Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has strongly condemned a move by the Italian judiciary to detain two Iranian nationals.

"Italy's latest movement to detain the two Iranians, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) journalist is immature and politically-motivated," Mottaki told reporters at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport after his return from Afghanistan on Wednesday evening.

Pressure from European Jewish lobbyists has forced the members of the European Parliament to change their plan to pass a resolution demanding implementation of the Goldstone report on Gaza war.

The decision to backtrack on the agreement regarding the wording of a draft was taken on Tuesday after the president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, warned that implementing it would gravely damage EU-Israel relations, Ha'aretz reported.

British intelligence says the five Pakistani men linked to a terror plot in Britain had been arrested days before they could carry out the strike.

A British intelligence officer told an immigration panel on Tuesday that the group had been planning to stage a terror attack in April last year, but its members were seized in raids in northwest England.

The German Ambassador to Tehran has been summoned by an Iranian parliamentary committee over Berlin's decision to release the leader of a Kurdish terrorist group 'Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK).

"As a country which has broad relations with Iran, Tehran expects Germany to end its support for the PJAK terrorist group," Mehr News Agency quoted the Chairman of the Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi as saying.

A Swedish newspaper has republished a sacrilegious cartoon of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by a Swedish caricaturist.

The Dagens Nyheter newspaper said it was publishing the cartoon in a sign of solidarity with the sacrilegious caricaturist Lars Vilks.

Former head of Britain's MI5 has said the United States deliberately kept UK in the dark about their mistreatment of terror suspects.

Addressing the House of Lords on Tuesday, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said she only discovered that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was tortured after retiring in 2007.

Turkish security forces have shot and wounded a man after he opened fire, trying to enter the Ukrainian Consulate in Istanbul's Bakirkoy Senlikoy neighborhood.

The incident took place at around 9 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on Tuesday when a Turkish man, identified as Volkan Ozbudak, attempted to enter the consulate.

France has ordered 14 Soyuz carrier rockets from Russia costing some $1 billion.

Speaking at the Russian-French business forum in Paris on Tuesday, French satellite launch firm Arianespace's CEO, Jean-Yves Le Gall, confirmed rumors of that France would be purchasing Soyuz booster rockets from Russia.

The European Commission is increasingly supporting the idea of creating a European version of the International Monetary Fund to boost eurozone's financial stability.

The proposed rescue fund, advanced mainly by Germany and France, would mark a new phase in economic cooperation within the 16-nation euro zone.

Violence has briefly broken out at the headquarters of France's largest company, Total, as several hundred of workers clash with police.

Security forces used tear gas to disperse the crowds, after some 300 of the demonstrators managed to break through a line of riot police and into the company's offices.