By Charles Recknagel, Asia Times Online, Feb. 7, 2013
An international human rights group says 54 foreign governments participated in the US intelligence agency's secret detention and rendition operations following terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
LONDON — Shockingly bad care and inhumane treatment at a hospital in the Midlands led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths and stripped countless patients of their dignity and self-respect, according to a scathing report published on Wednesday.
LEICESTER, England — Until it was discovered beneath a city parking lot last fall, the skeleton had lain unmarked, and unmourned, for more than 500 years. Friars fearful of the men who slew him in battle buried the man in haste, naked and anonymous, without a winding sheet, rings or personal adornments of any kind, in a space so cramped his cloven skull was jammed upright and askew against the head of his shallow grave.
By Michael Schwirtz, New York Times, Feb. 3/4, 2013
The police identified the man who shot Chris Kyle, the retired Navy Seal who was known as America’s deadliest sniper, as a 25-year-old veteran with a history of mental illness who had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Adam Nossiter and Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, Feb. 1/2,2013
ALGIERS — To the Algerians, the desert warlord in the swirling blue robes was a man of his word — the key to managing the crisis next door in northern Mali — and for months they lodged his representative here in the Algerian capital in high style in one of the city’s finest hotels.
PESHAWAR: Suicide bombers attacked a military checkpost in Pakistan’s troubled northwest on Saturday, killing 13 soldiers and 11 civilians, officials said, in an assault claimed by the Taliban.
“Thirteen security personnel and 11 civilians were killed in the attack,” a security official said of the raid which happened around 240 kilometres south of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
By Oliver Sacks, New York Review of Books, Feb. 21, 2013 issue
In 1993, approaching my sixtieth birthday, I started to experience a curious phenomenon—the spontaneous, unsolicited rising of early memories into my mind, memories that had lain dormant for upward of fifty years. Not merely memories, but frames of mind, thoughts, atmospheres, and passions associated with them—memories, especially, of my boyhood in London before World War II. Moved by these, I wrote two short memoirs, [.....]
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 1, 2013
BEIRUT — A suicide attacker detonated a bomb Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Turkey killing himself and a Turkish guard but failing to damage the main embassy building or cause serious casualties among U.S. personnel, authorities said.
Turkish officials later identified the suicide bomber as a member of an outlawed far-left domestic group. The White House labeled the incident in Ankara a terrorist attack, and U.S. officials praised Turkish authorities for their quick response. [....]
A rare peek into drug company documents reveals troubling differences between publicly available information and materials the company holds close to its chest.
By Natalie Angier, New York Times, Jan. 29/30, 2013
For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.
By Kareem Fahim, David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, New York Times, Jan. 29/30, 2013
CAIRO — Egypt's top military officer warned Tuesday of the potential “collapse of the state” if political forces in the country did not reconcile, reflecting growing impatience with the country’s growing unrest.
By Saeed Kamali Dehghan, guardian.co.uk, 27 Jan 2013
Security officials in Iran have raided at least four newspapers and arrested several journalists in what appears to be concerted action aimed at intimidating the media in advance of the presidential elections in June.
Sources in Tehran said reformist newspapers Etemaad, Shargh, Bahar and Arman were targeted by a group of plain-clothes officials who ransacked offices, filmed staff, confiscated documents and held several journalists.
For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.