Do not be a head for heads are easily hurt.

US 'needs fresh Afghan strategy'

A top US general in Afghanistan has called for a revised military strategy, suggesting the current one is failing.
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BBC NEWS: In a strategic assessment, Gen Stanley McChrystal said that, while the Afghan situation was serious, success was still achievable.
The report has not yet been published, but sources say Gen McChrystal sees protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban as the top priority.
The report does not carry a direct call for increasing troop numbers.
"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," Gen McChrystal said in the assessment.
Copies of the document have been sent to Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
The report came as further results from last week's presidential election were released, with ballots now counted from almost 48% of polling stations.
President Hamid Karzai is leading so far, with 45.8% of the votes counted.
The independent Electoral Complaints Commission says that of more than 2,100 allegations of wrongdoing during voting and vote-counting, 618 have been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven.
Crisis of confidence
Gen McChrystal's blunt assessment will say that the Afghan people are undergoing a crisis of confidence because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better, says BBC North America editor Mark Mardell.
The general says the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead - but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police.
And he will warn that villages have to be taken from the Taliban and held, not merely taken.
Gen McChrystal also wants more engagement with the Taliban fighters and he believes that 60% of the problem would go away if they could be found jobs.
More than 30,000 extra US troops have been sent to Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered reinforcements in May - almost doubling his country's contingent and increasing the Western total to about 100,000.
This report does not mention increasing troop numbers - that is for another report later in the year - but the hints are all there, our correspondent says.
But when Gen McChrystal's report lands on Mr Obama's desk he will have to ponder the implications of increasing a commitment to a conflict which opinion polls suggest is losing support among the American people.
The latest Washington Post-ABC news poll suggests that only 49% of Americans now think the fight in Afghanistan is worth it.
In a recent BBC interview, Gen McChrystal said that he was changing the whole approach to the conflict in Afghanistan - from what he described as a focus on "body count", to enabling the Afghans to get rid of the Taliban themselves.
Nato partners
On Saturday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised more support for UK troops in Afghanistan, during a surprise visit to the country.
During the visit he met Gen McChrystal. Correspondents say the pair discussed the need to speed up the pace of training of Afghan troops.
The British Ministry of Defence said it would look closely at any recommendations from Gen McChrystal.
"The UK conducted a review of policy earlier this year and the prime minister set out a new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan on 29 April.
"General McChrystal's work will be an important input to further planning, and we will work closely with him and our Nato partners moving forward," an MoD spokesman added.

Australia probes NKorea arms ship seized in UAE

MELBOURNE (AFP)- An Australian shipping firm at the center of an investigation into North Korean arms smuggling remained tight-lipped Monday as foreign affairs officials probed allegations it shipped arms to Iran.
United Arab Emirates customs officials are believed to have seized containers from the ship ANL Australia as it travelled from North Korea to Iran earlier this month.
The Australian government confirmed over the weekend that weapons including rocket-propelled grenades were found in the containers, in apparent violation of U.N.-imposed sanctions on Pyongyang.
A foreign affairs spokeswoman said officials were investigating if there had been a breach of Australian laws relating to the U.N. sanctions, which were strengthened in June after North Korea stunned the world with a nuclear test.
She said Australian laws backing the U.N. sanctions applied to the country's citizens and corporations anywhere in the world.
"In the event these inquiries reveal information which could reasonably be suspected to relate to an offence under Australian law, the department will refer the case to the Australian federal police," she said.
The ship is owned by ANL, a Melbourne-based subsidiary of the world's third-largest container company, CMA CGM, which has its global headquarters in the French port of Marseille.
ANL business development manager Chris Schultz said the company was not making any public statements about the allegations.
"We're just choosing not to make any comment," Schultz said from his Melbourne office.
The vessel's seizure marks the first time a nation has acted on U.N. sanctions to stop the communist state's arms proliferation.
The incident is seen as an indication that North Korea remains set on exporting its military technology, long a top money-maker for one of the world's poorest and most isolated nations.
A new round of U.N. sanctions was approved unanimously on June 12, under Resolution 1874, in response to North Korea's earlier nuclear weapons test and missile launches.
The resolution included financial sanctions designed to choke off revenue to the regime, called for beefed-up inspections of air, sea and land shipments going to and from North Korea and an expanded arms embargo.

'Eye mouse' to help disabled people get online

BUENOS AIRES: High school students of the ORT technical school in Argentina have presented a new technology that could help severally disabled people get online at a very low cost.
The software and webcam system was developed by the two 18-year-olds so that one of their friend's who suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) could use the computer.
Eye movements are translated by the Eye Mouse with a standard webcam into on-screen actions.
It means that people who suffer from SMA like Nicolas Rossi can control the computer with their eyes.

25 Nato-supply vehicles destroyed in Chaman

CHAMAN: The fire, which broke out after blast and firing at the containers and Nato oil tankers in Chaman area of Pak-Afghan border, could not be put out as yet, Geo News reported in the wee hours of Monday.
Also, the contingents of army have been called in to control the situation.
According to sources, some unidentified miscreants attacked with rockets at the Nato-supply cavalcade stationed at Pak-Afghan border a little after Iftar time and fired gunshots, which caused to set vehicles on blaze.
According to sources, over 25 containers, oil tankers, trailers and the vehicles mounted on trailers were all destroyed with three people injured in the incident.
Soon after the incident, Frontier Corps and Police put a security cordon around the area.
It should be mentioned here over thousand Nato supply vehicles and other trucks carrying commercial goods are standing stuck owing to the difference of mode of checking between the forces of Pak and Afghan forces.
Also, some unidentified miscreants tried to annihilate the containers for Nato supply on Sunday evening a little before Iftar; however, the bomb was neutralized with on time action.

Al-Qaeda claims responsibility of attack on Prince Nayef

DUBAI: Al-Qaeda has named the main it says was responsible for a suicide bombing targeting Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister.
In a statement posted on the Internet on Sunday, the group said Abdullah al-Asiri crossed into Saudi Arabia from Yemen to carry out Thursday's attack.
Mohammed bin Nayef, who is in charge of the kingdom's crackdown on suspected members of the organisation, survived the suicide blast in Jeddah.
"The hero martyr on the list of 85 wanted persons Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, known as Abul-Khair, managed to enter his palace, pass his guards and blow up a package," a statement attributed to the Qaeda Jihad Organisation in the Arab Peninsula said.
"He managed to get through all the inspections at Najran and Jeddah airports and travelled on his [the prince's] private jet," it said.

Picture of the Day

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a O.B.N

Winter Night at Pic du Midi

Hamas slams UN over Holocaust classes in Gaza

Netanyahu slams Israeli school ban on "Black Jews"
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GAZA: Hamas condemned the United Nations on Sunday for what it said was a plan to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust in its history books as Israel's prime minister slammed three Jewish religious schools for refusing to admit Ethiopian Jews.
In an open letter to a senior U.N. official, the Islamist movement called on the agency to withdraw plans for history books in U.N. schools as it was an obvious bone of contention to teach Palestinian children about an event that lead to the creation of the state of Israel.
A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which educates some 200,000 refugee children in Gaza, said the Holocaust was not on its current curriculum but would not comment on Hamas's statement that it was about to change.
Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust.
"We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists," Hamas' Popular Committees for Refugees said in its letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging.
UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said: "There is no mention of the Holocaust in the current syllabus." Asked if UNRWA planned to change that, he declined to comment.
Hamas's official spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said he did not want to discuss the history of the Holocaust but said:
"Regardless of the controversy, we oppose forcing the issue of the so-called Holocaust onto the syllabus, because it aims to reinforce acceptance of the occupation of Palestinian land."
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, run by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, teachers said there was no official guidance on teaching about the Holocaust.
Arabs resent the way world powers reacted to the Holocaust by supporting the establishment of Israel in 1948, a move that took land from the Palestinians and left more than half of them refugees.
Israeli schools
Meanwhile Israeli schools also made headlines on Sunday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed three Jewish religious schools for what he termed their immoral refusal to admit 100 Ethiopian Jewish students.
Spokesmen for Israel's 100,000-strong Ethiopian community described the schools' decision as discriminatory. Black Jews have long complained of prejudice in Israel.
The private ultra-Orthodox institutions, which also receive money from the government, denied the ban was racially motivated, saying the children required special funding and classes to raise their academic standards.
But Netanyahu called the ban "intolerable."
"Rejecting Ethiopian students is simply an attack on our morals, contradicting our ethos as a country, as a society, as Jews and as Israelis," Netanyahu said in an interview conducted jointly by Israel Radio and Army Radio.
"A school that continues along this line will suffer the consequences," he said. "I have told (the education minister) to act as forcefully as possible."
President Shimon Peres said last week the schools' policy was a "disgrace" no Israeli could accept. Most Ethiopian Jewish children attend state schools, many of them religious institutions.
Israel's chief rabbis determined formally in 1973 that Ethiopian Jews were descendants of the Jewish biblical tribe of Dan and were entitled to immigrate to Israel. Tens of thousands arrived in airlifts in the 1980s and 1990s