LONDON - Documents released Monday show how the British government tried to send thousands of Palestine-bound Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide back to postwar Germany without inflaming world opinion.

Could it be done? The answer was no. It was just two years after the end of the war and the world was outraged by the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in what became known as the Holocaust.

Despite the best efforts of early spin doctors to portray the move in the most sympathetic light, the decision to turn away the more than 4,500 Jews on board the Exodus refugee ship turned into a humanitarian and public relations debacle for Britain. Read more »

“Yo dat beez my posse!” 

PARIS - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said Monday that six pirates in French custody for allegedly holding the crew of a yacht hostage are likely from his home region in the Horn of Africa country.

Ahmed, who was in Paris for meetings with President Nicolas Sarkozy and other top French officials, did not confirm a French news report that four of the pirates were members of his extended family, or clan. Read more »

SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — Suffolk police have arrested three people they say were caught stealing items from tornado-ravaged homes.

It happened in the Burnetts Mill community.

Police made the arrests Saturday night after receiving a phone call from a resident saying they saw three people in their neighbors home. The suspects are identified as 22-year-old David James Kew, Jr., 21-year-old Oscar F. Fransisco Pena and 20-year-old Kenneth Ray Dennis.

Pena and Dennis both belong to the USS Wasp LHD1. Read more »

Nine-year-old paperboy Ethan Hall was out on his regular route when a pack of piled-up letters on a woman’s front porch caught his eye.”I noticed that her mail’s there. And she’s handicapped, so she can’t come out of the house,” said Sycamore, Ill., resident.

Ethan suspected something was wrong and told his mother, who then called police. The boy’s instincts were correct. Three days earlier, the resident of the house had fallen and broken her hip, and she lay stuck and helpless on the floor. Read more »

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq would make it difficult to mount any attack on Iran, the Pentagon’s top officer said in remarks broadcast on Monday, adding that he would prefer to avoid a new regional war.

I actually am very hopeful that we don’t get into a position where we have to get into a conflict,” Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel’s Channel Ten television when asked if he might recommend that U.S. forces strike Iranian nuclear facilities preemptively. Read more »

Amid the controversy last week over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s latest comments and his relationship with Sen. Barack Obama [”Obama Calls Minister’s Comments ‘Outrageous,’ ” front page, April 30], it might be useful to take a look at some of the racial politics we’ve had in our region. The small town of Farmville in Southside Virginia offers a rich case study in what Obama has called “the racial stalemate,” the failure of black and white people to openly discuss their mutual resentments.

In 1959, Prince Edward County shut down its public schools for five years to resist the racial integration ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The white children went to a hastily organized private academy that was subsidized by the state government; the black kids were left to fend for themselves.

Today, blacks and whites in Prince Edward still live racially isolated lives. The children of well-off white residents attend the private school established in 1959, leaving the predominantly black public schools starved for resources. The high school even has two cheerleading squads: one black, one white. Read more »

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them 

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse—for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not—can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments. Read more »

Investigators continue the manhunt for one of the suspects in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer.
Police are looking for 33-year-old Eric Floyd (pictured below). 

The local police union has posted a $10,000 reward,bringing the total offered for information leading to Floyd’s capture to more than $45,000.

Tip calls have led police as far away as New York City in search of Floyd.  Monday morning, investigators searched a train out of Trenton at New York’s Penn Station.  A tip indicated he could be on board.

Read more »

Bears running back Cedric Benson has been arrested on a drinking-related charge. It happened while Benson was on a boat Saturday night near Austin, Texas. He now faces charges of boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest.

Benson was boating on Lake Travis in Texas when his boat was stopped for a random safety check. After failing a field sobriety test, he was told he would have to go ashore for another test. At that time, he refused to cooperate, and according to the Lower Colorado River Authority, he presented himself as a threat to the officer. He was subdued with pepper spray and arrested.

But Benson claimed that he wasn’t drunk and didn’t resist arrest. Read more »

Iran said Monday it would not hold a new round of talks with the U.S. on security in Iraq until American forces end their current assault against Shiite militias.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Iraq’s government spokesman said Sunday that the crackdown would continue even if Iran pulled out of the talks.

“We believe the talks will not be held given the current situation (in Iraq),” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters during his weekly press briefing Monday. Read more »

ANC president says ruling party plans to transfer 30% of farmland by 2014.

JOHANNESBURG (Sapa) - ANC president Jacob Zuma passionately addressed thousands of workers at a May Day celebration in the North West on Thursday saying that rural development was key to fighting poverty.

“Many of them work long hours for poverty wages. Read more »

 Four years after after an urgent bulletin issued by the U.S. Army — with the headline ‘The Unexpected Killer’ — at least two more soldiers have been electrocuted, according to Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

The Defense Contract Management Agency tasked with supervising maintenance work by contractors at American bases in Iraq attempted to defend itself in a written statement as did KBR, which until just last year was known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and was a subsidiary of Halliburton.

From Sunday’s NYT:

“The Defense Contract Management Agency, which is responsible for supervising maintenance work by contractors at American bases in Iraq, defended its performance. In a written statement, the agency said it had no information that staff members “were aware” of the Army alert or “failed to take appropriate action in response to unsafe conditions brought to our attention.” Read more »

Theft, hookers, melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs—all in a day’s work for private military contractors in Iraq? Allegations of widespread mismanagement and corruption among private contractors in Iraq are nothing new; if anything, tales of cronyism, over-billing, and embezzlement have become so frequent that our national tolerance for them seems only to have increased as the Iraq War has drawn on. Even so, the testimony earlier this week of three whistleblowers before the Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) stands out for the sheer outrageousness of their accusations—namely that U.S. private contractors looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor. Yet despite its focus on such salacious matters as sex and corruption, the session earned little media attention. Source>>>