Iranian scholar and journalist Hashem Aghajari has again been sentenced to death for insulting the imams of early Islam. The verdict, rendered back in 2002, was finally confirmed after a retrial of the case by the Hamedan court. According to the BBC News website, it was in this city that a history teacher from the University of Tehran gave a speech in which he stated the need for reforms of Islamic institutions and that Muslims are not “monkeys” to blindly follow their spiritual leaders.

The UK Ministry of Defense has launched an investigation into allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners made against British soldiers, defense chief Geoff Hoon said, BBC News reports. Speaking at a special meeting of the British Parliament on the situation in Iraq, Hoon said that 33 cases of accusations against British troops of abuse of prisoners were being or had been investigated. In two cases, the investigation is in its final phase and a verdict is expected in the near future.

Up to eight people were injured in an explosion outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Baghdad on Sunday, BBC News reported. According to Reuters, the victims included two Britons, two Nepalese and two Iraqi hotel security guards. The British Foreign Office said seven Britons were at the scene but none were seriously injured. The explosive device was left outside the bar on the ground floor of the hotel. The room was badly damaged and the ceiling was damaged.

The US Federal Reserve on Monday fined one of the largest Swiss banks, UBS, $100 million for transferring money to Cuba, Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia in violation of sanctions imposed on these countries, AP reports. The Zurich-based UBS operations center, under an agreement with the Federal Reserve, was exchanging old dollar bills for new ones. The Swiss bank was not allowed to conduct transactions with banks located in areas subject to US government sanctions.

Saudi Arabia has asked OPEC to raise the daily oil production limit by at least 1.5 million barrels (more than six percent), Reuters reports. The request is motivated by the need to prevent further price increases and a recession in the global economy. In a statement, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said the increase in the limit is a critical measure to balance supply and demand in the market after prices jumped to $40 per barrel. The current quota is 23.5 million barrels per day.

On Sunday, a missile warhead was found among scrap metal at the Volgograd metallurgical plant "Red October", the Interfax agency reports . As the security service of the enterprise said, the warhead, presumably from the Smerch missile, was found at about 19:00 in the charge shop in a car with scrap metal. It is believed that the find came to the plant from the Kapustin Yar landfill.

By starting the construction of settlements in the Gaza Strip, the Israelis made a historical mistake, since this territory does not belong to the Jews. This was stated by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, speaking at a legal conference in Eilat. He promised that in five years there will be no settlements left in the Gaza Strip - all of them will be evacuated either as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians or unilaterally, the Cursor agency reports .

Independent. In addition, as the Independent writes, public opinion was seriously influenced by the scandal that occurred in connection with the publication in the press of photographs of the abuse of prisoners in a Baghdad prison. British soldiers were involved in the identified cases. The British Prime Minister was forced to publicly apologize to the victims. On Monday, Defense Minister Geoff Hoon is expected to make a special statement regarding the revelations of abuse of Iraqis.

Entrepreneur Boris Berezovsky called the terrorist attack at the Dynamo stadium in Grozny, which killed Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, an absolute defeat for Vladimir Putin's policies in the republic, according to the website of the Ekho Moskvy radio station .

World War II veterans have protested against German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's participation in a ceremony commemorating Allied soldiers killed in the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944. As the head of the Normandy Veterans Association, Eddie Hanna, told the Daily Telegraph, if Schröder laid a wreath on the graves of British soldiers at the cemetery in the French city of Ranville, the veterans would consider it blasphemy.

National Council for Child Welfare CEO Yitzhak Kadman estimates that between 60 and 75 percent of Israeli schoolchildren visit porn sites, both during school and in their free time. In this regard, he proposes to conduct a nationwide study of this problem following the example of the Scandinavian countries and Ireland, according to the website of the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

IBM has announced it is developing new middleware that will bypass Microsoft operating systems and applications installed on many computers. As reported on the Financial Times website, large companies are showing particular interest in the new software, where administrative costs per computer user can reach $7,000 annually due to high licensing prices.

Canadians seized a monopoly on hockey Results of the World Championship that ended in the Czech Republic "Maple leaves" don't fall The Canadian team won the World Hockey Championship, held in the Czech Republic. In the final, the Canadians beat the Swedes with a score of 5:3. This victory was the fourth for the current champions at the world championships over the past ten years - in addition to 2004, the Maple Leaves became the best in 1994, 1997 and 2003.

Georgia demanded that the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in Georgia, Plamen Nikolov, be recalled. As the chairman of the parliamentary committee on external relations, Konstantin Gabashvili, told the RIA Novosti news agency , the Georgian Foreign Ministry sent a letter to the Council of Europe on May 9, so Tbilisi expects a response on May 10.

It was not for nothing that the murder of the President of the Chechen Republic Akhmad Kadyrov forced even the Chinese Secretary General Hu Jintao to send his condolences not to anyone but to Vladimir Putin. And Boris Berezovsky, who declared on May 10 that Kadyrov’s death was a defeat for Putin, was also not at all original.