Eurasia Press & News

The PACE hears one of the most controversial reports in its history Mikhail Zygar. European lawmakers hear a report on CIA secret prisons – and Chechnya; The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has heard a report on CIA secret prisons in Europe.

With the George W Bush administration under pressure to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pakistan is readying to step in to help its ally in the “war on the terror”.

The Venezuelan president is visiting Russia, apparently shopping for hardware to boost its military against the USA. Vladimir Putin welcomed Hugo Chavez for talks at the presidential retreat outside Moscow, saying economic affairs and military-technical co-operation were on the agenda.

Five US soldiers have been killed in an attack on a patrol in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the US military has said.

The Iranian government’s last-minute decision to ration monthly fuel allotments, as well as increase the price of gas, triggered protests and riots — a rarity in the Islamic republic — according to Iranian media reports.

Financier Ashraf Marwan, 62, the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, had been named by Israeli officials as a source for the country’s intelligence service Mossad. Scotland Yard is treating his death in Carlton House Terrace as “unexplained”.

The Egyptian government announced plans on Thursday to ban all female circumcision, the widely-practised removal of the clitoris which just days ago cost the life of a 12-year-old girl.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A fifth of the members of the US Senate on Friday warned the situation in Afghanistan was quickly getting worse and called on Washington’s NATO allies to share more of the security burden.

As of Friday, June 29, 2007, at least 342 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S. soldiers killed four civilian members of the same family during a raid on Friday in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, an Afghan rights body said.