France has rejected the European Union's constitution in a national referendum, in a blow to President Jacques Chirac and European integration. 56% voted against the treaty, Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said, citing official results with 90% of ballots counted. The defeat, the first veto of an EU pact by a founding member, may kill the constitution, which requires the approval of all 25 nations. It may also end Chirac's hopes of seeking re-election in 2007, after his failure to curb unemployment at a 5-year high. The result may set back plans by countries including Turkey and Croatia to join. The euro fell after the exit polls.

Another Hit-and-Run in the City
by Eyewitness News' Carolina Tarazona

(Elmhurst, Queens-WABC, May 29, 2005) — Another hit and run in the city--this morning's collision is the latest in a string of recent hit and run incidents. But this time, the victim survived, and the suspect did not get away. Eyewitness News reporter Carolina Tarazona is in Elmhurst, Queens right now with more.

Police say ten people are struck by hit-and-run drivers every day in New York City. Luckily, this latest victim survived. The victim was critically injured by an alleged drunk driver early this morning at 98th Street and Northern Blvd. Police stopped the driver of the red Nissan Maxima, and arrested 36-year-old Jose Castro. They say he may have been under the influence of alcohol.

In a depressing May 29 story in the London Times, "'New Castro' threatens to take his feud with America nuclear," Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is quoted saying: “We want to initiate nuclear research and ask for help from countries like Iran.

In a May 24 op-ed in the New York Times, Niall Ferguson--a history professor at Harvard, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire--makes the case for a long-term US occupation of Iraq, drawing some instructive lessons from the experience of British imperialism before the American Century. The Brits, in Ferguson's nostalgic view, were real old-fashioned undisguised and unapologetic imperialists, with no squeamishness about the burdens of colonial policing, and therefore were able to prevail over the Iraqi insurgents of the 1920s--and this, of course, is what the US must now emulate. The piece is tellingly entitled "Cowboys and Indians," implicitly invoking the ugliest colonial conquest of America's own past, although the text does not actually invoke the pacification of the American west (presumably because it is too obvious). Ferguson begins:

"I think that this could still fail." Those words - uttered by a senior American officer in Baghdad last week - probably gave opponents of the war in Iraq, particularly those clamoring for a hasty exit, a bit of a kick. They should be careful what they wish for.

He then predicts disaster if the US leaves, and goes on to draw his comparison with the British experience in Iraq starting in the aftermath of World War I:

The UN conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has closed with little accomplished in the way of new ways to enforce the fast-unravelling treaty. A May 28 report in the LA Times notes:

The United States tried to keep the focus on alleged nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea instead of its pledges to whittle down its own arsenal. Iran, which contends that its atomic program is strictly for generating electricity, refused to discuss proposals to restrict access to nuclear fuel and objected to being singled out as a "proliferation concern." And Egypt joined Iran in demanding that the conference address Israel's nuclear status and declare the Middle East "a nuclear-free zone." "The conference after a full month ended up where we started, which is a system full of loopholes, ailing and not a road map to fix it," Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Vienna as the conference fizzled to a close...

Well, after all the "Newsweek-lied-people-died" gloating, the Pentagon acknowledges Koran abuse at Gitmo (while denying the toilet incident).

Pentagon Admits Five Acts of 'Mishandling' the Koran
By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Friday 27 May 2005

The Pentagon admitted last night it had substantiated five occasions when US military personnel at Guantánamo Bay prison "mishandled" the Koran of Muslim detainees. But it said it found no credible evidence to confirm a complaint that the Islamic holy book had been flushed down a toilet.

James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the House Judiciary Committee chair, has introduced the Orwellianly named "Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act" (HR 1528) would compel people to spy on their family members and neighbors, and even go undercover and wear a wire if needed. Citizens who resisted would face imprisonment.

Under the law, if you "witness" or "learn about" certain drug offenses, you must report the offenses to law enforcement within 24 hours and provide "full assistance in the investigation, apprehension and prosecution" of the people involved. Failure to do so would be a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence, and a maximum sentence of 10 years.

An Islamist prisoner, accused of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombings, has died in a Moroccan prison on hunger strike, al-Jazeera reports. The unidentified man died in Autaita prison in the city of Sidi Qasim, where about 1,000 inmates, members of the so-called Salafia Jihadia organisation, had staged a hunger strike. The strikers deny involvement in the bombings and say they have been tortured. Abu Usama, a prisoner in Autaita jail, told Aljazeera the prisoners were demanding the Moroccan authorities open an investigation into rights violations they faced in Morocco's prisons and jails, including being made to sign confessions under threat of torture.