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WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2006 – Detainees at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being held in accordance with the laws of armed conflict, John Bellinger, a State Department legal adviser, said here today. "The vast majority of the people who are in Guantanamo are being held under the typical laws of war," Bellinger said at a State Department Foreign Press Center briefing. "When we went into Afghanistan with the coalition, that was clearly a state of international armed conflict in Afghanistan, and clearly, the laws of war would apply to that." Bellinger said most of the detainees were captured...

827 Seattle students informed they will be freshmen again... Nearly one in four Seattle Public Schools sophomores is missing required credits and has been reclassified as a freshman, potentially delaying graduation. The move, effective this semester, was part of a package of changes the district announced in October to help better prepare high school students to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning and graduate. Under district policy, high school students have to complete five credits a year to advance to the next grade. At some schools, the rate was far higher than one in four students. At Rainier Beach...

Campaigning may be difficult after Katrina By JEREMY ALFORD Courier Capitol Correspondent January 08. 2006 12:41AM BATON ROUGE -- While state officials have spent recent months devising a plan to hold elections in the hurricane-ravaged portions of Louisiana, those who run campaigns have been concocting new schemes for the actual campaigning process. It will certainly be a different picture from what voters and candidates find familiar. Deserted cities will complicate media launches, limited resources will make fund raising difficult, and hordes of displaced voters could forever change the face of get-out-the-vote efforts. Additionally, by all accounts, there will only be...

Militants linked to woman suicide bomber held in raids By David Rennie in Brussels (Filed: 01/12/2005) Police in Belgium and France yesterday arrested 15 suspected militants believed to be linked to a Belgian woman who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq last month. The 38-year-old convert to Islam blew herself up on Nov 9 on the outskirts of Baghdad in what security sources believe was the first suicide attack involving a European woman. More than 200 heavily-armed officers raided addresses in Brussels and three other Belgian cities in the early hours of the morning. They arrested 14 people in...

PoWs from Korean War still held after 52 years By Richard Spencer in Beijing > (Filed: 26/10/2005)North Korea admitted yesterday that it was still holding prisoners from the Korean War as well as South Koreans it had abducted since. Ten PoWs are still in the North, 52 years after the war ended, the South Korean ministry of unification was told in response to inquiries about 103 missing people. Another 11 people who had been abducted were also being held. Six PoWs and 10 abducted prisoners whose existence was previously unknown had died in captivity. The rest were unaccounted for, the...

AL ASAD, Iraq (Oct. 6, 2005 ) -- “In a land where this concept of Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims worshipping together with pride and safety did not exist, you have built it. “Because of your willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, this house of God now stands. It is part of a long chain back to Solomon’s temple, and in its own way, is just as grand.” These words were spoken by Navy Cmdr. Travis M. Phillips, a Jewish chaplain with II Marine Expeditionary Force, to the Marines, Soldiers, Sailors and civilians attending the first religious services, Oct. 2,...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- “Once captured, there is no comprehending what goes through your head,” said former Marine and Vietnam prisoner of war, Walter W. Eckes, 59, who spoke at the Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital’s 15th annual Prisoner of War/Missing in Action remembrance ceremony Sept 16. The first national commemoration for POWs/MIAs was July 18, 1979. Since then, Congress has passed yearly resolutions for the tribute. But in 1996, a presidential proclamation designated the third Friday in September as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. For the commemoration in 1991, the hospital planted a tree as a living memorial...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Two Yemeni men say they were held in solitary confinement in secret, underground U.S. detention facilities in an unknown country and interrogated by masked men for more than 18 months without being charged or allowed any contact with the outside world, Amnesty International charged Wednesday. Amnesty and human rights lawyers argued that the report added to long-standing claims that the United States has held "secret detainees" in its war on terror. "We fear that what we have heard from these two men is just one small part of the much broader picture of U.S....

Leftists accuse U.S. of harboring Cuban bomber By Anthony Boadle 45 minutes ago HAVANA (Reuters) - Left-wing politicians and intellectuals attending a conference on terrorism in Cuba accused the U.S. government on Thursday of harboring a Cuban exile blamed for the bombing of an airliner in 1976. They said the Bush administration had a double standard in its post-9/11 war on terror because it refused to extradite former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to stand trial for the downing of a Cuban plane that killed 73 people. The meeting, headed by Cuban President Fidel Castro at Havana's convention...

Doctors in a Cairo mental hospital are holding an Egyptian Christian against his will, telling the man he'll be a permanent resident there until he recants his faith and returns to Islam, reports a leading monitor of Christian persecution. Reminiscent of the tactics of Communists in the USSR who put dissidents in mental hospitals, the forced stay, according to Voice of the Martyrs, has been in effect since January. At that time, the adoptive parents of Gaser Mohammed Mahmoud, 30, committed him to the El-Khanka Hospital after learning he had converted from Islam to Christianity two years earlier. "The hospital...

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION SEVEN PETER F. PAUL, Plaintiff, Appellant, and Second Respondent, vs. WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, Defendant, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON AND HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON FOR US SENATE COMMITTEE, INC., Defendants and Second Appellants, and DAVID ROSEN, Defendant and Respondent. ________________ 2d Civ. No. B178077 Superior Court, Case No. BC 304174 (Honorable Aurelio N. Munoz, Judge) APPEAL FROM THE JUDGMENT OF THE SUPERIOR COURT FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES THE HONORABLE AURELIO N. MUNOZ, JUDGE PRESIDING _________________________________ REPLY BRIEF OF SECOND APPELLANTS HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON AND HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON...

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands Mar 29, 2005 — Researchers want to excavate an old Japanese jail where aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator were rumored to have been detained before they vanished in 1937. The Historic Preservation Office of the Northern Mariana Islands has applied for a grant with the National Park Service to fund the excavation, hoping to solve the 67-year-old mystery of what became of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. The Northern Mariana Islands, about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii, were administered by Japan from 1914 to 1944 and are now a U.S. commonwealth. "In the past,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - The last time Sonia Eid saw her son Jihad was 14 years ago, when she watched from a distance as the Lebanese army corporal, blindfolded and bound to a line of other prisoners, was led into interrogation at Syria's notorious Mazzeh prison. He is just one of dozens of Lebanese who human rights groups say are still being held as political prisoners in Syrian jails, something Syria's government denies. Eid said her son was 20 when he was captured by the Syrian army on Oct. 13, 1990, the day that Lebanon's long civil war ended as...

PARIS, Feb 4 (AFP) - Three French nationals are being held by the US authorities in Iraq after being captured in last year's offensive against Islamic insurgents in Fallujah, Le Figaro newspaper reported Friday. The newspaper named two of the men as Chekou Diakhabi, 19, and Peter Cherif, 22, both of them from the same neighbourhood of Paris where last week French intelligence agents made a series of arrests of suspected Islamic militants. The pair left Paris for Iraq early in 2004 with several others allegedly recruited by the group's spiritual leader Farid Benyettou, 23, who was one of the...

Zhao Ziyang, former Secretary-General of mainland China’s Communist Party, died at a Beijing hospital last Monday. Good riddance to another communist? In this case, no. Not all tigers are incapable of changing their stripes. During his tenure in China’s one and only political party, Zhao took steps that truly can be called “reforms.” Zhao's greatest moment occurred during the pro-democracy rebellion of 1989, which was centered in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He opposed the use of China’s vast military might against the peaceful protestors gathered in the square. On May 19, 1989, Zhao personally pleaded with the protestors, mostly...

Soldiers in 'anti-US plot' held by Kuwait By Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer (Filed: 15/01/2005) US-Kuwaiti military exercises are under review after the arrest of eight Kuwaiti soldiers, five of them officers, on suspicion of planning attacks against US troops, according to senior Kuwaiti officials. The arrests were followed this week by the death of a terrorist linked to al-Qa'eda during a gun battle in which two police officers died, and the subsequent detention of 30 terrorist suspects in a series of police raids. At least two of the soldiers are to be court martialled amid allegations that they planned...

5000 Years Ago, Women Held Power In Burnt City, Iran Dec 23, 2004, 11:34 CHN According to the research by an archeological team in the burnt city, women comprised the most powerful group in this 5000-year-old city. The archeological team has found a great number of seals in the women's graves. In ancient societies, holding a seal was a sign of power, and was of 2 kinds: personal and governmental. The burnt city ancient site located in Sistan-Baluchistan province, southeastern Iran, dates back to between 2000 and 3000 BC. "In the ancient world, there were tools used as a means...

ELKHART -- Police believe a 13-month-old girl who suffered a fractured skull Thursday may be the victim of child abuse. The baby was taken to Elkhart General Hospital late Thursday night, police said, but because of the severity of her injury, she was then taken to Memorial Hospital in South Bend. She remained there Friday in stable condition, according to police. Her mother's 17-year-old live-in boyfriend has been arrested in connection with the injury and remains in the Elkhart County Juvenile Detention Center, police said. He is not the biological father of the infant, according to police. "I think it's...

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Despite the Chinese government’s horrific oppression of its people, dissent persists. Today, six women held a protest on an apartment building rooftop in Beijing. They waved a banner reading, “We accuse the police, the prosecutors and the courts in Liaoning province of corruption and trickery.” The women threatened to commit suicide if their demands were not met, but were later taken away by police. The protest took place not far from communist government headquarters. A similar incident occurred several weeks ago. According to the BBC, A growing number of Chinese have been bringing petitions to Beijing to try to gain...