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Tehran, July 25: The Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that Iran would strike Israel’s nuclear facilities if the Jewish state attacked it, state television reported.

“If the Zionist Regime (Israel) attacks Iran, we will surely strike its nuclear facilities with our missile capabilities,” Mohammad Ali Jafari, Guards commander-in-chief, told Iran’s Arabic language al-Alam television.

The Revolutionary Guards are the ideologically driven wing of Iran’s military with air, sea and land capabilities, and a separate command structure to regular units.

Tehran, July 24: An Iranian passenger plane skidded off the runway during its landing in northeast Iran and crashed, shredding the cockpit into a tangled mass of wreckage and killing 16 people, the state news agency said.

Footage from Iran’s Press TV showed the plane sitting at an angle, its tail awkwardly on the ground and the mangled front end pointing upward. The rest of the craft appeared largely intact.

The IRNA news agency reported that the tires failed on landing and it skidded into a wall, though no wall was visible in the footage.

Ahmedabad, July 24: In fresh trouble for Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the Gujarat High Court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the probe by the special investigation team (SIT) against him and 62 others in connection with the 2002 riots.

Pyongyang, July 24: When Im Chun-yong made his daring escape from North Korea, with a handful of his special forces men, there were many reasons why the North Korean government was intent on stopping them.

They were, after all, part of Kim Jong-il’s elite commandos – privy to a wealth of military secrets and insights into the workings of the reclusive regime.

But among the accounts they carried with them is one of the most shocking yet to emerge – namely the use of humans, specifically mentally or physically handicapped children, to test North Korea’s biological and chemical weapons.

London, July 23: Increasing numbers of non-Muslims are turning to Sharia courts to resolve commercial disputes and other civil matters, The Times has learnt.

The Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) said that 5 per cent of its cases involved non-Muslims who were using the courts because they were less cumbersome and more informal than the English legal system.

Freed Chedie, a spokesman for Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siqqiqi, a barrister who set up the tribunal, said: “We put weight on oral agreements, whereas the British courts do not.”

New Delhi, July 22: National Human Rights Commission on Wednesday gave clean chit to Delhi police in Batla House encounter case. “We are clearly of the opinion that having regard to the material placed before us, it cannot be said that there has been any violation of human rights by action of the police”, the NHRC said in its 30 page report on the encounter in September last year. The action taken by police in which two persons died “is fully protected by law,” said the NHRC.

Riyadh, July 22: Saudi Arabia is holding more than 3,000 people in secret detention and has used torture to extract confessions in its anti-terrorism crackdown since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Amnesty International said in a report.

The report criticised the international community for turning a blind eye to the kingdom’s methods in its crackdown. Saudi Arabia has carried out a heavy wave of arrests against al Qaeda members in past years after the militant group carried out a string of attacks against expatriate residential compounds, oil facilities and government buildings.

Baghdad, July 22: At least 18 people have been killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and the western city of Ramadi, security and medical officials said.

A one-year-old baby and an eight-year-old girl were among three people who died after an explosion in a market in Baghdad’s Sadr City on Tuesday.

At least 15 other people were wounded in the blast, the defence ministry said.

Another four people were killed and 31 injured in an earlier twin bomb attack in the same district in the northeast of the city.

Hyderabad, July 21: Shaukatullah, who was arrested from the Hyderabad airport, along with his brother financed the LeT and HuJI to target the state Special POTA Judge Jyotsnaben Yagnik on Monday remanded 43-year-old Akshardham attack accused Shaukatullah Ghori to 15 days police custody.

Mumbai, July 21: Police used Mumbai blast as an excuse to unleash terror on Muslims. For five days in December 1992 (6th to 10th December 1992) and fifteen days in January 1993 (6th to 20th January 1993), Bombay was rocked by riots.

Then on March 12, 1993 Mumbai was set ablaze by a series of bomb blasts, leading to the death of 260 people and 1,000 injured.

Beirut, July 20: Lebanon’s most influential Shiite cleric issued a religious edict saying Muslims who have serious concerns about contracting swine flu while performing the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia may stay away this year.

However Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who is widely respected among Lebanon’s 1.2 million Shiites and many others in the Muslim world, said the entire pilgrimage should not be canceled under any circumstances because it is a “divine duty.”

New Delhi, July 19: The controversy over electronic voting machines (EVMs) has a new twist. The Election Commission has challenged a software developer to prove his claim that EVMs can be programmed to guarantee victories for particular candidates or parties.

Ripujit Nomthondam claims the software he has developed can be put into any EVM by activating an already existing secret loop to ensure that by default every fifth vote will go in favour of a chosen candidate.

London, July 19: The trial of a British royal protection officer has exposed a culture of porn, gambling and alcohol inside Buckingham Palace, a news report said.

Paul Page, who was in the elite SO14 royal protection squad, faces a long sentence after he was found guilty of a multi-million-pound fraud.

London, July 18: A British student who converted to Islam was jailed for at least 10 years for plotting to blow up a shopping center using his own homemade “suicide vest.”

Isa Ibrahim, 20, a student from Bristol in southwest England, was arrested in April last year after police received what they described as a “landmark” tip-off from a member of the local Muslim community.

” You were, in my judgment, a lonely and angry young person at the time of these events, with a craving for attention ”
Judge

Baghdad, July 18: Iraqi officials outraged by the abuse of prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison are trying to contain a scandal of their own as allegations continue to surface of mistreatment inside Iraqi jails.

Accounts of Iraqis being beaten with clubs, blindfolded and coerced into signing false confessions are attracting increased attention partly because the United States is getting out of the prison business in Iraq. The U.S. has transferred 841 detainees into Iraq’s crowded prison system and more are on the way.

Jakarta, July 17: In coordinated bombings, suspected terrorists targetted two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta today, killing at least nine people and injuring 50 others, many of them foreigners.

“There were two explosions, one in the Marriott and one in the Ritz-Carlton,” a police spokesman said. Mostly foreigners stay at these two hotels. It is not yet known if any Indian was among the dead or injured.

“So far, nine people have been killed. Eight died at the scene and one in the hospital,” the spokesman said, adding 14 foreigners were injured in the blast.

Washington, July 17: A leading US Muslim civil rights organization slammed a draft state law that would bar teachers in public schools from wearing “religious dress” such as a headscarf.

“This legislation forces Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and others to choose between their faith and entering the teaching profession,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), referring to a bill before the governor of the northwestern state of Oregon.

Jerusalem, July 16: Two Israeli missile class warships have sailed through the Suez Canal ten days after a submarine capable of launching a nuclear missile strike, in preparation for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The deployment into the Red Sea, confirmed by Israeli officials, was a clear signal that Israel was able to put its strike force within range of Iran at short notice. It came before long-range exercises by the Israeli air force in America later this month and the test of a missile defence shield at a US missile range in the Pacific Ocean.

Dubai, July 15: Al Qaeda’s second-in-command accused the United States of leading a crusade to turn Pakistan from a Muslim nuclear power into a divided nation and urged Pakistanis to join jihad to resist.

Militants were in a tug-of-war with the U.S.-allied government as they push to make Pakistan a “citadel of Islam” in the region, Ayman al-Zawahri said in a audio recording posted on an al Qaeda-linked website.

Tehran, July 15: A Tupolev passenger aircraft crashed in northwestern Iran on Wednesday on its way to neighbouring Armenia and all 168 people on board were “On board the plane there were 151 adults, 2 children and 15 crew members,” Caspian Airline’s representative in Yerevan Arlen Davudyan told Reuters at Yerevan Airport.

“15 or 16 minutes after take-off the plane fell near the Iranian city Qazvin about 150 kilometers north of Tehran,” he said, adding it was a Tu-154aircraft and that the cause of the crash was not clear and the black box had not yet been found.

New Delhi, July 15: India is preparing to issue biometric identification cards to every one of its 1.2 billion citizens in what is being called “the biggest Big Brother project yet conceived,” according to a published report.

This fresh piece of reporting just in from the Times Online:

It is surely the biggest Big Brother project yet conceived. India is to issue each of its 1.2 billion citizens, millions of whom live in remote villages and possess no documentary proof of existence, with cyber-age biometric identity cards.

As if we needed any more proof that the international media deliberately avoids exposing anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian injustices, its suspect behavior during recent days has sealed the case.

Even as we were being force-fed minute details of Michael Jackson’s colorful life along with endless speculation as to the true parentage of his children, a former U.S. Congresswomen and presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, was languishing in an Israeli jail.

New Delhi, July 13: BJP has said the party was “not at all apologetic” about the demolition of the “disputed structure” in Ayodhya in 1992

“The party is not at all apologetic about the incident of demolition of a disputed structure as it had not committed any mistake,” BJP president Rajnath Singh said in an interview with RSS mouthpiece Organiser.

Reiterating BJP’s commitment towards building Ram Temple in Ayodhya, he said, “Whatever happened in Ayodhya was the outburst of sentiments of the masses. It is not apt to hurt the sentiments of the masses.”

Mumbai, July 13: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan pitched for greater harmony among South Asian people as he accepted an honorary doctorate from a British university, saying governments were best left to their own “agendas”.

“We belong to I know it’s a bit of a cliche but one world. Specifically I think, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka all of us, we’re the same. I really believe we are the same,” Khan told journalists after being made honorary Doctor of Arts by Bedfordshire University.

Tehran, July 12: The new US administration has deluded Arabs and Muslims into believing it would chart a course away from the policies of the Bush era, one of the leading religious authorities in Shia Islam said.

Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who spoke earlier this year of the “sincerity” of U.S. President Barack Obama’s message to the Muslim world, criticised U.S. policies across the Middle East and in Afghanistan and urged Arabs and Muslims to forget the U.S. president’s “foggy” words.