SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Saudi Arabian detainee died Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison and the U.S. military said he apparently committed suicide. Critics of the detention center said the death showed the level of desperation among prisoners. Also Wednesday, a Canadian detainee fired his American attorneys, leaving him without defense counsel ahead of his trial, his former U.S. military attorney told The Associated Press. The detainee, Omar Khadr, is still to be arraigned and is one of only three of the roughly 380 Guantanamo prisoners to be charged with a crime. The military did not identify the detainee […]

In an about-face by the Pentagon, the military is putting many more amputees back on active duty — even back into combat, in some cases. Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration. So far, the Army has treated nearly 600 service members who have come back from Iraq or Afghanistan without an arm, leg, hand or foot. Thirty-one have gone back to active duty. Most of those who return to active duty are assigned to instructor or desk jobs away from combat. Only a few […]

Democrat Barack Obama is the top 2008 presidential contender in the United States, according to a poll by Zogby International. At least 46 per cent of respondents would support the Illinois senator in head-to-head contests against four prospective Republican nominees. Obama holds a three-point edge over Arizona senator John McCain, a six-point lead over former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and a 17-point advantage over both former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson. In other contests, both New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards lead Romney and […]

WARNING: Loud noise, strong language, G.I.s voicing anti-war sentiments BAGHDAD – Nine U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, U.S. officials said yesterday, and the military reportedly identified the body of a man found in the Euphrates River early yesterday as that of an American soldier abducted during a deadly ambush south of Baghdad almost two weeks ago. Also yesterday, about 100 Iraqis were killed and 130 injured in mortar strikes, suicide attacks, car bombings, drive-by shootings and other violence nationwide, according to law-enforcement authorities and news-agency accounts. [via WASHINGTON POST] ASSOCIATED PRESS: In the soldiers’ hometowns, […]

“Obama also met for 30 minutes with Democratic mayoral nominee Michael Nutter at the Sheraton Center City Hotel, spokesman Robert Gibbs said. He declined to characterize the meeting.During the primary, Obama had endorsed and stumped for one of Nutter’s rivals, Rep. Chaka Fattah. A spokeswoman for Nutter declined to comment on the meeting, saying it was private.” [INQUIRER] WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT: Barack Obama, Electric Factory, 5:10 P.M. [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA]

May 20 2007 – Tripoli, Lebanon – Lebanese tanks pounded the headquarters of a group with suspected links to al Qaeda in a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli Sunday after the northern city’s worst clashes in two decades killed 22 soldiers and 17 militants.

Justice Department civil rights lawyer Hans von Spakovsky [NOT pictured] steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots. In interviews, current and former federal officials and civil rights leaders told McClatchy Newspapers that von Spakovsky: -Sped approval of tougher voter ID laws in Georgia and Arizona in 2005, joining decisions to override career lawyers who believed that Georgia’s law would restrict voting by poor blacks and who felt that more […]