Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

French police have searched President Nicholas Sarkozy's UMP party headquarters over a financing scandal linked to the L'Oreal heiress.

Police from the financial investigations squad searched the Paris headquarters Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party on Wednesday afternoon, said party leader Xavier Bertrand.

At least 16 people have been killed and more than 80 others injuries as a bomb went off in the capital of Russia's North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia.

An explosives-laden car, parked near the entrance to the central market in Vladikavkaz, was detonated on Thursday. The explosive device placed in the trunk of the car was stuffed with metal rods and bolts and was equivalent to 40 kilograms of TNT, Interfax news agency reported.

Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement is demanding the arrest of the masterminds of fake witnesses in the case of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination.

"It is required to open the case file of the false witnesses so that there will be no distractions," prominent Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said in his remarks published on Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended awarding Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who has published insulting cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Merkel presented the 75-year-old cartoonist with the M100 Media Prize 2010 during a ceremony on Wednesday, saying that Westergaard was recognized for what she described as “freedom of speech.”

China has urged Western countries to avoid broadening Iran sanctions by imposing new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

"China believes that countries should comprehensively and correctly implement the UN sanctions instead of expanding on these sanctions," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference on Tuesday.

The European Union has joined the international tide of condemnation of a Florida-based church, which plans to burn the holy Quran to mark the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday expressed the bloc's strong condemnation of the blasphemous plan by the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida on the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

The UK Home Secretary will announce an independent review of the country's controversial extradition laws to focus on the extradition treaty with the US.

Theresa May is expected to announce the review will concentrate on the UK-US extradition treaty and US arrest warrants.

The UK government military advisors have published a blueprint for pulling British troops out of Afghanistan.

In its four point plan, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) suggested that Britain should commit itself to a more low key policy of “containment and deterrence” in Afghanistan, the daily Standard reported on Wednesday.

The Home Affairs Select Committee holds an inquiry into the phone tapping scandal of ministers' phones that were hacked by News of the World journalists.

The investigation will look into unauthorised phone tapping of MPs' mobile phones after the Metropolitan police said they will be questioning Andy Coulson, the current director of communication and planning for Downing Street and former News of the World editor, Sky News stated.

A police sergeant caught on CCTV brutalising a middle-aged woman in a police station has been sentenced to six months in jail following an assault conviction.

Sgt Mark Andrews, who was caught on CCTV dragging Pamela Somerville, 59, across the lobby of Melksham police station in Wiltshire before throwing her face first into a cell and leaving her bleeding with an open wound on her head, has been sentenced to six months in jail by Deputy District Judge Peter Greenfield at an Oxford Magistrates Court, AFP reported.