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Defence Secretary Des Browne has given orders for HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark to "make ready" for operations off Lebanon. The pair will depart as soon as necessary, possibly within 24 hours. No order for evacuating UK citizens has yet been given, but ministers and defence staff are considering a plan to evacuate those trapped in Lebanon. It comes as Israel has stepped up its strikes in Lebanon after Hezbollah militants seized two Israeli soldiers. HMS Illustrious is currently in Gibraltar and HMS Bullwark is close to Spain. The decision whether to proceed with an evacuation plan has not yet...

Renowned music producer Dallas Austin has been sentenced to four years in jail for possessing cocaine and an MDM drug. Austin's lawyer Mohammad Al Redha told Gulf News he would be seeking an appeal on behalf of his client as soon as he receives the verdict sheet. Austin was travelling to Dubai to attend the birthday party of supermodel Naomi Campbell when he was arrested last month. The 34-year-old American, who has worked with a string of big names in the music business, among them Madonna and Anastacia, will be deported after serving his sentence.

Dubai: American music producer Dallas Austin pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine before a Dubai court judge who rejected his lawyer's appeal to hold the hearing behind closed doors on Sunday. The 34-year-old suspect pleaded guilty to possessing 1.26 grams of cocaine and five-and-a-half capsules of cocaine and an MDM drug before the Dubai Court of First Instance. He told presiding judge Mahmoud Al Sharshabi that he knows that possessing or using cocaine is forbidden but he "did not intend to use it in the UAE" and that he brought it into the country by mistake. Austin walked into the courtroom...

Malcolm X was born 80 years ago today, on 19 May 1925. But amid the commemorations, controversy is brewing. Some black activists are enraged by suggestions that their hero might have been gay - or at least bisexual. The controversy has been stirring since the publication of Bruce Perry's acclaimed biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (Station Hill, New York) in 1991. Based on interviews with Malcolm's closest boyhood and adult friends, Perry suggests that the US black nationalist leader was not as robustly heterosexual as his Nation of Islam (NoI) colleagues have always insisted....

Dubai: A group of worshippers who have had to use churches belonging to other denominations for more than 20 years will soon have their own place. In a few months, construction will start in Jebel Ali on a church for the UAE’s Greek Orthodox Christian community. It has all been made possible by the donation of a plot of land by General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence. Leaders of the Greek Orthodox community in the UAE hope the church, to be named St Mary’s, will be completed in time to...

Dubai: Manila will soon issue new passports stamped with the warning, “Not Valid for Iraq.” The move is intended to prevent workers from travelling to the war-torn country and falling prey to kidnappers, the Philippine envoy to the UAE said. The warning will also be in Arabic to advise companies in the region not to send their Filipino staff to Iraq, Ambassador Libran Cabactulan told Gulf News. “We are holding talks with companies and governments in the region,” he said. He conceded that companies who wish to move their staff to Iraq “will do anything to get them there.” He...

Abu Hamza cannot be sent to the US to face terrorism charges because any guarantee given by the US government not to execute him is worthless, a court was told yesterday. The extradition hearing for Mr Hamza, 46, began yesterday at the top security Belmarsh magistrates court. The cleric, who used preach at Finsbury Park mosque in north London, is facing a string of terror charges in the US. His barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, said any guarantee that the US government gave not to execute Mr Hamza if he was convicted would be worthless, because it would not be binding...

Muscat : A criminal court in Oman has sentenced an American woman to death for conspiring to kill her husband and gave life imprisonment to two Omanis, who were hired to carry out the murder. Forty-three-year-old Rebecca Thompson was given the death sentence while her teenage son from a previous marriage, William Derek Green, was handed a three-year term for his part in the killing of Mark Lee Thompson, who was battered to death on December 30 and his partly burnt body found on January 1. The two hired teenage Omani killers were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. The...

Street battles raged in north Belfast last night after a loyalist parade and supporters waving paramilitary flags were allowed to march past a row of Catholic shops. A 51-year-old man died of a heart attack after thousands of nationalists turned on riot police with bottles, rocks, bricks and anything they could find in residential streets, including trees uprooted from gardens. Senior republicans had to intervene to stop a nationalist mob that had isolated around 15 soldiers, forced them against a fence and were attacking them with rocks and baseball bats. Yesterday was the pinnacle of the Protestant marching season with...

IT IS barely 5pm and Dave is already unsteady on his feet. It could be sunstroke: behind his tattoos and grimy England shirt I can make out distinct patches of seared and cracked red skin. A more likely explanation for his lack of balance is the twelve pints of lager he has had since his breakfast shortly after midday. "Tastes like piss mate. You bloody dagos can’t make a decent pint," he yells back at the barman, baring his yellowing teeth like a baboon as if to issue the insult as a threat. The barman shrugs his shoulders: nothing he...

Abu Dhabi: The Italian President has honoured Father Daniele Cerofolini, an 83-year-old Dubai parish priest, with the Order of the Solidarity Star. Father Daniele was given the Order of the Solidarity Star by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President of the Republic of Italy, in recognition of his charitable activities. Domenico Pedata, Italian Ambassador to the UAE, handed over the award to him during an official ceremony held at his residence a few days ago. The honour has come at a time when Father Daniele is preparing to leave the country for Italy after serving the community here for over 30 years....

A Vatican-led conference on dialogue with Muslims ended in Qatar on Sunday after bickering over whether to allow Jews to participate in future meetings because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Emir had opened the seminar by telling senior Muslim and Christian religious leaders that Jews should also take part. "Perhaps it would be worthwhile widening next year's seminar to an Islamic-Christian-Jewish dialogue," His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani said in a speech delivered on his behalf on Thursday. "That is the way to build a decent human life where love, tolerance and equality prevail for the good of...

A REVOLUTIONARY new fighter needed to protect the Royal Navy from attack has been ordered back to the drawing board because it weighs too much, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. The American-made Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is capable of short take-offs and vertical landings (STOVL) and has been ordered by the MoD as a replacement for a number of jets, including the hugely successful Harrier. But it has now emerged that the JSF has a serious weight problem which means it will not fly fast enough to protect warships from aerial attack. The revelation that the enormously expensive jet must...

The beheading of Nick Berg was a truly barbaric act that served no cause except the brutish bloodlust of his executioners. Just when the world's attention was focusing on Washington and the plight of the Iraqi prisoners, this atrocity took the spotlight away from those who are suffering in detention. There is never any justification for taking life in this cold-hearted way. No political purpose will be served and indeed a lot of damage will be done, especially in Iraq. Indeed the act totally alienated the executioners from the Iraqi people. To say, as these hooded executioners did, that they...

George Galloway is to fly to Washington and demand to be heard in the US congress in an attempt to clear his name over allegations he took bribes from Saddam Hussein. The Glasgow Kelvin MP, expelled from Labour over his opposition to the Iraq war, was accused again on Friday of taking cash-redee mable oil vouchers from Saddam. Galloway, now heading the anti-war Respect Party, fears the flow of allegations could damage his chances in the London region of the EU elections. In an interview with the Sunday Herald he has also revealed he wants to stand for Westminster again,...

At the end of a cul de sac in the east end of Glasgow, in broad daylight and just a mile from his home, Duncan Harrison was executed at the wheel of a silver Mercedes. A neighbour discovered the bloody body of the 46-year-old father of three slumped over the dashboard. Police believe he had been forced to drive to the place before being shot in the head. Hours later, in a flat in Springburn, another of Glasgow's poverty-stricken estates, Paul McEnhill, 21, was stabbed to death, allegedly in a drunken argument. Two kinds of murder; one typical Saturday night...