"President George W. Bush used the first rally of his re-election campaign to cast Democrat John Kerry as a serial tax-raiser who has voted for tax increases 350 times. He also mocked Kerry's claims of support from undisclosed foreign leaders. Kerry, the president, said, has promised more than he can pay for. Kerry's campaign dismissed Bush's sharpest criticism to date by turning the argument back on the president, saying Bush had presided over an era of hidden tax increases in the form of higher college tuition, health care costs, gas prices and property taxes - all while incomes had fallen," reported the AP news agency.
"Tens of thousands of peace activists marched in cities around the world yesterday to demand an end to the occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the US-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein, but there was none of the massive turnout seen at pre-war rallies. The biggest crowds in Europe were expected in Italy, Spain and Britain, whose governments backed US President George W. Bush's call to war to oust Saddam despite massive public opposition," reported the AFP news service.
"Two anti-war demonstrators climbed to the top of London’s landmark Big Ben clock tower early yesterday, as opponents of the US and British invasion of Iraq prepared to mark its first anniversary with a rally. The spectacular protest is an embarrassment for British security services that have been on near high alert following the Madrid train bombings," reported the AFP news service.
"A year on from the war in Iraq, old Europe and the United States are slowly patching up their differences – but for many it is a marriage of convenience that could yet result in a new divorce," reported the AFP news service.
"The thaw is driven more by events on the ground in Iraq than any fundamental change in philosophy on the rights and wrongs of the conflict, according to analysts. And for Europe, the carnage in Madrid of last week has brought the war home, leading to a scrambled reappraisal of the threat posed by Islamic terrorism and, for some, the continent's relationship with the United States," reported the AFP news service.
"The terrorist attack in Madrid and its seismic impact on the Spanish elections this past week have brought the United States and Europe to the edge of the abyss, neo-conservative thinker Robert Kagan wrote in The Washington Post. If other European publics decide that the Spaniards are right, and conclude that the safer course in world affairs is to dissociate themselves from the United States, then the transatlantic partnership is no more," reported the AFP news service.
"India said yesterday that the US decision to grant Pakistan special military status has significant implications for relations between New Delhi and Washington and said it was disappointing it had not been forewarned. The special designation puts Pakistan but not India in an exclusive club of nations such as Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan and Thailand given preferential US treatment in military co-operation," reported the AFP news service.
"Jailed militant cleric Abubakar Ba’asyir attacked the United States and Australia yesterday for trying to block his scheduled release from an Indonesian jail next month, and warned America to stop what he called the persecution of Muslims. I challenge the United States' officials to come here and question me. They are spreading lies. It is unfair, Ba’asyir said by phone from jail. Ba’asyir slammed Australia for its insolence in meddling with his release. This is despicable. It is unethical for (Australia) to interfere with another country's judicial decisions," reported the AP news agency.
"Pakistan's army has arrested over 100 suspected militants after five days of intense battles near the Afghan border, but said it was unlikely al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri was among those still surrounded. Instead a senior commander said the “high-value target” whom the militants were thought to be protecting was probably an Uzbek or Chechen militant leader," reported the AP news agency.
"Israeli helicopters fired missiles at Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin as he left a mosque near his house at daybreak Monday, residents said, and witnesses said he was killed. Witnesses said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at Yassin and two bodyguards as they left the mosque, killing them instantly. Hamas officials confirmed that he had been killed," reported the AP news agency.
"Osama bin Laden's terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on a central Asian black market, the biographer of al-Qaeda's number two leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station. In an interview scheduled to be televised today, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that smart briefcase bombs were available on the black market. It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place," reported the AP news agency.
"While US President George W. Bush used the anniversary of the Iraq war to drum up electoral support, his closest ally in the conflict, Tony Blair, has looked very much like someone who wishes the whole thing would just go away. This was in stark contrast to Bush, who told cheering crowds in Florida during his first official campaign rally that the United States was proud to lead the armies of liberation. Such has been the political damage meted out to Blair over Iraq that British newspapers were openly debating yesterday when – not if – he could find himself ejected from power," reported the AFP news service.
"British universities are helping intelligence agencies listen to students' phone calls and intercept e-mail in an attempt to flush out those with links to terrorist groups, a newspaper said on Saturday. A particularly close eye is kept on students from so-called red flag countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Libya and Syria, with students' telephone numbers, e-mail and home addresses passed on to the security services," reported the AFP news service.
"Insurgents fired a rocket at US troops in western Iraq, killing two, and in the capital two mortars hit the US-led coalition headquarters yesterday and a third exploded in a nearby residential area, killing an Iraqi civilian," reported the AP news agency.
"Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed yesterday in an Israeli helicopter strike here, prompting the radical Islamist movement he founded to declare all-out war on the Jewish state. The 67-year-old wheelchair-bound cleric was killed along with seven other Palestinians when a helicopter fired three missiles as he left a mosque in the Sabra quarter of the city,"reported the AFP news service.
"Quranic verses blared yesterday from a mosque in Lebanon on word of the Israeli killing of the spiritual leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, and anti-Israel demonstrations erupted in Egypt and Lebanon as vows of revenge. Rage over the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship at daybreak as he left a mosque near his Gaza Strip home, reverberated across the Arab Middle East, and the attack cast doubt on recent Arab political moves aimed at reinvigorating the Palestinian-Israeli peace process," reported the AP news agency.
"Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most influential Islamic movement in the Middle East, issued a warning to all Americans and Israelis," reported the AP news agency.
"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday condemned Israel's killing of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as unacceptable. Israel had the right to defend itself from terrorism, Straw told reporters as he arrived for a European Union meeting, which also saw condemnation of Sheikh Yassin's killing from other EU ministers. But it is not entitled going for this kind of unlawful killing and we therefore condemn it. It is unacceptable. It is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objective,"reported the AFP news service.
"Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller reiterated his country's opposition to Israeli assassinations of prominent militants. As you know we are against extra judicial killings. Terror and violence and retaliation is not the way ahead. Killings and terror bombings will not help us. This is not a way ahead,"reported the AFP news service.
"Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, recalling the March 11 train blasts in Madrid, which killed more than 200 people, said he feared the killing of Sheikh Yassin would spill over into wider unrest,"reported the AFP news service.
"French authorities have told Australia that a suspected terrorist now in a Paris jail spent months here helping prepare an attack of great size on the country, The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. The suspect, Willie Brigitte, was deported from Australia to France in October and according to documents cited by the newspaper had links to the terrorist groups which carried out the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the March 11 Madrid train bombings,"reported the AFP news service.
"The Israeli military went on the offensive in Gaza and the Lebanese border to prevent Palestinian attacks after the militant Hamas, threatening revenge for the assassination of its leader, picked a hardliner to replace him. The army said early Wednesday that troops had killed two Palestinian militants who had tried to infiltrate the Gaza Strip settlement of Morag," reported the AP news agency.
"The State Department issued a worldwide advisory warning Americans overseas of increasing threats from terrorist organizations such as Hamas and al-Qaida. The State Department cited growing threats from Hamas against American interests abroad since Israel's killing of the group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, on Monday," reported the AP news agency.
"Israel yesterday braced for a backlash from Palestinian militants after Hamas spiritual chief Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's assassination as the government vowed to continue targeting militant leaders," reported the AFP news service.
"Army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon said Yassin's killing in an early morning air strike in Gaza City on Monday had delivered a significant blow to the Islamic radical movement, responsible for the majority of attacks against Israel since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000. But he conceded that it could well lead to a short-term flare-up in violence in the region," reported the AFP news service.
"On Monday, the Israeli forces were issued with a direct order from the highest level to target and kill this man in his wheelchair. The aims of this mission may seem obscure to some, but to many they are cynically cold-blooded and foolish. If the Israeli prime minister and his Cabinet thought that eliminating Ahmad Yassin would bring closer the chance of peace and resolution to a conflict that has brought unspoken misery and bloodshed, then it is a government suffering from serious self-delusion," reported the Guardian.
"Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat fears he is next on Israel's hit list after the assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, aides said. Israeli security officials say their focus is on Hamas – for now. The missile strike that killed Yassin on Monday may have shaken Arafat in more ways than one," reported the AP news agency.
"A Spanish judge yesterday freed a Moroccan man arrested in connection with the Madrid train bombings, but ordered four other men to remain in jail for their alleged role in the suspected al Qaeda-linked attack. Thirteen men, 10 of them Moroccans, are now being held over the bombings on four packed commuter trains that killed 202 people and wounded more than 1,800. No formal charges have been laid so far," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Iraq's most influential religious leader urged the United Nations on Monday to reject the country's new interim law. In a letter to the UN envoy to Iraq, top Shi'ite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said he would refuse to meet a UN team, due here this week, if the Security Council endorsed the law," reported the AFP news service.
"The former chief US weapons inspector in Iraq warned on Monday that the United States is in grave danger of destroying its credibility at home and abroad if it does not own up to its mistakes in Iraq," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Current and former defence and state department officials were to enter the US election-year fray yesterday over who, if anyone, was to blame for failing to prevent the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on America. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his predecessor Madeleine Albright, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his predecessor William Cohen will testify before the national commission investigating the hijacked plane attacks that killed about 3,000 people," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Israel's killing of a Hamas leader has backed the United States into a corner at the United Nations as the Palestinians push for a Security Council resolution condemning the attack. With a vote expected Thursday afternoon, the United States is trying to show it stands by Israel and is tough on terrorism - even though it disapproves of the Israeli policy of killing top Palestinian militants without arresting or trying them," reported the AP news agency.
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict looked on the verge of a major spate of bloodletting yesterday, as the new leader of the Islamist movement Hamas and the Jewish state declared all-out war on each other. Hamas firebrand Abdelaziz Rantissi became head of the movement in the Palestinian territories late Tuesday, succeeding the assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and vowing to avenge his death by relentlessly striking Israel," reported the AFP news service.
"Israel's killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has reignited tension along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier, with two operations by Hizbollah and a pro-Syrian Palestinian group against Israel in the past 48 hours. UN officials in south Lebanon fear that the deteriorating situation there could escalate dangerously at a time when regional tensions over the cleric's assassination on Monday are already high," reported the AFP news service.
"Spain's incoming prime minister resisted US and British pressure yesterday to keep Spanish troops in Iraq and said they could only stay if the United Nations was given much greater control of the occupation. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero met US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss Iraq, and Zapatero's likely foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said he had held firm," reported the Reuters news agency.
"England football captain David Beckham signed a birthday card for one of the suspected Madrid train bombers when he met him just weeks before the attack, several British newspapers said yesterday. Mohamed Bekkali met Beckham and asked for an autograph at the Real Madrid training ground two weeks before 190 people were killed in the bombings," reported the AFP news service.
"Police in the United Arab Emirates arrested a man they suspect was linked to a security threat that caused the US embassy to shut down temporarily, a US diplomat said yesterday. The US mission suspended operations after what it called a specific threat in the Gulf Arab state, a commercial hub until now unscathed by militant violence," reported the news Agencies.
"Guerilla rockets hit one of the best-known hotels and the main US compound here yesterday, wounding a foreign contractor, a US official said. Elsewhere, fighting in the restive town of Fallujah killed two civilians after a roadside bomb wounded two US soldiers," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Young demonstrators pelted the high walls surrounding the US Embassy compound in Bahrain with stones yesterday, shouting Death to America and Israel then scattered to elude riot police who chased after them with batons and firing tear gas. More than 200 youths threw stones and broken chunks of cement blocks at the walls. As they scattered and regrouped, more students skipped out of nearby boys' schools and joined in," reported the AP news agency.
"President George W. Bush's top advisers on Tuesday told an official inquiry into the Sept 11 attacks that al-Qaeda could not have been stopped. Bush played defence after a former counter-terrorism adviser accused him of sweeping aside the threat from Osama bin Laden's group upon taking office in January 2001," reported the AFP news service.
"Buffeted by charges that he failed to fully grasp the terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush said Thursday he would have employed every resource, every asset, every power of this government had he known the attacks were coming. Bush's defense of his administration's handling of the war on terror, both before and after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, were an expansion of comments he made Tuesday to counter charges from former top counterterrorism aide Richard Clarke that he did not act quickly enough to battle the terrorist threat and compromised the war on terror after the attacks by turning to a focus on Iraq," reported the AP news agency.
"The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, calling the measure one-sided and saying it ignored the group's bloody record of terrorism. Eleven countries voted in favor, three abstained and one - the United States - voted against the resolution. On Wednesday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva voted 31-2 to condemn Israel for Yassin's death, but the body has no power to punish countries," reported the AP news agency.
"The United States and Britain asked the United Nations Security Council to approve a resolution that would ban the transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and others acting without state authority. It was introduced by the US on Wednesday and co-sponsored by Britain after being promoted by US President George W. Bush in a speech to the UN General Assembly last September," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Britain's Tony Blair sealed Libya's return to the international fold yesterday with an historic handshake for Muammar Gaddafi and an agreement to fight al-Qaeda together. After more than an hour of talks, the prime minister said Libya's rejection of banned weapons and rapprochement with the West could act as a template for other Arab nations to turn their back on Islamic extremism," reported the Reuters news agency.
"The countdown to sovereignty in Iraq began in earnest yesterday with a UN team due to arrive here imminently to advise on who should lead the violence-wracked country from July. In deadly correlation, calculated attacks aimed at derailing Iraq's transition to democracy also appeared to gather pace as an Iraqi working for Time magazine was shot and critically wounded, while at least five other Iraqis were killed," reported the AP news agency.
"The basic law, signed earlier this month by the council, provides a bill of rights, an independent judicial system, civilian control of the army and a democratically elected parliament. But it prompted criticism from many Iraqis, including Sistani, who say it is an illegitimate document drawn up by an unelected body under pressure from the United States, and it will unfairly bind a future elected parliament," reported the AP news agency.
"The suicide rate among US soldiers in Iraq far exceeds the army average and experts believe more mental health specialists should be sent to Iraq, among other measures, officials said on Wednesday. But they said the 12-person Army Mental Health Advisory Team, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and experts in combat stress, did not regard the suicide rate in Iraq as a crisis," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke said late on Wednesday that the national security adviser had failed to take enough action against al-Qaeda before Sept 11. Clarke repeated his charge that President George W. Bush had not seen much urgency in threats posed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, while former president Bill Clinton had been obsessed with getting Osama," reported the AFP news service.
"Syria has asked close U.S. ally Australia for help in repairing its relations with Washington, according to a report Saturday. Sen. Sandy Macdonald, who last November led a parliamentary delegation to Syria, told The Weekend Australian newspaper Damascus wants Australian help in altering its image from a state that assists terrorists to a willing partner in the war on terror," reported the AP news agency.
"Palestinians accused the United States yesterday of granting Israel a licence to kill by vetoing UN condemnation of its assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," reported the Reuters news agency.
"Israeli forces killed two Hamas frogmen who came ashore overnight near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, after the Islamic militant group said it would launch earthquake-like attacks to avenge Yassin," reported the Reuters news agency.
"European Union (EU) leaders agreed to tough new counter-terrorism measures and relaunched stalled talks on a European constitution, spurred by a renewed sense of unity after the deadly rail bombings in Madrid," reported the AP news agency.
"Pressure to keep Abubakar Ba'asyir behind bars increased yesterday when a senior intelligence official claimed that police have enough evidence to bring new terror charges against the jailed cleric, who is scheduled to be released from prison next month. Police did not immediately comment on the claims of new evidence, and Abubakar dismissed them as lies concocted by America, saying The letter is a fake. These are all lies concocted by America. The Indonesian intelligence are all lackeys of America, who will buy off anyone with their dollars. I am not afraid. I have God on my side," reported the AP news agency.
