International

"Turkey, which agreed on April 2 to let the U.S. transport supplies through its territory to coalition forces in Iraq, used its large team of American lobbyists to get its message of long-term friendship and strategic importance across to members of Congress," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The lobbyists were sent into action after some members of Congress, who were upset over Turkey's refusal to let U.S.

Government officials from the U.S. and U.K. insist on labeling the American and British forces in Iraq as "coalition forces" despite the fact that the majority of "coalition of the willing" countries are providing little to no support for the Iraq invasion.

Robert Fisk reports that "an Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape, filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad, is raw, painful, devastating. ... It is also proof that Basra, reportedly 'captured" and 'secured' by British troops last week, is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. ...

"The English-language and Arabic websites of Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera were forced down this morning after a spate of suspected hacker attacks last night. Neither aljazeera.net, which gets the most hits of any Arabic website in the world, nor english.aljazeera.net, which launched on Monday, were available this morning after suspected attacks crashed both sites. [C]ommunications manager Jihad Ali Ballout told MediaGuardian.co.uk the company was doing everything possible to get the sites up and running.. ...