A Letter from Belgrade

Belgrade (Beograd) means "White City" in old Slavic as well as modern Serbian. The city stands on the confluence of two major rivers, the Sava and the Danube, and presently has almost two million residents. With many of them away on vacation in the dog days of early...

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FBI Launches ‘Preemptive’ Investigations

MONTREAL - Sarah Bardwell did not get the names of the four FBI agents and two police officers who questioned her and her roommates late on the afternoon of July 22 on the front porch of their house in Denver. "We asked them for their names and they said they...

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Violence Slows Iraqi Economy

BAGHDAD - Seventeen months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqi traders say the economy is stagnating. Last year in August the streets of Baghdad were bustling with commercial activity. At almost every corner sat a man exchanging money or selling something,...

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Backtalk, August 20, 2004

Abu Ghraib I was shocked to see those sick photographs. When I enlisted in the U.S. Army I heard stories about atrocities committed by US soldiers in World War II and the Korean War, but we never saw any photos. Had I seen such pictures I would not have enlisted,...

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Maldives Unrest Worries International Community

COLOMBO – Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Asia's longest running autocratic leader, is under international pressure to stop the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in the Indian Ocean archipelago. Colombo-based diplomats, who declined to be named, said...

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Women Press for End to Draconian Indian Law

NEW DELHI - Credit must go to women if the insurgency-hit northeastern Indian state of Manipur, bordering Burma, finally gets rid of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act or AFSPA, imposed a quarter of a century ago. Already the women, protesting for more than...

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UN Sees Opportunity to Turn Screws on Burma

BANGKOK - By throwing his weight behind the legitimacy of Burma's opposition party, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has deprived Burmese Prime Minister Khin Nyunt of claiming political progress to mark his first anniversary in office. Annan's statement on Tuesday goes...

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Kerry Is Clueless on Bases

The case that I have been making in this space – that, from a non-interventionist perspective, John Kerry may be worse than Bush when it comes to foreign policy – was boosted, if not proved, with the Democrats' denunciation of the President's plan to...

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