BBC report.

A Japanese oil tanker has been damaged by an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman, causing a minor injury to one crew member.

Japanese officials say the blast might have been caused by an attack, although piracy in the area is rare.

Patrick Cockburn in the Independent.

Pictures of prisoners being tormented in Abu Ghraib led to a tidal wave of revulsion against the US occupation of Iraq. The release of the vast archive of US military documents on Afghanistan is not likely to have the same explosive impact, but the sheer nastiness of the conflict is vividly conjured by the cumulative effect of thousands of uncensored reports from the frontline. The "Afghan Files" explain why the Kabul government is getting weaker, despite the fact that the US now has over 90,000 troops fighting 28,000 Taliban at a cost of $300bn (£190bn) over the last nine years.

Daily Mail report.

A former Russian spy's dossier which suggests that Government scientist David Kelly was 'exterminated' in a planned assassination is being studied by the Attorney General.

Boris Karpichkov, who fled to Britain after 15 years as a KGB agent, claims a London intelligence contractor linked to MI5 told him Dr Kelly's death was not suicide.

Independent report.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

From wsws.org.

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005--2009," the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.

From TheyWorkForYou.

Approximately 1.9 metric tonnes of DU ammunition was expended in the 2003 Iraq War by UK forces. The MOD provided the coordinates of targets attacked using DU ammunition in 2003 to the United Nations (UN) Environmental Programme. The MOD also shared with the UN and the Government of Iraq the results of a scientific assessment carried out in June 2003 that indicated very low levels of DU even in the vicinity of vehicles struck by DU munitions.

PA report.

Ministers could still use their powers to turn the July 7 London bombings inquests into a public inquiry to prevent secret MI5 evidence being released, a hearing has been told.

The Government said it would not launch a legal challenge to the coroner's ruling that she should investigate alleged police and security service failings.

But Home Secretary Theresa May reserves the right to launch a public inquiry and halt the inquests, potentially adding extra cost and delay to the process, the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London was told.

David Hughes' Telegraph blog.

In his statement to the Commons on September 24, 2002, Tony Blair was unequivocal about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. He told MPs that the Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded:

…that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population, and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

Chilling stuff. How does it measure up against today's testimony from Baroness Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot inquiry? The former MI5 chief has revealed that she advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited" and that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was "fragmentary". And she added: "If you are going to go to war, you need to have a pretty high threshold to decide on that."

Guardian report.

David Cameron told the Commons that the government will next year "publish a green paper which will set out our initial proposals for how intelligence is treated in the full range of judicial proceedings, including addressing the concerns of our allies". The government is seeking legislation that would in future prevent judges releasing information passed to MI5 by the CIA, as they did in the Binyam Mohamed case.

Independent report.

In a letter copied to the Prime Minister, Reprieve has requested that Sir Peter Gibson step aside as his impartiality is fatally compromised.

As the Intelligence Services Commissioner (ISC), it has been Sir Peter's job for more than four years to oversee the Security Services; he cannot now be the judge whether his own work was effective.

Guardian report.

The Guardian has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.

"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing."

The Leveretts comment. They refer to this article quoting Philip Giraldi.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of the strange case of Shahram Amiri is the behavior and public statements of U.S. officials since Amiri returned to Iran. These officials are talking to the media about Amiri in a way that makes one think they are out to goad the Iranian government into prosecuting Amiri for espionage. Why would they do that? Are they simply immature and unprofessional? Or, could it be that Amiri told them something they did not want to hear?

From the Sabbah Report.

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people -- Palestinians in Gaza -- who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.

The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.

[...]

The Israeli army, which plans to introduce the technology along Israel's other confrontation lines, refuses to say how many Palestinians have been killed by the remotely controlled machine-guns in Gaza. According to the Israeli media, however, it is believed to be several dozen.

Richard Ingrams comments in the Independent.

While the media pursue these red herrings, the most likely reason for Megrahi's release will go unmentioned. It is generally forgotten that, at the time of his release, he was engaged in a lengthy appeal hearing against his original conviction. Evidence showing the flimsiness of the case against him would have been produced; well-founded allegations of the bribery of witnesses and the possible planting of evidence on the crash site by the CIA would have been aired. It could all have ended with the exposure of one of the most scandalous miscarriages of justice ever acknowledged in a British court. No wonder that in the circumstances the Justice Minister, Jack Straw, was so keen to see the back of Megrahi and the discontinuation of his appeal hearing.

Telegraph report.

But his decision to fly back voluntarily, claiming outlandishly that he was kidnapped by CIA and Saudi agents during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last June and then tortured in the US, has prompted suspicions that he was a double agent working for Iran all along, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

New York Times report.

Iran's deputy police chief accused Pakistan on Saturday of providing a haven for members of an armed rebel group that has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin suicide bombings last week in front of a mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan.