Relatives and friends of an innocent man shot dead by UK police on the Tube on Friday have marched in his home town in Brazil demanding arrests be made. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot eight times at Stockwell station after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber. Tony Blair has said he is "desperately sorry" but urged people to support the police in "difficult circumstances" in the wake of the London bombings...Read the full article

TEHRAN, Iran- An appeals court rejected demands Monday for a new investigation into whether the 2003 death in prison of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was premeditated murder. Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, who leads a team of lawyers representing Kazemi's mother, was arguing for a criminal investigation to be opened...Read the full article

Egyptian Police arrest 70 in hunt for bombers

Photo: An unidentified tourist walks near the site of a car-bomb explosion in the old town of Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, on Sunday.

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - Egyptian police scoured for clues Sunday and struggled to identify dozens of the 88 people killed in three coordinated bomb blasts that rocked this Red Sea resort, sending foreign tourists scrambling to catch flights home. More than 70 people have been detained in Sharm el-Sheik and elsewhere on the Sinai Peninsula for questioning over early Saturday's explosions. None have been accused of involvement in Egypt's deadliest-ever terror attack, said security officials, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the inquiry...Read the full article

Explosive exploded as man carries in an Egyptian tourist bazaar. CAIRO, Egypt- An explosive detonated as as it was being carried by a man several kilometres from a tourist bazaar next to the Pyramids of Giza on Sunday, police said. The man was severely injured. The incident came amid heightened fears of attacks on tourists in Egypt after Saturday's string of bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, 400 kilometres east of the capital, that killed 88 people. Security was increased in many parts of Cairo, including around the Pyramids, after the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country's history. Investigators were trying to determine whether the man, identified as Sami Gamal Ahmad, 33, was taking the explosive to the nearby tourist area of Kerdassa, a bazaar of souvenir shops near the Pyramids, a senior security official involved in the investigation said...Read the full article

Lance Armstrong wins  Tour de France

Photo: Overall leader Lance Armstrong, of Austin, Texas, signals seven for his seventh straight win in the Tour de France cycling race, as he rides during the 21st and final stage of the race between Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris, and the French capital, Sunday.

PARIS, France- One last time The Star-Spangled Banner rang out over the Champs-Elysees in honour of Lance Armstrong. One last time on the podium against the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe, the cancer survivor who became the greatest cyclist in Tour de France history slipped into the leader's yellow jersey Sunday. This time, it was the winner's jersey, for an unprecedented seventh consecutive year in the world's most gruelling race...Read the full article

Bombs explode in a Russian Train. MAKHACHKALA, Russia- A bomb exploded beneath a train in Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan region on Sunday, killing one person and injuring four others, police said. The explosive device went off around 5:30 a.m. (0230GMT) under the first car of the train as it headed to the regional capital, Makhachkala, from the northwestern town of Khasavyurt, said Akhmed Magomayev, deputy chief of the region's railroad police department...Read the full article..

Bruce Springsteen: " I am  still learning things about my music each time I step on stage."

Photo: Bruce Springsteen performs during a 13-city North American solo acoustic tour at the Fox Theatre in Detroit.

Nearly three decades after Born to Run, with a dozen Grammys and an Oscar to show for his songwriting skills, Bruce Springsteen says he's still learning things about his music each time he steps on stage. "I'm once again in search of different and exciting ways of voicing the material," he explained after finishing a sound check before a weeknight show in Buffalo. "If you've written good songs, sturdy songs, you find you've just scratched the surface."...Read the full article..

Celebrities surprise fans for Amazon's 10th

NEW YORK- Clay Aiken lurked outside a house, Emmylou Harris stopped by a university, Nick Lachey dropped in on a stranger's workplace and Moby played with dogs while making special deliveries in honour of online retailer Amazon.com's 10th anniversary. Over 10 days, 23 Amazon customers received a surprise visit from a celebrity associated with their order...Read the full article..

An Essay On Bush As An Idiot Kid Wins Faux Faulkner Award. JACKSON, Mississippi, USA- A scathing parody that likens President George W. Bush to the idiot in William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest - and touched off a literary spat. Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple's The Administration and the Fury in its print edition - only on its website.

Photo: New York author Sam Apple is shown in a photo from 2005, provided by his family. Apple deployed his own "weapons of mass description" to produce a scathing parody of the Bush administration and win this year's William Faulkner write-alike contest...Read the full article

New York police checks  bags in subway stations

Photo: A New York City police officer, left, searches Vanessa Critchell's bag, chosen at random, before she passes through the turnstile at the Lafayette Avenue subway station in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

NEW YORK- Strap-hangers seemed resigned to random bag searches Friday as police across the region stepped up transit security in response to the new round of attacks in London. "They should have done this a long time ago, ever since 9/11," said Manhattan stockbroker Ron Freeman, 25, who had his backpack searched on Friday morning at a subway station in Brooklyn. "I don't mind if they're doing it for the right cause." Random searches also are being conducted on buses, ferries and commuter railways...Read the full article

Roman Polanski wins libel suit against Vanity Fair

Photo: Roman Polanski.

LONDON- Filmmaker Roman Polanski won his libel suit Friday against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate. The Academy Award-winning director was awarded $87,000 US in damages plus court costs. The jury of nine men and three women took 4-1/2 hours to reach their unanimous verdict at London's High Court. ..Read the full article

'Al-Qaida in Iraq' claims responsibility for Algerian diplomat abductions

Photo: Iraqi women grieve as the coffins of imam Alaa Salih al-Azawi and his two brothers, Bhaa Salih and Nuhad Salih pass by during a funeral procession, Saturday, in Baghdad. The three were gunned down by unknown attackers Friday night.

BAGHDAD, Iraq. - Iraq's most feared terror group claimed responsibility Saturday for kidnapping two Algerian diplomats this week. The panel drafting Iraq's new constitution postponed debate on contentious issues until Sunni Arabs end their boycott, raising new doubts that next month's deadline can be met. The chief of Algeria's diplomatic mission, Ali Belaroussi, and fellow envoy Azzedine Belkadi were seized Thursday at gunpoint from the upscale Mansour district of western Baghdad. An Internet statement Saturday attributed to the group known as "al-Qaida in Iraq" said it was responsible, claiming the "head of the Algerian mission was taken from the most-secured of areas."...Read the full article

Britain's police chased a man in a thick coat through a subway station, wrestled him to the floor and shot him. LONDON- Plainclothes police chased a man in a thick coat through a subway station, wrestled him to the floor and shot him to death in front of stunned commuters Friday. Police said the shooting was "directly linked" to the investigations of the bomb attacks on London's transit system. Appealing for help from the public to capture the suspects, police released photographs of four men suspected of launching Thursday's second wave of terrorist attacks, saying they bore similarities to the July 7 bombings that claimed 56 lives...Read the full article

London  Metropolitan Police: "We made a fatal mistake. The man we killed in subway was not a terrorist." LONDON, UK - Police identified the man who was chased down in a subway and shot dead by officers as a Brazilian and expressed regret for his death, saying they no longer believe he was tied to the recent terror bombings. The shooting before horrified passengers, coupled with the mayor of London's acknowledgment of a police shoot-to-kill policy, threatened Saturday to raise religious tension in a city already on edge from two well-co-ordinated terrorist attacks in two weeks. Islamic associations and civil liberties groups demanded an immediate inquiry into the shooting in London's Stockwell neighbourhood....Read the full article

Brazil government is shocked. SAO PAULO, Brazil- The Brazilian government "was shocked and perplexed" to learn London police mistakenly shot dead a Brazilian citizen on a subway car, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday. "The government expects the British authorities to explain the circumstances that led to this tragedy," the statement said, without citing the citizen's name or giving any other information about the incident. London authorities said 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was killed Friday at the Stockwell subway station as police investigated the series of botched transit bombings a day earlier and the July 7 attacks that killed 56 people, including the four bombers...Read the full article

Huge explosion rocks Egyptian Red Sea tourist resort. 83 were killed and 200 wounded. CAIRO, Egypt- As many as seven explosions, including at least four car bombs, struck Egypt's Red Sea resort Sharm el-Sheik early Saturday, hitting several hotels packed with European and Egyptian tourists and killing at least 83 people in the deadliest attack in Egypt in nearly a decade, witnesses and police said. Saturday's explosions at 1:15 a.m. local time shook windows two kilometres away. Smoke and fire rose from Naama Bay, a main strip of beach hotels in the desert city at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, also popular with Israeli tourists, witnesses said.

Photo: The body of an unidentified victim is covered outside a building following an explosion in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sham el-Sheik early Saturday.

At least four car bombs were used in the attack, said a security official in the operations control room in Cairo monitoring the crisis. One went off in the driveway of the Ghazala Garden hotel, a 176-room four-star resort on the main strip of hotels in Naama Bay, the governor of South Sinai province, Mustafa Afifi, said. Another exploded in the Old Market, an area a few kilometres away, killing 17 people -- believed to be Egyptians -- sitting at a nearby outdoor coffee shop, the control room official said.Read the full article

A bomb exploded in Beirut just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the Lebanese capital

Photo: Lebanese firefighters extinguish a car damaged by an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday. A loud explosion rocked a busy street of restaurants and bars in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut, witnesses said.

A bomb exploded on a narrow street crowded with bars and restaurants late Friday, wounding two people just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the area, officials said. The blast went off in front of a restaurant on Monot Street, an area popular with young people and packed on Friday nights. Military and security forces swarmed over the area after the blast...Read the full article

ZOA REPORTS: NEW RESTRICTIONS AND REQUIREMENTS ON U.S. AID TO PALESTINIAN ARABS OVERWHELMINGLY PASS HOUSE. Washington, DC, USA - The Zionist Organization of America is pleased to announce that legislation including the most stringent reporting and compliance requirements to date on U.S. aid to the Palestinians passed the House of Representatives Wednesday evening by an overwhelming margin of 351 to 78. A crucial amendment, sponsored by Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and Congressman Joe Crowley (D-NY), applying very specific controls to Palestinian aid, also passed by a large margin, 330 to 100, and with wide bi-partisan support. The Zionist Organization of America, working closely with key lawmakers, helped initiate, promote and pass these new restrictions.  "We wanted to achieve two major objectives," said Murray Tenenbaum, Director of Government Relations for the ZOA...Read the full article

British police arrest second suspect in the London bombings

Photo: Picture released Friday by Scotland Yard of one of four men who police wish to question in connection with the four suspected suicide attacks on three Tube trains and a bus Thursday in London. This image was taken on the bus. Photo credits: Metropolitan Police)

LONDON- Police investigating this week's failed bombings said Saturday they had arrested a second man in a south London neighbourhood close to the scene of one of the attacks and where officers shot another suspect dead in a subway train. Thousands of officers were conducting a huge manhunt amid hopes the publication of images of four suspected attackers would lead to their capture. Police said the second arrest late Friday was "in connection with our inquiries" into Thursday's attacks...Read the full article

Portuguese diplomat who saved thousands in the Holocaust remembered in New York.

Photo: Mrs. Sheila Fleischhacker Abranches, Sousa Mendes’ granddaughter.

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation presented a celebration on the 120th anniversary of Aristides de Sousa Mendes birth. On occasion of the 120th anniversary of Portuguese  savoir Aristides de Sousa Mendes’ birth, The International Raoul Wallenberg  Foundation hold an event to commemorate the diplomat's heroic deeds. Mrs. Sheila Fleischhacker Abranches, Sousa Mendes’ granddaughter, represented the  Sousa Mendes family. The commemoration was hold in the Museum of Jewish  Heritage, where the Registry Book used by Sousa Mendes for the thousands  visas issued on June 17, 1940, and the pen used to enter those names, are exhibited. As Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, he issued an uncountable number of  visas between the end of 1939 and June 1940 that allowed thousands of Jews  and non-Jews...Read the full article

3,500 PEOPLE FILL NYC'S TIMES SQUARE AND BEYOND -PROTESTING GAZA WITHDRAWAL PLAN. New York - Times Square in NYC, and many blocks beyond, were filled with a sea of humanity yesterday as 3500 people stood for hours in sweltering heat to support speakers who spoke out against the unilateral Gaza/Samaria withdrawal plan.  Almost every inch of sidewalk was bursting with people for blocks and blocks protesting the rewarding of terrorists actions against Israel and protesting the forced removal of 10,000 Israeli Jewish men, women, and children from their homes, farms, schools, synagogues, and businesses in Gaza and Northern Samaria...Read the full article

SECRET TUNNELS TO SMUGGLE WEAPONS AND ARAB WOMEN UNDER THE ISRAELI-EGYPTIAN BORDER. The Sunday Times Magazine reported that  beneath the Israeli-Egyptian border is a secret world: a network of narrow tunnels, through which Palestinians smuggle weapons - and even wives - into the Gaza Strip. But these 'snake holes' also carry the risk of disaster and death. Marie Colvin enters the subterranean labyrinth Nadr Keshta was 18 ..turned to the only paying job in Rafah: digging tunnels under the Israeli-Egyptian border. I had heard rumours of tunnels for years, but never really believed them, because there is nothing but white sand that runs through your fingers. How could you have a tunnel network in this flimsy sand?...Read the full article

Saudi Women Angered by Oprah Winfrey Show: "We Were Portrayed as a Backward Society That Is Violent Towards Women"

Photo: Arab woman from the Oprah Winfrey Show: "Women Across the Globe".

The American talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey recently did a show on "Women Across the Globe," in which she hosted 11 women, each representing a different country and culture. Representing Saudi Arabia was television hostess Rania Al-Baz, who made headlines in August 2004 when she was beaten nearly to death by her husband.(1). The fact that Al-Baz was chosen as representative of Saudi women provoked criticism in the Saudi press, particularly among women columnists. These columnists claimed that the show had shown bias by portraying Saudi society as oppressing women...Read the full article

Germany Charged White Supremacist Ernst Zundel With Inciting Racial Hatred Against Jews. BERLIN, Germany- German prosecutors said Tuesday they have charged white supremacist Ernst Zundel with inciting racial hatred, four months after he was deported from Canada. German authorities accuse Zundel of decades of anti-Semitic activities, including repeated denials of the Holocaust - a crime in Germany - in documents and on the Internet. Zundel is "known internationally as a leader of the right-wing scene," prosecutors in the southwestern city of Mannheim said Tuesday in a statement listing 14 examples of alleged incitement. It was unclear when he might face a trial, which Jewish leaders hope will spread awareness of the Holocaust...Read the full article