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Deadly Iraq sect attacks kill 200
At least 200 people have been killed in a series of bombings apparently aimed at a Kurdish religious minority group in northern Iraq, officials say. Some 200 more were reported injured as at least four blasts hit areas home to the Yazidi sect near the city of Mosul. The deadly attack was one of the most lethal insurgent strikes in more than four years of war in Iraq. The US called the bombings 'barbaric', while a Kurdish official said Baghdad had failed to protect the Yazidi. In a statement, the White House insisted US forces and the Iraqi government would continue to 'beat back' the 'vicious and heartless murderers'.

We've been neglected and let down say combat troops
The government is failing in its historic duty of care towards frontline troops who put their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan, forces charities and campaigners claim. There is growing anger in the service community that the Military Covenant, which says soldiers should always be able to expect fair treatment in return for the rights they forgo, is not being upheld. The newly-founded British Armed Forces Federation, Baff, says that the covenant is 'now a dead letter'. And in an unprecedented move, the Royal British Legion is to launch a campaign demanding that the government upholds the covenant and provides its armed forces and their families with proper care in return for asking them to risk making 'the ultimate sacrifice for their country'.

Bush's lethal legacy: more executions
The Bush administration is preparing to speed up the executions of criminals who are on death row across the United States, in effect, cutting out several layers of appeals in the federal courts so that prisoners can be 'fast-tracked' to their deaths.
With less than 18 months to go to secure a presidential legacy, President Bush has turned to an issue he has specialised in since approving a record number of executions while Governor of Texas. The US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales is putting finishing touches to regulations, inspired by recent anti-terrorism legislation, that would allow states to turn to the Justice Department, instead of the federal courts, as a key arbiter in deciding whether prisoners live or die.

U.S. helicopter crash in Iraq kills 5
Three suicide truck bombers targeted members of an ancient religious sect in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people, while the crash of an American transport helicopter near an air base in Anbar killed five U.S. servicemembers. Four more U.S. soldiers were reported killed in separate attacks - three in an explosion near their vehicle Monday in the northwestern Ninevah province and another who was died of wounds from combat in western Baghdad. In Baghdad, dozens of uniformed gunmen in 17 official vehicles stormed an Oil Ministry compound and abducted a deputy oil minister and three other officials, a ministry spokesman and police said.

Prison population set to hit new record
The prison population could reach a new record high just weeks after the government's controversial early release scheme was introduced, it was claimed today. The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) said measures allowing thousands of criminals to get out of jail 18 days early had only bought ministers a 'brief respite' from the overcrowding crisis. There were 81,040 inmates in England and Wales when the emergency measures were introduced on June 29, but the total has already crept back up to 80,708. Last Friday, a week-on-week rise in the prison population of 389 was recorded. If that is repeated this week, the record will be broken.

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned. David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”. These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Look Who's Editing Wikipedia
On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company’s machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits. In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Kidnapped Pakistani soldier beheaded in Waziristan
Pro-Taliban militants beheaded one of 16 Pakistani paramilitary troops kidnapped last week near the Afghan border, and threatened to kill more unless 10 comrades are freed, officials said on Tuesday. The soldiers were abducted on Aug. 9 in South Waziristan, a frontier tribal region and hotbed of support for Taliban and al Qaeda. Residents found the body and severed head near a football ground on Tuesday, Independence Day in Pakistan, in Jandola, 50 km (31 miles) east of South Waziristan's main town of Wana, said Latif-ur-Rehman, a senior government official in the region.

Al Qaeda Videos May Be Doctored
Media and terrorism experts alike have remarked on the increasing sophistication of al Qaeda propaganda videos that continue to be released by the group's media wing, as Sahab. One computer expert, however, has conducted extensive image analysis on many of the videos and concluded that in many cases the tapes were likely doctored to give a false impression of the speaker's location. Neal Krawetz, founder of Hacker Factor, a computer security and consulting firm, created a computer program which he uses to analyze screen frames from various al Qaeda videos, including those of al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al Zawahri and American al Qaeda commander Adam Gadahn. His software suggests that in many cases the sophisticated backgrounds were likely added after the video of the speaker was recorded.

Misery at bottom of supermarket supply chain
British supermarkets were under renewed pressure to clean up abuses in their supply chains yesterday as a Guardian investigation revealed that 40 Bulgarians found by the authorities to be illegally employed and exploited by a gangmaster in Cornwall were picking and packing vegetables destined for Tesco and Morrisons.
The Bulgarians said they were forced to 'live like pigs on scraps', scavenging vegetables from the fields when their Latvian gangmaster withheld their pay for 34 days. They were sent to work through a subcontracting chain at Southern England Farms, a leading vegetable farming and packing company that appears on Tesco's website as one of its flagship local producers of courgettes, cauliflowers and cabbage. They were housed in dirty caravans, with seven trying to sleep in a six-berth van in one example. They were initially charged £50 a week each for this overcrowded accommodation.

Ban drinking in street, says police chief
A senior police officer yesterday issued a devastating critique of the way towns were being blighted by violent, drunken youths who had made people afraid to walk the streets. Garry Newlove was killed after confronting a gang of youths outside his home in Cheshire last week Speaking after the death of a father allegedly at the hands of teenage yobs, Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Cheshire, blamed parents for abdicating responsibility for their children and shops that sold cheap alcohol. A 'hard core' of unemployed young men was at the centre of the problem, he said.

Salmond's White Paper puts Brown on defensive
Scottish independence was put back on the agenda yesterday by Alex Salmond, the First Minister for Scotland, in a White Paper paving the way for a referendum on the break-up of the Union. Opposition parties accused Mr Salmond of using the White Paper for ' nationalist propaganda', while the SNP leader himself claimed the ' tectonic plates' were moving in Scotland and said he wanted a referendum for voters by 2010 on the Union. But Mr Salmond may already be close to achieving a compromise, which will see more power devolved from Westminster

Climate camp admit sending email
An email confirms that protest organisers at Heathrow have been telling people to bring smart clothes and air steward uniforms for their direct action against the airport The campaigners have pledged that their protest won't affect the millions of passengers using Heathrow this week. However, it emerged today that organisers of the nearby climate camp had urged activists to bring smart clothes and air stewardess uniforms. The call came in an e-mail seen by Channel 4 News, but protesters insist it does not mean they're planning to take direct action against the airport.

Millions say it is too much effort to adopt greener lifestyle
Millions of people across Britain think their behaviour does not contribute to climate change and find it too much effort to make green changes to their lifestyle, a government survey suggests. About a quarter of people polled agreed with statements such as: 'It takes too much effort to do things that are environmentally friendly' and 'I don't believe my behaviour and everyday lifestyle contribute to climate change'. About half the people disagreed with the statements.