Four Suspects Detained in Berg Beheading

Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Coalition forces detained four suspects in the Nicholas Berg killing, and two were later released, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.

The suspects were detained during a raid Wednesday in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a news conference.

"US Soldiers Started to Shoot Us, One by One"

Rory McCarthy, The Guardian

Survivors describe wedding massacre as generals refuse to apologise

The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young
bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema
Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the
sky above.

"Sikh Who Saved India's Economy Is Named Premier"

Amy Waldman, NY Times, May 20, 2004

NEW DELHI, May 19 — Manmohan Singh, the gentlemanly Oxford-educated economist who saved India from economic collapse in 1991 and began the liberalization of its economy, has been appointed the country's next prime minister, ending a week of high political drama.

Mr. Singh said Wednesday night that the country's president had asked him to form the next government. At his side stood Sonia Gandhi, who a day earlier had stunned the country by announcing she would not become prime minister as expected.

Mrs. Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, reiterated that decision on Wednesday, despite pleas and protests from party members. Parliament members from her Indian National Congress then selected Mr. Singh, who was finance minister from 1991 to 1996. He will be sworn in within a few days.

In many ways, Mr. Singh, the architect of the restructuring of the Indian economy after four decades of quasi-socialism, is an apt choice to lead India now, when it is fast rising as a global economic power.

It faces the challenge of reforming further in order to ensure higher growth rates, but also delivering the benefits of reform beyond the growing middle class. That is the message being taken from the election results, when the largely pro-reform government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party was rejected by voters.

"We will give to the world and to our people a model of economic reforms," Mr. Singh said Wednesday night, but with a "human element." The new government, he said, would "create new opportunities for the poor and the downtrodden to participate in development."

Full: here.

electroNic writes:

UT Watch Membership Questioned by Feds
Jonathan York, The Daily Texan

Watch members are on edge after hearing that federal terrorism investigators asked a student whether he was a member of their activist group.

UT and federal officials, however, aren't saying why the group's name allegedly came up when physics freshman Mark Miller was investigated in January for filing an open records request for maps of steam tunnels under the campus. Miller told the Texan that FBI and Secret Service agents from the Austin Joint Terrorism Task Force asked if he was a member of "student activist organizations" with anti-government agendas. The agents specifically asked about UT Watch.

UT Watch closed a portion of its online forums after group member Forrest Wilder posted a comment citing the agents' questions.
"We need to make these forums private," Wilder wrote on the forum. "The FBI thinks we're trying to bring down the government by filing open records requests!"
The activists asked UT open records coordinator Annela Lopez last week why FBI and Secret Service agents mentioned UT Watch to Miller, who is not a member of the group. Lopez told them what officials already have said: Federal agents learned about Miller when UT System officials asked them to study vulnerabilities of the tunnel system. UT officials used the agents' opinions to prove their case to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott that the maps should not be released. He agreed.
"The AG wasn't simply going to accept the University of Texas saying, 'This is our critical infrastructure,'" Lopez said. "We had to go outside to get a better opinion."

UT officials with knowledge of the federal agents' visits didn't return phone calls.
"The main concern is that we're just caught in the middle of this thing that we've got nothing to do with," said Wilder. "But we're not going to hide in our homes or anything."