There are 304 articles

  • Israeli soldiers walk free in Gaza human shield case

    Two Israeli soldiers received suspended sentences and demotions on Sunday for using a Palestinian child as a human shield during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, an army spokeswoman said. The soldiers were convicted on October 3 for forcing a nine-year-old boy to search bags believed to be booby-trapped during Israel's 22-day war on Gaza which erupted in December.. More

  • NATO in Afghanistan: '2015 and beyond'

    Having dispensed of any pretense that the military is going to start withdrawing in July, NATO officials are now painting for the public a picture of what the Afghan War is going to look like in 2015, 14 years after the occupation began. The answer, of course, is that so far as anyone in NATO is concerned the war in 2015 will look much the same as.. More

  • From Balfour to Obama

    On November 2, 1917, Lord Arthur Balfour, the then British foreign secretary, promised to create a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Known as the Balfour Declaration, the document became the first stepping stone towards the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Palestine was still under Ottoman rule when it was written. But Britain and its allies.. More

  • UN: Mass rapes on Angola-DRC border

    More than 650 women and girls have been raped during mass expulsions from Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the past two months, according to a body of the United Nations. Many of the victims said they were locked up and tortured for several weeks while they were raped repeatedly by security forces. The report by the UN Children's.. More

  • UK troops face 90 new claims of abuse in Iraq

    A specialist team appointed by the government to investigate claims of abuse by British troops in Iraq has received 90 complaints involving 128 Iraqi civilians. The files, relating to allegations between March 2003 and July 2009, have been sent to Geoff White, a former head of Staffordshire CID, who heads the Iraq historic allegations team. The unit,.. More

  • Report slams Pakistan drone strikes

    New information on the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan directly contradicts the image the Barack Obama administration and the CIA have sought to establish in the news media of a program based on highly accurate targeting that is effective in 'disrupting al-Qaeda's plots' against the United States. A.. More

  • Forced abortions for Chinese women

    China's one-child policy leads to an estimated 13 million reported abortions every year, with many of those ordered by the authorities enforcing the system. Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan gained access to a hospital in the southeastern city of Xiamen, where she found one mother in a terrible condition. Xiao Ai Ying was forced to have an abortion eight.. More

  • UN: DR Congo troops committing rape

    Government soldiers in the DR Congo have attacked and raped women in villages where rebels already committed mass rape this summer, a high-level UN official has said. UN peacekeepers in the Walikale territory have reported that army troops are committing "rapes, killings and lootings," Margot Wallstrom, the special representative for sexual.. More

  • US military suicide rates surge

    For John Helfert, the problems started with the mortar shells screaming into the Abu Ghraib prison compound, the explosions sending furious shock waves. "You don't feel like there is any place to go," said Helfert, then a Marine lance corporal in an infantry unit at the infamous prison. "You are sitting in a building or a tower, not.. More

  • UN warns of global refugee crisis

    Conflicts are leading to new era of near permanent refugee populations, the head of the United Nation's refugee agency has said. Antonio Guterres also said rich countries are only willing to take a fraction of those forced to flee by drawn-out warfare, especially in Afghanistan and Somalia. "As a result of never-ending conflicts, we are witnessing.. More

  • Pakistan agriculture could take up 2 yrs to start flood recovery

    Pakistan's agriculture industry -- a pillar of the economy -- could take up to two years to start recovering from floods, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Monday. ADB and the World Bank are assessing the damage caused by one of Pakistan's worst natural disasters. Philip Erquiaga, director general of ADB's private sector operations, said the.. More

  • UN 'failed' DR Congo rape victims

    UN troops failed 242 women and children who suffered a mass rape attack in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a top UN peacekeeping official has said. Congo hosts the largest and most costly UN peacekeeping mission in the world, but the mass rape attacks happened just 30km from a UN base some time between July 30 and August 3 in the North.. More

  • Report: Karzai aide paid by CIA

    An aide to the Afghan president at the center of a corruption probe is being paid the Central Intelligence Agency, The New York Times has reported, citing Afghan and American officials. Mohammed Zia Salehi, chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the CIA's payroll for many years, the US news organization quoted.. More

  • Taking the slow lane to Tehran

    Saturday’s anniversary of last year’s disputed election in Iran follows eight days after another milestone: the one-year anniversary of US president Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world in Cairo. The election and the speech - coupled with other events, like Obama’s Nowruz message - created a brief moment of optimism early.. More

  • The myth of Israeli morality

    The Israeli attack on the international aid flotilla - killing nine and injuring dozens more - is not the first example of non-violent resistance by Palestinians and their supporters being met by force. Israel has, in fact, at different times reacted with repression or even extreme violence to cultural and political manifestations of Palestinian identity. B.. More