IRAN: DIPLOMATS TOLD POPE BENEDICT XVI WANTS 'WAR' WITH ISLAM

Speakers at a conference sponsored by the Iranian foreign ministry accused Pope Benedict of wanting a war against Islam and that he supported Hitler. Hojatolislam Seyyed Hadi Khosrowshahi a former ambassador to the Vatican, said that the Pope's speech in Germany as "not the start of a new crusade, but the continuation of the first war between Christians and Islam, a war which has never ended." He also said that that many prominent Muslims want to reevaluate their relationship with the Catholic Church AKI .

Russian Journalist and Putin Critic Murdered


Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who followed the Chechen wars and reported the Russian government's many abuses was found murdered in cold blood last Saturday. During her visits to Chechnya and the North Caucuses she wrote articles that reported on the human rights violations committed by Russian and Russian-backed forces, and also gave descriptions of the human devestation caused by the war BBC .

She worked for the Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia's few liberal independent newspapers, and wrote two books based on her articles,"Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy" and "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya," It was the second political assassination in a month, which started with the assassination of Andrei Kozlov, the deputy governor of Russia's Central Bank who was leading a campaign against financial fraud, was assassinated on September 14 Daily Star .