Category: News

NYT: This spring and summer, the slow and methodical siege of this southern provincial capital intensified. The Taliban and their allies set up road checkpoints, burned 20 trucks and slowed the flow of supplies to reconstruction projects. All told, in surrounding Helmand Province, five teachers, one judge and scores of police officers have been killed.…

SL Trib: Items in the vehicle when Jeffs was captured included: 27 stacks of $100 bills, worth $2,500 each; 14 cellular phones; a radar detector, two Global Positioning System units; two female wigs, one blonde and one brunette; several knives; several CDs; three watches; three Ipods; multiple credit cards; seven sets of keys; a photograph…

KSL: FLDS prophet Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, was taken into custody after he and two other people were pulled over late Monday by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, FBI spokesman David Staretz said. Here.

NYT: But the case has since taken a surprising turn, even by the bizarre standards of violence, organized crime and police brutality that have accompanied Chechnya’s lingering war. It turns out Elina Ersenoyeva, 26, led two lives. In addition to her public positions, she was a secret bride of Shamil Basayev, the one-footed Chechen terrorist…

Washington Post: A crowd of as many as 5,000 people, including hundreds armed with AK-47 assault rifles, attacked Camp Abu Naji and hauled away window and door frames, corrugated roofing and metal pipes, despite the presence of a 450-member Iraqi army brigade meant to guard the base. “The looters stole everything — even the bricks,”…

Wired: Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded. Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage,…

Washington Post: ABC News’s Martha Raddatz was not satisfied. “The violence has gotten worse in certain areas,” she reminded him. “Is it not time for a new strategy?” Bush acted as if Raddatz were Cindy Sheehan. “We’re not leaving (Iraq), so long as I’m the president,” he vowed. “That would be a huge mistake. It…

NYT: “The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself,” Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in Tuesday’s issue. “The resistance celebrates the victory,” read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt. Hezbollah’s…

NYT: The civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its public image, resigned from that post last night after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had “ripped off” urban communities for years, “selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.” In the interview,…

Guardian: Welcome to Eritrea, Africa’s most paranoid state. Talk about the football, talk about the 30p beer and 10p cappuccinos in the capital Asmara, but if you want to talk about the government, do it over the internet. Behind locked doors, and in hushed tones, Asmarinos trace the beginning of real paranoia to 2001, when…

The man behind the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ soft-porn empire lets Claire Hoffman into his world, for better or worse LA Times: Ignoring the two policemen who hovered a few yards away, he tiptoed past them to stand over me. He rubbed my shoulder. His gestures were oddly gentle—even fond. I felt sick. “I’m sorry,” he…

ICG: July 2006 was the grimmest month for conflict prevention around the world in three years. In 36 months of publishing CrisisWatch, the International Crisis Group has not recorded such severe deteriorations in so many conflict situations as in the past month, and several have significant regional and global implications. The Middle East erupted with…

SportsShooter: Months after my trip to El Salvador with Give a Kid a Backpack Foundation, images still keep me awake at night. I can’t get rid of the passionate embrace those kids gave me on the last day. I can still feel the tight hugs they gave me as they uttered “Thank you” over and…

NYT: A few moments later, Amuri’s eyes rolled back in his head, his chest stilled and he was dead. “Bring something for us to wrap the boy,” a nurse called out. His mother, Maria Cheusi, realized that her son’s life had slipped away. He was the third child she would bury. “Mama, mama,” she cried,…

TMZ, via WMFU’s Beware the Blog: Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Mel Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, “You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you.” The report also says “Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’…

Guardian: Meanwhile, the Foreign Office seems determined to press ahead with courting radical Islamists. Just this month, the British government paid for Yusuf al-Qaradawi to attend a conference in Turkey to discuss the future of European Islam. At home, it funded two Islamist youth organisations, the Federation of Islamic Student Societies and Young Muslim Organisation,…

From SF Chronicle: A jury convicted four leaders of a white-supremacist prison gang Friday on charges they used murder and intimidation to protect their drug-dealing operations behind bars. The trial is part of one of the largest federal capital cases, with more than a dozen people potentially facing the death penalty. More defendants face trials…

From the BBC: Television journalists were travelling with Russian forces who captured a group of rebel fighters sheltering in the village of Alkhan-Kala. Mr Yandiyev, dressed in camouflage, can be seen in the footage standing injured near a bus. He is questioned by a Russian general who eventually shouts: “Take him away, finish him off,…

From the New York Times: The crisis in Darfur, long neglected, finally burst into the world’s consciousness. Congo remains largely forgotten. It is hard to understand why. Four million people have died in Congo since 1998, half of them children under 5, according to the International Rescue Committee. Though the war in Congo officially ended…