More join hunger strike
San Juan, Puerto Rico – More Guantanamo Bay detainees have joined a hunger strike, raising the total to 89, the U.S. military said Thursday.
The strike – which last weekend jumped from three participants to 75 – is now the biggest of the year at the U.S. prison on Cuba, where about 460 men are being held on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
Six hunger strikers were being force-fed, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand – two more than last weekend. “All are being closely monitored by the … medical staff and being counseled on the health effects of long-term hunger striking,” he said.
Military officials said the hunger strikers are trying to gain public sympathy to pressure the United States to release them. But Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has been to Guantanamo Bay, said the growing hunger strike appears more like a call for help by detainees.
“The vast majority have never been charged with any crime and have been prevented from communicating directly with the outside world,” Wizner said. “So it may well be their attempt to ensure that the world is reminded of their unlawful detention.”
A U.N. panel said last month that holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay violates the world’s ban on torture.
NEW ORLEANS
Mayor takes oath, pledges better future
Mayor C. Ray Nagin took the oath of office Thursday for a second term leading this storm-hobbled city, promising a better future during a ceremony held at the site of some of the worst misery caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Nagin, who defeated Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu on May 20, was sworn in at the convention center, a giant riverside complex where thousands of hungry, frightened evacuees waited days for rescue last summer as muddy water submerged most of the city.
“Today is a new beginning for New Orleans, another beginning for New Orleans. I stand before you tried, tested and having weathered the worst of storms,” Nagin said.
WASHINGTON
Bush to stay course on nuke workers’ aid
The Bush administration will continue to support a benefits program for Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers, President Bush’s budget director says.
Rob Portman pledged to support the 5-year-old program in a letter to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
The letter, which Obama released Thursday, was written about three months after a White House budget document discussing ways to scale back the program became public.
In his letter to Obama, Portman said the administration “is not pursuing any changes to modify benefit costs” of the program.
DOERUN, Ga.
Army copter clips wire; 4 dead in crash
An Army helicopter clipped a wire on a television transmission tower and crashed Thursday, killing four soldiers on a training mission.
A fifth soldier aboard the MH-47 Chinook helicopter suffered minor injuries, said a spokeswoman for Fort Rucker, Ala., home to an Army helicopter training school where the soldiers were headed.
The helicopter left Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., and went down about 170 miles west of there in rural Colquitt County.
It clipped a wire as it flew past a television station’s 1,000-foot tower.
