China, Iran, stolen Icon, Nick Berg (#27)

LONDON (AFP) - China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, throwing diplomatic language to the wind, has told the United States in no uncertain terms to "shut up and keep quiet" on the subject of Beijing's growing military spending.

"The China population is six times or five times that of the United States," he said. "Why blame China?... It's better for the US to shut up and keep quiet. It's much, much better."
+ Top Chinese diplomat tells US to 'shut up' on arms spending

A Lebanese student has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planting bombs on trains last month which are believed to have been a failed terror attack. + Lebanese held over 'terror plot'

The icon of the Virgin Mary, at the monastery of Elona, symbolised Greek freedom during a 19th-Century campaign to expel the Turkish Ottoman empire. + Greek police hunt for stolen icon



Iran had a democractically elected nationalist Prime Minister - Mohammed Mossadeq.

The United States and Britain, through a now-admitted covert operation of the CIA called Operation Ajax, conducted from US Embassy in Tehran, helped organize protests to overthrow Moussadeq and return the Shah to Iran.

After his return from brief exile, Iran's fledgling attempts at democracy quickly descended into dictatorship as the Shah dismantled the constitutional limitations on his office and began to rule as an absolute monarch.


+ US, Britain sowed the seeds of Iranian Revolution

Nicholas Evan Berg (April 2, 1978 – May 7, 2004) was an American businessman seeking telecommunications work in Iraq during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. He was abducted and later beheaded in May 2004 by Islamic militants.

The CIA claimed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi personally beheaded Berg. The decapitation, the first of a series of such killings of foreign hostages in Iraq, received worldwide attention because it was filmed, and the footage was subsequently released on the Internet.

On May 11, 2004, the website of the militant Islamist group Muntada al-Ansar posted a video with the opening title of "Abu Musa'b al-Zarqawi slaughters an American", which shows Berg being decapitated.

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