MI5 chief quits as full story of July 7 is about to emergeThe head of MI5 has resigned weeks before full details of the role of her agents in a surveillance operation involving two of the July 7 bombers are due to be revealed.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, whose organisation has been at the forefront of the war on terror, is leaving after more than four years as director general.
Dame Eliza, 58, said the date of her departure after 33 years with the security service had been agreed with the former Home Secretary Charles Cl... (more)
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Blackmailed by dictators This much we knew already: Tony Blair's administration is riddled with double standards and hypocrisy in its international dealings. But Lord Goldsmith's announcement that the Serious Fraud Office was calling off its investigation into alleged corruption involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia dragged matters to an all-time low.
The explanations given are startling. Goldsmith has form in being flexible with the law and the truth - as with his legal advice in advance of Iraq. He sa... (more)
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Walter Litvinenko 'Putin murdered my son'The father of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, claiming that no one else in Russia would have the authority to sanction an assassination on foreign soil.
In his first interview since his son's death, Walter Litvinenko, who served as a doctor in the Gulag during the Communist years, said he was convinced that Alexander was poisoned by the FSB - the successor to the KGB. "The cynical m... (more)
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Spy was killed 'on orders of Kremlin Stalin' A feared Kremlin boss, who has been likened to Stalin, has emerged as the key suspect in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, according to the murdered spy's former business partner.
Yuri Shvets, a fellow ex-agent, has told British detectives that he believes Mr Litvinenko was killed after compiling a dossier on the official for a British firm considering a deal in Russia.
The file led to the firm cancelling the deal, worth tens of millions of pounds, with a comp... (more)
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Poisoned spy 'had information on Kremlin figure'An ex-business associate of Alexander Litvinenko says the former Russian spy was murdered because of information he held on a powerful Kremlin figure.
Ex-spy Yuri Shvets said Mr Litvinenko was commissioned by a reputable UK firm to provide information on Russia.
He told BBC Radio 4 that Mr Litvinenko was poisoned after his dossier containing damaging details was deliberately leaked to the high-ranking Moscow figure.
Mr Litvi... (more)
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Ruling in case of terror suspect may be explosiveWASHINGTON - A federal judge in Miami will soon make one of the most important rulings in the Bush administration's war on terrorism and decide whether to publicly explore evidence that an accused terrorist was brutally mistreated for years inside a one-man isolation cell.
The allegations involve Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen once portrayed as one of the most dangerous al-Qaida operatives ever arrested. Padilla's lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke to set him free... (more)
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Cornered Military Takes to Desperate TacticsFALLUJAH, Dec 9 (IPS) - People living in areas where resistance to U.S.-led occupation is mounting are facing increased levels of collective punishment from the occupation forces, residents say.
Siniyah town 200 km north of Baghdad with a population of 25,000 has been under siege by the U.S. military for two weeks.
IPS had earlier reported unrest in Siniyah Jan. 20 when the U.S. military constructed a six-mile sand wall in a failed attempt to check resistance attack... (more)
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CIA approved Iran report but White House blocks former official's Op-Ed based on itA former Bush official has been blocked by the White House from writing an Op-Ed for The New York Times based on a report which was already approved by the CIA.
On Friday, Flynt Leverett, a former government official who worked on President Bush's National Security Council staff and now serves as a senior fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation, revealed in remarks made at a Center for American Progress panel that the Op-Ed, wh... (more)
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Home Office bumps up innocents on DNA DatabaseLess than two thirds of people whose profile is stored on the National DNA Database are there for having been cautioned or convicted of a criminal offence, Home Office figures have revealed.
In response to a parliamentary question, John Reid last week responded that 3,457,000 individuals are on the database, but 1,139,445 have no criminal record. The figure is eight times the total of 139,463 reported by the Home Office Earlier in March.
The n... (more)
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Sir Ian to be 'criticised', not disciplined, over Stockwell Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is understood to be among those officers singled out for criticism in an official report into the handling of the aftermath of the Stockwell shooting.
The Met chief is on a list drawn up by law-yers of people who will receive a formal letter from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), warning them of the findings. Sources close to the inquiry said: "Clearly there was a cock-up and the buck stops with him."<... (more)
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Vapour trails? That's what THEY want you to think COULD secret military planes be flying over Halton as part of an experiment to control the weather?
Mid Cheshire-based researcher Phil Morris says he has spotted unmarked aircraft flying over the Silver Jubilee Bridge, Fiddler's Ferry power station and the industrial areas of Widnes and Runcorn, leaving thick, white, rapidly expanding 'chemtrails' which behave differently from normal condensation trails.
There is growing speculation that the chemtrails are deposited... (more)
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Testimony Helps Detail CIA's Post-9-11 ReachMILAN -- A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal: Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism suspects and fly them out of the country?
The CIA man did not identify which targets he had in mind but was "expressly referring to the possibility of picking up a suspected terrorist in Italy, bri... (more)
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RFID passports 'cloned within five minutes'New passports using radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to hold personal data can be cloned in less than five minutes, it has been claimed.
Two technology consultants have discovered that ePassports can be cloned using internet-bought software and put the owner "more at risk" from identity thieves, according to the BBC.
RFID chips on ePassports contain information about the owner via radio signals which can be read from a short distance... (more)
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U.N. peacekeepers accused of rapeLEOGANE, Haiti -- Reports that peacekeepers raped teenage girls have surfaced in Haiti, where a United Nations mission so far had avoided the sexual abuse scandals that have sullied the international organization's reputation in other parts of the world.
Natasha, whose real name is being withheld to protect her, says she was raped by a Sri Lankan peacekeeper in this quiet city an hour west of Port-au-Prince when she was 15 years old. Her mother forbade her from making a compla... (more)
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General Reveals Residual Neocon-Likudnik Haunting at Pentagon For the neocons, it was not enough last month when Bush compared Iran to al-Qaeda. Forget the rhetoric, say the neocons. Bomb Iran, now. Of course, this is nothing new, as the Israel First neocons, at the behest of Likud-Kadima, the nationalist-religious parties, and the fanatical settler wing of the Israeli government, have called for mass murdering untold numbers in Iran for some time now.
However, with each passing day, the calls get more strident, more shrill, more desp... (more)
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Litvinenko's killers used polonium worth $10m to give massive overdose# Dose ten times the lethal level
# Investigators are baffled by amount
British investigators believe that Alexander Litvinenko’s killers used more than $10 million of polonium-210 to poison him. Preliminary findings from the post mortem examination on the former KGB spy suggest that he was given more than ten times the lethal dose.
Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part o... (more)
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Data mining won't catch terrorists Many business travelers prefer to sit in an aisle seat. Many also prefer to sit near the front of the plane so they may be among the first off when the plane lands.
Those also happen to be seats that might be desirable for terrorists bent on hijacking an airplane.
That common seat preference shared by business fliers and violent extremists could be earning innocent passengers additional scrutiny as they cross the U.S. border.
... (more)
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Academic to be Tried for Attending Holocaust Conference
Robert Faurisson, a French academic who attended an Iranian conference questioning the Jewish Holocaust, could face legal punishment.
Robert Faurisson might be brought to court as a result of the comments he made at the "unacceptable" Tehran gathering, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said.
The foreign minister said the French academic was previously taken to court and banned from teaching at universities for his attitude toward the holocaust.... (more)
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Gaza: a prison againAfter the worst years in memory, charities try to offer hope where there is deep despair
Maybe they are just conveniently forgetting other periods in Gaza's turbulent and blood-stained history, but most Gazans will tell you that 2006 is the worst year they can remember.
In Gaza City's deserted gold souk, people are not even coming to sell their jewellery any more.
"We just sit and drink tea," said Yasser Moteer, 35, who runs a jewellery stall. "It's w... (more)
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Human Thoughts Control New RobotScientists have created a way to control a robot with signals from a human brain.
By generating the proper brainwaves—picked up by a cap with electrodes that sense the signals and reflect a person's instructions—scientists can instruct a humanoid robot to moves to specific locations and pick us certain objects [video].
The commands are limited to moving forward, picking up one of two objects and bringing it to one of two locations. The researchers have a... (more)
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