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UPI NewsTrack TopNews(UPI Top Stories Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Israel on alert for retaliatory strikesJERUSALEM, April 8 (UPI) -- Israeli security forces will go on alert Sunday out of fear of counterattacks following two missile strikes that killed eight Palestinians in Gaza. Iyad Abu Aynayn, 29 -- a senior bomb maker affiliated with Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip -- was killed Friday night along with his 7-year-old son and four other armed men in a military training camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Aynayn's wife was seriously injured in the attack. On Saturday, Israeli Air Force-launched missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City killing two members of a Kassam rocket cell, which the army said had just fired a rocket towards Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported. Despite the targeted killings and escalation in the anti-Kassam operation, dubbed Southern Arrow, Palestinian terror cells still succeeded in launching at least five rockets at Israel over the weekend. The actions drew a harsh response from Hamas. Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the new government, called the attack a brutal massacre. Maybe it's an important message to the president (Abbas) today that Israel is not interested in peace or political compromises, Hamad said. Report: U.S. blew Israeli spy missionTEL AVIV, Israel, April 8 (UPI) -- Israeli intelligence officials say the Bush administration blew their effort to penetrate al-Qaida in Iraq by releasing a letter to its top leader. The letter was from Ayman al-Zawahiri, said to be Osama bin Laden's top deputy, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Lebanese leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, The Times of London reported. The newspaper said Israel passed the letter to the United States in October, saying it should remain secret. John Negroponte, the U.S. director of national intelligence, posted the letter on his government Web site in both English and Arabic. President George W. Bush quoted it in one of his weekly radio addresses, saying that al-Qaida is gravely mistaken if its leaders think the United States will be forced out of Iraq. Israel's intelligence effort in Iraq was known as Operation Tiramisu. The Times said the administration's publication of the letter put its sources at risk, although agents did what they could to protect them. Niger diplomats reportedly forged documentROME, April 8 (UPI) -- Two diplomats from Niger faked documents the Bush administration used to support the invasion of Iraq, The Times of London reports. Citing NATO sources, the newspaper reported an investigation has shown that Niger's consul in Rome and the personal assistant to its ambassador forged a contract with Saddam Hussein purporting to show he had been trying to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake. The forgery was allegedly carried out for financial gain, after the ambassador's assistant was recruited by a former Italian police officer working as a French agent. When she passed on a report about a visit by a top Iraqi official to Niger, she was told that any proof Saddam was buying or trying to buy uranium would be well rewarded. The French reportedly passed information based on the forgery to the British and to the United States. The yellowcake story led to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's investigative trip to Niger, which then led to his open break with the Bush administration and the 2003 leak of his wife's identity as a CIA agent. Rally ends Berlusconi's uphill campaignROME, April 8 (UPI) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ended his re-election campaign Saturday with a rally in Rome attended by thousands of his faithful supporters. The crowd chanted Silvio, Silvio, Silvio as a woman in a revealing dress gave the prime minister a bouquet of flowers, The Times of London reported. Berlusconi is uncertain of victory in the election. Italian voters go to the polls Sunday and Monday. Berlusconi has campaigned hard on behalf of his House of Liberties coalition. Several months ago, he trailed Romano Prodi, leader of a center-left coalition, by 20 points, but the race has tightened up. Last-minute unofficial polls still put Berlusconi behind Prodi, but 15 percent of voters were undecided. The dominant theme of this campaign has been Berlusconi himself, John Harper, professor of European studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, told the Times. The issue is whether he is fit to govern or should be sacked, whether he is the miracle man or a threat to democracy. Brazil's first astronaut returns to EarthASTANA, Kazakhstan, April 8 (UPI) -- Lt. Col. Marcos Pontes, a 43-year-old Brazilian Air Force pilot, landed in Kazakhstan Saturday after nine days on the International Space Station. Pontes and his copilots -- Valery Tokarev of Russia and Bill McArthur of the United States -- arrived safely in their space capsule, the BBC reported. The trip back to Earth took only 3 1/2 hours. Soyuz has made a soft landing, said a mission control official in Moscow. The successful joint mission cost Brazil about $10 million. Brazil's space program met with disaster three years ago when a rocket exploded on the launch pad, killing 21 people in the northern part of Brazil. Pontes had been training to go into space since 1998. He originally planned to go in a U.S. space shuttle. |