Two vessels being towed to Israeli port; activists to be questioned, released

Jerusalem - Israel's navy boarded two protest boats trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip on Friday and towed them to an Israeli port just north of the Palestinian territory, officials said.

The military said forces boarded the boats after repeated calls for them to turn around were ignored. The boarding was done peacefully and nobody was hurt, the military said.

It was the latest attempt by pro-Palestinian activists heading for Gaza by boat to draw attention to a 5-year-old blockade of the impoverished coastal strip that critics say amounts to collective punishment of its residents. Israel says its naval blockade is vital in preventing weapons from reaching violent groups like Hamas, the Iranian-backed militant group that rules the Gaza Strip.

Once the vessels reach the port of Ashdod, the activists will be questioned by police and immigration officials and then sent back to their home countries as soon as possible, said Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Ames, Iowa - Casting the Wall Street protestors as misguided, Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann on Thursday said their frustrations should instead be directed at Washington politicians who protect their allies and put unfriendly companies out of business.

Bachmann said politicians have far too much power and unfairly pick winners and losers. The Minnesota congresswoman, trying to recapture her once surging poll numbers, said she has watched lawmakers enact laws that intentionally shut businesses down.

"For your sake and for your future, America - and Occupy Wall Street in particular - needs to wake up and stop blaming the free market, stop blaming capitalism, stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians," Bachmann told students at Iowa State University. "The problem is politicians who wink at their political donors and through the force of law put their competitors out of business."

Bachmann used her appearance in Ames to outline an economic proposal that would require all Americans to pay taxes. The Tax Policy Center estimates that some 46 percent of households this year will not pay federal income taxes.

"They need to be invested in the country," she said. "Even if they can only afford $10, they need to pay something."

Her position was a direct challenge to rivals Rick Perry and Herman Cain, who are advocating separate flat tax plans. Cain is also promoting for a national sales tax as part of his 9-9-9 plan.

Bachmann said she would not propose an absolute flat tax, but told reporters after that she would have at most three tax brackets, which she declined define.

Polls show Bachmann trailing behind other contenders in Iowa, which holds the first presidential caucuses in January. She won an early test vote in Ames in August. But her standing slipped as the GOP electorate rallied first around Perry, who had several weak debate performances, and then Cain, who has spent the last four days trying to redirect media attention away from allegations of sexual harassment filed by at least two women during his tenure at the National Restaurant Association.

With jobs and the economy as the top issues on voters' minds, Bachmann hopes her tough talk will help her regain her footing in a state that her advisers see as a linchpin in their strategy.

The UK and U.S. are drawing up plans to attack Iran amid growing tensions in the Middle East, it was claimed last night.

Barack Obama and David Cameron are preparing for war after reports that Iran now has enough enriched uranium for four nuclear weapons.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hardline regime in Tehran has been linked to three assassination plots on foreign soil, according to senior officials in Whitehall.

Iran has come sharply back into focus following the end of the Libya conflict.

President Obama said Iran's nuclear programme continues to pose a threat and that he and French president Nicolas Sarkozy want the international community to maintain pressure on the country to admit its intentions.
And the unrest has been inflamed by sabre-rattling from top politicians in Israel.

Defence oIsrael has successfully test-fired a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and striking Iran, fanning a public debate over whether the country's leaders are agitating for a military attack on Tehran's atomic facilities.

While Israeli leaders have long warned that a military strike was an option, the most intensive round of public discourse on the subject was ignited over the weekend by a report in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that said the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Ehud Barak, favoured an attack.

That was followed by a report in the Haaretz on Wednesday that Netanyahu is lobbying cabinet members for an attack, despite the complexity of the operation and the likelihood it would draw a deadly retaliation from Iran. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu did not yet have a majority.fficial says military tested rocket propulsion system as reports suggest country's leaders in favour of attacking Tehran

Kuwaiti paper says Binyamin Netanyahu believes the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet may have leaked plans for attack

Israel's prime minister has ordered an investigation into alleged leaks of plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, it has been reported.

According to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, the main suspects are the former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, respectively Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies.

Netanyahu is said to believe that the two, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, wanted to torpedo plans being drawn up by him and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to hit Iranian nuclear sites. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, is also said to have been persuaded to attack Netanyahu for "adventurism" and "gambling with Israel's national interest".

The paper suggested that the purpose of the leaks was to prevent an attack, which had moved from the stage of discussion to implementation. "Those who oppose the plan within the security establishment decided to leak it to the media and thwart the plan," it said.

Both Dagan and Diskin oppose military action against Iran unless all other options - primarily international diplomatic pressure and perhaps sabotage - have been exhausted. In January the recently retired Dagan, a hawk when he was running the Mossad, called an attack on Iran "the stupidest idea I've ever heard".

Fear that Egypt's ruling generals are working to perpetuate their hold on power is causing a political furor, threatening a "second revolution" and sending relations between the generals and activists to new lows less than four weeks before a key election.

The outcry has been prompted by a proposal from the military-appointed Cabinet to shield the armed forces from any oversight and give the generals a veto over legislation dealing with military affairs. The measure also is designed to curtail the likely influence by Islamist lawmakers over the writing of a new constitution.

The proposal, which requires the adoption of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to be binding, has united both Islamists and liberals - groups that helped engineer the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak - in its condemnation.

Egypt's best known reform proponent, Mohamed ElBaradei, decried the document as "distorted" and demanded its withdrawal.

"There is a difference between a civilian democratic state that guarantees man's basic rights and military guardianship," he said.

The Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest and most powerful political group, is leading the opposition to the document, saying it usurped the "people's will."

Pressure rose on Italy's besieged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to quit on Thursday, as rebel deputies from his own center-right party threatened to oppose the government in a vital parliamentary vote next week.

With financial markets in turmoil and Italian bonds under heavy fire, calls have been mounting from all sides for Berlusconi to step aside and make way for a new government to handle a crisis that now threatens the whole euro zone.

Six former parliamentary loyalists wrote to Berlusconi calling for a new government in a letter published in the daily Corriere della Sera.

"Be the backer of a new political phase and a new government," the deputies wrote.

One of the deputies, Isabella Bertolini, said the rebels could oppose Berlusconi in a parliamentary vote next Tuesday to sign off the 2010 budget.

"We are convinced that a strong political signal will come, otherwise we will see how we will act," she told reporters.

Greece is in turmoil and the world economy in limbo after Prime Minister George Papandreou apparently abandoned his explosive plan to put a European rescue deal to a referendum.

Ireland announced Thursday it is closing its embassies to the Vatican and two other nations, but denied that its deteriorating relations with the Catholic Church played a role in its choice of cuts.

Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said Ireland was under grave financial pressure as it tries to slash spending in line with its international bailout last year. He said a review determined that Ireland's diplomatic posts to the Vatican, Iran and Timor Leste offered the least returns in foreign investment.

"The government believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador," Gilmore said, suggesting that a diplomat based in another European country would be assigned the Vatican brief too.

In Rome, the Vatican likewise dismissed concerns that the Irish were sending another rebuke to the Catholic Church over its coverups of decades of child abuse in Ireland.

"What is important are the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and states, and these aren't in question concerning Ireland," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

Rick Perry's crazy, wacky and absurd speech at an event in New Hampshire is revealing on so many levels. People are saying he was drunk or on drugs. But I think it's deeper than that.

Perry is obviously losing it. He can't contain his fruity nature under the national spotlight. Politics is a big charade that involves repeating a lot of slogans, and it seems Perry is getting sick of saying "Balance The Budget," and "Cut The Government," and "Grow The Economy."

And it's not just Rick Perry who is experiencing some sort of mental collapse or emotional meltdown.

The trend of mental collapse among high-profile U.S. politicians is very visible in the last days of the U.S. empire.

U.S. political leaders are keeping world-changing secrets from the public. And they have a false persona which they present to the American people. Hence their bizarre episodes of mental collapse.

There is John "Insane" McCain who I'm pretty sure is a retard.

Dick Cheney is considered a psychotic and a paranoid mad man by a lot of people, not just so called conspiracy theorists.

George W. Bush was losing his mind, and gave bizarre answers to questions at press conferences.

Barack Obama can't give well structured speeches without the use of a teleprompter. He is not balanced mentally or emotionally. He is not fit to be President.