Simultaneities:
The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States.and:
Armed with assault rifles, stun grenades - even armoured personnel carriers - units once used only in highly volatile situations are increasingly being deployed on more routine police missions.
Dr Salvatore Culosi Jr had come out of his townhouse to meet an undercover policeman when he was shot through the chest by a Special Weapons and Tactics force.
It was about 2135 on a chilly January evening. The 37-year-old optometrist was unarmed, he had no history of violence and displayed no threatening behaviour.
A U.S. Army dog handler was found guilty on Tuesday of abusing detainees at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and faces up to eight years and nine months in prison, an Army spokeswoman said.
President Bush said on Tuesday he believes "we'll succeed" in Iraq and that if he didn't believe so, he would withdraw U.S. forces.and:
"I'm confident, I believe, I'm optimistic we'll succeed -- if not, I'd pull our troops out," Bush said during a White House news conference.
A video of civilians who may have been killed by U.S. Marines in an Iraqi town in November showed residents describing a rampage by U.S. soldiers that left a trail of bullet-riddled bodies and destruction.
A copy of the video, given to Reuters by Iraq's Hammurabi Organisation for Monitoring Human Rights and Democracy, showed corpses lined up at the Haditha morgue which residents said were the result of a Marine assault on several houses.
The judge deciding whether an Afghan man should be executed for converting to Christianity does not understand what all the fuss is about.and:
The spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans does not believe that creationism, the biblical account of the world's origins, should be taught in schools.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said: "I don't think it should, actually. No, no." He was reflecting on the education debate over religion and science that has divided the United States in particular.
Israel's vast separation wall slices Nazlet Isa off from one of the richest water sources in the arid northern West Bank where the fight for water is a fight for survival.and:
Israel is believed to monopolise about 75% of Palestinian water resources in a region where rainfall is infrequent and water a strategic asset.
For more than a decade, the idea that private companies would be able to bring water to the world's poor has been a mantra of development policies promoted by international lending agencies and many governments.
It has not happened. In the past decade, according to a private water suppliers trade group, private companies have managed to extend water service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who need it. About 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water, the United Nations says.
The reality behind those numbers is sinking in.
President Bush's job-approval rating fell to an all-time low -- 34 percent -- in a poll published Tuesday. That puts him not far above Richard Nixon's Watergate-era nadir and raises questions about how effectively he can govern in his remaining years in office.and:
Russell Feingold, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin, immediately raised his public profile here this past week when he stood up in Congress demanding that President George W. Bush be censured over his domestic eavesdropping program, which Feingold considers illegal.
His proposal - a congressional action that has only been used once, in 1834, to reprimand Andrew Jackson - sent reverberations through both the Democratic and Republican ranks, with Vice President Dick Cheney issuing an unusual rebuttal, calling the motion "outrageous."
The United Nations should protect the world's oceans from deep sea fishing and pollution in the same way as environmentally sensitive land, the lobby group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.and:
A Greenpeace report, published to coincide with a U.N. meeting in Brazil on biodiversity, said that 40 percent of the world's oceans should be placed in nature reserves.
Across the frozen North Slope of Alaska, the region's largest oil accident on record has been sending hundreds of thousands of litres of crude pouring into the Arctic Ocean during the past week after a badly corroded BPO pipeline ruptured. The publicity caused by the leak in the 30-year-old pipeline could seriously damage BP's image, which has been carefully crafted to show it as a company concerned about the environment.
