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Middle East
Al-Qaeda is preparing a new attack in the United States on the scale of September 11 after adopting a new operational structure which is impenetrable to US intelligence, according to a Saudi weekly. "An attack against America is inevitable," Al-Majallah quotes the Islamic militant network's newly-appointed spokesman Thabet bin Qais as saying in an e-mail to the paper. Al-Qaeda has "carried out changes in its leadership and sidelined the September 11, 2001 team", the paper quotes bin Qais as saying.
In an interview broadcast late Tuesday on Palestine television, new Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said he could not drop the Palestinian demand.Abbas, a refugee himself, said, "The refugees issue is for the final status. Keep it there and we will discuss it." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that the Palestinians must renounce the "right of return" of refugees and their descendants -- about 4 million people -- to their former homes in what is now Israel. Israeli officials said the renunciation must come before the second stage, in which a provisional Palestinian state in temporary borders would be set up.
British journalist James Miller, who was shot dead last week in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, was hit by IDF fire, not by Palestinian fire, according to an autopsy carried out at by the Forensic Institute, Israel Radio reported Thursday. A pathologist sent from Britain by Miller's family participated in the autopsy, the radio said. The dissection showed that the cameraman was shot from the front, and not from behind, as the IDF claimed. He was wearing a helmet and a flack jacket, but was hit in the neck.
North Korea Crises
South Korea's defense chief on Thursday warned of possible military provocations from North Korea, amid reports in the United States of new activity at Pyongyang's nuclear plant.Defense Minister Cho Young-Kil said Seoul's "top priority should go on perfect combat-readiness to handle the enemy provocations" in the crisis over the North's nuclear ambitions.
Read here on North Korea's military capability by a Korean analyst
Read here on Donald Rumsfeld's role in North Korea's nuclear capability.
The United States has given South Korea a satellite photograph showing smoke coming from a North Korean nuclear facility, a possible sign the communist nation has started reprocessing spent fuel rods, a South Korean official said Thursday. Reprocessing the rods would be a key step toward producing nuclear weapons.The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said other signs of nuclear activity, such as traces of chemicals used in reprocessing or heat signatures, had not been detected from the Yongbyon nuclear complex. He said the smoke was coming from radiation and chemical laboratories in the facility.
After assuring the White House for months that North Korea had not begun producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, American intelligence officials changed their assessment last month, concluding that the country may have produced relatively small amounts, according to senior administration and intelligence officials.The new assessment was delivered to the White House in mid-April, after President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, ordered a review of the intelligence. A little more than a week later, North Korean officials, meeting with the United States in Beijing, boasted that they had already turned 8,000 spent nuclear-fuel rods into weapons-grade material, and strongly hinted they would export it unless they struck a deal with the United States.
Iraq
Several years after the 1991 Gulf War, Dr Salma Haddad started noticing more and more children at Baghdad's Al-Mansur hospital with an aggressive form of cancer. Haddad, a leading Iraqi specialist, was especially alarmed since the disease, acute myeloblastic leukemia, is closely associated with exposure to radiation -- and suspicion fell on the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions.
Halliburton Co.'s emergency, no-bid contract to work on Iraq's oil wells must be fully disclosed, a Democratic lawmaker says, pointing to the Army's admission that the company has a far more lucrative role than originally believed.Prior descriptions said Vice President Dick Cheney's former company would fight oil fires. The contract also lets the company operate the oil fields for a time and distribute the petroleum, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Tuesday. Waxman cited information he received from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the contract.
Read here List of US companies that won contracts for Iraq reconstruction
Data compiled by Iraq Body Count from widely published press and media reports shows that at least 200 civilian deaths have already been reliably reported as being due to cluster bombs, with up to a further 172 less firmly linked deaths that also involved other munitions. The table below lists these 372 deaths and provides basic information for all reported incidents in which cluster bombs were involved. It reveals that 147 of the 372 deaths have been caused by detonation of unexploded or “dud” munitions, with around half this number being children
South Asia
India has appointed a high commissioner to Pakistan in a first step toward normalizing relations between the two countries, officials here said yesterday. But India has also reacted without enthusiasm to Pakistan's initial response to a peace overture by the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, last week.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee startled the subcontinent last week when he said it was time to end more than half a century of violence and enmity with rival Pakistan.But some observers say his motives are unclear: Was it pressure from the United States, which has sent a top envoy to the region for talks this week, or because the 78-year-old, ailing poet wants to leave a legacy of peace? The announcement came ahead of the arrival of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who was to begin his regional tour Thursday by talking with Pakistani officials in Islamabad.
Australia
Australia's Governor-General Peter Hollingworth today strongly denied allegations against him in the Victorian Supreme Court that he had raped a woman. The woman, who has since died, alleged Dr Hollingworth raped her in the 1960s. "I did not know this woman. I did not rape her," Dr Hollingworth said in a statement.
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