A former Taliban official now living on Long Island pleaded guilty in US District Court in Manhattan June 16 to tax fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Noorullah Zadran, 53, of Huntington Station, faces up to 8 months in prison after pleading guilty to filing a false 2000 tax return, failing to include in the statement the $1,541 in income he received from the Taliban. Zadran also admitted that he falsely claimed on a bank loan application that his wife was employed, in order to get a lower interest rate.

Zadran, described by Newsday as "a tall, elegantly dressed man with gold wire-rimmed glasses," was "First Secretary to the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan" from 1998 to 2001, when he frequently appeared on TV news programs as the spokesman for the Taliban regime.

You almost have to admire the chuztpah of the Bush gang. Not only are they refusing the close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, they are actually planning to expland it--and Halliburton gets the contract! This from the AP:

Halliburton Gets $30M Gitmo Contract
Friday, June 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — A subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton has been awarded a $30 million contract to build an improved 220-bed prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay (search), Cuba, the Pentagon announced.

This June 18 BBC account on Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's approaching 60th birthday provides a good brief overview of the recent escalating violence in Burma:

No happy returns for Suu Kyi
By Tony Cheng
BBC News, Bangkok

The woman simply known as "The Lady" will spend a lonely 60th birthday this Sunday, allowed only the company of two maids and a weekly visit from her doctor, as she enters her consecutive third year under house arrest.

From the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, June 16th, 2005 (online at Stop The Wall):

Villagers of Marda Continue To Resist Settler Bypass Road

Thirty villagers were injured today during clashes with Occupation Forces in Marda, in the east of Salfit district. Villagers were demonstrating against the theft of their lands by the Apartheid Wall and the Jewish-only bypass road system that together will almost completely encircle the village.

Several hundreds villagers marched to lands in the northwest of Marda, which are being confiscated and uprooted by the Occupation for the route of a new settler bypass road. They were attacked on the way by Occupation Forces who fired tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets into the crowds of demonstrators.

Another escalation is reported in the persecution of the Mapuche indigenous people of Chile: the imprisonment of the editor of a Mapuche magazine on six-year-old charges related to a land occupation, effectively preventing him from travelling to Canada for a meeting of Native journalists. This June 16 account is from Reporteros Sin Fronteras (RSF) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX):

Almost completely overlooked by the world media, the insurgency of the Naxalites, India's Maoist guerillas, has been simmering since the 1960s, and now shows signs of gaining ground, as indicated by this June 17 report from the Indian news agency Rediff:

Naxalism: 13 states discuss strategy
A one-day meeting of top officials of 13 Maoist-affected states to chalk out strategies to tackle Naxalism commenced in Hyderabad on Friday.

Perhaps embarrassed by outgoing chief Tom Ridge's admission that the color coded terror alert was raised for political reasons (USA Today, May 10), the Homeland Security Department appears to be slowing in some of its most egregious (or ambitious) new programs. Plans to require 27 allied countries to issue new passports with chips encoded with biometric data have been put off for a year, although by this October they will have to start issuing passports with tamperproof digitized photos. Allied governments had protested the chip-embedded passports, and Homeland Security may be rethinking the idea. (AP, June 16)

Police arrested 11 men June 15 on charges of belonging to a Syrian-based group that recruits suicide bombers to attack U.S. troops in Iraq. Authorities said the recruiting network has ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. More than 500 heavily-armed police held predawn raids in six cities to grab the men.