Egypt News By Asfory
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Israel rejected mounting international pressure on Monday to end its war against Hizbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon, as world powers squabbled over the urgency of a ceasefire.

A U.N. official said a meeting scheduled for Monday on a new peacekeeping force for Lebanon had been delayed “until there is more political clarity” on the path ahead in the 20-day-old war.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the end of a trip to Israel that a ceasefire could be achieved this week. But despite an international outcry over an air strike on Sunday that killed 54 civilians, most of them children, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there would be no ceasefire for now.

“The fighting continues. There is no ceasefire and there will not be any ceasefire in the coming days,” Olmert told local officials, drawing sustained applause.

Civilians fled battered villages in southern Lebanon after Israel said it had agreed partially to halt air strikes for 48 hours, and aid convoys headed into the area to deliver supplies.

Rescue workers found 49 bodies buried for days in collapsed buildings or inside destroyed vehicles, medical sources said.

The Israeli military said it had launched a new ground incursion into Lebanon in the Aita al-Shaab area. Hizbollah said its guerrillas were fiercely resisting the advance.

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The UN Security Council intensified pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, giving Tehran a month to halt uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions, the BBC reported.

The resolution, passed Monday by a vote of 14-1, warns that “appropriate measures” will be taken if Tehran doesn’t suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment.

However, the text stopped short of an immediate threat of sanctions, which have been strongly opposed by Russia and China, saying that punitive action would be the subject of further discussions.

The draft also calls on Iran to allow IAEA inspectors “without further delay” and demands IAEA director Muhammed ElBaradei to report on whether Iran has complied by August 31.

Monday’s resolution was proposed by the UK, France and Germany, with strong support from the U.S., which accuses Iran of covertly developing atomic weapons, although Tehran insists that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes.

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The Pentagon announced that a new, permanent prison will open in the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a move that clearly defies international mounting international calls to shut down the jail, The Independent reported.

Officials said Camp 6, a maximum-security prison built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will hold around 200 detainees.

Commander Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said the $30m jail will open by the end of September, claiming that “Camp 6 is designed to improve the quality of life for the detainees and provide greater protection for the people working in the facility.”

The recent announcement defy international calls to shut down the detention centre, which still holds 450 foreign suspects captured in President George Bush’s “war on terror”.

Critics point to Bush’s claim in June that he would “like to empty” Guantanamo. Weeks after he made his remarks, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo military tribunals were “illegal” under U.S. law and international Geneva conventions.

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Raging sectarian violence has pushed up the number of refugees in Iraq by 20,000 in the last 10 days alone, the migration ministry said on Monday.

It said in a statement the total number of people displaced has reached 182,154.

The crisis is likely to be far graver because ministry figures include only those who formally ask for aid within the country, some of them living in tented camps. By excluding thousands fleeing abroad or quietly seeking refuge with relatives, officials accept the data is an underestimate.

The figure of 182,154, based on the ministry’s data of 30,359 families, is the number of those claiming aid since the February 22 bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra sparked a new phase of killing by Shi’ites and minority Sunni groups.

Some 27,744 people have fled Baghdad alone in the past five months. More and more houses are boarded up in the capital and many shops in once bustling commercial districts have shut after being threatened with violence or attacked.

One of those districts, Arasat, was hit by a mass kidnapping on Monday.

Gunmen wearing uniforms of Iraqi security forces abducted 25 people from an office in the area in central Baghdad in broad daylight, police said, highlighting lawlessness afflicting the country more than three years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

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أعلنت السلطة الفلسطينية أن عدد المعتقلين الفلسطينيين في السجون الإسرائيلية تعدّى العشرة آلاف.

وقالت السلطة إن أكثر من 600 من هؤلاء تم اعتقالهم منذ أن أسر مسلّحون فلسطينيون الجندي الفلسطيني جلعاد شاليط قبل حوالي خمسة اسابيع.

وكانت إسرائيل قد اعتقلت أيضا 27 نائبا في المجلس التشريعي وسبعة وزراء في الحكومة في إطار الضغط على الحكومة للإفراج على شاليط الذي تبنّت ثلاثة فصائل فلسطينية عملية خطفه.

وقد كشف وزير المعتقلين في الحكومة الفلسطينية أن عدة معتقلين محتجزون في السجن الانفرادي وأنه يتم حظر الزيارات من قبَل كافة عائلات المعتقلين.

من جانبها تقول إسرائيل إن الذين اعتُقلوا منذ أسر الجندي متشبه في تورطهم بما تسميه إسرائيل “الإرهاب”.

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Palestinian doctors in Gaza say several people have been hurt in fresh Israeli air strikes there, that took place as Israel’s Lebanon offensive continues.
Israel says it attacked buildings used by militants from Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza City and the northern town of Beit Hanoun.

Palestinian militants fired a rocket on Sderot in Israel, hurting one person.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian president is heading to Kuwait as part of efforts to negotiate an end to the violence.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, in Israeli air strikes and incursions since Palestinian militants kidnapped a young Israeli soldier more than a month ago.

Yet the intense attacks on Lebanon have overshadowed the continuing violence in the Gaza Strip, our correspondents say.

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أقلعت يوم الأحد أول طائرة تقوم برحلة تجارية من مطار العاصمة الصومالية مقديشو منذ أكثر من عقد من الزمن.

وتجسد هذه الرحلة السيطرة الكاملة لاتحاد المحاكم الإسلامية على العاصمة.

وقد توجهت الطائرة التابعة لشركة طيران محلية تدعي جوبا إيرويز نحو دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة، كما صرح بذلك عبد الرحمن حسن محمد مفو المتحدث باسم الشركة.

وتزامن إقلاع الطائرة مع اليوم الذي نجا فيه رئيس الوزراء علي محمد غيدي من تصويت بسحب الثقة في البرلمان.

وأعرب عبد الولي أرالي وهو مسافر كان على متن الرحلة عن ابتهاجه للسفر فيها وقال: ” إنها رحلة تاريخية بالنسبة لي”، مضيفا ” أعتقد أننا استعدنا أخيرا الأمن والسلام. ”

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It’s unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.
Harry Potter accomplished it with his magic cloak. H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man swallowed a substance that made him transparent.

But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the “Fantastic Four.”

“She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice,” Leonhardt told Reuters in an interview. “That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future.”

Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls around the stone and then leaves as if nothing was there.

“If you replace the water with light then you would not see that there was something present because the light is guided around the person or object. You would see the light coming from the scenery behind as if there was nothing in front,” he said.

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Britain and California are preparing to sidestep the Bush administration and fight global warming together by creating a joint market for greenhouse gases.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plan to lay the groundwork for a new trans-Atlantic market in carbon dioxide emissions, The Associated Press has learned. Such a move could help California cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases scientists blame for warming the planet. President Bush has rejected the idea of ordering such cuts.

Blair and Schwarzenegger were expected to announce their collaboration Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, according to documents provided by British government officials on condition of anonymity because the announcement was forthcoming.

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A sheriff’s spokesman Monday defended the handling of Mel Gibson’s drunken driving arrest in Malibu last week amid allegations the department covered up anti-Semitic remarks reportedly made by the actor-director as he was being taken into custody.

The allegations of anti-Semitism stemmed from a leaked arrest report that quoted Gibson as saying, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and asking a deputy, James Mee, “Are you a Jew?”

The entertainment news Web site TMZ posted what it said were four pages from the original 8-page arrest report.

“This case is going to go to the district attorney,” sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore told reporters Monday at sheriff’s headquarters. “In that case file will be his statement, will be our report, will be everything pertinent to his blood-alcohol level. We have done our job. We hope we’ve done it with not only professionalism and intelligence, but held to the highest standard of legal and moral imperative.”

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