Politics

The Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party combine under the leadership of Nitish Kumar has won 143 of 243 seats in Assembly elections for the state of Bihar held this November. The JD(U) legislative party elected Nitish to be Bihar's new Chief Minister. This was the second election in the last eight months; the first was held in February and the resulting house was suspended by the Bihar Governor Buta Singh. The former Chief Minister Rabri Devi is the wife of Lalu Prasad Yadav, who had control of the state for 15 years, either directly or

President George W. Bush ordered Jose Padilla, detained by the US Military as an alleged terrorist, to be transferred out of military custody in order to face trial in a federal criminal court. He is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, aiding terrorist groups and other acts against US nationals outside the United States. These actions come six days ahead of a decision by the US Supreme Court on whether it should review the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal's ruling that the president is authorised to hold Padilla as an "Enemy C

"Give me liberty or give me a ditch" was the sign being held by one protester in Crawford, Texas. A dozen war protesters were arrested Wednesday for camping near President Bush's ranch in defiance of new local bans on roadside camping and parking. The protests have been planned during President Bush's six day Thanksgiving visit to his ranch. The protest was an act of civil disobedience, said Hadi Jawad, co-founder of the Crawford Peace House, "We want to challenge the encroachment of our civil rights". It was aimed to contest new regulations

Angela Merkel has been elected the first female chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany; she succeeds Gerhard Schröder after his seven years as head of government. Merkel received 397 of the 612 votes cast in the Bundestag. Schröder was the first to congratulate her before she accepted the election. The newly formed grand coalition of Social (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) holds a total of 448 seats in the Bundestag. Later in the day, Merkel took the oath of office and president Horst Köhler officially appointed her along with h

Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders issued a communique which calls for a pullout timetable for the U.S.-led coalition forces and also calls the insurgency "legitimate". Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers and leading Sunni politicians were all present to present the declaration. "An immediate end to arbitrary raids and arrests without a documented judicial order." is also demanded by the statement. The conference of leaders was part of an American-backed Arab league effort. The document included "calling for the withd

An unverified document discovered by the UK tabloid The Daily Mirror claiming to have been leaked from Downing Street has been reported to contain a statement from US President George W. Bush about wishing to bomb the headquarters of Arabic TV station Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. According to The Daily Mirror, the President was dissuaded from bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The newspaper said its story was based on information from an unnamed source with access to the "top secret" memo of the President

The Japanese whaling fleet is reportedly heading into the seas around Antarctica, drawing widespread condemnation from campaigners. Japan's fleet of six ships left the port of Shimonoseki, western Japan with a quota of 940 minke whales and 10 fin whales. Calls for the Australian government to intervene have been rejected by the environment minister, Senator Ian Campbell. Japan's whaling program, which is claimed to be for scientific purposes, is expected to kill nearly one thousand whales this season. "Japan's attempt to dress up its comme

Sachindra Chaudhry, the youngest son of Fiji Labour Party leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, married Marian Ma'afu, a descendant of Fiji's first Tui Lau Enele Ma'afu, in a Hindu ceremony at Wailailai Temple in Ba yesterday. A Christian wedding will follow at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Suva next week. Intermarriage between Fiji's indigenous and Indian communities is uncommon. Speaking for the family, Chaudhry's elder brother, Rajendra, said that the union was for love and that nothing political should be read into it. The unio

A convention of the Israeli Labor Party in Tel Aviv decided on Sunday to pull its ministers out of the coalition government with the Likud Party of prime minister Ariel Sharon. The decision results from an initative by party chair Amir Peretz, who was just elected to that office at the beginning of this month, succeeding Shimon Peres. In his speech to the convention, Peretz accused Sharon's government of "humiliating" immigrants and poor people and said it had deepend poverty in the country. He called on Likud voters to switch to Labor becaus

One of the most important arguments in the run-up to the Iraq war made by Colin Powell in his United Nations speech and President Bush in his State of the Union address was that Iraq had an active biological weapons program and possessed mobile biological weapons labs. According to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the main source for this information was an Iraqi defector codenamed Curveball who was a source for the German central intelligence agency BND. Several German intelligence officials responsible for Curveball hav

The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Admiral Stansfield Turner, in a frank interview with the United Kingdom's ITV has condemned the current US administration. His comments indicated that he believed President George Bush is not being truthful when he states that torture is not employed by the US. Turner, whose term as CIA director was during the 1977 – 1981 administration of Jimmy Carter said, "I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture. I think it is just reprehensible. He advocates torture, what else

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) on Friday called a vote in the House on a nonbinding resolution to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq. The one-sentence resolution read: "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately." Democrats in the House called the resolution a political stunt, saying that it misrepresented the comments of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who a day before said "Our troops have become the enemy. We need to change direction in Iraq." Murtha, a decorated Vi