Hugh Thompson, a former US Army helicopter pilot honoured for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow soldiers during the My Lai massacre, died early yesterday. He was 62.

IT IS hard to understand how anybody in his or her right mind could ever try to justify what happened in Beslan last week.

SEYMOUR HERSCH’S allegations that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon were behind the decision to abuse the Arab prisoners sexually so that they would talk must be taken seriously.