Auntie Em, Hate you. Hate Kansas. Took the dog. -Dorothy
REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday rejected allegations that terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay are abused.
And she reiterated the Bush administration's desire to close the detention facility in Cuba as soon as possible. Her comments came a day after Iceland's parliament adopted a resolution condemning abuses at Guantanamo and calling for its immediate closure.
"I strongly object to the notion that there are human rights violations at Guantanamo as is suggested by the resolution," she said, advising Icelandic lawmakers to read a report on conditions there by the Organization for Security in Europe.
She said "there's a reason why so many have fought so hard and sacrificed so much. It's because they knew that to be a citizen of this country is to have the right and responsibility to help shape its future. Not just to have your voice heard but to have it count. People have fought hard because they knew their vote was at stake and so was their children's futures.
Those people, she said “refused to accept their assigned place as second-class citizens. Men and women who saw America not as it was, but as it could and should be, and committed themselves to extending the frontiers of our democracy. The abolitionists and all who fought to end slavery and ensure freedom came with the full right of citizenship. The tenacious women and a few brave men who gathered at the Seneca Falls convention back in 1848 to demand the right to vote.”
CHENGDU, China - A government warning of a major aftershock sent thousands of panicked survivors running into the darkened streets Monday night following an unprecedented display of mourning for more than 34,000 people killed in a powerful earthquake one week ago.
In shattered Sichuan province, quake-weary residents carried pillows, blankets and chairs from homes into the open or slept in cars after a statement from the National Seismology Bureau was read on television warning that there was a "rather great" chance of an aftershock measuring magnitude 6 to 7. Such jolts could cause major damage.
People in the provincial capital of Chengdu got in their cars and drove east — toward plains and away from the quake zone to the northwest. At intersections outside the city, clusters of people slept on bedrolls. Cars were parked along a service road to a highway, their drivers sleeping on the sidewalk.
In Mianyang, closer to the quake zone, a hospital moved patients into the square outside the rail station, setting up beds, medicine trays and tents.
The alarm compounded uneasiness in the region, which has been rumbled by dozens of aftershocks since the May 12 quake, including one on Monday night measured at magnitude 5.2 by the U.S. Geological Survey. No damage or injuries were reported.
BEIJING -- China's nuclear safety agency had ordered staffers to be prepared for an environmental emergency the day after a massive earthquake jolted a region that includes several key atomic sites.
France's nuclear watchdog has said some of China's nuclear facilities sustained minor damage in Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake, though no Chinese government Web sites viewed Saturday mentioned any damage.
China's Nuclear and Radiation Safety Center, part of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, activated emergency plans the day after the quake and told all emergency personnel to be on standby in case of nuclear accidents, the center said in an announcement on its Web site.
Officials were in close contact with safety stations throughout the region and were monitoring operational data from nuclear power plants, the undated announcement said. The safety of drinking water was a top priority.
"With the deepening of the relief work, the main task is to prevent secondary environmental disasters and guarantee the safety of the environment in disaster areas," the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a separate statement Friday.
The French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety said Chinese authorities "reacted well" to the quake and immediately shut down nuclear sites for inspection.
Thierry Charles, the group's director of plant safety, said China's nuclear safety agency, NNSA, had reported no leaks of radioactivity since the quake.
He said Friday the Chinese reported "light damage" to older nuclear facilities that were being dismantled before the quake, noting that seismic construction codes were less strict when those sites were built. China did not specify which facilities had damage, he said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi photographer working for Reuters was hospitalized Friday after police beat him at the scene of a bombing, officials told CNN.
The unnamed still photographer was in stable condition after five Iraqi policemen struck him on the head with AK-47 rifles, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.
A police official said the photographer was filming the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Fallujah when police approached him and asked him to stay back for his own safety.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.
Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.
Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.
The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.
WASHINGTON - Increasing numbers of U.S. troops have left the military with damaged bodies and minds, an ever-larger pool of disabled veterans that will cost the nation billions for decades to come — even as the total population of America's vets shrinks.
Despite the decline in total vets — as soldiers from World War II and Korea die — the government expects to be spending $59 billion a year to compensate injured warriors in 25 years, up from today's $29 billion, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. And the Veterans Affairs Department concedes the bill could be much higher.
Oxfam warned yesterday that 1.5 million people could die needlessly in Burma as the first outbreaks of disease were reported in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, and many of the worst-hit areas went an eighth day without aid.
International agencies called on the country's secretive military junta to allow immediate access to those stranded without food, clean water and medicines. Cholera, typhoid and malaria could take hold within days as lack of food and shelter weakened the resistance of survivors. More than 100,000 people are believed to have died in the 130mph winds and storm surges that hit the country last weekend.
"Supplies will run out unless more aid is allowed into the country," said Christian Aid's Burma expert, Ray Hasan. "Partners are telling us that there are outbreaks of disease already. There is no time to lose." The UN World Food Programme said it had never seen such delays in dealing with a modern humanitarian crisis and described the official response as "unprecedented".
Yusif Osman was a U.S. legal resident from Ghana and had been living in Los Angeles for five years. After a companion carrying false ID landed him in immigration detention, Osman was facing deportation on smuggling charges, an allegation he denied. While at an immigration detention center outside San Diego, he died suddenly. His story highlights the poor care some immigrants have received in the scores of immigration facilities across the United States.
"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say," Clinton said. "And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. She thinks you've got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be here than listening to that stuff I have to hear on television, I'd rather be with you. There is a simple reason: You need a president a lot more than those people telling you not to vote for her."
"It is very interesting, from the very beginning of this race there has been a sharp divide in the vote -- the people who need a president, who need to turn the economy around, who need to restore the middle class, who need to give poor people a chance to work their way into the middle class, who need to give our children a better future, who need to restore our standing in the world and the war in Iraq, but do it in a way that rebuilds our military and stands up for America's security and standing around the world -- they have been for her from the get-go."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Navy admiral engaged in sexual relations in the White House in 1990 with a federal employee whom he falsely told he was a widower, according to a report released Friday by the Defense Department.
In March, when the report was submitted to Pentagon officials, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem was demoted and fired from his post as director of the Navy staff.
Stufflebeem told investigators he couldn't remember the name of the woman he had an affair with. He also lied when he told investigators he did not engage in sexual relations with the woman, identified as "Jane Doe," the Defense Department's inspector general's report said.
Jane Doe, who was then unmarried and working for a federal agency, told the investigators the allegations were true, the report said. Her supervisor and Stufflebeem's superiors supported her testimony.
Stufflebeem was convicted April 18 of making false official statements to investigators. After the hearing, called an admiral's mast, he requested retirement.
Jane Doe told investigators that she and Stufflebeem began their affair on an overseas trip in 1989, that the married admiral told her he was a widower who was raising his children as a single parent and that they had sexual relations several times, including once in a White House room reserved for "military aides with overnight duties."
The supervisor also said that she telephoned Stufflebeem's immediate supervisor to tell him of the affair and that when she called a few weeks later to follow up, the supervisor told her that "everybody in town knew Boomer was f'ing some bimbo at the [federal agency]."
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