a broad curfew in an attempt to maintain security on election day. Extraordinary security measures, including a ban on weapons, restrictions on who may drive and a curfew, will be in place before and during elections on January 30, a top Iraqi official said Saturday. Al-Naqib said all leaves and passes for police and military forces have been canceled and that further measures would be announced closer to election day.
|
Other stories about Iraqi, Sunni and Iraq:
| |
Rebels, Indonesian officials to negotiate cease-fire (World, 12 articles)
|
Finland's Crisis Management Initiative, headed by Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, confirmed Sunday that Indonesian government officials and rebel leaders would meet this week in Helsinki. Mediators on Sunday persuaded the Indonesian government and Aceh rebels to meet for negotiations on a cease-fire, trying to forge peace out of the tsunami tragedy. A lone tsunami survivor has been rescued from a remote Indian island, officials said yesterday, a rare moment of hope in the Indian Ocean as nations pledged to try to stop such a disaster from happening again.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Hajj pilgrims welcome rain in Saudi desert (World, 5 articles)
|
Saudi authorities, jittery over fears that terrorists may strike the event, said increased security and improved crowd management saw the pilgrimage go off without a hitch. Giant gray storm clouds dumped rain on the white-robed pilgrims, many wearing plastic shopping bags on their heads and tearing holes in garbage bags to fit their arms and legs through to stay as dry as possible. From Jakarta to New York and Baghdad to Paris, more than two million Muslims have been take part in this year's pilgrimage to Mecca.
|
| |
Official: 8 Chinese hostages freed (World, 5 articles)
|
The Islamic group announced the release Saturday in a videotape, which opens with four men standing and four kneeling, each holding their passports. Eight Chinese hostages freed by guerrillas in Iraq at the weekend were in good spirits and would return home soon, state media said on Monday. The eight, kidnapped this month after arriving in Iraq from the southeastern province of Fujian in search of work, were received by Chinese diplomats at a mosque in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bloody clashes feared in Venezuela over land redistribution (World, 4 articles)
|
Supporters said Chavez had championed involved the masses in politics and established social programs to benefit poor national sovereignty. Chavez said the move was a violation of sovereignty recalled Venezuela 's ambassador to Bogota economic deals between the two countries. He demanded an apology from the government of colombian Alvaro Uribe.
|
| |
Yushchenko sworn in as Ukrainian president (World, 11 articles)
|
In a ceremony rich with the symbols of Ukrainian independence, President Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in as president Sunday and shortly afterward told a massive crowd of joyous supporters that his inauguration marked " a victory for freedom over tyranny. The streets of Kiev were filled with revellers as Yushchenko was officially sworn in as Ukraine's new president, ending weeks of political conflict. INDEPTH: Ukraine The Western-oriented reformer took the oath of office in parliament, placing his hand on a copy of the constitution and an antique Bible.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Time fails to dim Auschwitz death-camp horror (World, 5 articles)
|
A stone wall engraved with the names of 76,000 Jews who were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II has been unveiled in Paris. French President Jacques Chirac will be one of many world leaders present at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. Then the gas chamber reveals itself through the wintry fog, and the death wall where prisoners were stripped and shot, and the soil and ponds still full of teeth and crumbled bones from incinerated corpses.
|
| |
Iran says U.S. military attack would be a 'strategic blunder' (World, 5 articles)
|
U.S. President George Bush said Monday his administration won't exclude the possibility of using military force against Iran over its nuclear program, which the United States believes is aimed at producing weapons. Vice President Dick Cheney also said Thursday that Iran "is right at the top of the list" of world trouble spots. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker magazine Monday that the Bush administration had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer" to gather intelligence and targeting information.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Pakistan-Taliban Nexus (World, 5 articles)
|
Caught in the stormy politics of expansionism in south and central Asia, Pakistan has had to plot a lonely - often defiant - course toward defining its role in the region. The United States, through Pakistan, kept a close eye not only on the Soviet Union's communist designs in central and south Asia, but also on India, an avowed supporter of the Soviet Union. Activists from Shiv Sena have threatened to disrupt the one-day match in Delhi in protest at the tour, the first by Pakistan to India since 1999.
|
| |
|
|
blaster@cs.columbia.edu
|
