Many of you by now may be aware of government plans to store our medical records in to a national database, dubbed NHS SPINE, this is to comprise of the records of 50 million patients in the UK. These plans are currently being sold to us as a means for the NHS to provide a better service to its patients. As a computer scientist, I do not doubt the advantages of having all this information stored in this form – it is true that databases offer us almost limitless flexibility and efficiency over recording information in a paper format.

The history of Israel has often been read as the saga of a people marked for extinction, who emerged from nazi death camps ­ from Auschwitz, Belcec and Treblinka ­ to establish their own country in 1948. Without taking away anything from the suffering of European Jews, I will insist that this way of thinking about Israel ­ apart from its mythologizing ­ has merit only as a partisan narrative.

Tape obtained by B’Tselem

Fast forward 5 years, Post 9/11, Madrid, Bali, 7/7, and many other events that were subsequently used to portray Muslims as a force of evil in the world, I still scour the papers and see not only has the oppression of Muslims continued and increased in the aforementioned Muslim lands and others including Iraq and Lebanon, but also a new offensive has begun against Muslims living in western societies. Muslims are being demonised, their rights are violated in the name of "anti-terrorism" laws and the media is being used as a weapon to alienate Muslims.

In the spring of 2002, Tom Hurndall made a journey around Europe, which then took him on to Egypt and Jordan. He was young, a soon-to-be student, interested in philosophy - and most interested in the contrast between cultures. It was a formative experience. Indeed, an abiding image for his friends is of Tom, who has died aged 22, on his motorcycle, cigarette in hand, riding into the Egyptian desert. Back in England, he was accepted by Manchester Metropolitan University to study criminology and philosophy.

The controversial ‘clash of civilisations’ theory is the subject of a special one-day conference organised by the GLA on Saturday 20 January.  Some argue that the world is going into an era of conflict and war driven by a 'clash of civilisations'. The Mayor of London’s policies are based on the exact opposite idea — that the multicultural city is part of creating a new concept of world civilisation that corresponds to a globalised world.

As George Bush reflects on his legacy, an urgent question must be pressing in upon him each day. Will I leave here as the man who launched failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost thousands of U.S. dead, to no avail? Or can I yet enter history as the Churchillian statesman who used U.S. power to save America and Israel from the mortal threat of atomic weapons in the hands of the Iranian mullahs? Which legacy would Bush prefer? Or Cheney?

As President Bush finalised plans to send thousands more US troops to Iraq, grim new figures emerged showing that almost 23,000 Iraqi civilians died last year as the sectarian violence ravaging the country reached new heights, above all in Baghdad. According to the latest death count, published by the Iraqi Health Ministry, the slaughter more than tripled between the first and second halves of 2006, from 5,640 to 17,310. In all, the ministry said, 22,950 people died in 2006.

The attack was carried out by an Air Force AC-130, a heavily-armed gunship that has highly effective detection equipment and can work under the cover of darkness. After fierce fighting, Ethiopian and Somali forces said on Monday that they were on the verge of capturing Ras Kamboni, one of the Islamist's last strongholds, where many fighters were dug in. Many other Islamist fighters are in hiding across the country.