"Resolving a fierce dispute with the United States, the UN Security Council agreed unanimously to give American peacekeepers a year’s exemption from prosecution by a new global war crimes court. The intense conflict pitted the United States, which opposes the International Criminal Court, against all 15 European Union nations, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina and many others advocates of the tribunal they believe the world needs to counter a future Hitler or Pol Pot. Most council members believed U.S. opposition was ideological and that Washington's worries its soldiers or civilians could come to the court were illusory. The court, for example, only steps in when countries are unable or unwilling to prosecute mass murderers or other systematic abuses," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Hundreds of angry protesters marched on police headquarters on Friday, demanding jail time for a police officer seen on videotape beating a black teen, while in an odd twist the man who filmed the incident found himself behind bars – his arrest also caught on tape. Referring to the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington that lead to broader powers for law enforcement, Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said we almost had them whipped and then Sept 11 happened. As a result of our fight against terrorism, the police have been re-empowered so they are out beating people’s heads," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Crack British troops are to be specially trained in anticipation of possible attacks on Iraq and for the continuing war against international terrorism, reported the Guardian News Service.
"Nine foreigners and three Pakistanis were hurt yesterday when an unidentified assailant hurled a hand grenade at a tourist party in northern Pakistan," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Indian-administered Kashmir was shut down yesterday as Muslim separatists called a one-day strike to mourn 21 Kashmiris slain 71 years ago by a Hindu king. The strike affected most of Kashmir’s Muslim-majority areas, although life remained normal in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region," reported the AFP news service.
"Opposition parties yesterday described President Pervez Musharraf’s plan to create a National Security Council as a ploy to give the military more power over a civilian government elected in October polls," reported the AFP news service.
"US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Yasser Arafat persona non grata and shot down a dramatic appeal from the Palestinian leader for an end to Israel’s three-week-old reoccupation of West Bank cities. Arafat was rebuffed as four more Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli raids throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to root out armed militants," reported the AFP news service.
"Israel's army is giving strong signs it plans to spend months - perhaps as much as a year - on the streets of Palestinian cities as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government undertakes its most sustained effort yet to stop suicide bombings. From Israel's perspective, the three-week-old offensive has been a triumph, cutting Palestinian attacks sharply without drawing the blasts of international criticism provoked by earlier operations. The current situation has raised comparisons to Israel's occupation of Palestinian areas before peace negotiations began in 1993 and the army began pulling out of Palestinian population centers. Israel says it doesn't want the burden of civil administration of Palestinian areas, though it's not clear how the Palestinian government will be able function effectively if the current restrictions remain for months. A decline in violence could prompt an easing of restrictions, but Israel says is doesn't want to repeat the recent past, when military withdrawals were soon followed by another spate of bombings," reported the AP news agency.
"The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency said in an interview released on Saturday that he believed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was still alive and hiding along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," reported the AP news agency.
"A government survey released yesterday showed that three million American teens have thought seriously about or even attempted suicide," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Iraqi military officers once loyal to President Saddam Hussein urged the United States on Saturday to try to topple the Iraqi president without destroying the country, saying that The United States will not find support inside or outside Iraq for an offensive that would harm civilians, destroy the infrastructure and target troops not defending the regime," reported the Reuters news agency.
"A secret Pentagon five-year plan directs the military to be ready for pre-emptive strikes anywhere in the world and to develop even greater precision-strike capabilities. A Defence Department spokesman confirmed the existence of the document on Saturday but flatly refused to discuss its contents. However, independent military analyst William Arkin expressed scepticism the new strategy would help the United States achieve its goals in the world," reported the AFP news service.
"Breaking a lull of several weeks, Israel deployed military aircraft yesterday over the southern Gaza Strip and fired missiles at a building, destroying it and injuring about 10 Palestinians," reported the AP news agency.
"India directed blame at Pakistan – and guerillas based there – for an attack on a crowded slum in Jammu-Kashmir state that killed at least 27 Hindu civilians," reported the AP news agency.
"The Senate on Monday unanimously approved the most sweeping changes in corporate accountability since the Depression, creating stiff penalties and jail terms for company fraud and tightening oversight of the accounting industry. The vote was 97-0 for the bipartisan bill, lifted by a rising tide of unease over a string of corporate accounting scandals that have shattered Americans' confidence in business and the markets and threatened the fragile economic recovery. Despite the attempt, the markets dropped even further after his remarks," reported the AP news agency.
"US President George W. Bush said yesterday that the country must get out of the hangover it is in economically as a result of the economic binge of the 1990s," reported the AFP news service.
"Osama bin Laden is alive and in good health after being wounded in an attack on his base in Afghanistan in December, an Arab journalist with close ties to the Saudi-born dissident’s associates said yesterday. Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London based al-Quds al-Arabi magazine, said Osama’s followers informed him that the al-Qaeda leader would not appear on video again until his group launched another attack on the United States," reported the Reuters news agency.
"John Walker Lindh, the American captured in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban, agreed yesterday to plead guilty to two charges in a surprise deal with prosecutors that could spare him from life in prison. The deal, which caught even the trial judge off guard, was announced on the first day of what was supposed to be a weeklong series of hearings at which defence lawyers hoped to get statements Lindh made to investigators thrown out of his trial," reported the AP news agency.
"The Pentagon may have ways to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and President George W. Bush may have made it a goal, but any US attack on Iraq remains in the distant future," reported the AFP news service.
"Lawmakers in India began voting yesterday for a national president with a Muslim, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who is father of the country’s nuclear missile programme certain to win. Political analysts said the choice of Kalam, plucked from academia after retiring from government, was aimed at silencing critics of the ruling Hindu nationalists, pilloried at home and abroad for the violence in which at least 1,000 people, many of them Muslims, died. Kalam’s expected election for a five-year term to the highest office in the land was seen by analysts as helping the government affirm mainly Hindu India’s officially secular standing," reported the Reuters news agency.
"A court in Pakistan sentenced British-born Islamic militant Sheikh Omar to death yesterday for the kidnap and murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl, drawing a threat of vengeance and calls for Muslims to respond. Omar, full name Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and three accomplices convicted along with him showed no emotion as each verdict and sentence was read at the end of closed-door trial. The court jailed the accomplices for life. But the fury was evident as relatives and lawyers spoke outside the court. Defence lawyer Mohsin Imam said the decision is unjust and they were not expecting it because they had demolished all the evidence and witnesses brought up by the prosecution during the trial. Omar’s father, Saeed Sheikh, said the case against his son highlighted US hypocrisy," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The U.S. economy is poised to return to healthy growth, but the startling stream of accounting scandals that has rocked Americans' faith in corporate leaders could weaken the recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress on Tuesday. Those accounting problems already have contributed to a slide in the stock market, he said. That threatens to cause consumers to spend less and businesses, whose profits took a hit during the slump, to become even more reluctant to make big commitments in capital investment, a necessary ingredient to the economy's full recovery," reported the AP news agency.
"City police have busted the country’s largest fake US currency mint following the seizure of loads of dud US$ bills that are said to have a face value of millions of dollars," reported the Malaysian Star newspaper.
"The grim task of sifting through debris from the World Trade Centre for human remains and criminal evidence formally ended on Monday, with a brief but sombre ceremony attended by victims’ relatives," reported the AFP news agency.
"India’s government came under fire in parliament yesterday for failing to quell Islamic militancy in Kashmir as it prepared to announce its response to the massacre of 28 Hindus in the rebellious state. Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani was due to make a statement in parliament later on Saturday’s massacre of Hindu slum dwellers by five gunmen in an attack that threatens to stoke tensions with Pakistan," reported the Reuters news agency.
"An Indian police probe into the massacre of 59 Hindus in a passenger train in Gujarat took a startling turn yesterday when detectives said the carriage was torched from inside," reported the AFP news service.
"US Secretary of State Colin Powell said before a meeting of Middle East peace envoys in New York yesterday he was willing to consider a plan retaining Yasser Arafat as a symbolic leader of the Palestinian people. Powell reiterated that the administration of President George W. Bush wanted to see a new Palestinian leadership, but said in an interview for ABC’s Nightline he could entertain the idea of having Arafat kicked upstairs to a figurehead post. Aides to the Palestinian president again rebuffed what they called foreign interference in their politics and called on the quartet envoys to press Israel to withdraw its forces from West Bank cities reoccupied last month. But the Europeans and the Arab world, while welcoming Bush’s call for a Palestinian state, disagree with his view that Arafat must go and reject Washington’s tolerance for Israel’s military clampdown in areas of the West Bank where Palestinians were granted self-rule under interim peace deals in 1994-95," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Iraq said on Monday it would sever the head off anyone who attacked it, and its parliament backed military preparations to repel any US strike to topple President Saddam Hussein. Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told Iraq’s satellite TV channel said that there is no flexibility on the issues of dignity and destiny, and handling the vital interests of the country, adding that said talk of America launching an attack was misleading, as it had already done so constantly, in fact, and with Britain, since the Gulf War in 1991," reported the Reuters news agency.
"India stepped up pressure on Pakistan yesterday to crack down on Islamic militants but stopped short of issuing an ultimatum following the massacre of 28 Hindus in the Kashmir region. He said he had told a US official if Washington threatened to declare Pakistan a terrorist state, guerilla attacks against India would stop," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Al-Qaeda terrorists could have been behind the assassination of Afghan Vice-President Haji Abdul Qadir," reported the AFP news service.
"A U.S. task force has seized dlrs 22.8 million in cash, checks and other assets in its push to disrupt terrorist finance networks. Operation Green Quest has made 369 seizures, arrested 38 people and indicted 26," reported the AP news agency.
"Switzerland, which had been neutral for 200 years, formally requested membership in the United Nations on Wednesday. Switzerland's U.N. observer Jeno Staehelin handed the letter from President Kaspar Villiger to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who said he was delighted that Swiss voters approved joining the United Nations last March. Only the Vatican now remains outside the world body," reported the AP news agency.
"The IRA guerilla group apologised on Tuesday for the first time for bombing and shooting hundreds of civilians in its 30-year campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland. The British government welcomed the unprecedented statement as a major step towards peace, but Protestant Unionists and some family members of victims said it was too little, too late," reported Reuters news agency.
"Yasser Arafat confirmed yesterday that he would be a candidate in January’s Palestinian leadership elections, throwing down a gauntlet to US President George W. Bush, who wants to see him ousted. Arafat also hit out at Bush, who called last month for Palestinians to change their leaders for ones not compromised by terror or lose US backing for their own state, in reference to Israel’s charges that Arafat is deeply implicated in anti-Israeli attacks by Palestinian militant groups, saying the Americans must know that Palestine is not Afghanistan, for them to change (leaders) as they wish," reported the AFP news service.
"US President George W. Bush presented his plan for homeland security on Tuesday, which could expand executive powers and engage the US military domestically if Congress gives it the green light," reported the AFP news service.
"Hackles raised, Philippine lawmakers assailed US Ambassador Frank Ricciardone and demanded an apology for his statement about widespread corruption in the country, particularly in the judiciary," reported the Asia News Network.
"Israel postponed talks with the Palestinians yesterday after a bus ambush that killed seven Israelis near a Jewish settlement, and its troops shot dead one of the attackers in a gun battle," reported Reuters news agency.
"President Saddam Hussein said yesterday in a televised speech marking Iraq’s July 17 revolution that the United States and its allies would not be able to topple his government. Saddam, marking the 34th anniversary of the revolution which brought the Baath Party to power, also said Iraqis were well-prepared and equipped to defend their country against any military assault," reported Reuters news agency.
"Two Palestinian suicide bombers killed at least three other people and wounded 40 when they blew themselves up in rapid succession in Tel Aviv’s foreign worker neighbourhood," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Frustrated Londoners had to negotiate swollen bus stop queues and packed railway stations yesterday as a strike by Underground workers forced travellers to get to work by any other means," reported the AFP news service.
"A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a former paper boy who became the architect of India’s missile arsenal, won the presidential vote yesterday and immediately urged a new vision for the poverty-hit country. Kalam is seen as a politically correct choice as he belongs to the minority Muslim community. The ruling BJP’s reputation was badly scarred by anti-Muslim violence this year in Gujarat, the largest state controlled by the party," reported the AFP news service.
"The Abu Sayyaf warned yesterday of punishments’ against US citizens and property over Washington’s efforts to help Filipino troops wipe out the al-Qaeda-linked group. The statement, delivered by a spokesman over RMN radio, was the first from the Muslim extremist group since a clash at sea last month with US-supported forces reportedly left one of its leaders dead," reported the AP news agency.
"Israel destroyed the homes of Palestinian militants and detained their relatives for possible exile from the West Bank to Gaza yesterday, resorting to tactics of a decade ago. In a sign of popular support in Israel for tougher measures to stop suicide bombings, the country’s leading dove, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, came out in favour of using exile as a weapon. Asked if he supported such a measure, he told Israel Radio that as far as he knows, it has undergone legal scrutiny, and if legally possible, yes," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Two white policemen appeared in court on Thursday to answer criminal charges in the videotaped beating of a handcuffed black teenager that ignited racial tensions in this multi-ethnic US metropolis," reported the AFP news service.
