In Iraq, the Justice Ministry has announced a female scientist, * Rihab Rashid Taha*, being held in US custody will soon be released. Hours later the US said the release would not happen. Taha was once nicknamed Dr Germ for her work as a biological weapons scientist. The talk of Taha’s release, came shortly after a resistance group reportedly connected to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi threatened to kill the British contractor Kenneth Bigley if all Iraqi women prisoners are not released from prison. Already this week the group has executed two American contractors, the 52-year—old Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley who would have turned 49 today. A videotape purportedly of Hensley’s killing appeared on the Internet yesterday. The U.S. government has not yet confirmed that Hensley was killed.