The United States will no longer be able to stockpile cluster bombs at its military bases in Britain under government proposals for an international ban on the controversial weapons. As diplomats from more than 100 states unanimously passed a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs, it emerged that British ministers are prepared to go further.
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/ 29 February 2008
The job that Prince Harry was doing in Afghanistan was essentially a ”carrot” to stop him leaving the army after he was refused permission to fight in Iraq with the soldiers he had led throughout his army career. After his men left for Basra without him, he retrained for a job he had not before done.
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/ 29 February 2008
Army commanders were making frantic arrangements on Thursday night to bring Prince Harry back from Afghanistan after an American website disclosed that he had been serving with other British troops fighting the Taliban. The prince, who is 10 weeks into a 14-week tour, was believed to still be in the country on Thursday night among British soldiers in the southern Helmand province.
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/ 10 February 2008
Britain evacuated of oil workers from a North Sea accommodation platform on Sunday after reports of a bomb threat but officials said the incident was quickly contained and there was no need to send in a bomb squad. Fourteen helicopters were sent to the Safe Scandinavia platform following a security alert, officials said.
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/ 7 February 2008
American forces in Baghdad on Wednesday warned of a ”disturbing trend in the use and exploitation of children by al-Qaeda in Iraq”, after discovering videos showing young boys being trained in kidnapping and assassination. In one of the videos about 20 boys are seen bristling with pistols, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
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/ 16 January 2008
A roadside bomb tore through a Sri Lankan bus killing 24 people and wounding dozens on Wednesday, officials said, as a six-year ceasefire formally expires between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. The Ministry of Defence said a large number of schoolchildren were on the bus at the time of the blast in the central district of Moneragala.
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/ 21 November 2007
China has committed to sending an engineering unit of peacekeepers to Darfur at the end of the week, the top United Nations peacekeeping official said on Wednesday. China has about 1 800 peacekeepers deployed abroad, making it the second-largest contributor after France.
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/ 6 November 2007
A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country’s history. Five members of the Afghan Parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise among the delegates and schoolchildren who were among the victims.
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/ 16 September 2007
A startling new household survey of Iraqis released last week claims as many as 1,2-million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq — apparently lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels. More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners.
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/ 6 September 2007
Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) scrambled four Tornado jets on Thursday to intercept eight Russian long-range bombers, the Ministry of Defence said. ”In the early hours of this morning, four RAF Tornado F3 aircraft from RAF Leeming and RAF Waddington were launched to intercept eight Russian ”bear” aircraft, which had not entered UK airspace,” the ministry said.
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/ 6 September 2007
Sudan has developed unmanned surveillance planes, is developing missiles, and is now ”self-sufficient” in conventional weapons, a Sudanese state news agency reported. The rare public announcement on Sudan’s military capability gave no details on how far missile development had progressed or where the surveillance drones might be used.
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/ 4 September 2007
Employers should allow their workers to befriend, chat and ”poke” each other through online networking sites while at work, Britain’s largest labour federation says. The Trades Union Congress says a ban on sites such as Facebook and MySpace ”may be something of an overreaction”.
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/ 4 September 2007
Two bombs exploded in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, killing 24 people and wounding 66, and at least one of the blasts was caused by a suicide attacker, officials said. The blasts come at a time of deepening political uncertainty in Pakistan, with the army chief and President, General Pervez Musharraf, preparing to try to secure a new term.