When the UN launched its investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, many in Lebanon and abroad were convinced that the perpetrators of this crime would eventually be brought to justice. Syria’s control over security in Lebanon was so pervasive that an operation of this caliber and complexity would have been nearly impossible to pull off without some degree of involvement by some node of its intelligence services. After the withdrawal of Syrian forces the following April and the election of a new Lebanese government eager to bring the killers to justice, the task of unraveling the plot seemed well within the capacities of the newly established UN International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC).

Three years later, despite the enormous financial resources, expertise, and forensic technology at its disposal, there is no indication that the IIIC has compiled sufficient evidence to support indictments of Syrian officials for Hariri’s murder (or for any of the other assassinations subsequently added to its mandate). While it’s likely that the commission hasn’t revealed the full extent of its findings, the prospect that conclusive evidence of Syrian complicity is being kept under wraps is remote.

Former NBA player Wayman Tisdale had part of his right leg amputated Monday because of bone cancer.

Tisdale, now an award-winning jazz musician, under went treatment and later had knee replacement surgery and resumed touring. Tisdale was still undergoing chemotherapy when he told the AP in June that “I feel better than ever. I’m excited. I’ve got a whole new look on life. I look at life on a whole ‘nother radar.”

The Taliban bomber calmly parked a white fuel tanker near the prison gates of this city one evening in June, then jumped down from the cab and let out a laugh. Prison guards fired on the bomber as he ran off, but they missed, instead killing the son of a local shopkeeper, who watched the scene unfold from across the street. The Taliban bomber calmly parked a white fuel tanker near the prison gates of this city one evening in June, then jumped down from the cab and let out a laugh. Prison guards fired on the bomber as he ran off, but they missed, instead killing the son of a local shopkeeper, who watched the scene unfold from across the street.

Seconds later, the attacker fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the tanker, setting off an explosion that killed the prison guards, destroyed nearby buildings and opened up a breach in the prison walls as wide as a highway. Nearly 900 prisoners escaped in the jailbreak, 350 of them members of the Taliban, in one of the worst security lapses in Afghanistan in the six years since the U.S. intervention here.

I was waiting for the swimwear competition.

The co-founder of a suspected al-Qaeda linked militant group in Iraq who lived a double life as a refugee in Norway’s capital Oslo is suing Norway for violating his rights.

Ansar-al-Islam is the organisation that former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell told the United Nations provided an operational link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Such an operational link has later been denied both by former CIA director George Tenet and the 9/11 Commission, among others, although some contact may have existed.

British police have arrested a fifth suspect in an alleged terrorist plot to kill Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his predecessor Tony Blair.

October surprise?

FOR more than a week now, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have filled the streets of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir, shouting ‘azadi’ (freedom) and raising the green flag of Islam. These demonstrations, the largest in nearly two decades, remind many of us why in 2000 President Bill Clinton described Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan, as ‘the most dangerous place on earth.’

Mr. Clinton sounded a bit hyperbolic back then. Dangerous, you wanted to ask, to whom? Though more than a decade old, the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir, which Pakistan’s rogue intelligence agency had infiltrated with jihadi terrorists, was not much known outside South Asia.

US authorities have confirmed that the 11-year old boy they claim to have captured with Dr Aafia Siddiqui in Kabul is her son Ahmed.

According to a report in the Washington Post, in a letter to Siddiqui’s family, US authorities said that photos and DNA tests strongly suggest that the youngster in Afghan custody is Siddiqui’s son Ahmed. The boy is claimed to have been detained on July 18 when Afghan police arrested Siddiqui near a government compound in Ghazni. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared in 2003 in Karachi. She had set out from her mother’s home on her way to the airport to take a flight to Islamabad, but she never arrived. Inexplicably, her family did not lodge a missing person report with the police. She is now in a federal prison in New York, charged with attempted murder.

More on the UK assassination plot.

For humans now there is the tantalising possibility of tweaking the photosynthetic reactions of cyanobacteria to produce fuels we want such as hydrogen, alcohols or even hydrocarbons, rather than carbohydrates.

Progress at the research level has been rapid, boosting prospects of harnessing photosynthesis not just for energy but also for manufacturing valuable compounds for the chemical and biotechnology industries. Such research is running on two tracks, one aimed at genetically engineering real plants and cyanobacteria to yield the products we want, and the other to mimic their processes in artificial photosynthetic systems built with human-made components.

No matter what help Barack Obama might get from Sen. Joseph Biden, his newly named vice presidential running mate won’t give Obama much cover on the Tony Rezko front.

When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden’s Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.

Sorry. I’m sure I scared some of you. Problems with the old web site required that I rebuild from scratch.  This is the first major change since I started in April of 02. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to straighten things out as I’m headed to Europe at the end of the week and I’m very busy until them.

It will be limited blogging. I’ll do what I can but not everything will work.

Currently I’m running a re-direct which may be a little slow. I think I’ll do the same thing with the rss feed.

I’ll expand on this post later but leave it at the top for a couple of days so be sure and check below for new posts.

An Italian priest says he is organising the world’s first beauty pageant for nuns to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.

Antonio Rungi says The Miss Sister Italy online contest will start on his blog in September.