Select a news topic from the list below, then select a news article to read.
New research disputes the government’s claim that media reports on the conflict in Iraq are unfairly biased against the coalition
“Our findings fail to offer strong evidence of media coverage that was autonomous in its approach to the official narratives and justifications for the war in Iraq,” the report says.
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“THANK GOD for the American elections,” our ministers and generals sighed with relief.
They were not rejoicing at the kick that the American people delivered to George W. Bush’s ass this week. They love Bush, after all.
But more important than the humbling of Bush is the fact that the news from America pushed aside the terrible reports from Beit Hanoun. Instead of making the headlines, they were relegated to the bottom of the page.
THE FIRST revolutionary act is to call things by their true names, Rosa Luxemburg said. So how to call what happened in Beit Hanoun?
“Accident” said a pretty anchorwoman on one of the TV news programs. “Tragedy”, said her lovely colleague on another channel. A third one, no less attractive, wavered between “event”, “mistake” and “incident”.
It was indeed an accident, a tragedy, an event and an incident. But most of all it was a massacre. M-a-s-s-a-c-r-e.
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The US has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 18 civilians, including women and children.
The draft, which also condemned Israeli military operations in Gaza, followed Wednesday's attack in Beit Hanoun.
The US ambassador at the UN, John Bolton, described the text as unbalanced and politically motivated.
Ten of 15 Security Council members backed the resolution. Four abstained – Denmark, Japan, Slovakia and the UK.
This was the second time this year the US used its veto on a draft resolution on Israeli military operations in Gaza.
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Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of the ruling Hamas group has said he is willing to resign if this will end a Western aid boycott.
His comments came after talks on a unity government with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Sanctions were imposed this year by Israel and Western countries, which see Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
"If we have to choose between the siege and myself, we must lift the siege and end the suffering," Mr Haniya said.
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[Photo: Sanaa Athamna lies dead with the bodies of her relatives Maysa and Maram. Eighteen members of the same family died in an Israeli artillery attack. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images]
Sanaa Athamna lay as if she slept, dead on a steel tray in the morgue of Beit Hanoun hospital. Across her forehead was a single, hairline fracture and beneath her eye a smudge of blood, the only visible marks of the destruction brought by the wave of Israeli artillery shells that struck her street in Beit Hanoun before dawn yesterday.
In her arms, hospital staff laid the bodies of her relatives: two sisters, Maysa, one, and Maram, three. Their mother Manal was also killed in yesterday's attack, but lay in a morgue at another hospital awaiting burial.
In all, 18 members of the extended Athamna family died when Israeli artillery struck their houses on Hamad Street. At least 14 of the dead were women and children. It was the biggest single Israeli strike in the Palestinian territories for four years and came only a day after the military had ended a six-day incursion in Beit Hanoun, a heavy battle which claimed more than 50 lives.
I am not inviting America to sacrifice a traditional friend: Israel. I am offering America an additional one: Palestine.
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Yesterday at dawn, the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed my home.
I was the target, but instead the attack killed my sister-in-law, Nahla, a widow with eight children in her care. In the same raid
Israel’s artillery shelled a residential district in the town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, leaving 19 dead and 40 injured, many killed
in their beds. One family, the Athamnas, lost 16 members in the massacre: the oldest who died, Fatima, was 70; the youngest, Dima, was one; seven were children. The death toll in Beit Hanoun has passed 90 in one week.
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US policy toward Israel is not expected to shift dramatically if Democrats take control of Congress. While Republican leaders have made efforts to overtly back Israel in recent years, analysts point to historic support for Israel among Democrats. In recent weeks, Democrats have been working to counter concerns they would balance support for Israel and the Palestinians or that Democrats would name committee chairmen who are seen as traditionally unsupportive of the Jewish state.
"There will be some Democratic chairmen who may not share all my views or have as clear a perspective on Israel as I do," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California), a Jewish lawmaker, said in a recent on-line chat with Jewish voters, sponsored by the House Democratic caucus. "But they will not be chairing committees dealing with Israel and the Middle East."
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We reject with disgust the lame apologies offered by government speakers. Even if there had been no explicit intention to perpetrate a massacre and kill civilians and children sleeping quietly in their beds, this massacre was the inevitable result of the army’s uncontrolled rampage in the Gaza Strip, fully authorized by the government.
In supposed “retaliation” for the shooting of missiles which killed nobody in Israel during the entire past year, the army killed nearly a hundred Palestinians in just the past week. We call upon the government to end the carnage and enter immediate talks with the elected Palestinian government in order to achieve a complete cease- fire and prisoner release, on the way to full negotiations for peace and an end to the occupation.
We further call upon all who care for peace and human decency everywhere – including, and especially, those who consider themselves friends of Israel – to raise their voice in protest at the war madness which seized those who hold power in Israel, and to hold protest vigils outside all Israeli embassies and consulates.
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This street in Beit Hanoun is very, very quiet indeed.
It's just a matter of hours since a number of Israeli shells fell on houses in this area, killing 18 people, including six children and two women.
We counted about eight impacts. The shells appear to have landed roughly in a straight line, starting in the fields at the end of the street and hitting houses on either side of it.
A pen for livestock was struck by one of the explosions and the animals are lying dead on the ground.
There are pools of bloodstained water outside one of the houses, which has had a hole blown through the roof and there are shrapnel marks everywhere from the explosion.
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