A ship detained by Cyprus on January 29 was carrying banned weapons material from Iran prohibited under United Nations resolutions, a senior diplomatic source confirmed yesterday.

The source told the Sunday Mail that was the advice the government received from a United Nations panel monitoring compliance of sanctions. Nicosia had sought guidance from the body earlier in the week after submitting a list of findings from the vessel, detained by Cyprus.

"There is no doubt that the material on board falls under the relevant UN Security Council resolutions," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

The Cyprus-flagged Monchegorsk had been sailing from Iran to Syria when it was called in by Cypriot authorities for checks.

Time to look into ourselves with calm objectivity.

Most modern countries have some people who exhibit chronic immoral and antisocial behavior, but the way these nations treat them are quite different. It is quite disturbing in this regard to see how the various sectors of our society are dealing with the latest case of a psychopathic serial killer.

Kang Ho-soon, the 38-year-old suspect who admitted to kidnapping and killing seven women in areas about 20 miles southwest of Seoul between 2006 and 2008, is now one of the most searched names (or words) on the Internet. High public interests in this handsome-but-hideous confessed murderer are somewhat understandable, but discussions about this heinous criminal are emotional at best and sadly shallow at worst.

The police deserve some praise for their extensive, tenacious chase of the suspect, but the time has long passed for them to cease blowing their own trumpets, and to begin to think of what could have stopped Kang after his first couple of victims, such as a far more astute response to early reports of missing women.

"No one could recall ever seeing or hearing about Gram being involved in a protest of any sort." Author Ben Fong Torres, who interviewed scores of people close to Gram Parsons while researching Hickory Wind

Timing is a curious thing. When I first started this series in May of 2008, the fact that Jim Morrison's father had served as the commander of the ships involved in the Gulf of Tonkin 'incident' had gone virtually unreported for some four-and-a-half decades. Readers were shocked - shocked, I tell you! - when I began this series by trotting out that revelation. Some even accused me of making it up, or of somehow twisting the facts.

But as fate would have it, as December of 2008 rolled around, the mainstream media was suddenly awash with reports of the unusual Morrison family connection. On December 8, for example, the Los Angeles Times carried a report on Admiral George Stephen Morrison, described therein as "a retired Navy rear admiral and the father of the late rock icon Jim Morrison." According to the Times report, "Morrison had a long career that included serving as operations officer aboard the aircraft carrier Midway and commanding the fleet during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to an escalation of American involvement in Vietnam." (emphasis added)

The very next day, on December 9, the New York Times followed suit with a report by William Grimes: "George S. Morrison, who commanded the fleet during the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to an escalation of the Vietnam War and whose son Jim was the lead singer of the Doors ... Aboard the flagship carrier Bon Homme Richard, Mr. Morrison commanded American naval forces in the gulf when the destroyer Maddox engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats on Aug. 2, 1964. A skirmish and confused reports of a second engagement two days later led President Lyndon B. Johnson to order airstrikes against North Vietnam and to request from Congress what became known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing him to carry out further military operations without declaring war." (emphasis again added)

"I'd have to say that, personally speaking, Crosby was worse for the good feelings of [the local] rock'n'roll [scene] than Manson was." Terry Melcher

"I had been to Terry Melcher's house on Cielo Drive many times." David Crosby

I'm not going to sugarcoat this at all: you people really suck when it comes to picking me out of a photo lineup. And I'm not talking about sucking just a little bit here, folks - no, I'm talking about totally sucking ass. And it wasn't even a particularly difficult task, to be perfectly honest. After all, I provided you with twenty-one composite sketches of what I looked like circa 1966, and yet only one of you - just one! - could correctly identify me. So to give the rest of you a sporting chance, I'm going to narrow it down for you: I'm one of the three wise men - which is to say, the three hairless kids - in the top row.

Anyway, I believe we were discussing the Byrds when class was last convened, so let's now meet a formidable behind-the-scenes player and the band's first producer, Terry Melcher. It is fairly well known that Melcher was the son of 'virginal' actress Doris Day, who was just sixteen when impregnated and seventeen when Terry was born. Melcher's father was trombonist Al Jorden, who reportedly regularly beat Day, and likely Terry as well. Jorden wasn't around for long though; his death, when Melcher was just two or three years old, was naturally ruled a suicide.

After an equally short-lived second marriage, Doris Day married her agent and producer, Marty Melcher, who was universally regarded as one of the biggest assholes in Hollywood - and that's not an easy title to attain, given the fierce competition. Like Jorden, Melcher was well known to be a tyrannically violent and abusive man. He also reportedly embezzled some $20 million from his wife/client. On the bright side though, he did adopt and help raise Terry, who took his name.

Terry Melcher was arguably one of the most important figures lurking about the periphery of the Laurel Canyon saga, by virtue of the fact that he had deep ties to virtually all aspects of the canyon scene, including the Laurel Canyon musicians, the Manson Family, the Vito Paulekas dance troupe, and the group of young Hollywood actors generally referred to as 'The Young Turks.'

January 2009 will go down in human history as the month when the leaders of the state of Israel showed their true colors. If anyone doubted that Israeli politicians deserved a place next to the likes of Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot, their storm troopers put those doubts to rest by displaying a brutality and callousness to shock even the most apathetic. To add insult to injury, the Zionist PR machine went into top gear, using all the tricks in the big book of government propaganda. Lies through mass media and lies through their paid 'Hasbara' trolls on the Internet.

But for once a considerable number of the world population - including some in Israel itself - actually saw the genocide for what it was and demonstrated against it. This brought shame on Western governments and on the US in particular as it highlighted Obama's timidity and ultimate compliance, and the Bush administration's grotesque submission to the Zionist agenda.

Cyprus has sent a written request to the Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council, for advice on handling the cargo of the Russian-owned ship docked off the Limassol coastline since last week. The vessel is suspected to be carrying arms and munitions from Iran.

Due to the committee's requirement for unanimous voting - and Russia's veto power - it is feared that the issue will lead to deadlock, passing the ball back to the Cypriot court for a decision.

"We are carefully handling the situation, based on international conventions and agreements - and not based on what a third country possibly wants," said Stefanos Stefanou, state spokesman, referring to the reported pressure on Cyprus by the US and Israel to confiscate Monchegorsk's cargo.

State broadcaster CyBC yesterday said that Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was in constant contact with his US counterparts over the affair, adding that Israel now believed the arms were heading for Syria.

Mysterious serial killings of beggars on Guwahati streets have left the city police in a tizzy. Four beggars have been killed since the first week of January.

Police are now exploring all angles - whether the killer is a psychopath or if the killings were carried out at the behest of a larger network whose motive is to create terror among beggars and force them to form an association to exploit them for profit.

Israel, which originally denied the use of white phosphorus in Gaza when questioned by The Times two weeks ago, has since said that all weapons used in Gaza were "within the scope of international law". Most Nato countries, including Britain and the US, use white phosphorus to create smokescreens. Its use as a weapon of war in civilian areas is banned under the Geneva Convention of 1980.

The Times has uncovered dozens of incidents in which doctors say that civilians have been wounded by white phosphorus, which burns at extremely high temperatures until its oxygen is cut off. Last week UN officials in Gaza were certain that their compound had been hit by white phosphorus shells.

More than 140 reporters and cameramen are expected to squeeze into a court house in the city of Perugia this morning for the opening of what has been billed as Italy's trial of the year. And all eyes will be on Amanda Knox, the 21-year-old American student whose sexual appetites are at the centre of the case.

In the dock with her will be her 24-year-old ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. They have spent more than a year in Perugia's jail waiting to be tried for their alleged role in the murder of the Surrey student Meredith Kercher, 21, sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in her Perugia bedsit in November 2007.

Organized by the Revolution Books in Manhattan, an unprecedented Emergency Town Hall Meeting took place last night at the New York City Society for Ethical Culture on 2 West 64th Street. The focus of the evening was the intolerable humanitarian catastrophe that is being inflicted on the Palestinian People by the Israeli military in Gaza.

SOTT.net editors attended the event, this is their report: