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Bulletproof glass cage of special courtroom

After being led from cells directly underneath the specially constructed courtroom in Greece's largest maximum security prison, the 19 suspects took their seats in a bulletproof glass cage where, ringed by armed police, they were asked to confirm their names.

 The 18 men and one woman are alleged members of November 17, a left-wing group accused of murdering 23 people and carrying out hundreds of bombings and robberies over a 28 year period.

 The group's reign of terror began in December 1975, with the assassination of the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch. Its last victim was the British military attache Stephen Saunders, who was fatally shot while driving his car in June 2000. 

Between the two killings, not a single member of the group was arrested, leading to charges of incompetence against the Greek security services. But police secured a vital breakthrough last year, when a botched bombing led to a series of arrests.

 One of those caught was the alleged mastermind of the group, silver-haired Alexandros Giotopoulos, who has denounced the charges against him as a fantasy concocted by U.S. and British intelligence services.

 The trial's first day was filled with technical arguments, including objections from defendants that the three-judge panel is not fit to try them, because their acts were politically motivated.

 For Greece, the trial is a major security coup ahead of next year's Olympic Games in Athens. The government is determined that nothing will upset the most eagerly awaited trial in the country since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. 

Spectators packing the courtroom have to pass through an elaborate series of security checks to gain entrance to the public gallery, while local journalists have been enraged by a ban on live broadcasts from the courtroom. 

Greece's 20 -year statute of limitations means that the killing of Richard Welch is not being taken into account at the trial. But the defendants are still facing life sentences, if found guilty at the end of the proceedings, which are expected to last for several months.

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At least 20 deaths have been reported in the latest fighting along the tense border between Ivory Coast and Liberia. 

Heavy fighting has erupted in recent days on both sides of the Ivorian-Liberian border, a region where rebels fighting both governments have been active. 

The defense minister of Liberia, Daniel Chea, is accusing the Ivory Coast military of supporting Liberian rebels fighting his armed forces. Mr. Chea says this amounts to "a declaration of war." 

Mr. Chea says Liberia could send troops into Ivory Coast on a counter-attack, after Ivory Coast helped rebels who attacked the Liberian border town of Toe on Friday. 

An Ivorian army spokesman, Colonel Jules Yao Yao, has issued a statement denying the Liberian charge. However, he concedes Liberian rebels are camped in parts of the western border region beyond the control of the Ivorian armed forces. 

In the same statement, Colonel Yao responded to allegations by an Ivorian rebel group that Ivorian helicopter gunships killed 20 civilians in an attack near the western town of Bin-Houye on Saturday. 

Colonel Yao says the army had been counter-attacking a force of heavily armed men speaking English, the official language of Liberia. He said anyone killed in the fighting would have died in combat. 

The fighting is a sign of the fragility of Ivory Coast's cease-fire, as a stalemate drags on over the formation of a new government that would include rebel representation. 

President Laurent Gbagbo continues to resist rebel demands that they be given control of the defense and interior ministries. The rebels say they were promised those portfolios during peace talks in January. 

Mr. Gbagbo refused to discuss the political crisis at a news conference Saturday. 

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Weapon inspections continue in Iraq

Baghdad maintains it destroyed all of its supplies of anthrax and VX nerve agent in 1991, but U.N. weapons inspectors have said tons of the agents remain unaccounted for. Monday, U.N. officials announced Baghdad would provide, in about a week, a more detailed report to the Security Council egarding those chemical and biological agents.

 The announcement follows a three hour technical meeting Sunday between U.N. and Iraqi officials.

 The top scientific adviser to Saddam Hussein, General Amer al-Saadi, said Sunday that excavations had produced significant traces of the agents. He said the agents were discovered in fragments from nearly all of the 157 previously destroyed bombs Baghdad said had been filled with anthrax and VX nerve agent.

 General al-Saadi also said Baghdad might stop the destruction of its Al-Samoud-2 missiles, if Iraqi officials become convinced U.S. forces will attack Iraq without approval from the U.N. Security Council.

 Destruction of the surface-to-surface missiles continued Monday. Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said the weapons exceed a U.N.-mandated limit of 150 kilometers. Iraq insists the missiles would fly below the mandated range, once they are loaded with the extra weight of guidance and control systems and warheads.

 Meanwhile, Bahrain and Kuwait say they support a proposal made by the United Arab Emirates calling on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his government to quit and leave Iraq in an effort to avert war.

 The UAE made the proposal during Saturday's Arab League summit in Egypt. Arab leaders refused to discuss the proposal. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said the majority of Arab leaders believe the issue is about making sure Iraq is fully disarmed, not about a change of government.

 The secretary general also said a delegation of Arab diplomats would travel to New York within a matter of days to spell out the Arab position to the United Nations regarding the Iraqi crisis. The delegation is then expected to go to Baghdad.

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By the BBC's Nick Miles  Central America correspondent

The girl, who became pregnant after being raped, received an abortion in a private clinic - an operation that the health minister considered a crime.

But the Nicaraguan Attorney General, Maria del Carmen Solorzano, said the abortion did not break any laws because it was carried out to save the life of the girl.

The family was supported by women's and children's groups

They only allow abortions when the mother's life is in danger, or when the foetus has severe deformities.

It's the type of law that is common across much of Catholic Latin America.

A panel of three doctors was set up two weeks ago to decide whether the nine-year-old girl, known only as Rosa, could legally have an abortion.

Unclear ruling

 The panel came up with an ambiguous decision, saying that Rosa's life could be threatened by both having the baby and aborting it.

Her parents took that as a green light to terminate the pregnancy.

But it caused widespread condemnation from the church who excommunicated the parents and the doctors who carried out the procedure.

The Nicaraguan Health Minister, Lucia Salvo, called the abortion a crime and prosecutors threatened to bring charges against those responsible.

Women's rights groups in Nicaragua have welcomed the decision not to press charges and it could open the way for a more general debate within the congress to liberalise the abortion laws.

There is considerable public support for that, but also a great deal of opposition from the Roman Catholic church.

Last week the country's bishops wrote an open letter to the government asking whether there was any real difference between abortion and terrorist suicide bombings. 
 

 

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Arab League chief takes a break after the summit

"The Arab League stands firmly behind peace," says the Qatari daily Gulf Times.

The paper hails the summit but points out that it "was not without drama" - a reference to a proposal by the UAE for Saddam Hussein to step down and a public spat between the Libyan and Saudi leaders.

"Despite these disagreements", the paper says, "the Arab world is united in its belief that there is no justification for bringing the horrors of yet another war to this region."

The paper believes the Iraqi authorities' behaviour "imperils the Iraqi government and it also imperils the stability of the region and the Arab cause as a whole", concludes Gulf Times.

'A star and a hero'

The London-based Al-Arab al-Alamiyah also describes the summit as successful.

It says the Arab leaders "have all risen to their responsibility without indulging in accusations".

The summit exposed differences and a failure to have a single vision on how to handle any forthcoming war  Gulf News - UAE

It calls the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad "a star and a hero" for his criticism of the US policy in the region.

The London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi agrees.

"What the US wanted," the paper claims, "was for the Arab summit to give a legitimate cover for the occupation of Iraq and imposing a Jewish state as the policeman of the region."

The UAE daily The Gulf Today says that the summit achieved its objective: rejecting war against Iraq aimed at "regime change in Baghdad".

"Never before has the Arab world faced such a danger", the paper says, adding that a US-led war against Iraq is not going to be "a conflict in a contained situation".

"It is the first step in a grand American design that aims at reshaping the political map of the Middle East", the paper maintains.

The paper believes that the war is also aimed at "propelling Israel as the dominating power" in the region. 

The Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar criticises the US for making a distinction between "what Iraq is being accused of doing and the atrocities and gruesome crimes Israel commits" against Palestinian people.

The paper, however, points out that Iraq's "unjustified mistake was behind the US presence in the Arab lands".

Elsewhere, the paper says that while "the summit may not have defeated the odds of war, it enhanced the chances of reaching a peaceful solution."

"The ball is still in the Arab court," it concludes.

'Siding with the devil'

The UAE daily Gulf News says "the Arab summit did not display the Arab world's unity on the question of any military action against Iraq".

It believes that the summit "exposed differences and a failure to have a single vision on how to handle any forthcoming war".

His [UAE President's] goal is to plant a time bomb in the Arab summit to detonate and divide Arab ranks  Babil -Iraq

It hails the UAE president's call on Saddam Hussein to step down.

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, it says, "is the first Arab leader to make such a call", which is "consistent with his steady search for a peaceful solution".

"He is wisely seeking an alternative way through which regime change can happen", the paper concludes.

"The agent and the agent by proxy", reads the headline of the Iraqi daily Babil, which is run by the Iraqi leader's son Uday.

The paper says those who proposed such idea "have chosen to side with the devil".

"He has an American tongue," the daily says, adding that the UAE leader "utters what the Americans and the enemies of the region want him to say".

"His goal is to plant a time bomb in the Arab summit to detonate and divide Arab ranks," charges Babil.

Slanging match

The London-based Al-Hayat defends Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz's outburst after being criticised by Libya's Colonel Gaddafi for allowing US military presence on Saudi soil.

The paper says the observers of the Saudi position "ought to make allowances for his outburst".

"The Gulf war was imposed on Riyadh," the paper says, "which found itself facing a historical responsibility of rescuing Kuwait following Arab division."

"Undoubtedly the image of Saudi Arabia in Arab media lacks objectivity and impartiality," the paper thinks, "because some revolutionary Arab regimes still think any attack on the Iraqi regime is a direct attack on them."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

 

 

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The injured were rushed to Davao hospital

President Gloria Arroyo was told by the national police that they had "several men in custody being interrogated for committing these murders," her spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

He did not give details of the identities of those detained.

The explosion ripped through a packed waiting area in Davao City airport on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao at around 1715 (0915 GMT) on Tuesday.

"This is a brazen act of terrorism that will not go unpunished," President Arroyo said, in a statement read on DZBB radio by Mr Bunye.

An American is confirmed to be among the 18 who died, but the nationalities of the other victims have not yet been released.

Shortly after the attack two further explosions were reported at a bus station and government clinic, though there were no reports of serious injuries.
 
 

Hunting culprits

Speculation has been mounting about the identity of those responsible for the attack.

In the past, rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have been blamed by the military for a string of attacks on the island. They included a car-bomb explosion at Cotabato airport last month, which killed one and injured another six people.

The Abu Sayyaf militant group - and another two factional organisations - have also been blamed for attacks in the region.

The airport explosion is reported to have happened shortly after a Cebu Pacific flight arrived.

Rebel unrest

Many of the victims were rushed to the Davao City Medical Centre, according to local television reports.

Flights to and from Davao were suspended until further notice.

The president called an emergency meeting of the cabinet oversight committee on internal security for later on Tuesday to discuss the attack. 

Davao city, about 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Manila, is the largest city on the island of Mindanao, and has a largely Christian population and a reputation for relative calm.

Mindanao is mired in factional fighting, with government troops clashing regularly with Muslim separatist rebels.

The rebels have been fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines for three decades.

The Philippine army said on Tuesday it had killed 14 rebels in fighting on the island.

Mindanao was also hit by a major power cut on Tuesday, for the second time in a week, amid rumours of a suspected sabotage by guerrilla groups.

 

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Sadeq Saba  Iranian affairs analyst

Reformers in Iran have suffered their first election defeat since President Mohammad Khatami was elected in a landslide in 1997. 

The voter turnout across the country was disappointingly low

Leaders of the main pro-reform party, the Participation Front, have accepted that they had been crushed by conservative candidates in the country's nationwide local elections which were held on Friday. 

They blame low turn-out and voter apathy for their defeat. 

But the results of this poll can have far-reaching consequences for the reform movement in Iran.

Recent elections in Iran are full of surprises. Six years ago, Mr Khatami shocked the conservative establishment by winning a landslide victory on a reform platform. 

Later, his supporters repeated his success in parliamentary and municipal elections. 

But now the reformists themselves have been heavily defeated. 

Popularity blow

Leaders of the reformist camp have blamed low turn-out for their shocking defeat. In the capital, Tehran, almost 90% of the electorate stayed away. 

This is despite the fact that reformists have been urging their supporters to take part in the vote - they knew that these elections would be seen in part as a referendum on the popularity of Mr Khatami. 

But public frustration with the slow pace of reform was so high that their calls were not heeded. 

Analysts believe that this election defeat marks a serious setback for Mr Khatami who has always relied on his popular mandate. 

If the same pattern is repeated in next year's parliamentary elections, it could seriously damage his programme of peaceful and gradual change in Iran's Islamic government. 

In a bid to counteract this prospect, reformists may try to win back the hearts of the electorate by adopting bolder policies. 

But their conservative rivals, boosted by their election victory, may even make more obstacles for reformists. 

This could intensify power struggle in the Iranian leadership in the months ahead.

 

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German newspapers examine yet another electoral setback for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder; the Czech press considers the announcement of a confidence vote in the government; and Russian papers see today's visit to London by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov as a sign of their country's growing importance on the world stage.

Schroeder punished again

German papers find much to talk about in the results of Sunday's local elections in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, where Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats lost more than 10 percentage points to the opposition CDU.

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung acknowledges that it is unusual for local election results to be influenced by outside factors, but sees no other explanation.

"The people are deeply disappointed by the chancellor and his party - their fundamental agreement in opposing a war on Iraq can't change that," it believes.

However, it advises against forecasting a "Goetterdaemmerung" for Mr Schroeder just yet, as much can still happen before the next general election.

"Nothing is more fleeting in our mediocracy than the voters' mood - especially as there are hardly any arguments about politics in the real sense of the word any more."

The centrist Der Tagesspiegel believes Mr Schroeder would be wrong to dismiss the upset as a purely local problem.

"Gerhard Schroeder's policies - to put it mildly - have done nothing to counter the SPD's downward trend," it comments.

This Sunday was not a good sign for a chancellor whose economic and foreign policy now looks foolhardy rather than prudent  Die Welt

Arguments between the party's reformers and traditionalists have put voters off, while the CDU has made a virtue of its lack of clear policies, the paper believes:

"Better to have no view than a contentious one."

The conservative Die Welt sees the result as reversing Germany's division at last year's general election into a pro-Schroeder north and a south which backed his Bavarian challenger Edmund Stoiber.

"The phenomenal CDU victory... gives force to a different, traditional trend: punishing the national government, coupled with 'new brooms sweep clean'," it states.

"This Sunday was not a good sign for a chancellor whose economic and foreign policy now looks foolhardy rather than prudent," it concludes.

The centrist Sueddeutsche Zeitung agrees that "in employment and social policy the government has completely lost the public's trust which it won in foreign policy".

"Voters want to know for what they are supposed to make sacrifices and to be sure this is being done with some fairness."

Confidence boost?

Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla's call for a confidence vote after parliament elected the opposition's Vaclav Klaus as president is welcomed in the Prague daily Mlada Fronta Dnes.

Mr Spidla's handling of the presidential election saga was the behaviour of a "stubborn suicide", it believes.

"Neither blondes nor the police - so often the target of jokes - could have acted in a more nonsensical way."

"The request for a vote of confidence, on the other hand, makes sense," it goes on.

No party which causes the fall of its own government has a chance of winning elections again  Hospodarske Noviny

"Spidla is currently at the bottom and cannot sink any lower - it is better not to be premier than to be a ridiculous premier."

The Hospodarske Noviny daily agrees.

"He who gets to the bottom has only two possibilities - either to give up and stay there or to decide to struggle and try to return to the surface," it comments.

"No party which causes the fall of its own government has a chance of winning elections again," it warns any Social Democratic MPs who might be tempted to bring Mr Spidla down.

This view is shared by Lidove Noviny, though it reaches a less comforting conclusion for the prime minister.

"Spidla's gesture resolves the situation only if his government does not receive a vote of confidence - in the opposite case it will only bring a time-out," it believes.

Treading the world stage

Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta is enthusiastic about Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's visit to London today.

The mutual liking between Putin and Blair, from which it is only a step to mutual understanding, has become a constant  Trud

Even preparations for President Vladimir Putin's state visit to Britain in June - "the first such event in the history of post-monarchical Russia" - are secondary to Russia's growing international role over Iraq, it believes.

"Russia is acting as a kind of mediator in this situation, trying to reconcile everybody and at the same time to find some kind of magic solution," it says.

The paper notes with pride what it has heard from a senior Russian diplomat: "the other day Berlin asked Moscow through diplomatic channels to help mend the damaged relations between Chancellor Schroeder and President Bush".

Meanwhile, the popular daily Trud gets personal, hailing the chemistry between Mr Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"The mutual liking between Putin and Blair, from which it is only a step to mutual understanding, has become a constant, and this is having a beneficial impact on the intensity of their political dialogue," it believes.

The European press review is compiled by BBC Monitoring from internet editions of the main European newspapers and some early printed editions.

 

 

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Devotees celebrated Mahashivratri across India at the weekend

The incident took place on Sunday in a remote village near the southern textile city of Coimbatore. 

It was part of a festival to the god Shiva, whose idol was being carried in a procession. 

The women lay face down in front of the procession as the priest, in an apparent trance, walked over their backs. 

The women were thought to have subjected themselves to the ritual as an act of devotion and penance. 

Mahashivratri

One of the women said she believed both physical and mental illnesses would be cured when the priest's feet touched them.

The procession was part of Mahashivratri festival celebrations in honour of Shiva throughout India. 

Several months ago, in another ritual in a village near the southern town of Madurai, children were buried alive before being retrieved a few seconds later. 

A state minister in whose presence that ritual took place had to resign because of the outcry and the ritual is now banned following protests by human right groups. 

But this has not prevented similar rituals from taking place elsewhere. 

In another village in Coimbatore district, authorities have banned the practice of devotees entering burial grounds to symbolically consume human bones in a ritual also connected with the worship of Shiva. 

Many villagers who had gathered in the burial ground to witness the ritual were disappointed. 

One of the villagers blamed the ban on unnecessary publicity and the photographs of devotees with bones in their mouth that appeared in the media. 

He said it was just a symbolic ritual and bones were not actually eaten. 

Analysts say such rituals will continue despite official bans because of superstition among the poorer, uneducated people in the state. 
 

 

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Sheikh Mohammed was captured without a fight in a dawn raid

Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, said the suspect is co-operating with interrogators and that his information is being acted upon.

He predicted there would be "significant developments" but gave no details.

On Tuesday, Australia said it also wanted to quiz Sheikh Mohammed in connection with last October's bombings in Bali.

More than 200 people, including 89 Australians, died in the blasts.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the country wanted to find out if he had any links to Jemaah Islamiah, the Asian Islamic group blamed for the Bali bombings.

Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected planner of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, was arrested in a joint Pakistani-CIA operation near the capital, Islamabad, at the weekend.

Washington is hoping that the suspect can lead them to Osama Bin Laden and to sleeper cells in the United States.

It has also been suggested that he was involved in the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl last year.

Experts say the forces hunting Bin Laden will have to move quickly if information from Sheikh Mohammed is to have any value.

Security alert

 Intelligence about his activities was partly behind a decision by the US Government to put the country on the second-highest level of alert last month, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said. 

"Some of the concerns we had that caused us to raise the threat level were attributable to the planning he was involved in," Mr Ridge told the Associated Press. 

There are just some fish that are so big you can't keep them quiet  White House spokesman Ari Fleischer  Click here to find out more about the interrogation

US officials have said they will not torture the suspect.

The Pakistani authorities say they have no plans to hand him over to the Americans and have suggested he might be handed over to Kuwait, his country of origin. 

However, the US considers Sheikh Mohammed such a senior figure within al-Qaeda that they will insist on access to him, intelligence sources say.

Sheikh Mohammed's exact whereabouts are not being disclosed, although the Pakistani authorities have insisted that he is still in Pakistan. 

"He is very much in Pakistan," Interior Minister Hayat said, describing the arrest as a "big step forward in eliminating al-Qaeda" from his country. 

Officials are also trying to identify an Arab man picked up with Sheikh Mohammed. 

Senior operative

 Washington has described Sheikh Mohammed as one of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's "most senior and significant lieutenants". 

Intelligence sources say the successful arrest of the suspect - apparently after telephone intercepts - was a joint operation. 

KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED  Click here for profile of al-Qaeda 'kingpin'

"This is a very serious development, a blow to al-Qaeda," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Monday.

President George W Bush had expressed his deep gratitude to President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani Government for their efforts in the war against terror and for "their fine work in this most recent success," Mr Fleischer said.

Sheikh Mohammed has long been on the FBI's most-wanted list, and the US had recently increased the reward for his capture to $25m. 

On Sunday, his picture on the FBI website showed a red strip over the front marking that he had been located.

Domestic pressure

 BBC Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says that Bush administration has been under pressure at home from critics who complain it has neglected the hunt for al-Qaeda as it focused on Iraq, and the arrest will take some of that heat off.

The whereabouts of Bin Laden remain unknown

Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for President Musharraf, described the Kuwaiti as "the kingpin of al-Qaeda".

US intelligence agents have been hunting remnants of Afghanistan's former Taleban regime and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network since the US-led military action in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants and former Taleban leaders are thought to have fled into Pakistan since US-led forces launched the strikes following the 11 September attacks. 
 

 

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Israeli troops met strong resistance

Sheikh Mohammed Taha is reported to be the first senior Hamas political leader to be arrested since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.

Eight Palestinians were reported to have been killed, including a pregnant woman and a child, when Israeli tanks, backed by helicopters, entered the camp at Bureij, in central Gaza.

The soldiers crept into our house without anyone knowing... they beat my father and took him into custody as he fainted  Mohammed Taha's son, Hassan

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi said Mohammed Taha's arrest was a big loss to the group, the Associated Press reported.

"But this does not mean that Hamas is going to stop resistance. Israel will pay a high price for all its crimes," he was quoted as saying.

The Palestinian Authority called on the United States to condemn the Israeli operation in Gaza. 

Houses demolished

After the incursion, Palestinian militants fired a rocket from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot, Israeli police said. No one was injured in the attack.

Monday's raid was the second in as many days.

Mahmoud el-Makadma's pregnant wife died in the raid

About 40 Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles, backing up infantry units, met strong resistance as they moved into the area. 

The operation centred around Mohammed Taha's home.

"The soldiers crept into our house without anyone knowing. They beat my father and took him into custody as he fainted," his son Hassan told Reuters news agency.

Mohammed Taha's five sons - all said to be senior Hamas militants - were also arrested.

The Israeli army said Taha and several of his sons were involved in directing attacks on Israelis, Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported on its website.

In the Gaza Strip, we are going to intensify the pressure on Hamas... and we are going to do the same thing in the West Bank  Shaul Mofaz Israeli Defence Minister

The Israeli army also said it had demolished four houses belonging to militants during the operation.

One of those who died was a pregnant woman who was buried under the rubble when her house was demolished, Palestinian medics said.

Clashes were also reported in the nearby Nusseirat refugee camp.

Palestinian sources said at least two of the dead were civilians, including a 13-year-old boy. 

Thirty-five Palestinians are reported to have been wounded in Monday's raid.

Israeli warning

Israel has launched a series of raids into Gaza since a bomb planted by the Islamic group Hamas killed four Israeli tank crewmen there a fortnight ago. 

Sunday's incursion came after Israeli soldiers discovered and safely detonated a large roadside bomb, weighing over 100 kilograms (220 pounds), in the Khan Younis area.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz had pledged on Sunday that the raids would continue.

"In the Gaza Strip, we are going to intensify the pressure on Hamas, as we have done in the past weeks, and we are going to do the same thing in the West Bank." 

During the 29-month-long Palestinian uprising, Israel has frequently targeted the family homes of militants in an attempt to discourage attacks on its citizens. 

Palestinians condemn the measure as collective punishment.

More than 1,800 Palestinians and more than 700 Israelis have been killed since the present intifada erupted in September 2000.

 

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The spat was broadcast live on TV

The decision was taken by the Libyan parliament which expressed its discontent at what it called Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz's "aggression" towards Colonel Muammar Gaddafi at the talks being held in Egypt.

Tripoli's relations with Riyadh would be reviewed, as well as Libya's membership of the Arab League, an official statement said.

The exchange - which was broadcast live on television - began when the Libyan leader accused the Saudis of having been ready to "strike an alliance with the devil" when US troops were deployed to protect the kingdom after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. 

Crown Prince Abdullah retorted: "Who exactly brought you to power? You are a liar and your grave awaits you."

After this, Egyptian state television pulled the plug on the broadcast. 

Crown Prince Abdullah is said to have stormed out of the room after Colonel Gaddafi refused to apologise. 

The conference was suspended for about half an hour while other participants calmed the two men down, news agencies reported. 

Thousands of Libyans are reported to have demonstrated outside the Saudi embassy in Tripoli.

 

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CMB - THE BEST IMAGE YET

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About 300,000 years after Big Bang, matter and radiation "decoupled" Matter went on to form stars and galaxies; radiation spread out and cooled Radiation now shines in microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum - at a very cold -270.45 deg Celsius By mapping tiniest temperature fluctuations (mottled colours above) in CMB, astronomers can "see" distribution of matter in early Universe

The best map yet of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation - the so-called echo of the Big Bang - shows the Universe may not be the same in all directions.

The image has been produced from data collected by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Map), which was launched in 2001.

"It is a photo of the most distant thing we can see; our best photo yet," said Dr Max Tegmark, of the University of Pennsylvania, US, who processed the image.

Dr Tegmark and colleagues present the CMB as a sphere: "The entire observable Universe is inside this sphere, with us at the centre of it."

In so doing, the team find something unexpected and so far unexplained in the symmetry of the CMB.

Relic radiation

In producing the image, Dr Tegmark removed all sources of contaminating foreground radiation leaving only the cosmic background itself.

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NASA'S WILKINSON PROBE  Launched to obtain full-sky images of 13 billion+ year old temperature fluctuations in CMB  Temperature differences correspond to "seeds" that grew to become stars and galaxies  Data help answer questions about age and geometry of Universe

He told BBC News Online that there were many sources of radiation that could "pollute" the CMB. Dust in our galaxy radiates microwaves and electrons moving through magnetic fields give off this radiation as well. 

These effects have to be removed if the CMB is to be studied properly.

The radiation that we detect as the CMB comes from a time when the Universe was less than half a million years old; from the so-called recombination era when hydrogen atoms formed in the cooling, expanding fireball of the Big Bang.

It was a time when the stars and galaxies had yet to form. There was only gas. 

In general, the relic radiation from these clouds is almost isotropic - the same in all directions. 

'Glowing wall'

For decades, astronomers knew there must be secrets about the Universe in the CMB, if only they could observe it at a high enough sensitivity.

Octopole: Looking at the symmetry of the CMB, curious patterns emerge

The expected variations in the CMB's intensity turned out to be so hard to detect that it was only in 1992 that they were first seen - variations of about a few parts per million on scales of the same angular diameter as the apparent diameter of the Moon.

The variations in the CMB contain information about the formation of the galaxies, the composition of the Universe and its fate.

Having produced the cleanest map of the CMB yet, Dr Tegmark displayed it in an unusual manner. Instead of a flat projection on a computer screen, he showed the data as ripples on a sphere - "after all the CMB comes from a sphere", he says.

"Space continues outside the sphere but this opaque glowing wall of hydrogen plasma hides it from our view. If we could only see another 380,000 light-years we would be able to see the beginning of the Universe," he told BBC News Online.

Looking for evidence

And he added: "We found something very bizarre; there is some extra, so far unexplained structure in the CMB.

"We had expected that the microwave background would be truly isotropic, with no preferred direction in space but that may not be the case."

Looking at the symmetry of the CMB - measures technically called its octopole and quadrupole components - the researchers uncovered a curious pattern.

They had expected to see no pattern at all but what they saw was anything but random.

"The octopole and quadrupole components are arranged in a straight line across the sky, along a kind of cosmic equator. That's weird.

"We don't think this is due to foreground contamination," Dr Tegmark said. "It could be telling us something about the shape of space on the largest scales. We did not expect this and we cannot yet explain it."

It may mean that the CMB is clumpier in some directions than others. Some theories of the structure of the Universe predict this but observational evidence to support it would be a major discovery.

 

 

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By Nick Miles  BBC Central America correspondent

The United States needs nine of the 15 Council members to vote in favour. 

The battle for votes is under way

It already has a number of countries on board, among them the UK and Spain but it will have to secure six more votes. 

Being on the Council represents both an honour and a diplomatic dilemma for many countries: do they vote in favour and risk a political backlash at home or vote against the resolution and risk angering the United States? 

Nowhere is that dilemma as strong as in Mexico. 

Special place

Mexico likes to think of itself as having a special relationship with the United States, much like the rapport Britain enjoys with Washington. 

But that relationship is coming under increasing strain because of the diplomatic row over Iraq. 

When it comes to the vote Mexico will have to come off the fence and risk being damned whichever way it votes  Anna Maria Salazar Academic

So a 'No' vote would seem like the obvious choice, particularly considering that polls show 90% of Mexicans are in favour of giving the UN weapons inspectors more time to do their job. 

Economic reliance

But in a world where President George W Bush says "you're either with us or against us" in the fight against terrorism, Mexico finds itself in a difficult situation. 

It relies on the US market to soak up 80% of its exports and it is thought that at least four million Mexicans are working illegally north of the Rio Grande. 

Mexican-born Anna Maria Salazar used to work at the State Department under the Clinton administration.

She is now an academic working in the Mexican capital and says the repercussions of a 'no' vote could be severe. 

"So far the Mexican President Vicente Fox has given few indications which way he is likely to vote on Iraq. President Fox says he likes to see Mexico's role as that of mediator between countries like France and Russia on the one hand and the US and Britain on the other," she says. 

"All very well but when it comes to the vote Mexico will have to come off the fence and risk being damned whichever way it votes."