A US federal jury will determine whether former soldier Steven Dale Green should be executed for raping an Iraqi teenager and executing the girl and her family, court officials said.
It took the jurors less than two days of deliberations to find Green guilty on all 17 criminal counts, which included rape, premeditated murder and obstruction of justice.
Three other soldiers were given life sentences in the March 2006 atrocity that was devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Thousands more civilians surged out of Sri Lanka’s war zone on Wednesday, while soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels fought the apparent endgame of Asia’s longest-running war despite calls to protect those still trapped.
In the third day since troops blasted through a massive earthen wall built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and unleashed the exodus, the military said 81,420 people had been registered for onward transit to refugee camps.
The massive civilian presence in a 17 square km (6.5 sq mile) area had been the last crucial defence for …

A Tamil Tiger spokesman has accused the Sri Lankan government of shelling civilians and wreaking carnage during its military offensive in the north.
The government has denied the allegations, in turn accusing the rebel group of targeting civilians.
The army has said at least 25,000 civilians have fled the Tamil Tiger-held area.
The rebels have so far rejected government calls to surrender, or face a final assault.

British troops began their formal withdrawal from southern Iraq Tuesday, “marking the beginning of the end of the UK’s six-year combat mission in Iraq,” the Ministry of Defence announced.
The remaining 4,000 or so British troops in the sector will leave by summer, a ministry spokesman told CNN.
The spokesman declined to be named in line with MoD policy.
“You won’t now see hundreds of troops coming out of Iraq every day, (but) this is the start of the end for British forces — a period that will take until the end of …

After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
The …

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay accused the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tiger rebels of actions that may constitute war crimes and violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. She said both parties are putting thousands of civilians at risk and is calling on them stop fighting immediately.
This is the toughest statement issued by the UN’s top human rights official on the conduct of the war in Sri Lanka. Navi Pillay said she is extremely alarmed at the increasing number of civilians reported killed and …

Israel launched airstrikes into Gaza on Saturday, responding to a series of rockets fired by Hamas the day before, the Israeli military said.
Hamas security forces also reported Saturday’s strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Israeli air force struck two “smuggling tunnels” on the southern Gaza border and one “weaponry storage site” in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was in stable condition and recovering from head injuries Friday night after a car wreck that killed his wife, Susan, medical sources told CNN.
The crash, on a busy two-lane highway between Tsvangirai’s hometown of Buhera and the capital city of Harare, comes just weeks after the start of a power-sharing agreement between Tsvangirai and his political rival, President Robert Mugabe.

MANILA, Philippines—The Filipino engineer held captive by Abu Sayyaf bandits in the mountains of Indanan, Sulu, along with her two colleagues in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has pleaded for help to end their suffering.
Mary Jean Lacaba was allowed by her captors to speak on the phone with this reporter on the afternoon of Feb. 25. Her voice was low and trembling, and she spoke in short sentences, in a mix of Filipino and English.
Lacaba relayed the same message over and over again, directed at the government …

Iranian and Russian engineers carried out a test-run of Iran’s first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a major step toward starting up a facility that the U.S. once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Washington worried Iran would turn spent fuel from the plant’s reactor into plutonium, which could then be used to build a nuclear warhead, and U.S. officials pressured Moscow for years to stop helping Iran build the electricity-generating facility.