Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that Iran's policies were against US national interests, adding that Washington will keep existing sanctions against Tehran in force.

In a letter to the Congress of the United States, President Obama informed lawmakers about his decision to make the National Emergency on Iran, which will be expired on March 15, saying that the emergency will continue in effect for one year.

The US Treasury Department reports a budget deficit of 221 billion dollars, the highest in 17 months as spending increased to help revive the ailing economy.

The excess of spending over revenue increased to $221 billion last month, compared to a shortfall of $194 billion in February 2009, according to Treasury Department figures released on Wednesday.

A UN expert on torture has criticized the White House for not investigating torture allegations against the former administration of US President George W. Bush.

"This is my criticism of the Obama administration: There is not enough done to remedy what has been done in the past," Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture said on Wednesday.

Hundreds of demonstrators have held an anti-Israeli rally outside a fundraiser for the Israeli military in New York.

Earlier a Jerusalem Post article had reported that the Friends of the IDF would host a USD 1,000-a-plate dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, to raise funds for the Israeli military.

The number of US female soldiers sexually assaulted by their male counterparts and superiors in Iraq and Afghanistan has jumped by 25%, official US data shows.

According to the latest Pentagon figures over 3,700 women were sexually assaulted in year 2009, which is close to a third of US female veteran population.

A senior official in the United Nations has warned that the growing use of full body scanners at airports breaches individual rights.

Martin Scheinin, the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur, said the scanners are more of a political response to terrorist attacks than a carefully designed security measure.

Congress and the White House are in disagreement over whether March 18 has been set as the deadline for a vote on US President Barack Obama's health care reform bill.

Earlier last week, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the House was set to vote on the sweeping legislation by March 18, the day the US president is scheduled to leave for a week-long visit to Indonesia and Australia.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned that imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program would be a very dangerous step.

Sanctions could isolate Iran so much that tensions would spiral out of control, Lula told AP in an interview on Tuesday.

US Vice President Joe Biden, who is in Israel for 'proximity talks' between Israelis and the Palestinians, has reiterated Washington's commitment to Israel's security.

There is absolutely no space between the two sides in terms of Israel's security, Biden assured in a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

US lawmakers are stepping up efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran after a report revealed that Washington had awarded 107 billion dollars in payments to American and international companies doing business with the country.

"We need to send a strong, clear signal to Iran that until it halts its nuclear ambitions, the dangerous state will be denied the benefits of access to the global economy," Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Monday.