An Iranian newspaper called on the government on Wednesday to preempt any UN action over its nuclear programme by imposing sanctions of its own against France, a major investor in the country.

In a no-holds-barred attack on Paris, Jomhouri Eslami accused French President Jacques Chirac of taking advantage of Iranians and “having treated Iran in a way not even the United States has yet dared to do.”

It said France, whose companies including Renault, Peugeot and Total are among the most important foreign investors in Iran, should be “set aside from Iran’s profitable market”.

“Paris, with its investment of 25 billion euros over the past 15 years, has earned a considerable position in Iran’s economy … Mr. Chirac cannot both flirt with enemies and us and, at the same time, plunder Iranians’ wealth,” the paper said. (more…)

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch says he has no regrets about supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq and argues the US death toll in the conflict is “minute” from a historical perspective.

The News Corporation chief was speaking on the eve of US mid-term elections where President George W Bush’s Republican Party is tipped to lose seats in part due to a backlash over the war.

“The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute,” Mr Murdoch told reporters at a conference in Tokyo.

That’s right folks, elites like Murdoch see the mass murder of 650,000 Iraqis as “minute”…most would like to see more mass killing. (more…)

Israel fired artillery shells containing white phosphorus in its recent conflict with Hizbollah militants in the Lebanon, according to an official investigation by the United Nations.

White phosphorus is banned under the Geneva Convention when used against civilians or in civilian areas, although Israel insists that the shells were directed against solely military targets.

However, the UN team failed to find any evidence that Israel used depleted uranium, enriched uranium or any other radioactive material in bombs dropped on Lebanon during the month-long war, which ended on 14 August. (more…)

An AIDS virus genetically engineered to fight other AIDS viruses worked better than expected, suppressing the virus and renewing the immune systems of a few patients, researchers reported on Monday.

The study involved just five people, and such an approach needs years more study, they cautioned — but the surprising results offer new hope both for the field of gene therapy and for treating the fatal and incurable AIDS virus.

“The goal of this phase I trial was safety and feasibility and the results established that,” said Dr. Carl June of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who led the study.

“But the results also hint at something much more,” he added. (more…)

A list of 13 “enemies of the internet” has been released by human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). For the first time, Egypt has been added to the list while Nepal, Libya and the Maldives have all been removed.

The list consists of countries that RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the internet.

The civil liberties pressure group has organised a 24-hour protest, inviting web users to vote for the worst offending countries.

Visitors to the RSF website are also invited to leave a voice message for Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang, expressing their views on the firm’s involvement in China. RSF has been outspoken in its condemnation of Yahoo. The search engine has been criticised along with other companies for helping the Chinese authorities block access to some online material. (more…)

History suggests power shift may be temporary

Israel will not target Iran’s nuclear facilities which the Jewish state says are used to secretly develop an atomic bomb, a senior US official said.

“Israel will not target Iran’s nuclear facilities because it has said this is a problem of the entire world,” the official told AFP. “Israel understands that the only way to defuse the nuclear crisis is through diplomatic channels.”

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet United States President George W. Bush in Washington next week for talks which are expected to focus on Iran’s controversial nuclear programme. (more…)

Syria’s foreign minister said Monday his country was ready to resume peace talks with Israel and he urged the Jewish state’s government to heed calls from within the country for renewed negotiations.

“We appreciate the Israeli voices who call for the resumption of the peace process with Syria,” said Walid al-Moallem, urging the Israeli government to respond and resume talks.

If Israel agrees, “it will find Syria ready to resume peace negotiations,” the foreign minister said during a news conference in Damascus with his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Store. (more…)

Amman- The head of the defence team of the deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Tuesday accused the US troops of preventing him and his colleagues from returning to Amman and depriving them of an access to the media and the world’s legal organizations. “The defence team members remained on the alert and under a kind of confinement inside the Green Zone since Monday, while several experts, observers and journalists who attended the last session have been evacuated,” Khalil Duleimi said in a letter e-mailed to the media in Amman.

“It should be noted that the American authorities have promised to secure our return to Amman not later than Monday, 6th of November,” he added.

Duleimi charged that delaying the return of the team member to Amman where they are based “has only one sole aim - that is to gain time in order to obstruct the lawyers’ efforts to get access to the media and international organizations in their effort to prevent the implementation of the unjust judgements.” (more…)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has told the BBC he expects Saddam Hussein to be executed by the end of 2006.
In an interview with John Simpson in Baghdad, Mr Maliki said the decision to hang the former president would not be affected by any pressure.

“We would like the whole world to respect the judicial will of Iraq,” he told the BBC.

The former Iraqi leader was sentenced to death two days ago after being convicted of crimes against humanity. (more…)

Government says it needs “more time” before releasing a video that shows nothing

The FBI has further delayed the release of a video that many bloggers have speculated may show the impact of flight 77 into the Pentagon on September 11th 2001.

Following last week’s article detailing the imminent release of the Doubletree hotel video, a reader has informed us that after calling Judicial Watch and asking when the video would be made public, he was told:

‘The Government said they needed more time’. When asked when enough time would pass before they could release the tape, they said they didn’t know and it was indefinite… (more…)

An artist’s concept of what a human-dog hybrid might look like. The strange creatures are part of a sculpture by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini entitled “The Young Family,” produced to spark reflection on the perils of creating human-animal mixtures.

Scientists are going too far in creating mixed human-animal organisms, a Scottish organization is warning.

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, a professional group based in Edinburgh, has published a report on the ethical implications of the practice in the journal Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics. The report is online at www.schb.org.uk.

“Crossing the human species barrier is a procedure that has always fascinated humanity,” noted the report, made public Tuesday and written in light of draft legislation on human embryology being prepared by the U.K. Department of Health, to be published this summer. (more…)

The government is refusing to release a secret draft of its dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.  The version was written by the Foreign Office’s head of press, who said it did not include the infamous “45-minute claim”, the New Statesman reported.

A charity worker has been trying to get it published for two years under the Freedom of Information Act.

He has appealed to the Information Commissioner but the Foreign Office says it has “no plans” to publish it. (more…)

Still thrashing around for something to call his ‘legacy’, Tony Blair makes ever more extravagant claims for his wildly expensive scheme to introduce biometric ID cards.

Not only will they help in the fight against crime, terrorism and illegal immigration, he says, but they will smash identity fraud and make it easier for everyone to access services.

Sounds wonderful in theory. But in practice?

Leave aside the frightening implications for civil liberties - and how sinister it is that Mr Blair now wants the police to check all our fingerprints against files on 900,000 unsolved crimes. Can anyone believe that ID cards will be anything like as effective as he makes them out to be? (more…)

IBM granted the first manufacturing license for its RFID Clipped Tag, designed to let consumers remove RFID antennas from clothing, prescription drugs, and other items they’ve just purchased.

IBM thinks it’s got an answer to privacy concerns about RFID tags. It’s announcing Wednesday the first manufacturing agreement for its Clipped Tag, which was designed with an antenna that’s as easy to remove as tearing off a piece of paper.

IBM and its first manufacturing licensee, Marnlen RFID, don’t yet have any business customers for the tags, but they’re talking to retailers in the U.S., Canada and Europe about pilot tests, says Paul Moskowitz, a scientist with IBM Research and one of the tag’s inventors. The idea is to let retail, consumer goods and drug companies tap into the value of RFID while sidestepping privacy concerns. Consumers could remove the antennas once items are purchased. IBM has even done an informational YouTube video on the tag. (more…)

The Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, yesterday vowed to resist attempts by US president George W Bush’s administration to obtain private information on internet users.

On the day when the Republican administration faced dispiriting results in the US mid-term elections, Dr Schmidt launched a stinging criticism of the government’s attitude to privacy.

Earlier this year, Google succeeded in having a subpoena allowing access to huge banks of data on the habits of web users overturned by a federal judge.

Dr Schmidt said the search giant “would fight very hard” against any repeat performance from the White House. (more…)