International Slipstream

"I want to say to him, ‘Leave her alone, for Christ’s sake. She’s 47. She doesn’t practice contraception because she’s a Catholic. So stay off her’."

Palestinian Abu Nidal, the world’s most wanted terrorist (before Osama bin Laden), was found dead in Baghdad with multiple gunshot wounds. Nidal (meaning father of the struggle), was the arch-enemy of both PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israel, and is estimated to have killed or wounded 900 people in some 20 countries, from France to India.

The 65-year-old, chain-smoking Nidal spent much of his life fleeing. He came to Baghdad after escaping from a private hospital in Egypt, where he was undergoing treatment for leukemia. Abu Nidal had been reported dead many times earlier. This time his death was first announced by a Palestinian paper, Al Aayyam, and subsequently confirmed by Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz. One report claims that he committed suicide after Iraqi sleuths accosted him with evidence of plotting against Saddam Hussein.

In what is seen as Moscow’s response to Washington’s Missile Defence Programme, Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov recently said his country would retain its Satan and Scalpel missiles. This is against the intent Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president George Bush had voiced in May this year, to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Under START II, which was never implemented, Russia was to reduce its 154 Satan missiles—each carrying 10 nuclear warheads—which form the basis of its Strategic Nuclear Force. Satan because it has decoys which can slip through a missile defence. Perhaps the decision to retain these is more linked to the prohibitive cost of acquiring Topol M missiles, which were supposed to have replaced Satan. A fewer Topol missiles will release funds that Moscow can pump into overhauling the ageing Satan and Scalpel missiles and prolonging their life till 2015.

CNN’S Nic Robertson has done in Afghanistan what the CIA and other American operatives were expected to—he has procured 60 videotapes documenting Al Qaeda activities and lengthy footage of Osama bin Laden. One of these tapes shows an agonising death of three dogs exposed to chemical agents. Other tapes have instructions on bomb-making and shooting surface-to-air weapons. Another documents Laden’s famous press conference of May 26, 1998, where he declared war on the US and Israel. He had said then: ""By God’s will, their (jehadi groups) actions are going to have a successful result in killing Americans and getting rid of them." On August 7, US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam were simultaneously attacked.