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This page features brief excerpts of news stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (6-1-11)
On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.
The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon. Only 180 bodies were identified, but the Israeli-based Babylonian Heritage Museum says about another 600 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.
The violence continued through the night. A red hand sign, or hamsa, had been painted on Jewish homes, to mark them out. Families had to defend themselves by whatever means they could.
Some families bribed policemen to stand guard, paying half a dinar for each bullet fired. Others owe their lives to Muslims who took great risks to protect them....
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (6-1-11)
Military prosecutors have refiled terrorism and murder charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of September 11, at Guantánamo Bay.
The charges against Mohammed and four others allege that they were responsible for planning the attacks that sent hijacked commercial airliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Prosecutors have recommended that the trial be a capital case, which could bring the death penalty.
The five men were charged previously in connection with the attacks, but those charges were dropped in 2009 when the Obama administration hoped to close Guantánamo and do away with Bush-era military commissions for trying terror suspects....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (6-1-11)
A Pakistani doctor has said he was shocked to learn he had unwittingly been Osama bin Laden's family GP for up to five years.
Dr Mehar Dil Wazir, an eminent paediatrician in Abbotabad, said he had not known the children he had treated for three years were the al-Qaeda leader's.
He only discovered the support role he had played to bin Laden's life in hiding when Pakistani intelligence officers questioned him after some of his prescriptions were found on the third floor following the US Navy Seal raid on bin Laden's secret compound close to a Pakistan Army military academy.
According to neighbours, he has been in the custody of the country's ISI intelligence agency from the day after bin Laden was killed until earlier this week....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (6-1-11)
Iran's defence minister was forced to leave Bolivia during a diplomatic trip after Argentina demanded his arrest in connection with the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires.
Ahmad Vahidi was invited to Bolivia by the country's Defence Ministry and attended a military ceremony in the city of Santa Cruz on Tuesday in the presence of Evo Morales, the Bolivian president.
He is on an Interpol wanted list over the bomb attack in the Argentine capital 17 years ago that killed 85 people and injured up to 300, making it the country's worst terrorist attack.
Argentina believes he planned the attack on the seven-storey Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AIMA) building and gave the final go ahead for the bombing.
Alberto Nisman, the lead prosecutor investigating the attack, contacted Interpol's offices in Bolivia to demand Vahidi's arrest as soon as Argentina became aware that he was in South America.
But Vahidi was travelling on a diplomatic passport granting him immunity from arrest and Bolivia instead told him that he must leave the country....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (6-1-11)
UN war crimes prosecutors have demanded that Serbia identify and arrest the "protective network" that hid Ratko Mladic from justice as allegations that his capture was a "set up" grow.
Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said he was waiting for "verifications" of how he had evaded an international manhunt, particularly in the period since 2006.
Hinting at the continued involvement of elements of the Serbian state in hiding Mladic, Mr Brammertz insisted the general's capture would not prevent a critical report on Serbia's record at a meeting of the UN security council on Monday....
Name of source: 6-1-11
SOURCE: 6-1-11 (Sky News)
Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance before a U.N. tribunal in The Hague on Friday to answer a list of war crimes charges that includes genocide.
The former Bosnian Serb military commander is accused of masterminding atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
He is being held in an isolation cell following his extradition from Serbia....
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (5-31-11)
A group of mothers demanding justice for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, said Tuesday that police officials in Beijing had contacted one family in April to discuss giving compensation for the death in that family. It was a rare instance in which officials had mentioned compensation in relation to the killings....
