Has Cassini found a lake of liquid hydrocarbon on Titan?

Iraq: A bloody mess

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A year ago the supposed handover of power by the US occupation authority to an Iraqi interim government led by Iyad Allawi was billed as a turning point in the violent history of post-Saddam Iraq. It has turned out to be no such thing. Most of Iraq is today a bloody no-man's land beset by ruthless insurgents, savage bandit gangs, trigger-happy US patrols and marauding government forces... On Sunday the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, told a US news programme that the ongoing insurgency could last "five, six, eight, ten, twelve years". Yesterday in London, after meeting Tony Blair, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, tried to be more upbeat, commenting: "I think two years will be enough and more than enough to establish security"... The news now from Iraq is only depressing. All the roads leading out of the capital are cut. Iraqi security and US troops can only get through in heavily armed convoys. There is a wave of assassinations of senior Iraqi officers based on chillingly accurate intelligence. A deputy police chief of Baghdad was murdered on Sunday. A total of 52 senior Iraqi government or religious figures have been assassinated since the handover. In June 2004 insurgents killed 42 US soldiers; so far this month 75 have been killed. The "handover of power" last June was always a misnomer. Much real power remained in the hands of the US. Its 140,000 troops kept the new government in business. Mr Allawi's new cabinet members became notorious for the amount of time they spent out of the country. Safely abroad they often gave optimistic speeches predicting the imminent demise of the insurgency. Despite this the number of Iraqi military and police being killed every month has risen from 160 at the handover to 219 today.

Snipers with children in their sights

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When reporters pressed the issue, the army promised a full investigation, but a few weeks later it was quietly dropped. This has become the norm in a military that appears to value protecting itself from accountability more than living up to its claim to be the "most moral army in the world". As Tom Hurndall's parents noted yesterday after the conviction of an Israeli sergeant for the manslaughter of their son, the soldier was put on trial only because the British family had the resources to bring pressure to bear. But there has been no justice for the parents of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers... B'Tselem argues that a lack of accountability and rules of engagement that "encourage a trigger-happy attitude among soldiers" have created a "culture of impunity" - a view backed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which last week described many army investigations of civilian killings as a "sham ... that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder". In southern Gaza, the killings take place in a climate that amounts to a form of terror against the population. Random fire into Rafah and Khan Yunis has claimed hundreds of lives, including five children shot as they sat at their school desks. Many others have died when the snipers must have known who was in their sights - children playing football, sitting outside home, walking back from school. Almost always "investigations" amount to asking the soldier who pulled the trigger what happened - often they claim there was a gun battle when there was none - and presenting it as fact.

US 'in talks with Iraq with Iraq rebels'
Insurgents reveal secret face-to-face meetings.

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On the rebel side were representatives of insurgent groups including Ansar al-Sunna, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings and killed 22 people in the dining hall of an American base at Mosul last Christmas. Also represented was the so-called Islamic Army in Iraq, which murdered Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist, last August; the Iraqi Liberation Army; Jaish Mohammed and other smaller factions. According to an Iraqi commander, one of the Americans introduced himself as “a representative of the Pentagon” and declared himself ready to “find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances”. The US officer also indicated that the contents of any discussion would be relayed to his superiors in Washington... The Iraqis had agreed beforehand to focus on their main demand, “a guaranteed timetable of American withdrawal from Iraq”, the source said. “We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless.” The demand did not meet with a favourable response from the American team, perhaps because a timetable is the one thing that President George W Bush has declared he will not agree to. The original discussion is said to have lasted for an hour and a half and to have broken up with the US team explaining that it would need to consult Washington. But one American official apparently asked whether the insurgents would be interested in disarming in return for a release of all Iraqi prisoners in US military camps. The Iraqi side immediately reverted to its demand for a timetable and the only agreement of the afternoon was to meet again. At the second meeting, the Iraqi sources added, two little known insurgent groups were present. They were introduced as Thawarat al-Ishreen and the Shoura Council of Mujahideen. This meeting did not go well. “The tone of the Americans was different,” the Iraqi insider said. “They were talking with a tone of more superiority, arrogance and provocation.” After a discussion about Al-Qaeda activities, the Americans bluntly advised the Iraqis to “cease all support, logistics and cover for Zarqawi’s group”. Only if links to Al-Qaeda were severed would the Americans be ready to discuss Iraqi demands. “Our response was that we will never abandon any Muslim who has come to our country to help us defend it,” the commander said... The meeting reached another inconclusive end but the two sides agreed to keep talking, the Iraqi source said. The insurgents said they had asked for a United Nations representative to attend the next round.

New - reconstructed from both newly found and old fragments - poem from Sappho!

Eric Hobsbawm:America's neo-conservative world supremacists will fail
Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties

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All the great powers and empires of history knew that they were not the only ones, and none was in a position to aim at genuinely global domination. None believed themselves to be invulnerable. Nevertheless, this does not quite explain the evident megalomania of US policy since a group of Washington insiders decided that September 11 gave them the ideal opportunity for declaring its single-handed domination of the world... Even those who do not share the views of the old generals and proconsuls of the US world empire (which were those of Democratic as well as Republican administrations) will agree that there can be no rational justification of current Washington policy in terms of the interests of America's imperial ambitions or, for that matter, the global interests of US capitalism. It may be that it makes sense only in terms of the calculations, electoral or otherwise, of American domestic policy. It may be a symptom of a more profound crisis within US society. It may be that it represents the - one hopes short-lived - colonisation of Washington power by a group of quasi-revolutionary doctrinaires. (At least one passionate ex-Marxist supporter of Bush has told me, only half in jest: "After all, this is the only chance of supporting world revolution that looks like coming my way.") Such questions cannot yet be answered.

Third and last boom of the MARSIS radar on ESA´s Mars Express probe has been succesfully opened and the radar has functioned well in a test.

Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation

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American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards towards the Middle East: one standard towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years. The two main items on America's current agenda for the region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however, insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not for its friends. As for the peace process, it is essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American hypocrisy is nothing new. ...If she is serious about spreading democracy in the Arab world she must accept the outcome of free elections; in most of the Arab world they would produce Islamist, anti-US governments. Israel has contributed more than any other country to this sorry state of affairs. Condi and the American right regard Israel as a strategic asset in the war on terror. In fact Israel is America's biggest liability. For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people and America's blind support for Israel. America's policy towards the Middle East is myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon's selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace.

Private solar sail spacecraft Cosmos 1 has been launched.

Iraq's treasures still being looted

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"What's going on here is worse than what happened with the Baghdad museum," says Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stonybrook University in New York. "What happened at the museum shouldn't have happened. But in terms of what was taken, we knew where it came from. We have photographs. What's coming out of here, we haven't the faintest idea what it is." Professor Stone has been studying new satellite images which show hundreds of neatly-arranged holes where sites have been dug up. "We can tell the difference between the areas they're really targeting and the areas they're probing," she says. "We can really make a distinction between different types of looting." ..."Archaeological sites are being destroyed in order to find these objects," says Dr John Curtis, head of the Ancient Near East department at the British Museum in London. "In the process of that looting, very important archaeological evidence gets lost. And it's this evidence that can tell us a great deal about the civilisation."

Archaeologists fight to save Iraqi sites

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The scale of pilfering and destruction at innumerable sites is causing dismay in the profession, though many items stolen from the Baghdad Museum's storage rooms immediately after the American-led invasion have been returned. "The situation has become desperate since the end of the war," said Bill Blake, who is the head of English Heritage's Metric Survey Team and recently returned from running courses in neighbouring Jordan. "State control has effectively collapsed and people are helping themselves to whatever they can get. They are taking material for building or digging for antiquities to be sold abroad. "I have seen pictures of Bronze Age sites, dating back to 3000-4000BC, which march from horizon to horizon. They are uninvestigated as far as we know. There are tell sites [mounds of accumulated detritus from previous settlements] which look like moonscapes of hills. They have Arab cemeteries on the surface, then you dig down to pre-bronze age occupation. All sorts of cultural artefacts are disappearing - decorated pottery, sculptures and cuneiform tablets. Iraq was the cradle of western civilisation."

New findings from the threatened Mayan city of Waka.

Red Herring

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It is an irony of fate (or a triumph of folly) that Hamas was created, in fact, with the help of Israel itself. Much as the Americans created the al-Qaeda of Osama bin-Laden in order to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan, Israel supported the Islamic movement in the occupied territories as a counterweight to the PLO. The assumption was that pious Muslims would spend their time praying in the mosques and would not support the secular PLO, which was then considered the arch-enemy. But when the first intifada broke out at the end of 1987, the Islamists organized as Hamas (the Arabic initials of "Islamic Resistance Movement") and quickly became the most efficient underground fighting organization. However, the Security Service started to act against them only after a whole year of the intifada had passed. Now the existence of Hamas is an accomplished fact. It has deep roots in the community, also because of its widespread social services which were initially financed by the Saudis and others.

There´s nothing that is extraordinary here - but much that is ironic, as the US is now having show trials of Palestinian Americans that have funded Hamas or Jihad, and so done the same thing that Israel itself did - as the Apartheid-era government of South Africa supported Inkatha to weaken the ANC and Turkey supported it´s own Hezbollah movement to weaken the PKK etc etc.

More secrets from Karnak

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The discovery of a life-sized dyad statue of a Middle Kingdom Pharaoh and the reconstruction of two prestigious monuments are among the latest achievements of the Franco-Egyptian archaeological team working at Karnak Temple in Luxor... At the Karnak Temple, history has a special scent and taste. Within its pylons is amassed an unsurpassed assembly of soaring obelisks, awe- inspiring chapels, and splendid sanctuaries reflecting the spectacular life and great civilisation of Ancient Egypt. Although most of Karnak has been thoroughly excavated, the temple still conceals and occasionally reveals more of the Pharaohs' secrets and mysteries.

Orang-utans killed for illegal trade

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Around 1000 orang-utans are being killed each year so that their babies can be traded as pets, leaving the primate species on the brink of survival, the WWF warns in a new report.The orang-utan - meaning “man of the forest” in Malay - is native to the tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo. They are already under severe threat due to intensive logging of their habitat - over 90% of the species were wiped out during the last century... It has been illegal to hunt or trade in orang-utans since 1931, but the study by WWF and TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, discovered that fewer than 10% of people found in illegal possession of the apes were prosecuted.

The Exception Is the Rule

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The American occupation of Iraq is something new, but the fundamental error of the United States has a long pedigree. It is the imprisonment of the human mind in ideology backed by violence. The classic example is Stalin's Russia, under which decades of misrule were rationalized as a "stage" on the way to the radiant future of true communism. As for the miserable present, it was amusingly called "actually existing communism." The future, when it came, of course was not communism at all but the disintegration of the whole enterprise. All the "stages" turned out to lead nowhere. Once the mind is in the grip of such a system, every "actually existing" horror can be seen as a mere imperfection in a beautiful larger picture, every defeat a stage on the way to the glorious future. The simpler and more coherent an ideology, the better it can withstand the assault of fact. So today in Iraq, every act of torture, every flattened city, every gushing sewer, every car-bombing and beheading, is presented as a bump on the road to "freedom" for Iraq, or for the Middle East, or even for the whole world, in which our President has promised an "end to tyranny." (It's apparently a rule of ideology that the more sordid the reality, the more grandiosely splendid the eventual goal must be.) But a moment comes -- perhaps it is a sudden defeat, or perhaps it is merely reading a story like Shadid and Fainaru's -- when the fantasy dissolves, and then one is left face to face with the factual truth. All the "exceptions" turn out to be the rule. When that happens with respect to Iraq, America's grotesque misadventure there -- born of lies, sustained by lies and productive of more lies every day it continues -- will be brought to a close.

Mars Express has succesfully deployed the second main boom of the MARSIS radar.

History's Greatest Reoccuring Hoax: Colonization "For Security Reasons"

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Why aren't the US and Europe calling, in the strongest terms possible, for an immediate halt to the illegal wall construction and for the dismantling of the miles already up, for a halt to the illegal Kalandia construction, to the continued illegal Israeli settlements? Why are they not withdrawing their ambassadors from Israel? By not protesting, by accepting Israeli actions implicitly or explicitly as "security" policies, they are buying into the biggest hoax in history. They are leaving the Palestinians no option but to fight back - one kind of force (the kind that grabs land, builds walls and barriers and constructs illegal settlements under the protection of the Israeli army) with another kind of force (the kind that throws stones and mortar shells and explodes people in the market place), and then let each individual's conscience sort out which is defense and which is terrorism. It will take some effort to get out from under the biggest Israeli hoax of all time. You have to use imagination: "You have to imagine what it feels like to wake up one morning in your own house, the house your grandfather built long before the state of Israel existed, and to find the official notice on the wall. Your home, where you have lived your life, is soon to be destroyed; you and your children will be refugees."

Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem, Israeli Style

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Israeli authorities are carrying out a process in East Jerusalem that accurately be described as ethnic cleansing. It is plainly geared to uproot Palestinians from an area that historically has been known as Arab East Jerusalem and convert it into an integral, permanent part of the capital of the Jewish state. The scandalous process is recognized and deplored by the major news media in Britain and elsewhere and even by some newspapers in Israel, but it is predictably ignored in the United States. Still worse, Washington provides the financial, political and military support without which the cleansing could not go forward. B'Tselem, a private organization of Israelis concerned about human rights, calls it "a policy of quiet deportation." In its report, subtitled Revocation of Residency of East Jerusalem Palestinians, the group notes that "perhaps thousands of people have been forced to leave" and warns that the worst is still to come.

World's dry regions set to expand

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Drylands cover 41% of the planet's land surface, and are growing. They are home to over two billion people, including the world's most impoverished, in areas such as central Asia and northern Africa. One of the biggest problems is that as land dries up, it becomes unsuitable for farming. This exacerbates poverty and creates environmental refugees. The authors estimate that hundreds of thousands of people will be in need of new homes and lifestyles over the next 30 years as the Earth dries up. The effects are also felt far beyond the desert areas themselves. Dust storms from the Gobi Desert in Asia and the African Sahara are responsible for respiratory problems as far away as North America, says the report.

How Earth-like is the newly found planet that orbits Gliese 876?

Smallest extrasolar planet found

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The new planet whips around the star in a mere two days, and is so close to the star's surface that its temperature probably tops 200 - 400 Celsius (400 - 750 degrees Fahrenheit) - oven-like temperatures far too hot for life as we know it... The researchers have measured a minimum mass for the planet of 5.9 Earth masses. It orbits Gliese 876 with a period of 1.94 days at a distance of 0.021 astronomical units (AU), or 3.2 million km (2 million miles). Though the team has no direct proof the planet is rocky, its low mass precludes it from retaining gas like Jupiter. More.

Web of Cold-Blooded Lies

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In July 2002, the head of MI-6, Britain's secret intelligence service, briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet on U.S. plans to attack Iraq. Sir Richard Dearlove ("M" to James Bond fans) reported that U.S. President George Bush had decided to invade oil-rich Iraq in March 2003, in a war "to be justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." Translation: The U.S. and British governments would concoct charges against Iraq to justify war. After Britain's attorney general warned that unprovoked invasion of Iraq would violate international law, Dearlove opined with oily cynicism, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." Translation: Use propaganda and scare tactics to whip up war fever. British and U.S. intelligence agencies were ordered to produce "evidence" to justify a war. In the U.S., faked "evidence" and grotesque lies were fed to the frightened public by pro-war neo-conservatives and frenzied national media. The U.S. Congress clapped for war like trained seals.

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

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The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier. The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal. This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

Logging threatens Borneo species

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A report from the WWF says illegal logging and clearance for oil palm plantations is destroying the habitats of several animals. Orang-utan and pygmy elephants could become unviable in just 15 years. According to the WWF, 1.3m hectares of Borneo's lowland forest is being destroyed each year. At that rate, it claims, by 2020 the remaining pockets of jungle may be too small and broken up for some species to be genetically viable.In other words, each tiny area of woodland that remains will not support a healthy breeding population of large animals like pygmy elephants or orang-utan.

Found: Europe's oldest civilisation

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Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming. More.

Searching for the truth about Srebrenica

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Professor Mient Jan Faber, former director of the Dutch Interchurch Council for Peace (IKV), said: "The Dutch have constructed a fantasy narrative about Srebrenica - the idea that, at the expense of some men, we saved thousands of women and children." After the fall of Srebrenica to the Serbs under Gen Mladic on July 11 1995, the terrified population of the enclave split into two. Some 15,000 made off over the mountains towards Bosnian-held territory. Another 25,000 streamed to the Dutch UN base at Potocari, seeking protection from troops charged by the UN security council with providing it. Some 5,000 got inside the base, which the Dutch then closed, leaving 20,000 outside. On July 12, the Serbs began sporadic killing of people outside. The following day, the Dutch ordered those cowering inside the base to leave. Their commander, Colonel Tom Karemans, left his deputy, Col Franken, to oversee the expulsion, or "evacuation" as it is known. Under the eyes of Dutch soldiers, the Serbs then separated women, children and the elderly from men and boys - the latter taken away for summary execution.

Uzbek crackdown was a 'massacre'

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Uzbekistan's crackdown on protesters in Andijan last month was a "massacre", according to Human Rights Watch, in the fullest report yet on the bloodshed. The US-based rights group called for Washington and the EU to suspend links with the Uzbek government until it allows an independent investigation. "The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre," Human Rights Watch [HRW] said in its report, presented at a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

One Day in Iraq: At-a-glance

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The BBC News website is reporting in detail on events in Iraq throughout the day, to try to convey the fullest and most accurate picture we can of the reality of life in the troubled country. From dawn to dusk Baghdad time, we will be reporting the news in greater detail than usual and talking to Iraqis from all walks of life about their everyday experiences and the impact of the violence that surrounds them in their daily lives. We'll be looking at what the Iraqi media and bloggers are saying and at what our readers in Iraq and elsewhere make of the situation there, and we'll be responding to your e-mails, comments and questions.

Dilemma for Washington as ICC begins Darfur probe

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday launched an investigation into suspected war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, a development likely to present problems for the Bush administration as it opposes the court's existence and maintains close intelligence links with the Khartoum government. Up to 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during the two-year-old conflict in western Sudan, and more than 2m people have fled their homes. Independent aid and rights organisations accuse rebel groups, the government and allied Arab militia the Janjaweed of atrocities. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, called for international co-operation with his investigation, which would focus on “the individuals who bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes committed in Darfur”. The UN has given the ICC a list of 51 names of war crime suspects... At the same time, according to officials, the US maintains a close relationship with Sudanese officials and intelligence officers believed to be responsible for the ethnic cleansing and village burning in Darfur. US officials say Sudan is a valuable partner in the “global war on terror”. Washington also fears Khartoum's isolation would jeopardise the peace deal ending the decades-old north-south conflict.

Burma rebuilding risks Pagan jewel

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The sunsets are still spectacular - a golden glow brushing the curves of 2,000 ancient temples and pagodas clustered on the edge of the Irrawaddy River in central Burma. But today some of the world's leading experts have accused Burma's military regime of waging "archaeological blitzkrieg" against the legendary Buddhist treasures of Pagan. "They're ruining it," said Richard Engelhardt, regional advisor for the UN's cultural arm, Unesco. ...almost everywhere I saw signs of the "false" and "misguided" restoration work which Unesco and other experts have so bitterly condemned.

Khartoum facing war crimes probe

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The International Criminal Court at The Hague is to launch an inquiry into alleged war crimes in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, is expected to announce on Monday the details of what will be the ICC's biggest ever investigation. A special United Nations inquiry has given the ICC the names of 51 potential suspects, a BBC correspondent says. The UN says about 180,000 people have died in the two-year Darfur conflict. It says more than two million people have been forced to leave their homes in the region.

The breakthrough that wasn't

Claims of a breaktrough in deciphering the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were "somewhat" exaggerated.

Seymour M Hersh - from My Lai to Abu Ghraib

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My Lai told us that the we don’t fight wars any better than the “nips” and the “krauts”. Nobody fights wars well — it’s always brutal and it always involves a lot of abuses. These things happen in war, and to think otherwise is madness. So we in the US are always naive. We thought we could do it better. And what’s pernicious about Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan is that, as bad as we think it is, the whole story isn’t out yet. It’s even worse. The American people are gradually getting into this. But John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, refused or wasn’t willing to deal with the war. When people ask me what I think of Kerry not bringing up Abu Ghraib, I always have a pat answer, “You’ve got to admire his brilliance in not dealing with the war, because now he’s president, which shows he was right!” The only shot Kerry had was to make the war an issue — and he didn’t do it.

The failed siege of Fallujah

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After two devastating sieges of Fallujah in April and November of 2004, which left thousands of Iraqis dead and hundreds of thousands without homes, the aftermath of the US attempt to rid the city of resistance fighters in an effort to improve security in the country continues to plague the residents of Fallujah, and Iraq as a whole. Simmering anger grows with time among Fallujans who, after having most of their city destroyed by the US military onslaught, have seen promises of rebuilding by both the US military and Iraqi government remain mostly unfulfilled... Thus, rather than improving security and stability in Fallujah and Iraq, the siege of Fallujah has accomplished nothing more than devastating the city and spreading the Iraqi resistance into other cities, such as Qaim, Beji, Baquba, Mosul, Ramadi, Latifiya and many areas of Baghdad. It could easily be argued now that the siege of Fallujah accomplished the exact opposite of its stated goals - rather than bringing increased security and stability, it has inflamed tempers, deepened sectarian rifts and spurred the Iraqi resistance into levels of attack rarely seen prior to the siege.

4032 Palestinians have been killed and 44666 injured by Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied areas of Gaza and West Bank since 29.09.2000.

Jerusalem orders Palestinian homes to be razed

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Jerusalem's city council has ordered one of the largest mass demolitions in the city's recent history, with plans to raze the homes of about 1,000 Palestinians in a neighbourhood claimed by Jewish settlers. The council says about 90 buildings served with demolition orders were built illegally over the last three decades on a site of religious and archaeological value just outside the Old City walls, and that they are being destroyed to restore the area as a national park. But Israeli human rights campaigners say the real intent is to forcibly remove Palestinians from an area, Silwan, that is an important link in the government's plan to encircle Arab East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements... Among those served with a demolition order is Mo hammed Badran, who says he was born in 1961 in the house the council now wants to raze. Mr Badran has papers from the British mandate era in the 20s that appear to show his grandfather owned the land where the house now stands."I have been taxed on this house since the day they introduced it to East Jerusalem in 1973," he said. "If the house was illegal, why did they take the tax?"

Changing planet revealed in atlas

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An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet. It compares and contrasts satellite images taken over the past few decades with contemporary ones. These highlight in vivid detail the striking make-over wrought in some corners of the Earth by deforestation, urbanisation and climate change.

The Jewish leadership of Jerusalem plans to raze down 88 Arab homes to create a "Jewish archaeological park" - and ethnically cleansing a part of the city, to unleash a new circle of violence in the process.