The revival of a guide for veterans' end-of-life care, suspended under the Bush administration, has caused controversy as some believe it encourages veterans to end their lives. The pamphlet titled 'Your Life, Your Choices', was first published in 1997 and was in use until the Bush White House evaluated the document's effect on treating complex health and moral issues and suspended it. The document, however, was revived under the Obama administration's Department of Veterans Affairs.... The guide, dubbed the 'Death Book' by opponents, asks the reader to write down whether they find their lives 'worth living' under certain circumstances. The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to 'shake the blues'. There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

US President Barack Obama has approved the creation of an elite team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects. Citing unnamed senior administration officials, The Washington Post said the decision was part of a broader effort to revamp US policy on detention and interrogation. Mr Obama signed off on the unit, named the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) late last week, the report says. It will be made up of experts from several intelligence and law enforcement agencies and housed at the FBI, the paper noted. The group will be overseen by the National Security Council, which means shifting the centre of gravity away from the CIA and giving the White House direct oversight, The Post said.

Several European nations have agreed to appeals by the United States to accept detainees held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, a US newspaper has reported. Nine European Union member states are negotiating with Washington to take prisoners held at the jail in Cuba, ..... An agreement by European nations to accept Guantanamo detainees would provide a boost to Obama in his efforts to close the prison by January next year. The prison camp is holding 229 inmates designated "enemy combatants" by the previous US administration of George Bush during its so-called "war on terror". About 80 of those detainees have so far been cleared for release....Five EU states - Portugal, France, Ireland, Italy, and Spain - have already publicly given their assent to accept detainees to their mainland or overseas territories....Obama, earlier this year, decided to go ahead with prosecuting some Guantanamo detainees in military commissions, while trying some others in US federal courts. Human rights groups say that detainees' legal rights are limited through the military commissions process, given that the Pentagon decides on which lawyers will defend those in front of the commission.

Scotland's government defended itself Sunday against unrelenting criticism from the U.S. over the decision to free the Pan Am Flight 103 bomber on compassionate grounds. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing, was released Thursday because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. He has returned to his native Libya to die. His release was met with outrage by families of the U.S. victims of the bombing and criticized by President Barack Obama as ''highly objectionable.'' But Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond told BBC Radio that it was wrong to assume that all those affected by the bombing were opposed to al-Megrahi's release. ''I understand the huge and strongly held views of the American families, but that's not all the families who were affected by Lockerbie,'' Salmond said. ''As you're well aware, a number of the families, particularly in the U.K., take a different view and think that we made the right decision.''...''No one I think seriously believes we made any other decision except for the right reasons,'' Salmond said. ''I think it was the right decision. I also absolutely know it was for the right reasons.'' He said al-Megrahi's release was consistent with Scotland's legal system, which allows for the release of prison inmates who are terminally ill.

Years after the US attacks on Iraq, people in the Persian Gulf state are suffering form the consequences of radioactive contamination caused by the use of depleted uranium. Iraq's Environment Minister, Narmin Othman Hasan, said Monday that depleted Uranium (DU) weapons used by US-led troops against Iraq during the1991 Persian Gulf War and the 2003 invasion still blight the country. Armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium were first used in warfare by US-led troops during the1991 Persian Gulf War and then during the 2003 invasion, turning many parts of Iraq to radioactive toxic wastelands. Depleted uranium --a radioactive metal twice as dense as lead-- has been blamed for a number of health problems, from cancer to birth defects. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5 billion years. Following the 2003 US-led invasion, over 140,000 cases of cancer has been reported in Iraq, which are believed to be caused by toxic weaponry used by the occupying troops. It is reported that 2,000 tons of (DU) expenditure were used during the invasion of Iraq. Several Human rights groups have called the US use of the toxic weapons against the people of Iraq as crimes against humanity since they are causing grievous harm and suffering to civilians in contaminated areas. They have also accused the US-led troops of covering up and denying the damaging health effects of the DU's and blamed them for refusing to release information on the amounts, types and locations of these weapons in Iraq. Iraq's Environment Minister also warned about the danger posed by the tens of millions of landmines strewn across the country. "For one person we have one mine planted. We have 25 million mines in Iraq -- one quarter of the world's mines," she said.

A majority of Iranian lawmakers have approved a bill that will fund a program intended to expose "breaches of human rights" in the US. In a vote on Sunday, the parliamentarians voted by a margin of 189 to 21 to pass the bill which will allocate $20 million toward the efforts, reported the Iranian Labor News Agency. "The Americans have repeatedly approved measures to assist Iranian opposition, especially recently [they approved] a $55-million allocation by the US Senate," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who head the influential Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee. The new law consists of a single article, which stipulates: "To counter the unfair restrictions imposed by the United States and other Western powers in the arena of information technology, and in order to expose the numerous and increasing instances of breaches of human rights and to defend legal trends that stand against that country's methods, the sum of $20 million is allocated from the currency reserves fund." In defending the measure, Boroujerdi called it "necessary" and said: "We must respond in kind to America's injustice and tyranny and the interference of this country against Iran."

INTERNET scammers have stepped up their attacks on the personal details of Australian taxpayers, with the tax office reporting a 31 per cent increase in cyber security incidents.Identity fraud, fake websites, bogus text messages and "phishing" are among the most common rorts identified by the Australian Tax Office. ..The tax office reported a 31 per increase in eSecurity incidents between 2007-2008. "The greatest cyber crime vulnerability that the tax office faces is loss of revenue or information through identity fraud," the ATO said. "In addition to the harm caused to the person whose identity is stolen, it can lead to a loss of confidence in the tax system which has major ramifications for the Australian community." The ATO said scammers had also circulated fake tax refund emails, potentially costing the commonwealth money through forgone revenues.

Former US presidential nominee Mike Huckabee says Israel is much better favored by the American evangelicals than by the American Jewish community. "Maybe one of the hard things is to convince some of our Jewish friends that Evangelicals are the best friends they've got - because I think generally, that's the case," Huckabee said in the epilogue to a three-day visit to Israel. "Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community," he added in an interview with the CBN News. He said that the evangelical Christians were, unlike Jews, consistently supportive of the Israeli territorial assertions. During his visit to Israel, Huckabee reiterated his longtime Zionist affiliations by asserting that Jerusalem had to be the eternal united capital of Israel.

Ministers from 10 African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting. They are expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming. And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012. African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change....They will discuss a suggestion that developed countries should cut emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and that richer nations should provide $67bn (£40bn) a year to help the least well-off cope with rising temperatures. They will also attempt to agree a set of key ideas in order to help national delegations to the UN negotiations in Copenhagen this December to present a co-ordinated position. The Copenhagen conference will try to negotiate a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, elements of which expire in 2012.

Malaysia: Islamic officials took custody Monday of a Muslim model scheduled to be caned this week for drinking beer, the first woman in Malaysia to be given the punishment for violating religious laws....Kartika, 32, is to become the first Malaysian woman to be caned in Malaysia. She was arrested in a raid for drinking beer at a hotel lounge last year for breaching the Muslim-majority country's Shariah law, which forbids Muslims to consume alcohol. She was sentenced by a Shariah court in July in what was considered a warning to other Muslims to abide by religious laws. Kartika did not appeal and says she is willing to be caned....In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Kartika had said she wants to be caned because "I want to respect the law."

RELIGIOUS authorities in Malaysia today freed a Muslim woman who had been sentenced to be caned for dinking beer, although she refused to leave a van taking her to jail when returned to her home. And her father said the change of mind would ridicule Islam, which bans Muslims from consuming alcohol. "The warrant cannot be executed," Sharafuddin Zainal Ariffin, head of enforcement for the state of Pahang's Islamic Affairs Department, said after Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, 32, was returned to her house. It was not immediately clear whether the sentence, the first time a woman has been sentenced to caning in this Southeast Asian country, had been overturned or merely postponed. Both the woman, a Malaysian who has two children and who had worked as a nurse in Singapore, and her father had called for the sentence to be carried out quickly and in public.