Israel celebrates 60th anniversary

Israel is marking its 60th Independence Day, which began at sunset yesterday, with a great sense of pride but also uncertainty about its future and doubts about prospects for peace with the Palestinians.

This Independence Day is marred by a fresh criminal inquiry of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose legal woes are calling his political survival into question just as he is moving to forge a peace deal with the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.