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  • US trafficking report reveals 'modern slavery' toll

    More than 42,000 adults and children were found in forced prostitution, labor, slavery or armed conflict in 2011, a US government report has found. Some 9,000 more victims were identified around the world than in 2010, the state department report said. But the number is just a fraction of the estimated 800,000 people trafficked across borders every.. More

  • On the front lines of Syria's guerrilla war

    Dawn broke over the northern mountains of Jabal al-Zawiya late last month to find a group of anti-government fighters hiding along a ridge line, waiting for their remote-controlled bomb to destroy an army convoy on the road below. The roughly 100 guerrillas were members of a larger group known as the Sham Falcons. Like many of the hundreds of ad hoc.. More

  • Rohingya: Stateless and 'Friendless' in Myanmar

    Decades of discrimination have left the Muslim Rohingya stateless, scattered around the globe and viewed by the United Nations as among the most persecuted minorities on the planet. About 800,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar, according to the UN, mostly in western Rakhine state, which has been swept by fierce sectarian violence in recent days. Speaking.. More

  • Glimpse of Syria's Qubayr massacre

    A young man describes how his town became the latest horrific headline to emerge from Syria. Mohammad, a 20-year-old from a small village in Hama province, left for work on Wednesday morning not knowing that he would find most residents of his town dead when he returned. When Mohammad came back to his house that night, he found the burned corpses.. More

  • Syria: 'Why is the world not doing anything to help us?'

    By Donatella Rovera "Why is the world not doing anything to help us? We demonstrated peacefully and from the first day we were beaten and shot at. Then the army came into our villages and fired at us with tanks and helicopters and burned and destroyed our homes. Is the world just going to keep watching and do nothing until we've all been.. More

  • Houla massacre

    The village of Taldou, near the town of Houla in Syria's Homs province was the scene of one of the worst massacres in the country's 14-month-long uprising. United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, but the majority appear to have been.. More

  • The Dronification of Planet Earth

    It’s now commonly estimated that more than 50 nations have drones, are making plans to develop them, or are at least planning to buy them from those who do produce them. In other words, the future global skies are going to be a busy -- and increasingly dangerous -- place. They will be filled not just with robotic surveillance aircraft, but also.. More

  • Assad forces widen attacks after massacre

    With the international community expressing outrage over the massacre of at least 108 civilians in the village of Houla, fresh outbreaks of fighting were being reported in other conflict hotspots. On Monday, activists in the opposition stronghold of Hama reported an intensified government bombardment of the city, saying that at least 41 people had.. More

  • Did Egyptians vote against their revolution?

    The results of the first round of voting in Egypt's presidential elections appear to have taken many by surprise, both at home and abroad. Many had expected Egypt's first ever democratic presidential election would be the final battle in the war against the former regime, a battle Mubarak's allies were seemingly inevitably set to lose. But the result,.. More

  • NATO ‘pullout’ won’t actually remove troops from Afghanistan

    Following in the rich history of fake endings to wars during the Obama Administration’s first term, the US and other NATO member nations are loudly hyping their endorsement of a transition pact, which is being presented as an “irreversible pullout” of occupation forces. “We are now unified to responsibly wind down the war in.. More

  • 'Jewish democracy' founded on ugly battles

    Israel has a Jewish majority today because of the expulsions and denationalization of most Palestinians living there. Among the many good reasons for marking the anniversary of the Nakba are two which speak to the intensifying debate about Israel's "democratic values": firstly, the fact that the Nakba is ongoing, in the daily acts of piecemeal.. More

  • Palestinian hunger strikes: Media missing in action

    Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1,500 prisoners engaged in a hunger strike in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story? Such an obsession would, of course, be greatest if such a phenomenon were to occur in an adversary state, such as Iran or China, but almost anywhere it would.. More

  • Slamming the door to justice on Palestinians

    Israel's ability to commit crimes against Palestinians with impunity relies on international complicity. There is a determined international effort to ensure that Palestinians are shut out of every legal forum where they could pursue justice for Israel's crimes against them. Nothing illustrates this better than the horrifying case of the Samouni massacre. L.. More

  • Amid the ruins in Homs, Syrian anger burns

    Burnt houses, collapsed buildings and rubble line streets strewn with broken glass and spent shells in Homs' devastated neighborhoods, for months the front line in the revolution against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On a 10-minute drive through Baba Amr district on Thursday, as journalists accompanied United Nations truce observers, two elderly.. More

  • Number of Palestinians on hunger strike hits 1,550

    At least 1,550 Palestinians in Israeli jails are now taking part in a mass hunger strike, Israel's Prison Service said on Wednesday, with two of them marking their 64th day without food. IPS spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told AFP another 100 prisoners had begun refusing food in the past two days, swelling the number of those on hunger strike to 1,550 --.. More

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