Tehran - Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced they are to fire ballistic and other missiles at desert targets during three days of war games starting Monday in a warning to threats of military action by Israel and the United States.

"Long-, medium- and short-range surface-to-surface missiles will be fired from different locations in Iran... at replica airbases like those used by out-of-region military forces," the head of the Guards aerospace division in charge of missile systems, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said.

"These maneuvers send a message to the adventurous nations that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is standing up to bullies alongside the determined and unified Iranian nation, and will decisively respond to any trouble they cause," he was quoted as saying by the Guards' official Sepah news website.

Although Iran frequently holds war games, these exercises appeared to underline Tehran's threat to strike U.S. military bases in neighboring countries -- in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- if it comes under attack by Israel or the United States.

According to the Sunday Times, a Norwegian who was trained in Yemen plans to crash the plane on a suicide mission; British authorities say there is a shortage of personnel to carry out proper security screenings.

The al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula is believed to be planning a terror attack during the Olympic Games in London, scheduled to begin at the end of the month. According to a report in today's Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, the organization has recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert who was supposed to hijack a U.S. passenger plane and crash it on a suicide mission. It is not clear though that the attack targeted one of the Olympic venues, despite the timing.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been involved in a number of attempts to carry out high-profile attacks on Western targets.

Turkey has scrambled six F-16 fighter jets near its border with Syria after Syrian helicopters came close to the border, the country's army says.

Six jets were sent to the area in response to three such incidents on Saturday, the statement said, adding that there was no violation of Turkish airspace.

Last month, Syrian forces shot down a Turkish jet in the border area.

The incident further strained already tense relations between former allies.

Turkey's government has been outspoken in its condemnation of Syria's response to the 16-month anti-government uprising, which has seen more than 30,000 Syrian refugees enter Turkey.

A no-fly zone has been imposed over Wimbledon for the first time in nearly ten years, police revealed today, as part of one of the biggest security operations in the Championship's 126 year history.

With the Olympics only three weeks away security bosses said they would be watching for any threats that might have "a knock on effect" on the policing of the Games, which is expected to be the biggest peace time security operation in British history.

The number of officers on the ground at the All England Club has been noticeably increased at this year's Championships and the Civil Aviation Authority has imposed a ban on low-flying aircraft within a mile perimeter of the Championship grounds, on police advice.

Yitzhak Shamir, who has died aged 96, was a former terrorist who, a little to his own surprise, found himself Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.

He only entered the Knesset in 1973, when he was nearly 60, as a member of Menachem Begin's Herut party (which was later to merge with other right wing groups to form Likud). In 1977 he was elected Speaker and three years later he became Foreign Minister.

It was a curious appointment, not only because had he never held any ministerial office before, but also because he differed profoundly from Begin on perhaps the key element in his foreign policy, the 1978 Camp David Accords which led to peace, the following year, between Israel and Egypt.

Moreover, Shamir was a virtually unknown quantity, for his past was shrouded in mystery, but that, if anything, helped, for it gave him something he otherwise lacked, a certain amount of glamour.

The Foreign Ministry seemed to make him heir apparent to Begin, although they were almost exact contemporaries and Begin had no immediate or even distant plans to retire. But then, in August 1983, about a year after the invasion of Lebanon, Begin suffered a nervous collapse and resigned. David Levy, who was Deputy Prime Minister, made a bid to succeed him, but was easily beaten by Shamir. He had got to the top in a mere 10 years without any apparent effort to get there, and his whole career suggests that advancement is dependent less on ability than on being in the right place at the right time.

Former president Jimmy Carter has blasted the United States for anti-terror strategies such as targeting individuals for assassination and using unmanned drones to bomb suspected targets, saying they directly flout the basic tenets of universal human rights and foment anti-US sentiment.

In an article written for the New York Times headlined "A Cruel and Unusual Record", Mr Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work trying to resolve conflicts around the globe, suggested that the US is in violation of 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a rare attack by a former commander-in-chief on a sitting President - especially of the same party.

With the Cruise marriage split, the 60th anniversary of L Ron Hubbard's cult movement is going from bad to worse

Suddenly, being called a "cult" seems the least of Scientology's worries. The movement is already facing a summer of high-profile court cases, bitter defections, blockbuster exposés and members bringing the so-called religion into disrepute. Now its 60th-anniversary year has brought the divorce of its two most high-profile proponents.

Worse, there were reports yesterday that Katie Holmes's decision to walk out on Tom Cruise was linked to her actor husband's involvement with Scientology. According to the celebrity website TMZ, she was concerned Cruise would drag their six-year-old daughter, Suri, deep into the movement. The reports throw the spotlight once again on the belief system that promises members "spiritual rehabilitation" through counselling sessions described as "auditing".

Holmes, who was brought up a Catholic and enrolled Suri in a Catholic pre-school in 2009, is reportedly filing for sole legal custody, specifically to avoid Cruise having control over religious decisions.

At a conference in Dublin yesterday former members were due to add to the chorus of condemnation. The conference organiser, Pete Griffiths, who turned his back on Scientology, said: "They're looking for people who've got a lot of money [and] a lot of time."

With Thursday's decision to grant exceptions to China, which buys up to a fifth of Iran's oil exports, and Singapore, which buys Iranian fuel oil, the Obama administration has now spared all 20 of Iran's major oil buyers from its unilateral sanctions.

The sanctions themselves are designed to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program, which the West believes aims to develop nuclear weapons but which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity and medical isotopes.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said both China and Singapore earned the reprieve by cutting imports of Iranian crude and argued the reductions by all 20 countries showed that Iran was paying a high price for its nuclear program.

The interest rate rigging scandal that has engulfed Barclays was the result of a coordinated attempt at collusion by traders working for a coterie of leading banks over at least five years, according to a series of lawsuits and legal rulings filed in courts in Asia and North America.

The lawsuits allege the fraud was extensive, spanning at least three continents and involving trades worth tens of billions of pounds. The allegations raise further serious questions about the banks' ability to police themselves and the role of senior management in monitoring the activities of their employees.

In a 28-page statement of facts relating to last week's revelation that Barclays had been fined a total of £290m, the US Department of Justice discloses how a network of traders working on both sides of the Atlantic conspired to influence both the Libor and Euribor interest rates - the rates at which banks lend to each other. It was, in effect, a worldwide conspiracy against the free functioning of the market.

The size of the fines was significant and the opprobrium heaped on Barclays unremitting. "This is the most damaging scam I can recall," said Andrew Tyrie, chair of parliament's Treasury select committee. "It appears that many banks were involved and Barclays were the first to own up."

Indeed, as politicians bay for his blood this weekend, the one source of comfort for Bob Diamond, the embattled Barclays chief executive, is that his bank appears to have been merely one of several involved in the scandal.

For their own sake, many of his fellow senior bankers will be hoping this weekend that he does not go the way of Northern Rock's Adam Applegarth and RBS's Fred Goodwin - ousted by a tidal wave of public fury.

It shows how much party conference speeches matter to leaders that Ed Miliband and his advisers are already worrying about what he will say in the autumn - an event that lies three months in the future. His inner circle have been debating whether he should try out some new ideas or instead build on the theme that he launched from last year's conference platform when he talked about "producers versus predators". Thanks to the bankers, I suggest Mr Miliband need not agonise any further. The latest, multiple scandals to erupt from the moral cesspit of the City should help the Labour leader to the conclusion that there is plenty of mileage left in making the case for radical reform of how we do capitalism.

He may, mind, have to find a stronger word for the City than predatory. We already knew from the financial crisis that the banksters were greedy, reckless and incompetent. We already knew from their reluctance to account for themselves or change their behaviour that they were shameless. The latest mis-selling scandals confirm something else we already knew: that they fleece their customers. What has changed over the past few days is that we now have proof that they are also corrupt and fraudulent. The rigging of Libor, the key interest rate which is used to value contracts worth trillions and affects everything from home loans to credit card charges, has shocked those who thought they were beyond being shocked. Sir Mervyn King has long held a scathing view of modern banking culture, but even the governor of the Bank of England seemed staggered that they had fallen so low. Barclays and the other institutions involved in this particular fraud were not just practising casino capitalism. They were rigging the wheel, loading the dice and marking the cards. The "few bad apples" defence will not wash. Some 20 further banks, including several other big household names, are also under investigation for perpetrating this scam. This could only happen in a City in which cheating and deception have become institutionalised.