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In a dream I wandered through a vast park, where many people also walked, and played and seemed happy and festive. Some were playing games, many laughing and buying things, enjoying food and drinks and snow cones at various merchants’ stands. Some carried boxes because for some reason they had to because of the things they bought. It was okay I decided and got some things and boxes too. It was fun. I'm tough and can even carry more. Even some vendors carried them. Among the crowd there were short people and very tall people, and now most were toting...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Authorities say 23-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheriazar drove a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee into The Pit at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus around noon Friday, injuring five students and a visiting scholar. Police said they would charge Taheriazar, who was a UNC student as recently as Fall 2005, with multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Authorities are not releasing a motive, but they did say the incident was intentional. Six people were taken to UNC Hospitals with minor injuries, hospital spokesman Tom Hughes said. Four of the students had been treated and...

Presented to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights For the period of 1ST January to 25th March 2005 Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy - BRussells Tribunal The city of Fallujah was subjected to a genocide war by the American forces. The military machinery destroyed almost 70 per cent of the city, from civilian houses to medical center and general services facilities especially water, electricity. This war resulted in killing thousands of innocent civilians and sending almost a half million refugee. It is well known that the American forces and their puppet government prevented...

tick a fork in it. Diana Duyser's ''Virgin Mary'' grilled cheese sandwich is done. Sold, as of 8:22 p.m. Monday, for $28,000 on eBay. The lucky winner? GoldenPalace.com, an online casino whose executives say they were willing to spend ''as much as it took'' to own the 10-year-old sandwich half with a bite taken out of it. ''It's a part of pop culture that's immediately and widely recognizable,'' GoldenPalace spokesman Monty Kerr said. ``We knew right away we wanted to have it.'' The new owners of the sandwich, which the 52-year-old Hollywood woman says bears an image of the Virgin...

RALEIGH, N.C., — Republican leaders here are working feverishly to take a Senate seat away from the Democrats by electing Rep. Richard M. Burr, who faces Democrat Erskine Bowles in a tight race that is key to determining which party will control the Senate. "North Carolina needs him in the United States Senate," former Sen. Jesse Helms told a cheering crowd at a Tuesday night Republican rally that drew 3,000-plus to a tobacco warehouse in the rural community of Smithfield. Most polls show the two candidates neck-and-neck — a Mason-Dixon poll released this week has the race tied at 45...

I thought John Kerry clearly won the first debate, lost the second, and did worse in the third. Most Americans, however, apparently disagreed, since many polls showed that respondents thought Kerry won all three. We hear of mayhem daily in Iraq; news on the economic front is mixed; and an entire host of surrogates has defamed George Bush in a manner not seen in decades during a political campaign. Why, then, does Kerry gain little traction, trail in most polls, and perhaps even start to slip further? After all, he is a hard campaigner, has a razor-sharp memory, speaks well,...

Relatives of Beni Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawaed convene press conference ahead of filing civil suit against UN. Charge kidppings couldn’t have succeeded without UN assistance and active involvement. Anat Shihor-Aharonson The families of the three IDF soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah have accused the United Nations of involvement in the abductions. “Today we can say with certainty that the UN was actively involved in the kidnappings of our sons”, the families of Beni Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawaed charged during a press conference they convened ahead of filing a civil suit against the UN in a US court,...

It is a certain fact not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that the hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims. Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners in Russia were also Muslims. Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned...

UN peacekeeping operations across the globe are expanding in number and scope, pushing the capacity of the United Nations close to the breaking point, Secretary General Kofi Annan said today. "The increased demand for United Nations peace operations that has arisen in 2004 represents a challenge not seen since the rapid increases in the scale and complexity of operations in the 1990s," Mr Annan said. "The heightened demand will stretch, to the limit and beyond, the capacity of the United Nations to respond," he said in an annual report. At the beginning of the year, UN peacekeepers were working in...

BY LAST night Zalina Tsabolova had given up hope. With no news after a day of searching she went home, sat out on her balcony and resigned herself to the fact she will not see her 10-year-old son Marat alive again. Below her, hundreds of other parents were still scouring hospitals desperate for news of their children. But Tsabolova knows in her heart her son is dead. "Marat used to daydream," she said. "He used to dream of becoming president. We had such a clever little boy, he played chess so well. Why was he killed by the terrorists? What...

MOSCOW: Furious relatives of Russian school hostages on Saturday lynched one of the terrorists involved in the three-day bloody siege in Beslan in southern Russia. Twenty six terrorists were killed by security forces in a gunbattle while three were detained. Another terrorist, while being taken to a police station, was snatched away by relatives of the hostages and lynched, Federal Security Board chief in North Ossetia Valery Andreyev said. Over 30 terrorists of various nationalities were involved in the siege, Andreyev was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS . "We can say with confidence that there were more than 30 bandits....

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Saturday it hoped Islamic militants were about to free two French hostages, but urged caution as fresh violence erupted in Iraq. "All the indications we have strengthen hope for their imminent release," Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said, welcoming home a Muslim delegation that flew to Iraq to try to help free journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot. "You know the prevailing situation in Iraq and, of course, in this context there is a need for great caution," he said. There was no fresh word from the Islamic Army in Iraq, which seized the...

The Fischer defence By Andrew Alderson (Filed: 22/08/2004) Last week as Bobby Fischer languished in a detention centre in Japan, his new fiancee announced their impending nuptials. Andrew Alderson reports on the latest twist in the bizarre life of the former world chess champion who has gone from Cold War hero to one of America's Most Wanted. Bobby Fischer was deeply unhappy when a press photographer snatched a picture of him as he was being transferred to a new detention centre in Japan this month. Fischer, the greatest chess player ever, turned virtual recluse, was not worried, however, about being...

In Darfur, the UN veto is proving as deadly as the gun Only a transfer of power to the general assembly will end this misery David Clark Saturday August 14, 2004 The Guardian Today marks the halfway point in the UN security council's 30-day ultimatum to the government of Sudan to disarm the Janjaweed militias, responsible for what is commonly described as the world's worst humanitarian disaster. Already it is apparent that the response of the Islamist regime will be to continue bluffing it out with protests of injured innocence in the hope that the international community eventually gives up...

International Justice Day, 17 July 2004, marks the international community's historic adoption the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) six years ago. Major progress has been made in setting up the ICC since the entry into force of the Rome Statute on 1 July 2002. Ninety-four states -- almost half the international community -- have ratified the Rome Statute, committing to investigate and prosecute persons accused these crimes in their national courts. The ICC will only step in when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. In particular, on 23 June 2004, following a referral by...