Britain has failed in its duty to stop the US from committing "shameful acts" in the treatment of suspects detained during the war on terror, one of America's most respected intellectuals warns today.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, today promised to release 250 Palestinian prisoners as violence continued in Gaza. Even as Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met in Jerusalem, Gaza militants launched rockets, some of which lande

Text and instant messaging may soon cease to be an anonymous method of communication as advances in forensic linguistic research make it possible to identify the sender and also predict the gender and age of the author with some degree of success.

Far from undermining our ability to communicate, teenage text message shorthand represents a "linguistic renaissance", say researchers. Email and mobile phones have bred a whole lexicon of abbreviations, truncated words and acronyms that can be used to

He's the Beirut-based reporter who has met Bin Laden and infuriates Bush's America. Robert Fisk tells Rachel Cooke about a life in the line of fire