But Britain’s ambassador to Madrid, Peter Torry, insisted the tanker “has nothing to do with Gibraltar” and dismissed suggestions to the contrary as nonsense.. Biographers have known for some time that John F Kennedy was a sick man throughout his short-lived presidency, suffering from chronic back pain and a life-threatening kidney ailment called Addison’s disease. It was not unusual for him to receive as many as eight consecutive injections before news conferences and high-profile events.”The most remarkable thing was the extent to which Kennedy was in pain every day of his presidency,” said Jeffrey Kelman, one of three doctors on a special committee entrusted with the former president’s medical records.. Palestinians appeared to be in danger of being forced out of their homes in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday after Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said land taken over by Jewish settlers in the Old City should be linked with the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba on the edge of town. Israeli tanks have since returned to Hebron.Visiting the scene yesterday, Mr Sharon said Israel must “exploit the opportunity to create new facts in the field and create contiguity” between Kiryat Arba and the settlements inside Hebron.Natan Sharansky, Israel’s Housing Minister, said the government might expand the settlements to join them up. Tens of thousands of Palestinians live between Kiryat Arba and the settlements. Linking them could mean forcing out the Palestinians.Israeli helicopters attacked a training base for Palestinian security forces in Gaza City yesterday with rockets and machine-guns.

No casualties were reported.* Abba Eban, an Israeli diplomat who helped to convince the United Nations to approve the creation of a Jewish state in 1947, died yesterday aged 87 He was Israel’s Foreign Minister between 1966 and 1974.. The biggest protests in three years against the hardliners who rule Iran appeared to have succeeded yesterday, after the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered a death sentence on a reformist academic to be reviewed. Already facing a looming crisis after Mr Khatami presented two bills to parliament to curb the powers of the mullahs to overturn laws approved by parliament, Ayatollah Khamenei recently threatened that if the government could not resolve problems he would have to call on “the forces of the people”.But he backed down when he ordered yesterday’s review, which is a serious setback for hardliners. The fact that he has ordered the sentence to be reviewed means it will probably be overturned.There is no doubting the popular will for reform: Mr Khatami has been elected twice by landslide votes and parliament is dominated by reformers. But hardliners have used supervisory councils they control to overturn new laws of which they disapprove.The judiciary, which they control, has been the most effective weapon of the mullahs. Pro-reform newspapers were closed by the courts and their editors jailed. Mr Khatami’s leading political supporters were imprisoned.Ayatollah Khamenei, the most powerful man in Iran in a post created for the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, identifies with the hardliners.

But this is not the first time he has backed down to prevent the power struggle getting out of hand.The last time students protested like this, in Tehran in 1999, it ended in murder when police and vigilantes stormed a dormitory and attacked students with clubs and iron bars. The vigilantes were mobilised again yesterday when 200 burst into an auditorium, threw chairs and smashed tables. Police did not intervene.But this time it did not work – and that could revitalise the student reform movement. The campuses were at the forefront of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and they have been at the forefront of the reform movement. But they have been heavily suppressed by the hardliners.Student leaders said the protests would now be called off but they issued further demands, for the release of political prisoners and an end to the jailing of reformers.Mr Khatami has threatened to resign if his bills limiting the power of the hardline Council of Guardians to overturn laws are not allowed to pass. Many are calling on him to carry out that threat if necessary.. Security guards on El Al, Israel’s national airline, overpowered a man who tried to hijack a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul last night.