Rockets and mortars pounded Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone Sunday and a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul in a surge of attacks that killed at least 57 people nationwide.

The latest violence underscored the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups as the war enters its sixth year and the U.S. death toll in the conflict approaches 4,000.

Attacks in Baghdad probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups - some of whom may have been behind the Green Zone blasts. It was the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.

The deadliest attack of the day was in Mosul when a suicide driver slammed his vehicle through a security checkpoint in a hail of gunfire and detonated his explosives in front of an Iraqi headquarters building, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 42 other people, police said.

 Source : AP / Myway News

The world faces a future of "water wars", unless action is taken to prevent international water shortages and sanitation issues escalating into conflicts, according to Gareth Thomas, the International Development minister.

The minister's warning came as a coalition of 27 international charities marked World Water Day, by writing to Gordon Brown demanding action to give fresh water to 1.1 billion people with poor supplies. "If we do not act, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead," said Mr Thomas. "We need to invest now to prevent us having to pay that price in the future."

His department warned that two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed countries by 2025. The stark prediction comes after the Prime Minister said in his national security strategy that pressure on water was one of the factors that could help countries "tip into instability, state failure or conflict".

 Source : Independent UK

Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, has triggered speculation that he has been using a tour of the Middle East to prepare Iran's neighbors for a possible war with Tehran.

Mr Cheney, whose nine-day tour has included stops in Turkey, the Gulf and Afghanistan, insisted that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

"The important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilising for the entire area," Mr Cheney told ABC News before arriving in Kabul, the Afghan capital, after a visit to Oman.

 Source : Telegraph UK

The number of coalition military deaths in the war in Iraq has reached 4,000.

The gloomy milestone was reached as a U.S. general said there has been a rise in insurgents booby-trapping houses. Most of the fatalities throughout the Iraq war have been U.S. military service members, with 3,705 deaths. That number also includes seven civilians working for the Pentagon.

The nearly 300 others hail from countries, such as Italy, Poland and Ukraine, that have supported the U.S. effort, which began in March 2003. The numbers are based on a CNN Library count of official figures from the various countries involved in the Iraq war.

On Friday a roadside bombing killed a U.S. soldier in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Two others were wounded. They were all from Multi-National Division-Baghdad. Three U.S. soldiers died in Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said. Two of the dead died from a "non-battle related cause." In addition, a Task Force Lightning soldier was killed by enemy gunfire in Baghdad province.

Forty-six U.S. troops have died this month. Britain, which has command of coalition troops in southern Iraq, has suffered 168 deaths, 132 of them in hostile circumstances. The United States has about 162,000 troops in Iraq; 11,500 are from other countries, the State Department says.

 Source : Yahoo News / CNN

There is no sign the fighting is abating

At least 46 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers have been killed in one of the deadliest days of fighting in Gaza since troops withdrew in 2005.

Medical staff said at least eight were children and up to 16 were militants. Israel said most were militants. Seven Israeli troops were lightly injured.

Israel says it wants to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, but about 50 hit Israel on Saturday, injuring five.

The Palestinian leader said the Israeli raids were "more than a holocaust".

Mahmoud Abbas was apparently alluding to controversial remarks made on Friday by Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, who said Palestinians risked a "shoah" - the Hebrew word for a big disaster as well as for the Nazi Holocaust.

Mr Vilnai's colleagues insisted he had not meant "genocide".

 Source : BBC News

Prof Noel Sharkey fears increased research and spending on unmanned military systems by countries including the US, Russia, China and Israel will lead to the use of autonomous battlefield robots that can decide when to kill within a decade.

In a keynote speech he will also predict it is only a matter of time before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace suicide bombers.

Prof Sharkey, of the University of Sheffield's Department of Computer Science, is best known as a judge in the BBC television series Robot Wars.

He will outline his fears in a speech at a conference on the ethics of unmanned military systems at the Royal United Services Institute, a respected defence think tank.

Prof Sharkey said yesterday: "There's a massive drive towards developing autonomous robots for more complex missions.

"We are rapidly moving towards robots that can make the decision to apply lethal force, when to apply it and who to apply it to. I think maybe we're taking about a 10-year time frame."

 Source : Telegraph UK

Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in a suicide attack.

Ms Bhutto - the first woman PM in an Islamic state - was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and set off a bomb.

At least 16 other people died in the attack and several more were injured.

President Pervez Musharraf condemned the killing and urged people to remain calm but angry protests have gripped cities across the country.

Security forces have been placed on a state of "red alert" nationwide.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack. Analysts believe Islamist militants to be the most likely group behind it.

 Source : BBC News

First Iraq, now Iran. The United States has operated under a cloud of faulty intelligence in both countries.

In a bombshell intelligence assessment, the United States has backed away from its once-ironclad assertion that Tehran is intent on building nuclear bombs.

Where there once was certainty, there now is doubt. "We do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons," the new estimate said Monday.

Compare that with what then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told Congress in January. "Our assessment is that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons."

 Source : Yahoo News

"The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was"

For some time now no navy or air force has posed a threat to the United States. Our only competition has been armies, whether conventional forces or guerrilla insurgencies. This will soon change. The Chinese navy is poised to push out into the Pacific—and when it does, it will very quickly encounter a U.S. Navy and Air Force unwilling to budge from the coastal shelf of the Asian mainland. It's not hard to imagine the result: a replay of the decades-long Cold War, with a center of gravity not in the heart of Europe but, rather, among Pacific atolls that were last in the news when the Marines stormed them in World War II. In the coming decades China will play an asymmetric back-and-forth game with us in the Pacific, taking advantage not only of its vast coastline but also of its rear base—stretching far back into Central Asia—from which it may eventually be able to lob missiles accurately at moving ships in the Pacific.

 Source : TheAtlantic.com

Foreign countries conducting web-based espionage now present the greatest threat to the nation's security, a report says

Government and military computer systems in the UK are coming under sustained attack from China and other countries, a major new study gives warning today.

The closely-read annual Virtual Criminology Report, which draws on interviews with senior staff at organisations including the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Nato and the FBI, says that the UK has entered a “cyber cold war” in which web-based espionage poses the biggest threat to national security.

It envisages a future where rogue governments and criminal gangs regularly target the computer systems that run electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and Government computer networks.

Dr Ian Brown of Oxford University, one of the report’s authors, said: “We know that UK computer networks have been probed by China. The means to carry out ‘cyber-warfare’ have been under development for years. Now is the first time that we are seeing states flex their muscles.”

 Source : Times Online UK

Efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining materials that could be made into radioactive dirty bombs - or even crude nuclear explosives - are bound to fail, he said. And the result will be horror on an unprecedented scale.

"These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists' hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon," he declared. "We must plan for failure and prepare for absolute terror."

Dickinson is assistant chief constable with Lothian and Borders Police, and has responsibility through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland for protecting Scotland from chemical and nuclear attacks . He has been closely involved in co-ordinating the country's counter-terrorism response.

He said: "An incident will continue for days and all the public will see is people dying without reason. What will we do when our children come home from school with blisters on their skin and their parents don't know what to do? "What happens if 10 deaths, 50 deaths, 100 deaths start occurring in an unconnected and random way all over the country? The public will be rightly and understandably terrified."

Casualties caused by radiation , which most people don't understand, would trigger widespread "panic and fear", said Dickinson. And the response of the emergency services "would be chaotic" because of a shortage of resources.

The police capability for dealing with the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threat - known as CBRN - needs to be increased, he argued. "I haven't got as many officers with protective equipment as I would like," he added. "We must prepare for the worst."

 Source : Sunday Herald

The previous study, by David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, found that swings in temperature were correlated with times of war in Eastern China between 1000 and 1911. Zhang's newer work, detailed in the Nov. 19 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, broadens its outlook to climate and war records worldwide and also found a correlation between the two.

"This current study covers a much larger spatial area and the conclusions from the current research could be considered general principles," Zhang said.

The research does not represent direct cause-and-effect, but rather suggests a link between climate and conflict.

 Source : Live Science

More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 - an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.

The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic” – often linked to post-traumatic stress.

 Source : Times Online UK

They say "hidden costs" have pushed the total to about $1.5 trillion - nearly twice the requested $804bn (£402bn).

Higher oil prices, treating wounded veterans, and the cost to the economy of pulling reservists away from their jobs have been taken into account.

The White House has called the report politically motivated.

"They did not consult or co-operate with the Republicans on the committee, and so I think it is an attempt to muddy the waters on what has been some positive developments being reported out of Iraq."

And some of the figures the report contains were labelled speculative by funding experts, the Washington Post newspaper reported.

 Source : BBC News

Egyptian and Saudi Arabian intentions to begin or revive their nuclear programs in the face of Iran's continued race toward nuclear power present an "apocalyptic scenario" for Israel as well as for the rest of the world, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Lieberman's remarks came a week after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced a decision to restart his country's nuclear program. On Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had begun operating 3,000 centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium.

"If Egypt and Saudi Arabia begin nuclear programs, this can bring an apocalyptic scenario upon us," Lieberman told the Post. "Their intentions should be taken seriously and the declarations being made now are to prepare the world for when they decide to actually do it."

Lieberman also said Pakistan was a major threat to Israel due to the political instability there and the fact that the country had "missiles, nuclear weapons and a proven capability."

 Source : Jpost.com

A claim by President Ahmadinejad that Iran has 3,000 working uranium-enriching centrifuges sent a tremor across the world yesterday amid fears that Israel would respond by bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

Military sources in Washington said that the existence of such a large number could be a “tipping point”, triggering an Israeli air strike. The Pentagon is reluctant to take military action against Iran, but officials say that Israel is a “different matter”. Amid the international uproar, British MPs who were to have toured the nuclear facility were backing out of their Iran trip.

Even before President Ahmadinejad’s announcement, a US defence official told The Times yesterday: “Israel could do something when they get to around 3,000 working centrifuges. The Pentagon is minded to wait a little longer.” US experts say 3,000 machines running for long periods could make enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb within a year.

Israel responded by serving notice that it would not tolerate a nuclear Iran. “Talks never did, and never will, stop rockets,” said Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, after talks with the security cabinet.

 Source : Times Online UK

"This is the first formal confirmation at that high level that those countries entered mainstream strategic nuclear war planning," says Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at FAS, which obtained the excerpt from a 2002 U.S. Strategic Command (U.S. STARTCOM) briefing on the new war plan to take effect in 2003. Such "broadening of nuclear targeting" is troubling, Kristensen says, "especially when diplomats claim we have decreased the role of nuclear weapons."

 Source : Scientific American Online

The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.

 Source : Asia Times Online

Mr Putin was speaking after a summit with EU leaders in Portugal aimed at deepening ties despite disagreements over human rights and foreign policy.

Russia has long opposed US plans to build missile bases in European states once in the Soviet sphere of influence.

The Cuba crisis saw the Soviet Union and US go to the brink of nuclear war.

The 1962 stand-off was triggered when US spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba, within striking distance of the American mainland.

Moscow's decision to deploy these weapons in Cuba was at the time seen as a response to the build-up of powerful US missiles in Europe.

Tensions were only defused when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the bases in return for guarantees that Washington would not attack communist Cuba.

 Source : BBC News

The proposal was included as part of a nearly $200 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Bush administration sent to Capitol Hill on Monday.

The request included $87.8 million for further development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a conventional bomb designed to destroy hardened or deeply buried targets.

Many of Iran's nuclear development facilities are believed to be underground. The United States accuses Iran of trying to develop a nuclear bomb while Tehran insists its nuclear program is only for power generation.

  Source : Yahoo News