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Internet chatroom users can be so aggressive that a sociologist studying them has labelled some online communities "electronic fight clubs". According to the new research, even the most laid-back people can erupt into furious rants when debating online, and it's all part of an effort to distinguish themselves from the next user. Some even take on multiple personalities in a bid to outsmart their online acquaintances, while others adopt menacing usernames. Gordon Fletcher, an information systems lecturer at Salford University, revealed his findings to the British Sociological Association meeting this week. His paper, entitled "Fight Club: culture, conflict and everyday...

Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, survived an assassination attempt on Thursday when gunmen opened fire on his entourage, a security official in his office said. "At 10 o'clock this morning, gunmen opened fire on Ayatollah Sistani as he greeted people in Najaf, but he was not hurt," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

North Korean refugees repatriated by China tell of prison where new-born children are left to die. Richard Spencer reports from Seoul There is a cell in Nongpo prison where they take the women whose babies are to be killed. As in the other cells, the women are packed so tightly they can only crouch, squeezing together, for sleep. There is no room to lie down, so when one of the women goes into labour, the others stand up to make space. They watch, but are not allowed to help, as the baby is born. One woman designated by the guards...

A taxi driver who drove the self-confessed killer of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh out of town after the attack could be called as a last-minute witness on the final day of the trial, news reports said. The taxi driver, whose name was not disclosed, could on Monday provide the court with crucial information about 25-year-old Mijailo Mijailovic's state of mind after the murder, prosecutor Krister Petersson told Swedish news agency TT. The driver contacted police with his story this week, saying he had only just realized that he had driven Mijailovic home on September 10 after the attack on...

<p>TOGETHER they form the largest bloc in the parliament, where, with their allies, they command a two-thirds majority. So why are 80 members of the 290-member Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Iranian parliament, behaving like an opposition and holding a sit-in amid threats of mass resignation?</p>

Together they form the largest bloc in the parliament where, with their allies, they command a two-third majority. So, why are 80 members of the 290-member Islamic Consultative Assembly -- the Iranian parliament -- behaving like an opposition and holding a sit-in amid threats of mass resignation? The reason is that the next general election, to be held on Feb. 20, could end the parliamentary career of many of them, not because of rejection by voters but because they won't even be allowed to stand. A couple of months ago Richard Armitage, the No. 2 at the U.S. State Department,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Iran played a key role in capturing deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit last month, a Lebanese newspaper reported. Daily al-Mustaqbal, owned by Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri, quoted a well-informed Paris-based Arab source as saying the Kurds only had a secondary role in capturing Saddam while the essential credit should go to the Iranians who succeeded in trapping him. The source said Saddam was moving among four hideouts located in the so-called Sunni triangle northwest of Baghdad and relied on a small number of assistants who relayed his messages and...

In July 2003, Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured and murdered by Iranian security agents after she attempted to report on the growing opposition movement in Iran. FRONTLINE/World correspondent Jane Kokan risks her personal safety to follow in Kazemi's footsteps, traveling undercover to Iran to investigate the clerical regime's latest crackdown on students, journalists and dissidents. "I want to find out what happened to [Kazemi]," says Kokan, "and the story she died trying to tell." Iran is a theocratic republic ruled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and a council of mullahs, who control the prisons, courts and security forces. Students...

The 97-year-old woman rescued after nine days in the rubble of an earthquake appeared wrinkled and dry, but showed a big appetite Sunday. Officials said she likely survived because she was wrapped up in bed and had just gotten breakfast when the deadly quake shook Bam. "Please I'm hungry, I need food," Sharbanou Mazandarani was heard saying when an Associated Press photographer visited the field hospital where she is being treated. "For the Imam's sake, please give me some food." The death toll from the 6.6-magnitude quake rose to about 35,000, Brig. Gen. Hoseyn Fat'ahi of the Islamic Revolution Guards...

Mehrdad Vakili remembers his father screaming, "Get out of the house!" as Iran's devastating earthquake began shaking the walls of the family's home. The 12-year-old boy ran but was immediately pinned by rubble. Mehrdad was rescued. His father and younger brother were not. "I don't want to live without them," Mehrdad said Thursday as a female relative dabbed his tears with a handkerchief at his bedside in a Kerman hospital, where he was recovering from a broken leg and severe stomach wounds. Survivors brought to the provincial capital recounted narrow brushes with death during the Dec. 26 earthquake that struck...

From the marble mansions of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein's in-laws are leading the world's least likely human rights organisation, as families of the coalition's 55 most wanted men band together to appeal for fair treatment for them. Many of the coalition's top targets were either captured or negotiated their surrender in April and May, immediately after the war. Since then they have not been allowed to see their families or their lawyers and no charges have been brought. Deatined: Fadil Mahmud Gharib For families whose very word once meant life and death for ordinary Iraqis, this new impotence has come as...

President Pervaiz Musharraf of Pakistan won a vote of confidence yesterday which will leave him in place until 2007 and give him sweeping powers, including the right to sack the government. The decision followed a deal with an alliance of fundamentalist Islamic parties, under which Gen Musharraf promised to resign as army chief in 12 months. "Parliament has consolidated his position," Zafrullah Khan Jamali, the prime minister, said after the vote. Secular opposition parties staged noisy protests in both houses of parliament, chanting "Go, Musharraf, go", before walking out to boycott the vote. "It is most unfortunate that the new...

Thousands of the regime forces have been mobilized in the Kerman Province and especially in the cities of Bam and Jiroft in order to prepare the "conditions" for the "future" visit of the Islamic republic leaders. Orders have been issued to arrest or shoot on any protester in the devastated areas under the label of "fighting looters". The Islamic regime knowing the degree of the popular hatered and the existing explosive situation has preferred to postpone these official visits and its leaders, such as Mohamad Khatami, haven't showed up on the scenes of the unprecedented devastation which stroke the region...

The stench of death filled Iran's earthquake-devastated city of Bam on Sunday and fears of epidemics and looting grew as hopes dwindled for those still buried by a disaster that killed 22,000 people. Aid poured in from around the world, including Iran's arch-foe the United States, to help deal with what appeared to be the world's most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years. "The toll has risen to 22,000 dead," an official from the government of the Kerman province where Bam is located told Reuters on Sunday evening. Cemeteries overflowed with corpses. Mullahs in shirt-sleeves rather than their usual...

High level U.S. and Iranian officials put aside diplomatic differences to directly discuss humanitarian aid after the earthquake that killed tens of thousands of Iranians, a State Department official said on Saturday. Spokesman Lou Fintor told reporters the discussion took place in a phone call between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif. "Given the urgency of the situation we deemed direct contact to be the most appropriate channel," Fintor said. The White House said earlier the United States would send government and civilian emergency workers and 150,000 pounds of...

One Irish and two German tourists kidnapped in southeastern Iran earlier this month have been released and are in good health, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Sunday. "The three hostages have been freed and are safe and sound," Kharazi told state television. "All three are in good health," the minister said, without elaborating on the circumstances of their release. Earlier Sunday, deputy interior minister Ali Afghar Ahmadi had announced that he expected the tourists to be freed "very soon." The trio were kidnapped by bandits while cycling near Nosrat Abad, on the road between the ancient city of Bam, which...

Pakistani scientists may have played a major role in advancing Iran's nuclear program, but more than a half-dozen other countries are now being drawn into the UN investigation, diplomats and arms experts say. A month-long probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency has traced the origins of Iran's program to the late 1980s, when Iran was supplied with the first drawings on centrifuge technology, its main way of enriching uranium - leading to suspicions it was developing nuclear weapons. The investigations have widened "well beyond" Pakistan, Russia and China to include companies in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other West European...

The regime's plainclothes men and security agents have arrested in several cities, such as in Tehran and Esfahan, Iranians who angered by the situation had shouted publicly unprecedented slogans considered almost as a blasphemy by the ruling theocracy. These unprecedented slogans were nothing else than "Long Live Israel!" and "Long Live America!" shouted during tens of popular Blood collect gatherings by Iranians welcoming the Israeli and American support of the quake's victims. The popular anger has been boosted as the Islamic regime has banned any Israeli support of the quake's victims by rejecting this country's offer of aid. Many Iranians...

U.S. and Iranian officials put aside diplomatic differences to directly discuss humanitarian aid after the earthquake in Iran that claimed tens of thousands of lives, a State Department official said on Saturday. The United States will send government and civilian emergency workers and 75,000 tons of medical supplies to Iran, the White House said. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement that the United States was working with Iranian authorities, the United Nations and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent to quickly send aid to Iran after the devastating earthquake in the city of Bam, where officials...

US seeks bin Laden here, there and everywhere By Mark Huband and Mohsen Asgari Published: December 26 2003 18:43 | Last Updated: December 26 2003 18:43 Much of the story behind Saddam Hussein's eight months on the run has yet to be made public. But US military and intelligence officials say the Iraqi dictator never wandered far from the banks of the Tigris. Remaining within the Sunni heartland, he scrambled from one farmhouse to the next, sometimes by car or van, sometimes by boat. By contrast, Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, appears to have become far...