By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS

GENEVA

The world’s largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorize occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. Read the full story

via http://www.disinfo.com/

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to announce a new policy on Wednesday to curb the spread of biological weapons, but it will reaffirm the Bush administration’s opposition to an international regimen for verifying stockpiles of anthrax, smallpox and other agents.

The policy, to be disclosed in a speech in Geneva by the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, Ellen O. Tauscher, will focus on increasing health security to reduce the impact of outbreaks of infectious disease, whether natural or man-made, administration officials said Tuesday. Read the full story

Defense Minister Ehud Barak told world diplomats on Tuesday that the Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of having committed war crimes in Gaza, is “false, distorted and promotes terror.”

Speaking to the foreign ministers of France, Britian, Spain and Norway, among others, ahead of a United Nations debate on the report scheduled for Thursday, Barak said that adopting the report would give terror organizations around the world an advantage.

“The democratic nations of the world must understand that adopting the report will cripple their ability to deal with terror organizations, and terror in general,” Barak said.

On Wednesday, it emerged that the UN Human Rights Council’s debate over the Goldstone report will also deal with Jerusalem, the Temple Mount riots and the siege of Gaza, according to a resolution the Palestinian Authority and a group of countries intend to submit.

Haaretz has obtained a copy of the document: Click here for the full text of the Palestinian draft resolution.

According to a political source in Jerusalem, the PA’s ambassador to UN institutions in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, told the ambassadors of the countries involved, most of them Arab and Muslim, that the main motivation behind the Palestinian request to discuss the Goldstone report stemmed from “Israeli provocations in Jerusalem.” The Palestinians had originally decided not to have the report discussed.

The Palestinian ambassador said Israel must be shown that it cannot evade international law.

The new draft resolution is entitled “The human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

The resolution, which Foreign Ministry sources have described as “very extreme,” has three parts: East Jerusalem, the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead, and the report by the UN’s human rights commissioner on conditions in the Gaza Strip.

An official at the Foreign Ministry says the draft “will only serve to show how excessive the Palestinian claims really are.”

The deliberations at the council will take place Thursday and Friday, with a vote on the resolution on Monday.

http://www.haaretz.com/

The Palestinian Authority would not oppose the prosecution of Hamas militants on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court, Israel Radio on Saturday quoted the PA’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as saying. Read the full story

The much-delayed and maligned Large Hadron Collider has been hit by its most outlandish claim to date – it is being sabotaged by its own future.

Forget the far-fetched belief that it will create a black hole, two distinguished physicists have gone even further claiming nature itself is stopping the troubled £4.4billion project from getting off the ground. Read the full story

The 32-year-old man of Algerian descent was one of two brothers detained in the south-east town of Vienne on Thursday.

Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France. Read the full story

UN Condemns Pakistan Suicide Bombing

By Lisa Schlein
Geneva
05 October 2009

The U.N. Secretary-General is condemning the terrorist attack that killed five World Food Program aid workers in Islamabad, Pakistan. Several other people were injured in the attack as well.   Read the full story

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White House Condemns Iranian Missile Tests

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Shahab-3 medium-range missile during a drill at an undisclosed location, 28 Sep 2009

The White House on Monday condemned Iran’s latest missile tests as “provocative” and called on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to provide inspectors “unfettered access” to its nuclear facilities. Read the full story