Saturday, Jan 31st
Last update09:41:30 AM GMT
International Glance
U.S. government medical researchers intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala, including institutionalized mental patients, with gonorrhea and syphilis without their knowledge or permission more than 60 years ago.
Many of those infected were encouraged to pass the infection onto others as part of the study.
About one third of those who were infected never got adequate treatment.
From the attempted delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip to the call for Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the number of things officials have warned against on the grounds of “hindering peace talks” has been staggering. This did not appear to expend to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s office, however, as he delivered a speech at the United Nations calling for the mass expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
A fresh US-led diplomatic effort was under way yesterday to rescue Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as construction resumed in some Jewish West Bank settlements after Israel's decision to end a 10-month moratorium on building.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas effectively gave US mediators at least a week to resolve the crisis by confirming that he would hold a series of consultations, culminating in an Arab League meeting called for next Monday, before deciding whether to pull out of the negotiations.
A computer worm which targets industrial and factory systems is almost certainly the work of a national government agency, security experts told the Guardian – but warn that it will be near-impossible to identify the culprit.
The "Stuxnet" computer worm, which has been described as one of the "most refined pieces of malware ever discovered", has been most active in Iran, says the security company Symantec – leading some experts to conjecture that the likely target of the virus is the controversial Bushehr nuclear power plant, and that it was created by Israeli hackers.
A report by three U.N.-appointed human rights experts Wednesday said that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla killing nine activists earlier this year.
The U.N. Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission concluded that Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and described the military raid on the flotilla as brutal and disproportionate.
A Polish prosecutor says his office has opened an investigation into whether a Saudi man accused in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole was mistreated in a prison that the CIA allegedly ran in Poland.
Prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski told The Associated Press on Wednesday that events surrounding Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri's detention will be handled as part of an ongoing investigation into Poland's involvement in the now-shuttered U.S. system of secret prisons around the globe. No charges have yet been filed.
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday ruled that the state's issue of tax benefits to Israeli citizens based on their place of residence was inequitable and discriminated against certain sectors of society, particularly Arabs.
Supreme Court president Dorit Beinisch, Justice Eliezer Rivlin and Justice Asher Grunis questioned the legality of these benefits, as no Arab community has been included as a recipient of the benefits. "The government and the Knesset systematically refrained from resolving this issue, contrary to the position of the attorney general," the judges wrote in their decision.
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