By Blanca Rodriguez
Reuters March 9, 2006 MADRID - Two bombs exploded near highways in northern Spain on Thursday after a warning that five devices had been planted by Basque separatists ETA, who have stepped up their violent campaign for independence in recent weeks.
Authorities said the explosions were quite small and there were no reports of injuries. |
BBC
Thursday, 9 March 2006, 06:23 GMT Washington said in its annual rights report that China was one of the world's "most systematic" offenders.
In return Beijing urged the US to "look squarely" at its own problems, such as a high murder rate and jail population. While China often rejects US criticism of its rights record, this exchange is especially sensitive due to President Hu Jintao's visit to the US next month. |
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent 09 March 2006 The US State Department issued its annual report detailing human rights shortcomings around the world yesterday - and for the first time referred to its own failings in that field.
As usual, the study focuses on foreign countries, highlighting a familiar list of transgressors, headed by North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Burma as well as China, where harassment and harsh treatment of people seen as threats to the government increased in 2005. But after massive international criticism of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and other secret CIA-run detention centres, and the US practice of "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects, the State Department has had little choice but to turn the spotlight - however briefly - closer to home. Comment: Given the countless reports of torture and spying employed by the Bush Regime, the State Department's "criticism" is severely muted.
|
Democracy for breakfast - Twenty years after perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev says the US needs a dose of Russian medicine
By Nick Paton Walsh
The Guardian 8 Mar 06 Twenty years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled perestroika and with it the beginning of the end of the cold war, forcing what was then the world's second superpower to take stock of the gap between its grand designs and crumbling infrastructure.
But as his 75th birthday passes, "Gorby" has a clear message for his former Iron Curtain adversary. "America needs its own perestroika", he said, suggesting it is the United States that now needs radical reforms and self assessment. "The United States has not found its role after it became the only superpower. Until it gets rid of the victor's complex, it will make more mistakes. The younger Bush made a big error in Iraq." |
Thu Mar 9, 2006
Reuters The number of cigarettes sold in the United States in 2005 fell to the lowest level in 55 years largely due to enforcement of marketing restrictions imposed on the tobacco industry, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) said on Wednesday.
According to federal tobacco tax figures, cigarettes sales slid 4.2 percent from 2004 levels in the largest one-year percentage decrease since 1999, the group said in a statement. The attorneys general said 378 billion cigarettes were sold in the United States in 2005, the lowest number since 1951. |
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