May
14
2013
Afghan officials say they’ve got video of a man overseeing the torture of Afghan civilians. Exactly who ordered the man to torture is a matter of fierce dispute — and also helps explain this year’s erosion of trust between Washington and Kabul.
Allegedly, there’s a videotape in Afghan government hands showing a man named Zakaria Kandahari presiding over the torture of an Afghan civilian who, along with 15 others, recently disappeared from Wardak Province. According to …
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May
14
2013
(Reuters) – Seven shots rang out at a wedding reception in this sooty city in eastern India, and Suresh Singh, India’s “Coal King”, fell fatally wounded.
He was a wealthy coal trader, a politician and, police say, a crime boss. At the time of the shooting, Singh had 14 criminal charges against him, including one for homicide. His career and murder are emblematic of one of India’s most nagging economic problems: the corruption that cripples …
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May
14
2013
(Reuters) – Vermont is poised to become the third U.S. state to allow doctor-assisted suicide, after its legislature passed a bill allowing physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.
The bill passed late on Monday, and the governor has pledged to sign it into law.
Oregon and Washington state have legalized doctor-assisted suicide in voter referendums.
Vermont’s measure includes a number of safeguards. Both the patient’s primary physician and a consulting doctor must agree the …
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May
14
2013
Almost all of Alaska’s indigenous villages are learning to live with the dramatic changes in the far north: the thinning sea ice, the melting of the frozen sub-soil known as permafrost. But for some villages the consequences of climate change are a direct threat to their existence.
A government report in 2003 found that 86% of all indigenous Alaskan villages – 184 communities – were experiencing consequences from climate change. The most destructive of those effects …
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May
14
2013
Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history. With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples’ lands. This giant collection of bases receives remarkably little media attention, costs a fortune, and even when cost cutting is the subject du jour, it still seems to get a free ride.
With …
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May
14
2013
While few are defending the Internal Revenue Service for targeting some 300 conservative groups, there are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, at least from what we know so far, the groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, …
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May
14
2013
THOUSANDS of mine workers have downed tools at South Africa’s Lonmin mine after a union leader was shot dead in the restive platinum belt at the weekend.
“Lonmin operations are suspended this morning due to an illegal work stoppage,” Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told AFP on Tuesday.
Work had stopped at all of the firm’s 13 shafts in the northwestern Rustenburg mining town, the world’s top platinum producing region, she added.
The reasons for the strike remain unclear …
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May
14
2013
PARIS, France — It’s Paris under the spring sunshine. Couples stroll hand-in-hand, steal kisses while window shopping past chic boutiques, or whisper sweet-nothings over marble-topped tables at a sidewalk cafe.
These are familiar cliches of the romantic French capital, except that along the Rue des Archives, the couples in question are likely to be same-sex.
This is the Marais neighborhood, a favorite hangout of gay Parisians and a scene of celebration on April 23 when lawmakers in …
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May
14
2013
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Five-months pregnant, Im Chanthy was told that her husband’s body had been found in the trunk of his car, brutally hacked to death for reporting on illegal logging and land concessions in Cambodia.
Many of these concessions, a new report by environmental watchdog Global Witness found, are owned by two Vietnamese rubber companies, which — with the financial support of Deutsche Bank, an arm of the World Bank and local governments — …
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May
14
2013
A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced two men to lashes and prison terms for converting a woman to Christianity and helping her flee the conservative Islamic kingdom, the Saudi Gazette reported yesterday.
A Lebanese man was sentenced to six years in prison and 300 lashes for converting the woman, while a Saudi man was sentenced to two years and 200 lashes for aiding her escape abroad, the English-language daily said.
It added that the pair had …
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