Doctors in Iraq's
war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many
chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that
may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.
The
extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months
as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have
started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.
The
United Nations General Assembly has voted in favour of resolution
endorsing a UN-sponsored report into war crimes committed during
Israel's war on Gaza.
The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war
crimes, was endorsed by the assembly on Thursday by a margin of 114 to
18, after two days of debate.
Forty-four member-nations abstained from voting.
I have been to the Gaza Strip twice
and southern Israel once since the 2008-09 war, where I had the opportunity
to listen to accounts from both people about what had happened to them
during that time. Israelis showed me thickly walled rooms that act as
bomb shelters and explained air raid siren systems in Sderot and Ashqelon.
As difficult as their situation was, nothing could have prepared me
for the level of destruction I found in Gaza.
In a stunning
blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of
Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday
attacking the report
of the United Nations Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission on
the Gaza conflict.
Shame on the House of Representatives, and on the Democratic
leadership of the House, for pushing through a resolution once again
blindly taking the side of Israeli aggression.
I’m referring to the vote on Tuesday, by a lopsided 344-to-36 margin, to condemn the Goldstone report on Gaza.
The
US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the
findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war
crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding
resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his
opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard
Goldstone, a South African judge.
UNITED NATIONS - Arab U.N. delegates circulated a draft resolution on Monday that would require Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to bring a U.N. report alleging war crimes in the Gaza Strip before the Security Council.
A special meeting of the 192-nation assembly on Wednesday will debate the U.N. report on the December-January war in the Gaza Strip and vote on the draft resolution.
That report accused Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants of war crimes and was prepared by a U.N. fact-finding commission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister during the Gaza war, would probably face arrest on war crimes
charges if he visited Britain, according to a UK lawyer who is working
to expand the application of "universal jurisdiction" for offences
involving serious human rights abuses committed anywhere in the world.
MONTREAL — As George W. Bush cracked jokes with a
business crowd inside a hotel ballroom Thursday, hundreds of people
outside the building cheered while he was being burned in effigy.
Police in riot gear and others on horseback held back a crowd of
hundreds, including many people who tossed shoes at Montreal's historic
Queen Elizabeth Hotel in a demonstration of disdain for the man
speaking inside.
Two protesters who tried forcing their way through the line of
shield- and baton-carrying police were wrestled to the ground and
arrested.
On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected
a series of arguments by lawyers for the mercenary firm formerly known
as Blackwater seeking to dismiss five high-stakes war crimes cases
brought by Iraqi victims against both the company and its owner, Erik
Prince.
