Israeli lawmaker Effi Eitam last week said it has become clear in light of the failure of international diplomatic efforts that Israeli will eventually have no choice but to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel National News quoted Eitam as stating during a gathering in the Samarian town of Beit El that "Israel has the right and the ability to defend itself and that day is around the corner."
Eitam went on to say he is confident the United States will support Israel in any military action it deems necessary for the survival of the Jewish state and the Zionist dream.
In related news, American analysts said at the weekend that new satellite imagery shows Syria has completely razed and covered the site of a suspected nuclear installation that Israel bombed in September.
Syria maintains the site was not a nuclear facility built with North Korean help, as Israel charges, but its haste to apparently prevent nuclear inspectors from conducting an investigation there has given the lie to Damascus' official position.
The Syrians "took down this facility so quickly it looks like they are trying to hide something,'' David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and ...   more »

"The purpose of the Annapolis peace conference is not the Palestinians but drafting support for a strike on Iran," Hamas senior Muhammad Nazal told the London-based newspaper Al Quds al Arabi on Monday.
According to Nazal, the "Annapolis conference is meant to save Olmert and Bush and help the [American] Republican party in the next elections."
Nazal, a former member of Hamas's political wing, attacked Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that he was "wrong and deceitful to think he will get American support. Israel is initiating an agreement which breaches the rights of the Palestinian people." According to Nazal, by accepting Israel's offers, Abbas was turning his back on his Palestinian brethren and leaders in the Arab world.
Nazal elaborated: "Our point of departure is that the conference's purpose is not [to advance the interests of] Palestine, but to gain support for a strike on Iran. The US administration needs to prove it is making efforts to solve the Palestinian issue, while all the while beating the drums of war against Iran." The conference was also a "life jacket for [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert," whose popularity is low, he said.
When asked his opinion about Israeli and American claims ...   more »

By  Renee Boucher Ferguson
It's illegal now for California employers to force anyone to have an RFID device implanted under his or her skin as a condition of receiving something—such as a paycheck or government benefits.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 362 on Oct. 15, prohibiting the forced implantation of RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips. The bill, authored by state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.
The anti-tagging bill, now a law, is not the first piece of privacy-based RFID legislation authored by Simitian to pass the governor's desk. A little more than a year ago Gov. Schwarzenegger quietly vetoed SB 768, also known as the Identity Information and Protection Act of 2006, which would regulate the use of RFID in state and local documents.
At the time, the bill was thought by many to be a call for other states to enact similar legislation. But when that effort failed, so did the hopes that California's actions would spur additional state legislatures to address RFID-related privacy concerns.
In the wake of the 2006 veto, Simitian took the next feasible step. He broke the Identity Information and Protection Act into smaller bits and shipped ...   more »

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
European Union officials have been accused of "political geography" after Turkey, but not the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, disappeared from a map of Europe designed for new euro coins.
A common design for the "tails side" of euro coins is to be rolled out in 2008 with an updated graphic showing an enlarged EU and new countries, such as Cyprus, that are joining the single currency.
Papers given to Euro-MPs under Brussels open information rules show that the European Commission proposed a standard format map of Europe extending as far as the Caspian Sea and including Turkey.
But, following the intervention of unnamed national governments, Ankara was short-changed in the final design as Cyprus was moved hundreds of miles west, to rest near Crete, while Turkey was cut from the map altogether.
Marco Cappato, an Italian Liberal Euro-MP, is angry that Turkey, an EU membership hopeful, has been removed from a design that includes Moldava and Belarus, countries with poor human rights records.
He believes the omission is a deliberate "provocation" by euro zone members, such as France, who are hostile to Turkish EU entry.
"They have deliberately and secretly wiped Turkey off the map. ...   more »

 N.Y. Political Events
 Ever wish you could be a "fly on the wall" at a closed-door meeting or to hear a foe’s secrets?
Enter the robobug.
Witnesses are buzzing about recent sightings of robotic-looking dragonflies seen at Washington and New York political events. And U.S. government and private agencies have admitted to striving for the spy technology, The Washington Post reports, though no one has confessed to deploying the bugged bugs.
"They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters," New York college student Vanessa Alarcon said after seeing the dragonflies while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.
The U.S. has used robotic fliers as early as World War II, but their numbers were fewer and the technology more primitive.
• Click here for FOXNews.com's Patents and Innovation Center.
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," Washington lawyer Bernard Crane said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?'"
Some federally funded groups are implanting live insects with computer chips in hopes of using spyware and remote controls to manipulate their flight.
The robobugs could be used to track suspects, guide missiles or find trapped survivors in collapsed ...   more »