Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, yesterday gave Shia militia and other gunmen a 72-hour deadline to surrender their weapons as his forces engaged in fierce street battles in the southern city of Basra for the second day running.
As the US-protected green zone in Baghdad came under renewed attack from rockets and mortars, American officials insisted that members of the Mahdi army – followers of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – were not being singled out in the Iraqi forces’ “surge” in Basra.
– The Guardian
The Stasi secret police may have died with communism but its surveillance methods are still alive at Lidl, the German supermarket chain.
George Orwell’s Big Brother, it seems, stalks the aisles between the cornflakes and the canned dogfood. Detectives hired by Lidl – which has more than 7,000 stores worldwide, including 450 in Britain – have been monitoring romance at the cash till, visits to the lavatory and the money problems of shelf-stackers.
– The Times
Plans to fingerprint millions of passengers a year at Heathrow’s new fifth terminal have been put on hold hours before it opens for business tomorrow.
BAA, the airport operator, took the decision after being warned by the Government’s Information Commissioner that the move could breach the Data Protection Act.
– The Telegraph
