
U.S. intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before his death and expect that tape to surface soon..
Source: www.google.com/hostednews



US Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be "ill-advised" to attack Iran, but stressed that it was unlikely to do so.
"According to the code, a soldier has to do his utmost to avoid civilian casualties and that involves taking some risk," said Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor at Hebrew University….
Israeli aircraft bombed smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border on Wednesday in a response to the killing of an Israeli soldier, violence that strained a fragile ceasefire before the arrival of a U.S. peace envoy...
METHODS used by the Israel Defence Forces in their assault on the Gaza Strip have raised questions about whether Israeli military commanders authorised the use of Palestinians as human shields - a charge Israel has repeatedly made against Hamas...
By the time the shooting stopped, more than 100 Palestinians had been killed for every Israeli who died. Was every death lawful? And, if not, where does the fault lie? ..
"I had just left the room, carrying my youngest son on my shoulders. Then a shell came through the wall.I rushed back to find their dead bodies - or rather parts of their bodies - strewn all over the room. One was still sitting in a chair but she had no legs..
"They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine," said Zahar, in a video recorded from his hiding place in Syria and broadcast on Hamas's al-Aqsa television.
The pope's minister for peace and justice was accused yesterday of speaking like a Holocaust denier after comparing Gaza to a "big concentration camp"...
After killing 50 civilians in UN schools sheltering refugees - "C'est la guerre", the Israeli minister Meir Shitreet told the BBC when asked about the atrocities - the Israeli government agreed a three-hour daily lull in the carnage for "humanitarian purposes", as diplomatic manoeuvring intensified over a possible ceasefire deal. All this at the cost of only 10 Israeli dead, six of them soldiers.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group...
Hamas's Syrian-based chief Khaled Meshaal told Israel that "if you commit the stupidity of launching a ground offensive then a black destiny awaits you…..
"Israel has destroyed the buildings, but Hamas is still here," Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas spokesman, said Thursday, the sixth day of the bombing campaign. "There is no anxiety over the existence of Hamas even if they destroy all of Gaza because we are among the people."..
Gordon Johndroe, the Bush administration spokesman, said Israel must try to avoid civilian casualties, but laid the blame for deaths on the Palestinian groups that controls the impoverished territory.
Israel's foreign minister brushed off a call for restraint from Egypt's president, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a direct appeal to Gaza's people to pressure their leaders to stop the barrages.