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Israeli warplanes have reportedly overflown southern Lebanon amid speculation that Tel Aviv may be seeking to provoke Hezbollah.

The warplanes overflew the Lebanese port city of Sidon on Tuesday morning, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Tel Aviv has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of making preparations to attack Israel to avenge the murder of its commander Imad Mughniyeh.

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At least five Palestinians have been killed after Israeli strikes hit two separate schools run by the United Nations in the Gaza Strip.

According to medics and UN officials, two people were killed in a strike on a school in the southern of Khan Yunis and three people were killed in an air strike on a school in Gaza City on Tuesday.

Hundreds of Palestinians have taken refuge at UN schools to escape the raining fire on Gaza.

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Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem defined the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip as “a barbaric act any way you look at it” and called on the international community “to try those responsible to these war crimes which violate international law, including the Geneva Treaty.”

“I stress to you that our opinions are similar and that we have formed a joint stance.” Moallem once again slammed Israel for “committing war crimes” and said Israeli leaders should be tried by an international tribunal.

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euben Powell is an unlikely terrorist. A white, middle-aged, middle-class artist, he has been photographing and drawing life around the capital’s Elephant & Castle for 25 years.

With a studio near the 1960s shopping centre at the heart of this area in south London, he is a familiar figure and is regularly seen snapping and sketching the people and buildings around his home – currently the site of Europe’s largest regeneration project. But to the police officers who arrested him last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

“The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said ‘what are you doing?’ I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act,” he recalled.

For Powell, this brush with the law resulted in five hours in a cell after police seized the lock-blade knife he uses to sharpen his pencils. His release only came after the intervention of the local MP, Simon Hughes, but not before he was handcuffed and his genetic material stored permanently on the DNA database.

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Tony Blair is to receive the United States’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from his friend George Bush next Tuesday, at a White House ceremony during the latter’s last week in office.

The medal, a five-pointed white star, was first introduced by President Harry Truman just after the second world war and later revived to reward eminent citizens for distinguished service in peacetime by president John F Kennedy.

Although among its previous 400 recipients there are American figures such as Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye and Arnold Palmer, it has also been presented to every post-war president and to senior politicians and military men.

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Weeks of moving are finally completed, and the United States has opened its enormous new embassy in Baghdad. Taking over three and a half years to complete and costing in the realm of $700 million, the gargantuan compound is bigger than the Vatican, and the largest and most expensive embassy on the planet.

A city within a city, the compound will employ thousands, and features a power station, a water treatment plant, schools, restaurants, and shopping areas. All in a fortress-like environment that will make security even in the Green Zone seem lax.

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Freedom of the press in Israel, such as it is, took another hit today as the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that, in spite of an order by the Israeli Supreme Court to allow eight foreign journalists to enter the Gaza Strip, it would continue to keep them out, citing security reasons.

With an ever growing number of reports of Israeli troops targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip, and multiple reports on the growing humanitarian crisis in the strip, the Israeli government seems determined to keep anybody from entering the strip who might be able to confirm the reality on the ground, while they continue to insist that everything is going “completely as it should be.”

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GENEVA (AFP) — Israel deliberately targeted Hamas-run media installations in its bombing campaign on Gaza and is practising media censorship, a journalist rights group said Monday.

The installations in question include Al-Aqsa television, Al-Resalah newspaper and Sawt Al-Aqsa radio, which the Israeli army bombed on December 28 and over the weekend respectively, the Geneva-based Press Emblem Campaign said in a statement, citing a Palestinian media non-governmental group.

The press group, which fights for better protection of journalists in conflict zones, also condemned the recent deaths of two journalists as a result of Israeli attacks.

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It was the first week of Washington’s cell phone law and I was driving down Sprague Avenue in Tacoma. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a red sedan moving into my lane. I swerved to the right to avoid a collision and by then the other driver had seen me and pulled back into her lane.

Now side-by-side, I could see that she was driving with one hand and looking down at her lap. There, her right hand held a cell phone that she was trying to dial. A cord ran from the phone to her ear.

She nearly hit me while having a conversation. But her’s was a completely legal conversation under our “ban” on cell phone use by drivers. In fact, it is encouraged by the law because as long as this driver was using a hands-free device (I would say “so-called” hands free device, but you get the point), she was acting legally.

Had she bent her elbow, however, and snuggled that phone against her ear, she would be in violation of the law and subject to a citation – assuming that she’d committed some other offense at the same time.

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Israel is using controversial white phosphorus shells to push forward with a ground offensive against the densely-populated Gaza Strip.

White phosphorus, classified as ‘chemical weapon’ by the US intelligence, can cause horrific burns and severe injuries in anyone exposed to the element released from artillery shells.

“The explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in,” an Israeli security expert was quoted by the Times Online.

The shells were used by the artillery on Gaza City on Sunday, as Israeli tanks and ground forces pushed further into the region, tightening military grip on the city.

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A Palestinian mother and four of her children are killed as the Israeli forces continue their attack on the Gaza Strip for the 10th day.

Medics at Shifa hospital told reporters that Israeli forces shot the mother and her children in the Chujaiya neighborhood in the Gaza city.

The latest death brings to nine the number of the children killed on Monday attacks.

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Washington, Jan 5 (ANI): The face of war is all set to transform, with American armed robots predicted to patrol on the battle ground in a matter of few years, killing without any remorse.

According to a report in the Washington Post, this advancement in American military prowess is a fact that comes under Moores law.

Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, noticed nearly half a century ago that computing power seemed to be doubling about every two years.

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The incoming Obama Administration says it wants to shut down the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. But even if Guantánamo closes, it won’t end the controversial U.S. practice of jailing suspected al Qaeda militants and other terrorists indefinitely. That’s because such detentions continue on an even greater scale at the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, 40 miles north of Kabul. Roughly 250 detainees are currently being held at Guantánamo; an estimated 670 are locked up under similar conditions at Bagram.

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