Beirut - Israeli planes violated Lebanese airspace Saturday and dumped green balloons over the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanese security sources said.
Lebanese troops cordoned off the area around the coast of Tyre and prevented people from touching the 'suspicious balloons' after reports indicated that some people were poisoned when they did.
According to a hospital source in Nabatiyeh, similar green balloons were dropped over the market-town of Nabatiyeh, 54 ki... (more)
A boy of 12 is believed to have become the world's youngest sex change patient after convincing doctors that he wanted to live the rest of his life as a female.
The boy - originally called Tim, but now known as Kim - has started to receive hormone treatment, in preparation for the operation that will eventually complete the sex change.
Tim was diagnosed as a transsexual two years ago, when doctors and psychiatrists concluded that his claims to be "in the wrong body... (more)
How do free people say good-bye to freedom? This is the only real question people must ask themselves unless one happens to be a billionaire. As wealth is now the only badge of freedom, and as the American masses continue to lose jobs, private property, Constitutional rights, opportunity, and intellectual capacity, it is clear that our trajectory is spiraling downward into the new dictatorial definitions of our political handlers. Feudalism is alive and well on the homeland, and we are trapped l... (more)
Hucksters know more and something different from what they’re telling their potential buyers. Hucksters do great infomercials. Don King is a huckster. Managers for professional wrestlers, certain evangelical preachers, (Swaggart, Hagee, Haggard) – are all hucksters. They sell hollow products by agitating false needs and cruelly exploiting genuine ones.
Tehran, Jan. 26: One of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, Ardeshir Hassanpour, a professor at the University of Shiraz, has died under mysterious circumstances.
Hassanpour’s death was announced by Iranian state television, a week late, on Thursday.
No reason was given for his death. The scientist was proclaimed the best scientist in the military field in the Islamic Republic in 2003. Hassanpour directed the centre for nuclear electromagnetic studies he had ... (more)
DAVID Hicks is spending 22 hours a day in "nightmarish" isolation in conditions described by Guantanamo Bay inmates as "a dungeon above the ground", court documents suggest.
Fresh evidence about the treatment of prisoners in the US military base has been revealed amid deepening concerns about the Australian terrorist suspect's mental state, and just days before Hicks receives a visit from his Australian lawyer.
Conditions inside Hicks' cell block at the naval base i... (more)
“This is how the 1975-90 conflict began in Lebanon. Outbreaks of sectarian hatred, appeals for restraint, promises of aid from Western and Arab nations and a total refusal to understand that this is how civil wars begin”.
Robert Fisk, “World ignores Signs of Civil War in Lebanon” UK Independent 1-27-07
Robert Fisk is all wrong about Lebanon. The country is not on the brink of another “civil war”. It's been subsumed in an &... (more)
More than half a million people had signed a petition calling for the Government to scrap plans for pay-as-you-drive road pricing last night as it emerged that the European Union is about to cash in on the scheme.
With less than a month before the petition is taken down from the Downing Street website, the latest predictions are suggesting that around 750,000 will back the campaign started by Peter Roberts, an account executive from Telford, Shropshire. L... (more)
Corrupt police and tribal leaders are stealing vast quantities of reconstruction aid that is intended to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans and turn them away from the Taliban, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
In some cases, all the aid earmarked for an area has ended up in the wrong hands. Defence officials in the United States and Britain estimate that up to half of all aid in Afghanistan is failing to reach the right people.
Actor Sean Penn summed up the new energy -- and the new focus -- of the anti-war movement Saturday, when he turned George Bush's own words against the president.
Just hours after the president had again reasserted his false claim to authority to pursue a war that is not wanted by the American people or the Congress, Penn told anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington that Bush would be wise to review the Constitution.
"In a democracy," the actor told the cheerin... (more)
I would like to bring your attention to a story I covered last August about 1st Lt. Ehren Watada. The story covered his decision not to deploy to Iraq and a speech he gave at the Veteran's for Peace National Convention in Seattle last August. The full text of his speech can be read here
In the weeks following that speech, I was contacted by the prosecuting attorney from his court-martial an... (more)
The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.
Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.
'We're selling pets. No one will target us,' merchants told a policeman before a bombing that killed 15 people and injured 51. Many of the patrons were children, at least one of whom died.
BAGHDAD — The police officer warned them to spread out. Now was not the time to cluster around one another so closely. But he didn't press too hard before he moved along. In this time of war and misery, police officer Sabah Shayal admitted, it heartened him to see so many people gathering ... (more)
Detectives have discovered a hand-written note from Tony Blair among new evidence that has widened significantly the cash-for-honours investigation.
It is the first time that the "paper trail" uncovered by Scotland Yard has led directly to the Prime Minister. The note is understood to acknowledge the efforts of Labour's 12 secret lenders who provided £14 million to help the party fight the 2005 election.
An Iranian nuclear official has rejected a statement by a Tehran MP who said Iran had begun installing 3,000 new atomic centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Hossein Simorgh, the head of public affairs at Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said on Saturday that no such new devices had been fitted at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, had earlier been quoted as saying Iran... (more)
Australian toll road giant Macquarie agreed Wednesday to purchase forty local newspapers, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, for $80 million. Macquarie Bank is Australia's largest capital raising firm and has invested billions in purchasing roads in the US, Canada and UK. Most recently the company joined with Cintra Concesiones of Spain in a controversial 75-year lease of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road.
Sal Costello, the leading opponent of toll road projects as head of the Texas To... (more)
LONDON, January 28 (IranMania) - Iran has condemned the order by US President George W Bush allowing US military to capture or kill Iranian agents operating inside neighbouring Iraq, terming it a 'terrorist act'.
'I really hope that this report is wrong as such an order is a clear terrorist act and against all internationally acknowledged norms,' the head of the parliament's foreign policy and security commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi told Fars news agency Saturday.
CHAPEL HILL - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who toured the country last fall talking about other people's homes, is now fielding questions about his own $6 million estate outside Chapel Hill.
Edwards had hit the talk show circuit to promote his book "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives," which describes the childhood homes of various more-or-less famous people, including his own modest mill village houses.
But since he announced his second run for th... (more)
Russia said yesterday it was not willing to hand over to Britain the businessman suspected by Scotland Yard of poisoning the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Russian prosecutors said there was virtually no prospect they would agree to any future British request for Andrei Lugovoi to be extradited to the UK to stand trial.
Senior Whitehall officials have told the Guardian that a Scotland Yard file on Mr Litvinenko's murder, which is abo... (more)
Low levels of chlorine in tap water used for bathing can almost double the risk of bladder cancer, a study claims.
Scientists found chemical by-products from mains water containing the disinfectant can be absorbed through the skin in the bath or shower and accumulate in the bladder.
Swimming in public pools can also present a risk because chlorine levels are much higher.
The risk is caused by chemical by-products called THMs which are produced when ch... (more)
Women in southern Sweden will in the future not be able to choose the sex of their gynaecologist. Allowing them to choose discriminates against male gynaecologists, it has been ruled.
The new practice has been introduced by clinics in the counties of Skåne, Halland, Blekinge and Kronoberg. Gynaecological patients in those areas will now be assigned a doctor of either sex, Helsingborgs Dagblad reports.
Exceptions will be made in some cases, such as for women wh... (more)
MEN are turning to cosmetic surgery to tackle the embarrassment of “man breasts”, fuelling a near doubling in the number of people sculpting their bodies through liposuction.
Surgeons have reported a surge in the number of men requesting breast-reduction operations for ‘moobs’. According to one theory, the condition, called gynaecomastia, may be caused by an excess of female hormones in tap water.
The boom in demand for liposuction is reveale... (more)
