"Paris hotel fire called accidental"

Paris hotel fire called accidental
PARIS -- Searing flames and thick smoke sent people jumping from windows of an overcrowded budget hotel before dawn Friday in one of the worst fires in recent memory in the French capital. At least 20 people were killed -- half of them children and many African immigrants and other people without means lodged there by authorities.

Many of victims came from Africa
PARIS - Many of the victims of the Paris hotel fire were African immigrants being temporarily housed by the city government in the Paris-Opera hotel, near the Gallerie Lafayette department store in the Opera district. The store, popular with Parisian shoppers and foreign tourists, was turned into a makeshift hospital for the injured.

Gorilla warfare from Pretoria to Cameroon
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) has criticised the South African government for failing to convene a technical committee to facilitate the return of the Taiping Four gorillas to West Africa as promised.

Africa deserve membership of the UN Security Council
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said on Friday that Africa deserved a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. He said any UN Reforms worth the support of Africa should consider the need to appoint an Africa country and reverse the status quo, which he described as unacceptable. "Africa has no interest in any proposal for reforms, which seeks to be variant of the status quo," Nana Akufo Addo stated at the opening of an international security think-tank conference in Accra.

30 million guns circulating in Africa
There are more than 30 million weapons in circulation in Africa, the vast majority in private hands, a conference was told yesterday.

Ivory Coast Rebels Return to Government
Rebels in Ivory Coast returned togovernment on Friday in line with a peace deal signed in SouthAfrica last week that is meant to shepherd the country toelections in October.

UN Trying to Carry Out Washington's Agenda in Haiti
The recent posture of the United Nations appears to be one that is finally yielding to United States pressure to be more forceful and "aggressive" in its "disarmament" efforts. On March 16th, the Washington-based propaganda arm of Haiti's right-wing elite, the Haiti Democracy Project, released their "findings and recommendations" based on a February delegation to Haiti. With respect to MINUSTAH, the HDP characterized the UN mission as too "passive" and "neither aggressive enough nor sufficiently nuanced" in their approach to the occupation and in their ability to prop up the U.S.-installed regime of de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue.

Declassified: Rogue State Britain
The Blair government’s foreign policy since the invasion of Iraq has been disastrous for human rights. Outside of media and parliamentary scrutiny, decision-makers have been implementing some remarkable steps: Britain is deepening its support for state terrorism in several countries while unprecedented plans are being developed for global military intervention. The government has also announced that, following Iraq, state propaganda operations will increase.

WHO: Deadly Viruses Gone Missing
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that two thirds of a batch of deadly viruses misplaced in analysis kits have been destroyed, but that the kits to be shipped to Mexico and Lebanon have gone missing.

Ramsey Clark says Saddam's rights being violated
It's been over one year since U.S. forces captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. When he does face justice, he'll have an unlikely ally: Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson, the son of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice and civil rights activist. Dan Abrams interviews Saddam Hussein's attorney. On Thursday's "The Abrams Report," Clark speaks exclusively to MSNBC's Dan Abrams about why he feels Saddam Hussein deserves effective representation and a fair trial. Following are excerpts from the interview:

Riverbend Is a Blogger, "Embedded" in the Real Baghdad,
Telling It Like It Is, Helping Us See With New Eyes

Crisis hits Ecuador
After three days of growing street marches demanding his ouster, President Lucio Gutierrez dissolved the Supreme Court and declared a state of emergency in Quito in a bid to keep protests under control and find a solution to a deepening political crisis.

Castro says Cuban exile should be tried in Venezuela
Cuban President Fidel Castro called on the United States on Thursday to extradite a CIA-trained Cuban exile to stand trial in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people died. Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Communist militant also accused of plotting to assassinate Castro and masterminding bomb attacks on Havana hotels, applied for political asylum in the United States one month after crossing the Mexican border illegally, his lawyer said in Miami on Wednesday.

The Five had no access whatsoever to classified information
That incredible declaration from a man who obsessively pursued those Cubans he viciously described as "spies" gave the following answer to Zuñiga’s question:
"Do you believe that the security of the United States was in danger at any point, or did they have access to any intelligence information that could be valuable to the enemies of the United States?"
And Pesquera answered, verbatim:
"No," and explained, "For example, in the case of (Antonio) Guerrero, there was a retrospective study of the information he had obtained and the investigation did not indicate that it could have been so."
Evidently not – as the rest of the interview demonstrates.