Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

A German court is set to review legal action against a media researcher for her remarks on the murder case of Egyptian doctor Marwa el-Sherbini.

A court in the Bavarian city of Erlangen, has set the appeals date for Sabine Schiffer, Head of the Media Responsibility Institute (IMV) for March 24.

As Iran prepares for the Persian New Year, the Judiciary chief said Sunday the events of the past year, which ends March 21st, have made the Islamic Republic stronger than before.

Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said although the year was "bittersweet," its events had paved the ground for the foundation of the revolution, the Iranian Labor News Agency reported.

Unknown gunmen have killed two Americans associated with the US Consulate General in the Mexico's violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, the White House says.

According to a US National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer, the drive-by shooting incident on Saturday that took the lives of an American Consulate employee and her husband, also resulted in the killing of the husband of a Mexican consular employee.

Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of an under-construction mosque in the northern West Bank village of Burin on Sunday, head of the Palestinian Authority's settlement portfolio said.

Ghassan Daghlas explained that the Israeli Civil Administration ordered a stop on construction work at the Salman Al-Farisi Mosque, demanding the demolition of the three-story mosque's already built structures.

Chairman of Iran's Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani calls on Iranian youth and university students to choose a "rational" manner to express their views.

Rafsanjani said Sunday that everybody should be free to express their views, adding that "I will never ask them to remain silent."

Early results from Iraq's general election show former premier Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya Alliance is leading in the northern province of Kirkuk.

Iraqiya garnered 123,862 votes, while the Kurdistania Alliance, which had been expected to secure most of the votes, was second with 120,664 votes, followed by Goran with 20,152 votes.

A report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia links the unending civil strife in the Horn of Africa Nation to the transitional government's “weakness”.

The report, which is set to be presented to the Security Council this week, maintains that the ongoing civil strife in the country was a clear indicator of the government's “weakness” rather than “opposition's strength.”

The liberals and pro-Obama activists across the United States have launched their Coffee Party initiative as a response to the conservative conventional Tea Parties.

The party, which boasts more than 141,000 Facebook fans as of Saturday, said in its statement that "today's coffee houses have been a huge success — both for Coffee Party USA and for democracy. All across the US, Americans from all political sides sat down for civil conversation and, of course, coffee," reported CNN.

Iran's envoy to the Vatican said Sunday diplomatic efforts are underway to secure the release of an Iranian journalist detained in Italy over alleged arms smuggling.

Ali Akbar Naseri, the Iranian ambassador, made the comments in Tehran where he met with Iranian lawmakers to review the case of Hamid Masouminejad.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil is planning to pay an official visit to Tehran in May, an Iranian official said Sunday.

Mir Qassem Momeni, the head of Iran-Brazil Friendship Association, said economy will top President Lula's agenda during his visit to Iran, slated for May 15.