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Police accused of using provocateurs at summit
Protesters are accusing police of using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North American leaders' summit in Montebello, Que. Such accusations have been made before after similar demonstrations but this time the alleged 'agents provocateurs' have been caught on camera. A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand. The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location. See also

White House Manual Details How to Deal With Protesters
Not that they're worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any. A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of 'deterring potential protestors' from President Bush's public appearances around the country. Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by 'rally squads' stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

Texas executes 400th inmate in 25 years
Texas reached a milestone last night when a man who murdered a convenience store clerk became the 400th person executed by the US state since it resumed capital punishment in 1982. Johnny Ray Conner, 32, who was convicted of the fatal shooting in Houston in 1998, was the 21st prisoner put to death by lethal injection in Texas this year. Another three Texas inmates are scheduled to die by lethal injection next week, and five more executions are scheduled in September. Since 1976, 1,091 prisoners have been executed in the US. Texas leads the nation in enforcing the death penalty. Conner's execution in Huntsville, north of Houston, provoked condemnation from opponents of the death penalty.

WHO warns of global epidemic risk
Infectious diseases are spreading faster than ever before, the World Health Organization annual report says. With about 2.1 billion airline passengers flying each year, there is a high risk of another major epidemic such as Aids, Sars or Ebola fever. The WHO urges increased efforts to combat disease outbreaks, and sharing of virus data to help develop vaccines. Without this, it says, there could be devastating impacts on the global economy and international security. In the report, A Safer Future, the WHO says new diseases are emerging at the 'historically unprecedented' rate of one per year. Since the 1970s, 39 new diseases have developed, and in the last five years alone, the WHO has identified more than 1,100 epidemics including cholera, polio and bird flu.

Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president
President George Bush sought to buy more time for his Iraq 'surge' strategy yesterday by making a risky comparison for the first time with the bloodshed and chaos that followed the US pullout from Vietnam. Making it clear he will resist congressional pressure next month for an early withdrawal, he signalled that US troops, whom he hailed as the 'greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known', will be in Iraq as long as he is president. He also said the consequences of leaving 'without getting the job done would be devastating', and 'the enemy would follow us home'. Mr Bush's speech came on the day that the US suffered one of its highest daily death tolls since the 2003 invasion, with 14 troops killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed.

It Happened In... Lockerbie
On 21 December, 1988 the worst airline disaster in British history and what remains the deadliest terrorist attack in the UK to date took place. A Pan Am 747 Jumbo Jet bound for John F. Kennedy airport in New York crashed just north of the Scottish border. A bomb planted in the cargo hold of the Jumbo Jet detonated within an hour of take-off and the explosion sent the plane plummeting to Earth. Eleven residents of the town of Lockerbie along with all 259 passengers and crew aboard the flight were killed. A row of houses in Lockerbie's Sherwood Crescent was turned into an inferno by the falling wing of the plane, leaving just a smoldering crater behind. Bodies, some still strapped into their seats, were found in trees and rooftops. The search for pieces of aircraft and luggage spanned 848 square miles and the town's ice rink was turned into a massive morgue. Twenty-one countries were represented among the dead.

Diana conspiracy theories flourish
Two major investigations by French and British police concluded that Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash was a tragic accident, but 10 years on many remain convinced she was murdered in a sinister plot. The usual suspects cited by conspiracy theorists include Britain's royal family - because they were unhappy Diana was to marry her lover, Muslim Dodi al-Fayed - or arms dealers, because they were angry at her support for a ban on landmines. 'They were killed as a result of a wicked conspiracy by people who did not want the princess to marry my son and were fearful of what she could say and do,' Dodi's father Mohamed, the leading murder theory protagonist, told Reuters. And there are some truly bizarre hypotheses. These suggest leaders of a 'new world order' assassinated her because she wouldn't marry former President Bill Clinton, or that she was killed as part of a Satanic ritual, or even that she is still alive having faked her own death.

At Iraq's front line, U.S. puts ex-foes on payroll
Under a tree by a battlefield road in Iraq's 'Triangle of Death,' Lieutenant- Colonel Robert Balcavage meets his new recruits. The men are Iraqi Sunni Arabs who are about to join the U.S. military's payroll as a local militia. They want guns. 'I am not giving out guns and ammo,' the U.S. commander says. The men listen carefully as the interpreter translates. 'I've been shot at up here enough times to know that there's plenty of guns and ammo. Me personally. Some of you guys have probably taken some pretty good shots at me.' Slowly but deliberately, U.S. forces are enlisting groups of armed men -- many probably former insurgents -- and paying cash, a strategy they say has dramatically reduced violence in some of Iraq's most dangerous areas in just weeks.

Howard attacked for links to secret Christian sect the Brethren
They describe themselves as 'a Christian fellowship based on the Holy Scriptures', but others call them a sect, and they have meddled in elections in New Zealand and Australia. So when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, admitted that he had recently met leaders of the ultra-conservative Exclusive Brethren, his critics smelt something unsavoury. The group, an offshoot of the Plymouth Brethren, with followers in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the US, enforces a policy of separation, including from other Christians. Children are educated in Brethren-run schools; adults work in Brethren-owned companies. Brethren eat, drink and socialise only with other Brethren. Television, mobile phones and computers are banned.

Most US adults in the dark about world politics
Two-thirds of US adults admit to being in the dark about political issues outside the United States, and only a third are well-versed in US politics, the results of a poll published Tuesday showed. Candidates in the US presidential primaries 'may have their work cut out for them as they work to get people interested in the election,' wrote the Harris Poll group, which surveyed 2,225 adults between July 6 and 13 for the poll. A separate survey gave New York Senator Hillary Clinton a healthy lead over her main rival Barack Obama for the Democratic primary race. More than 40 percent of those who would vote in a Democratic primary or caucus would vote for Clinton while 27 percent said they would vote for Obama, the poll showed.

£1.5bn: annual cost of the enduring sectarianism in Northern Ireland
Sectarianism and the deep divisions within Northern Ireland could be costing the Exchequer up to £1.5bn a year, according to an official report. Although this extraordinary figure is tentatively advanced, the report lays bare the workings of a society cut down the middle by the religious and political divide. The report has been obtained by The Independent in advance of its consideration by the fledgling Belfast power-sharing executive headed jointly by the DUP and Sinn Fein. It shows that the new administration faces mountainous challenges. The report demonstrates that policy and practice in health, education, security and other vital fields have been skewed by the need to cope with unionist and nationalist communities which are in many ways starkly segregated.

Iraq: The vanishing coalition
President George Bush invoked the spectre of Vietnam for the first time yesterday as 15 more American soldiers died and increasing evidence emerged that the coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq four years ago has begun to fracture irreparably. As the US death toll moved to 3,722, Iraq's Prime Minister engaged in an angry war of words with his critics in Washington. Meanwhile, a senior US general issued a dark warning that American troops may have to be sent to the south of the country to fill the vacuum left by a projected British withdrawal. Amid the chaos, an isolated Mr Bush vowed he would 'fight to win', that the so-called troop 'surge' was working and that the lesson from Vietnam was that withdrawal had cost millions of lives.

Press rejects Iraq-Vietnam link
President Bush's comparison between Iraq and Vietnam receives a poor reception in the US press. President Bush broke with convention yesterday when he mentioned Iraq and Vietnam in the same speech. Addressing a veterans' convention, he said: 'One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawl was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people', 'reeducation camps' and 'killing fields'.' The reaction to the speech in the US national press has been predominantly critical. The Los Angeles Times says: 'The president's Vietnam-Iraq analogy begins with a large kernel of truth, but goes astray.'

Pakistan's release of al-Qaida suspect upsets US and UK
Pakistan's decision to release a suspect al-Qaida expert accused of training suicide bombers and plotting to attack Heathrow airport met with surprise and dismay in London and Washington yesterday, with officials describing the Pakistani computer engineer as a 'significant individual'. Pakistan's supreme court heard this week that Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, 28, from Karachi, had returned home after three years' detention at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. His lawyer, Babar Awan, said that all charges had 'gone with the wind'. The media has been prevented from interviewing Mr Khan, who remains under tight surveillance. His low-key release contrasted with the clamour that followed his capture in July 2004, which authorities celebrated as a big blow for al-Qaida.

Japan activist posts finger to PM
A Japanese political activist has been arrested after he cut off his little finger and posted it to PM Shinzo Abe's ruling party, according to police. Yoshihiro Tanjo said he was protesting against Mr Abe's refusal to visit a war shrine, on the 62nd anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. He said he thought his message would be ignored if he just sent a letter. The Yasukuni shrine honours Japan's war dead but is controversial because it also honours convicted war criminals. Mr Tanjo, 54, was charged with intimidation tactics after severing a finger and sending it to the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters, police said.

Noise of modern life blamed for thousands of heart deaths
Thousands of people in Britain and around the world are dying prematurely from heart disease triggered by long-term exposure to excessive noise, according to research by the World Health Organisation. Coronary heart disease caused 101,000 deaths in the UK in 2006, and the study suggests that 3,030 of these are caused by chronic noise exposure, including to daytime traffic. Deepak Prasher, professor of audiology at University College London, told the New Scientist magazine: 'The new data provide the link showing there are earlier deaths because of noise. Until now, noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people haven't been aware that it has an impact on their health.'