A top Russian official confirmed the existence of a contract for the supply of MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria but said work on the planes had been frozen, the daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.  "A few years ago, two contracts were signed: one for (the supply to Syria of) MiG-29s and one for MiG-31s," the head of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fedorov, told the paper.  "Consultations on this contract are now ongoing, so its future is unclear."

A top Russian official confirmed the existence of a contract for the supply of MiG-31 fighter jets to Syria but said work on the planes had been frozen, the daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.  "A few years ago, two contracts were signed: one for (the supply to Syria of) MiG-29s and one for MiG-31s," the head of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fedorov, told the paper.  

The 400-500 million-dollar (280-350 million-euro) contract for the delivery of eight MiG-31s fighter jets was inked in early 2007, according to Kommersant.  It cited sources close to the arms exporter in May saying the supplies of the planes had been frozen under pressure from Israel over fears the weapon sales could offset the balance of power in the region.  According to a a government official cited by Kommersant, the contract had been suspended after Damascus could no longer afford the planes.

A Russian newspaper is reporting that Russia has a contract to provide Syria with powerful MiG fighter jets but has not begun delivering the planes. Kommersant cited the head of Russia's state-run United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fyodorov, as saying a 2007 contract to sell MiG-31E interceptor fighters to Syria has not entered into force. The paper said Russian arms sales officials have denied such a contract exists.

Kommersant cited Fyodorov as saying a contract to provide Syria with Mig-29M fighters is being implemented.

State arms sales company Rosoboronexport declined to comment on the report.

The three nominees who were rejected were the proposed energy, welfare and education ministers. Of three nominated women ministers, only Health Minister Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi was approved. She will become the Islamic Republic's first female minister.

Crucially for Ahmadinejad, heavyweight nominees including the oil, defence, intelligence, interior, economy and foreign ministers were all approved by MPs. The nomination of Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi has been condemned by Argentina, which accuses him of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish centre that killed 85 people. Tehran has repeatedly denied any link to the attack. He received the highest number of votes in favour of all nominees, 227 out of 286 members of parliament present.

Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged.

The most incendiary accusation of PHR's latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data gathering was "a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation".

In April, a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found that medical staff employed by the CIA had been present during waterboarding, and had even used what appeared to be a pulse oxymeter, placed on the prisoner's finger to monitor his oxygen saturation during the procedure

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ordered an investigation into allegations that private contractors employed to protect the American embassy in Afghanistan were engaged in "deviant and lewd" parties that have been compared to Lord of the Flies. The decision to launch the inquiry came after an independent group sent her a 10-page dossier yesterday claiming that the security guards at the embassy had been engaged in drunken parties involving prostitutes and the kind of ritual humiliation associated with gang initiation. Pictures and video footage were attached to the dossier.

The dossier, compiled by the independent investigative group Project on Government Insight, includes an email allegedly from a guard currently serving in Kabul describing scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity".

Blackwater, now named Xe. The group at the centre of the new allegations are the ArmorGroup, part of the Florida-based Wackenhut group, one of the biggest private security organisations in the US. The organisation did not respond immediately today to the allegations.

Iran has offered to arm the Lebanese Military, Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper reported Wednesday.  In a brief report, the paper said that the Iranian Embassy in Beirut inquired after the Lebanese army's armament requirements. The latter replied in detail, focusing mainly on air force needs.

Iran is not going to produce a nuclear weapon any time soon and the threat posed by its atomic program has been exaggerated, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said in a published interview.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there was no concrete evidence that Tehran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program. "But somehow, many people are talking about how Iran's nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world. In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped," he told the specialist Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

"But the idea that we'll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn't supported by the facts as we have seen them so far," said ElBaradei, 67, who will step down in November after 12 years in office.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi says much of Africa's violence is due to foreign meddling and that Israel in particular is to blame for stoking conflicts there.  

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday declared that Israel would not stand by idly should Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad go ahead with his stated plan to declare a de-facto state within two years.

Fayyad said last week that the Palestinian Authority intends to establish a de-facto state by 2011, despite failing peace talks. We have decided to be proactive, to expedite the end of the occupation by working very hard to build positive facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be ignored," Fayyad told the Times of London. "This is our agenda, and we want to pursue it doggedly."