Lufthansa may have been wrong to decide to ignore the threat to its Tel Aviv flight yesterday but the Israelis were definitely acting outside the law by using jet fighters to force the airliner to divert to another country.

From the first days of what began as a peaceful uprising, to which Israel responded with one million bullets in the first month of protests, Israeli and American analysts have been declaring that the efforts to stop all resistance would soon succeed. A few more assassinations, a few more missiles, a few thousand more arrests, a bit more torture, a few hundred more demolitions, a little more hunger and darkness ? and the Palestinians will get the message and realize that their best option is servitude under occupation.

Weisglass, who was one of the initiators of the disengagement plan, added, "And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."

The two 15-year-old pupils at Jabaliya's school were both shot in the head by Israeli soldiers inside their homes just a few blocks and several hours apart. Islam died almost immediately after the bullet smashed through her forehead as she baked bread with her mother in their yard on Sunday. Tahreer is still on life support at a Gaza hospital after an operation to remove shards of shattered skull from her brain. She lies motionless, with little to suggest she is alive other than gentle breathing. Doctors do not expect her to survive.

Israeli tanks shelled a town in the in the northern Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, killing three Palestinians and wounding 10 children in their houses, witnesses and medics said.

US warplanes have again pounded Falluja and launched fresh attacks on Sadr City and another province close to the Iraqi capital.

The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in a street in the city of Fallujah and asking his mission controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying: "Oh, dude."

Intelligence says group too small to do what he claims or is blamed for

In debate against an opponent with the dangerously attractive attribute of freshness, Cheney paled -- literally. He's not special, it turns out. He doesn't know anything special, he hasn't done anything special, and for the future he doesn't offer anything special.

The other problem for Cheney, of course, was the way he lied with nearly every word that passed his curled lips. It was a virtuoso performance of prevarication, obfuscation and outright balderdash. On Thursday night, George W. Bush played the part of a man who couldn't possibly defend his record. On Tuesday night, Cheney acted as though that record did not exist.

The US dollar is fast reaching a point at which foreign investors will abandon it and send it into a freefall, says Bill Clinton's former economic adviser.

Evangelical Christians - estimated at tens of millions of Americans - overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies, Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference Monday.
But if Bush shifted his position toward support for Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and a Palestinian state, his Evangelical backing would disappear, Robertson indicated.

Agents on the front lines of the war on terror have risked their careers to warn America about the corruption and culpable negligence that continue to put our nation in peril.

Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before last year's U.S.-led invasion and its nuclear program had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War, a weapons inspector appointed by the Bush administration said on Wednesday.
The report contrasted with statements by President Bush before the invasion, when he cited the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for overthrowing President Saddam

The United States on Tuesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution demanding that Israel stop a major offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has arrested 13 UN employees on suspicion of "links to terrorism".
...speaking at a news conference convened in the midst of a row between the UN and Israel over Israeli claims that footage showed a UN ambulance being used to transport rockets.
When he was asked about whether the object filmed was a rocket or a stretcher, Gen Ziv said: "I suggest we don't deal with the object but rather with the context," Haaretz newspaper reported.

Amnesty International news release published on 5th October 2004

It is not coincident to have American tanks and Armour of terror rolling into Iraqi towns killing innocent Iraqi civilians en masse and destroying their homes and communities at the same time Israeli tanks rolled into Palestinian refugee camps and towns killing Palestinian civilians en masse and destroying their homes and communities. Iraq and Palestine are two centres of identical atrocities committed by two close allies against defenceless populations. These atrocities are only allowed to continue because of the silence and passivity of Western citizens, and media pundits.

Michael Moore received a flood of letters and emails from disillusioned and angry American soldiers serving in Iraq. Here, in an exclusive extract from his new book...

...the personal political fortunes of Mr Sharon and the US president, George Bush, bound up to a critical degree in what happens in places such as Jabaliya and Samarra.
Both men are fighting to convince sceptical electorates, and their own parties, that they know what they are doing. When elected, Mr Sharon promised to achieve security for Israelis. Mr Bush declared victory in Iraq more than a year ago.
Each man has a credibility gap. To fill it, it seems ongoing civilian carnage is not too high a price to pay.

do understand that in the US version of democracy, groups of various backgrounds lobby their government to defend or achieve their interests.
Fair enough.
But there are limits. America should come first. You cannot, knowingly, sacrifice US interests to serve Israel. You cannot break the law, local or international, or pressure your government to break it.

Just sitting next to a friend who expresses an anti-Bush opinion can get you into big Secret Service trouble in George W. Bush's United States.

from Haaretz----> Ahmed said he was working for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization, and Ibrahim was meant to be one of its organizers in northern Gaza since the group already had an infrastructure in the south. Ahmed gave Ibrahim a list of people, mostly Hamas activists, and was told to collect information about them and follow them so they could also be drafted for the Al-Qaida cause.
Ibrahim became suspicious. He contacted a preventive security officer in Gaza and told him the whole story. The officer looked into the matter and told Ibrahim that Ahmed was an Israeli Shin Bet agent, and Ibrahim should immediately cut off any contacts with him.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday after she approached an army watchtower in a tense border zone, witnesses said.
An Israeli military source said the girl was shot inside a restricted area when soldiers suspected she had a bomb. Palestinian medics said she had been hit by 20 bullets.

The FBI investigation into Israel espionage agents in the Pentagon is part of a major struggle between prominent Zionists in the Pentagon and the US Security apparatus. Ever since the Bush regieme came into power there has been a fierce... war between Pentagon Zionists ..their military collaborators... and the professional military and intelligence apparatus.

Even though a mound of evidence keeps accumulating that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat to fulfill its obsession to invade Iraq, administration officials keep standing by?in Goebbels-like repetition of the ?big lie??the need for war.

...many of the so-called Republicans in the House are pushing this nightmarish legislation which would:

* Create a massive government database containing personal information on every American man, woman and child;
* Standardize (i.e., nationalize) the process of issuing driver's licenses -- thereby taking the final step toward creating a national ID card; and
* Set up a system whereby any employer or industry identified by the Attorney General would have to submit employment applicants to the government for approval -- complete with fingerprints or other "biometric identifiers."

A book published in France says the US regularly monitored French President Jacques Chirac's phone calls.
"The relationship between your president and ours is irreparable on the personal level. You have to understand that President Bush knows exactly what President Chirac thinks of him," a US official is reported as telling a senior French military official in the book by journalists Henri Vernet and Thomas Cantaloube.

shielded from view is the suffering of about 50,000 Palestinians trapped in areas seized by hundreds of Israeli troops, backed by about 200 tanks and armoured vehicles.
Palestinians in the Israeli-held areas, including parts of Jabaliya refugee camp and the small town of Beit Hanoun, described by telephone the widespread destruction and desperate living conditions.

Israel is insisting that Operation Days of Penitence, its latest incursion into the Gaza Strip, is needed to protect its territory from the Palestinian rockets which killed two toddlers in the southern town of Sderot last week. But the scale of the offensive, the largest since the reoccupation of much of the West Bank in 2002, poses disturbing questions about the intentions of Ariel Sharon's government.

...see the pictures, comments and video

There is no question that the bombing of Iran will be much more complicated than the attack on the Iraqi reactor. The flight range is greater, the Iranian installations are scattered and protected, and Iran is capable of retaliating. But the interesting difference between Iraq and Iran is that at the time, the Iraqi operation was planned in secret and was carried out by surprise, and this time the ostensible preparations are being conducted almost in the open.

An unknown suspect fired several shots into the Bearden office of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign Tuesday morning.
According to Knoxville Police Department (KPD) officers on the scene Tuesday, it is believed that the two separate shots were fired from a car sometime between 6:30 am and 7:15 am. One shot shattered the glass in the front door and the other cracked the glass in another of the front doors.

A total of 11 Palestinians were killed and 20 others injured on Monday as the Israel Army continued itsmilitary operations in the northern Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

video

There is a surreal silence today, full of the noise of "sound bites" and "grabs" of those with power given opportunities to distract us from their crimes. An exquisitely irrelevant vote in Parliament on fox hunting and a great deal of journalistic indignation about "breaches of security" by fox-hunting zealots were no more than distractions from the horror of Iraq. Never has there been such a volume of repetitive "news" or such an exclusiveness in those controlling it. In 1983, the world's most powerful media were owned by 50 corporations. Rampant de-regulation has ended even a semblance of diversity. In February, Rupert Murdoch predicted that, within three years, there would be just three global media corporations and his empire would be one of them. Perhaps he exaggerated, but not by much. Even on the internet, the leading 20 websites are now owned by the likes of Fox (Murdoch), Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viacom and a clutch of other giants; just 14 companies attract 60 per cent of all the time Americans spend online. Theirs is a global ambition: to produce not informed, free-thinking citizens, but obedient customers.

Inside Camp Delta, the British former Guantanamo prisoner Shafiq Rasul told me: 'There's only one rule that matters. You have to obey whatever US government personnel tell you to do.' The cost of disobedience was high: possibly a visit from the camp's 'Extreme Reaction Force (ERF)', a squad of guards in riot gear, which is said by several detainees to have carried out brutal assaults.
Guantanamo is, in fact, in flagrant breach of the fundamental piece of international law.

James Pavitt spent 31 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, the last five as head of the clandestine service. But never, Pavitt said Friday, does he recall anything like "the viciousness and vindictiveness" now playing out in a battle between those aligned with the White House and the CIA.

Video----> A hard hitting special report into the "war on terror" by award winning journalist John Pilger

"I don't know what to say, but I'm not alone. The entire neighborhood is homeless, and they're as shocked as I am," says Bilal, looking at the other demolished houses.
In the 48 months of the Palestinian intifada, 4,022 houses have been completely demolished in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 19,371 houses partially damaged by Israeli forces, according to Palestinian sources.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) yesterday demanded an apology from Israel over accusations that Gaza militants used a UN vehicle to transport a homemade rocket.

The United States will veto a resolution condemning Israel for its military operation in the Gaza Strip should such a resolution be proposed during Monday's United Nations Security Council meeting, a diplomatic source in Washington told Haaretz.

The operations ?have led to the deaths of scores of Palestinians, among them many civilians, including children,? a spokesman for Mr. Annan noted in a statement issued on Sunday.

The boy was hit in the head when soldiers guarding Israeli bulldozers clearing farmland near the Palestinian town of Khan Younis fired warning shots apparently aimed at keeping residents away from the area.The army had no immediate comment on the incident

...the problem is not training, but loyalty. All the training in the world is worthless if the people being trained have no reason to fight for those who are training them. And a paycheck isn't much of a reason, especially when the fellow Iraqis they are to battle are fighting for God.

Families tried to bury their dead on Sunday but the road to the cemetery was blocked off by US troops, witnesses said.

Watching the military attacks on Samarra and hearing the stories from displaced families or people from around the area is like reliving the frustration and anger of the war. It's like a nightmare within a nightmare, seeing the corpses pile up and watching people drag their loved ones from under the bricks and steel of what was once a home.
To top it off, we have to watch American military spokespersons and our new Iraqi politicians justify the attacks and talk about 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' like they actually believe what they are saying... like hundreds of civilians aren't being massacred on a daily basis by the worlds most advanced military technology.

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order...

At least eleven people are dead following continued U-S air strikes on the Iraqi city of Fallujah...hospital officials say three women and four children are among those killed in the raid. They say that includes residents of neighboring houses. They also say 12 others were injured, including six women and three children.
The military says has "removed foreign fighters from the streets of Fallujah and strengthens the safety of Iraq."

...pure evil.

The prevalent and continued decline of the Empire?s mind can be attributed to the evolving degeneration of American capitalism, through the inherent evils it espouses, its subjugation and control of human nature, and its consequences on a society entangled and indeed dependent on the very mechanisms of exploitation of self, addiction to materialism and the pandemic of greed. This latest stage of capitalism, the most sinister to arise from the realm of human conscious, has replaced once nobler, controllable, equal and just instruments. It is simply the erosion of capitalism, after having flourishing in previous stages of development, into a phase that has mutated beyond the control of humans and into a realm of damaging and malevolent repression and exploitation.

Nine Muslims held indefinitely without charge in Britain are challenging their detention in the country's highest court.

Fox News Channel has disciplined one of its senior journalists for posting a falsified article about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on its website.

Halliburton's relationship with the Bush administration is beginning to prove more problematic than it is worth.

Ariel Sharon said yesterday that an assault on the Gaza strip that has claimed more than 60 lives and injured 250 people - the bloodiest of the intifada - will be expanded until it puts an end to Hamas rocket strikes against Israel.

A must watch documentary---> "Hijacking Catastrophe" is powerful, understated, straightforward and educational. In a single meticulously organized hour of evidence and analysis, viewers are treated to a thoughtful explanation of modern American empire, neo-conservatism as a driving force for the current Bush administration.

The Intelligence Committee's report makes clear, that 93-page estimate stands as one of the most flawed documents in the history of American intelligence. The committee concluded unanimously that most of the major findings in the estimate were wrong, unfounded or overblown.

Since Israeli unleashed its military might six days ago, 71 Palestinians have been killed in the deadliest raid on the Gaza Strip since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation four years ago.
Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon warned that the onslaught, which is aimed at preventing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants, could last for weeks.

He said no firm date to complete the withdrawal had been decided yet, but that Poland hoped "to finish our mission at the end of 2005."

A Palestinian teenager died of his injuries after being seriously wounded in an Israeli air strike on Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian hospital sources said.
Two more Palestinian teenagers died of their injuries after being seriously wounded by Israeli army gunfire in Jabalya, Palestinian medics said.

American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe have been widely exaggerated by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington's desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.

A lawyer, based in offices in a run-down part of north London, worked with three British executives from the US construc- tion group Halliburton to pay at least $132m in "unjustified" fees to contacts in Nigeria.

Hundreds of Iraqi families, mostly women and children, lined up at the main entrances of Samarra,125 kilometers north of Baghdad, in a desperate attempt to escape the gates of hell broken loose by the American occupation forces.

After the latest U.S. air strike on Falluja, enraged residents clasped wounded children and challenged Iraq's prime minister to visit the town to see how bombs were hitting civilians, not "terrorists."

The Rev. Jerry Falwell said yesterday that evangelical Christians, after nearly 25 years of increasing political activism, now control the Republican Party and the fate of President Bush in the November election.

Black people intimidated at the polling booth. Voting machines that register ballots wrongly. Welcome to the disaster-waiting-to-happen that is the US presidential election of November 2004.

in pictures

The Palestinian representative to the Arab League, Muhammad Sobaih, said permanent delegates would meet in Cairo on Sunday - at the request of his country - to "discuss the savage and continuing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in all cities, villages and refugee camps", notably in Gaza.

Democrat challenger John Kerry has pulled ahead of President Bush in a poll published by Newsweek magazine showing Thursday's television debate erased the lead Bush had enjoyed for the last month.

...well...let's watch for the 'Terrorists' now

Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. [Fire Engineering - 1/4/2002]

Palestinian masked militants from Izzedine al Qassam, the militant wing of Hamas, stand in front of various weapons at a news conference in a mosque in the Jebaliya refugee camp, nothern Gaza Strip, Saturday, Oct. 2, 2004. In their first-ever news conference, members of the secretive Hamas military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, threatened Saturday to fire rockets at the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, which is 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of Gaza and has so far been out of reach of the rockets.

Israelis are attacking a camp with 100 tanks, helicopters, jeeps, Armoured Personal carriers, snipers and thousands of IDF soldiers and these guys hold a press conference. You would think that the IDF would get curious with all the radio trucks infront of a building?
Camp Jabilya is surrounded by three IDF forts within 1/2 mile plus the IDF has undercovers all over.

?????????????

"Stop calling here, you hear me," he said when I called to speak to Ze'ev. "I've nothing to do with this business. Goodbye." And he hung up.
Of more than a hundred people contacted in connection with this Weekend Herald inquiry, only a handful were prepared to talk.

Since the Israeli troops launched their latest set of incursions on Tuesday night, at least 43 Palestinians have been killed. Almost 200 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles moved into the northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian cabinet declared 'state of emergency' on Saturday as Israeli continues its raids in Gaza.Arafat, moreover, accused Israel of "using inhumane and illegal weapons, such as fragmentation bombs."

More troops poured into the Gaza Strip on Saturday as Israel expanded its offensive to counter Palestinian rocket fire, one of the largest incursions in four years of fighting.

The Palestine Monitor urgently appeals to the international community to intervene in the carnage being wrought on the civilian populations of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
More than 30 Palestinians, including several children, have been killed and more than 130 wounded in army operations in Gaza over the last two days and the Israeli offensive is almost certain to double this death toll if immediate action is not taken to intercede.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees yesterday accused the Israeli army of taking over schools in the Gaza Strip, while children were still in class, and using them as firing positions for tanks.

The White House has endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to extract information.
The "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" marks the first time the U.S. government has officially scripted its policy known as "extraordinary rendition," whereby American authorities can circumvent their own restraints on interrogations by sending suspects to countries known to employ harsh tactics.

George Bush's biggest lie goes something like this: "We invaded Iraq because bad intelligence led us to believe that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could have been given to terrorists and used in an attack against the United States."

Amid heightened concerns of a North Korean missile test, a U.S. destroyer has started patrolling the Sea of Japan in what officials say is a first step toward creating a shield to protect the United States and its allies from a foreign missile attack.

I stayed away from observing the World for a day or so...
I'm returning to the "Watching" us after 35hrs+...
...and what strikes me more than ever?!
The World screeeeeeeeeeeeams for help!
The World is under tremendous pressure!
........we hurt!
and
We, human beings, are so amazing as a species...
So creative, intelligent and beautiful
and
Our reality is fcked up...

hence....

Are we under torture?
We are under torture.
Maybe under self-torture?
Maybe.
Is this reality manufactured for us?
Absolutely.
Are we willing participants of that game/torture?
Looks that we are.
Why do we want to hurt ourselves?
Because we don't know any better.
Because it's about life and death.
.............it's as strong as instinct.
and we are responding accordingly.

We are under torture...'Not-Normal' system of self-hurting...
Money, Power, Competition, Lies, Hate, Ego, Greed...
Very strong forces at work.
....and that is...our daily bread.
Your food...
Your rent and mortgage...
Your health...
Your school...
Your religion...
Your kids...
Your love?
Everything is poisoned by sick solutions and answers without heart(God).
Evil at large.
No wonder we make wrong choices.
No wonder we are neurotic.
No wonder we don't trust each other.
No wonder we hurt.

It's all about evil and hate...
...nothing else.
and the funny thing is...
(funny as in simple)
those forces can exist only under
certain conditions...
....what conditions?
Lack of love.
Lack of humanity.
Lack of compassion.
Lack of "deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it."
....absence of love creates hate.
....absence of compassion and humanity becomes evil.

Presence and absence.
ones and zeroes of the universe.
is(s) and is not(s).
The Reality.

That's all
One love.

A French lawmaker said that his unofficial bid to secure the release of two French journalists held in Iraq had failed after US troops opened fire on the convoy attempting to bring them out, killing six of their escorts.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

The United States helped train and arm rebels from west Sudan who rose up against the Sudanese government last year, Sudanese President President Omar Hassan Al Bashir said in remarks published on Thursday.
Sudanese officials have previously said the United States has exploited the Darfur crisis to further its own political agenda in the region and to exploit the country?s oil and other resources. Sudan produces up to 320,000 barrels a day of crude.

Despite its pledges to stay engaged with the world, the United States is gradually retreating from the UN-sponsored system of international law, having ratified only about 29 percent of existing multilateral agreements, according to a study.

Have we really fallen this low? "The United States of American is looked at," the document says, "as the most dangerous and destructive nation in the world by civilized global societies."

----> Transcript

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has warned that the Russian armed forces are on the verge of collapse because people are avoiding the draft.

...depleted uranium (DU). A radioactive by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is used in ammunition such as tank shells and "bunker busting" missiles because its density makes it ideal for piercing armour.
Thousands of DU shells and bombs have been used in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and - both during the 1990-91 Gulf war and the ongoing conflict - in Iraq.
"They're using it now, they're using it in Falluja, Baghdad is chock-a-block with DU - it's all over the place," says Major Doug Rokke, director of the US army's DU project in 1994-95.

An Italian aid worker in Iraq held captive and subsequently freed has said guerrillas there were right to fight US-led forces and their Iraqi "puppet government".

The Palestinian Authority yesterday called on the UN Security Council, the Quartet that drafted the road map and the United States to stop Israeli "massacres" in the northern Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Three of Iraq?s oil-rich southern provinces have discussed breaking away to set up an autonomous region similar to that demanded by Iraqi Kurds in the north.

Insurgents run rampant and Rumsfeld grows more stubborn. We're etching a big black mark across American history.
We do not need to recount yet again the history of the war in Iraq. It will go down as one of the most ill-conceived military undertakings in our history.

"If Americans who tuned into last night's presidential debate were waiting for one of the candidates to catch the other in a fatal error, or leave him stammering, the event was obviously a draw," wrote The New York Times.

...of course...and capitol of US is Boston!

Americans like to believe that God speaks to the world through the US.

from ----> CNN

How bad was it for Bush?
So bad that FOX News' website didn't even run any poll. Bush got shellacked so badly it was astounding. He was like a wounded animal desperate for a place to hide but not able to find one.

The FBI translation department whistleblower talks about her case, the extraordinary gag order imposed on it - and hints at an October Surprise for the Bureau and the Bush administration

....Fox News, generating the images and cutaway shots, perhaps inadvertently delivered to the world The Smirking Robot: the president of the United States lip-smacking, smirking, blinking, eye-rolling, performing anguished jazz solos of facial contortions, and looking genuinely angry. His voice was petulant. He barely remembered his own record. He said absolutely nothing new. And he could barely disguise his rage: How could anyone even dream of questioning and holding him to account for his foreign-policy choices - in the "war on terra" and in Iraq? After all, "I just know how this world works."

Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for all the world as though he were sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

More Israeli tanks have entered northern Gaza as the army intensifies its operation against Palestinian militants in the area.
Palestinian sources say about 100 tanks have moved into the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp and the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
At least five Palestinians have been killed by missile strikes in Jabaliya.
The move comes after Israel's security cabinet unanimously approved a plan for a major military operation in Gaza.

United States and Iraqi forces have stormed Samarra in a major offensive in a bid to retake control of the town from insurgents.
US troops estimate 109 insurgents have been killed, but doctors talk of 80 dead, including civilians.