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A court in the Russian republic of Tatarstan on the Volga river has refused to allow Muslim women to wear headscarves on their passport photos. Three Muslim women appeared in court on Friday to protest against having to remove their traditional headwear on official ID cards. "It is Islamophobia that moves our officials to refuse our women such an elementary right," said Walliulla Yakupov of the Tatar Islamic Administration. After the verdict the women said their human rights have been violated and vowed to fight on. Islam renaissance The three women filed suits after the local passport agency refused to...

<p>ARLINGTON, Virginia (AP) -- At least a couple of times a week, mechanic Ernie Pride tells customers at his independent repair shop he can't fix their cars because he doesn't know what's wrong with them. Go to the dealer, he advises.</p>

Germany 8-0 Saudi Arabia Germany took control of Group E with a resounding victory over a desperately poor Saudi Arabia outfit. Rudi Voller's men lifted some of the clouds that had started to gather over the national team with a controlled display in what ended as a training session for the Germans. Germany recorded their biggest ever World Cup win with their eight-goal haul, in part inspired by hat-trick hero Miroslav Klose. The striker scored all three goals - two in the first half, one in the second - with his head and the cerebral quality of his play more...

Minority religious groups in Australia's immigration detention centres are being persecuted and physically assaulted by Muslim asylum seekers, according to Amnesty International, the human rights group. Amnesty believes many are suffering psychological trauma as a result of the constant discrimination they face. Locked away for months and even years while their applications for asylum are processed, many detainees rely on their faith to help them through this period of uncertainty. The majority are Muslims, who have access to halal food and attend Mosques established inside Australia's detention centres. Policy defended The concern Amnesty International has is for religious groups, such...

Fake fingers made out of common household ingredients can fool security systems that use fingerprints to identify people. The artificial fingers and prints were created with gelatine by Japanese researchers who used the digits to get trick biometric systems into thinking they were seeing the real thing. Not only was it possible to fool the security systems with casts of fingers, the researchers found they could make convincing fakes using fingerprints lifted from glass. Experts say the experiments cast serious doubt on any claims that this type of biometric system can be made fully secure. 'Impressive work' The work was...

An Aboriginal activist is seeking permission from Australia's High Court to spear a senior police officer to death because he desecrated a sacred fire. It follows an incident last year, when the police filed a writ to the court, ordering a group of Aborigines engaged in a religious ceremony in the capital, Canberra, to extinguish their fire. Indigenous campaigner Darren Bloomfield has claimed the senior officer in charge "has incurred the death penalty under Aboriginal law". A police investigation into the incident at the Aborigines' so-called "tent embassy" on the lawns of the Old Parliament House is under way. Confrontation...

An American woman has been charged with murder after hitting a man with her car and then leaving him to bleed to death, stuck in her windscreen. Chante Mallard, from Fort Worth in Texas, drove home with the man's broken legs hanging over the bonnet and his head and torso through the glass. She then locked the car, with the victim still suspended, in her garage for several days. Miss Mallard told police that she ignored his repeated pleas for help - but she said she did apologise to him on several occasions. Mr Biggs, who lived in a city ...

Play was temporarily halted at the Australian Open on Thursday when a bird was killed by a tennis ball. The bird, believed to be a house martin, came to a grisly end when he instinctively chased a moth across the Rod Laver Arena. Sadly he flew straight into the path of a powerfully struck forehand by French doubles player Michael Llodra. The force of the shot killed the bird instantly and he dropped like a stone to the court. Julien Boutter, who was partnering Arnaud Clement in what was already a tense semi-final against Llodra and Fabrice Santoro, was the ...

This is a tale of two Afghans: Abdul, who nearly got us killed through his deceit, and Haji-sahib, who saved us. Let's start with Abdul, our driver. He was a droopy-faced Afghan who spoke American gang slang, even though he's from Kandahar. Abdul had slipped into the U.S. a few years back and ended up working 20-hour shifts at a place called "American Fried Chicken". His boss, of course, was another Afghan, and he'd send Abdul out to deal with the crackheads and the gangbangers. The few times when he was translating from Pashto to English for us, Abdul relied ...

A plaque honouring actor James Earl Jones at a Florida event marking Martin Luther King Day has instead paid tribute to James Earl Ray - the man who killed the civil rights leader. Over a background featuring stamps of famous black Americans, including King, the erroneous plaque read: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive." Ray shot King in a Memphis hotel in 1968. The plaque is being corrected in time for the actor's visit to a ceremony in Lauderhill, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, this Saturday. Gerald Wilcox, owner of the company which ordered the plaque, ...

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic fired off another tirade against the U.N. war crimes tribunal Wednesday but is expected to play a new card when he goes on trial next month by calling NATO leaders as witnesses. Yawning and checking his watch frequently, the former Yugoslav leader looked nonchalant at a hearing at the court in The Hague as officials discussed the nuts and bolts of his Kosovo war crimes trial set to begin on February 12. He then sprang to life when British presiding judge Richard May gave him the floor, insisting once again that NATO -- which ...

An increasing number of Ethiopian military personnel are being reported moving into Somalia. According to the latest reports, about 300 Ethiopian troops have deployed in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in northern Somalia. The troop movements are concentrated in Puntland and the neighbouring Bay region, as well as the town of Baidoa. Ethiopia has been supporting Somali factions opposed to the Transitional National Government of President Abdulkassim Salat Hassan. But it remains unclear what has driven the latest deployment, and the Ethiopian Government continues to deny having any troops in Somalia. Battle wagons The BBC's Hassan Barise in Mogadishu ...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Argentina has arrested an infamous navy officer from the 1976-83 military dictatorship, dubbed the "Blond Angel," at the request of Sweden, which wants to extradite and try him for the death of a young Swedish girl in 1977, a court said on Friday. Alfredo Astiz was a member of a death squad operating out of the Navy School for Mechanics, a clandestine camp in Buenos Aires where many of the 30,000 people who died or disappeared in the "Dirty War" against leftists met their grisly end. He is also wanted by Italy and Spain and ...

US marines based at Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan have been warned about the danger of attack from "kamikaze camels". During their war with Soviet forces during the 1980s Afghanistan's mujahideen were known to strap explosives to camels and send them towards enemy positions. Just days after the warning from US intelligence services, soldiers guarding Camp Rhino at night say they saw a camel running inside the camp compound. They were so alarmed by the appearance of the camel that they opened fire, but when they went to investigate it afterwards the animal had mysteriously disappeared. "It was a pretty ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anti-Taliban forces on horseback attacked tanks in northern Afghanistan as U.S. airstrikes hit caves and vehicles and fighting raged near the key crossroads city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The month-old U.S.-led bombing campaign was focused on that patch of rugged terrain, where mounted cavalry charges by the Northern Alliance were reported, according to Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff. "This is opposition forces riding horseback into combat against tanks and armored personnel carriers," Pace said at a Pentagon briefing. "So these folks are aggressive. They're taking ...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Orthodox Jews have steered Israeli public transportation in a new direction with a bus service that segregates men and women in strict interpretation of ritual law. The decision by the Egged bus cooperative to inaugurate the special route between Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, a religious enclave near Tel Aviv, drew criticism from the secularist Shinui Party. "It's segregation all over again, apartheid," party leader Yosef Lapid told Reuters. Men and women sit apart in the buses. Orthodox tradition dictates that they should not mix unless related. Some private buses serving religious communities already feature curtain partitions. An ...

Back in March Moscow's Permanent Mission at the UN submitted to the UN Security Council an unprecedentedly detailed report on Al-Qaeda's terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan, but the US government opted not to act. To find out why - and to discover the astonishing degree of information contained in that report - buy the latest special issue of Jane's Intelligence Digest online for just $36. Jane's Intelligence Digest's analysis of this Russian report, leaked from the highest levels of the UN, uncovers the following revelations: The breathtaking extent of intelligence data tabled by the Russians The degree of Pakistani military and ...