"Two....soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us, (took) us to two separate jeeps, (took) me to the settlement and put me in a corner, (put) a dog next to me," refused to let him use the bathroom, threatened to hold him forever, wouldn't let him call his mother, blindfolded him, and held him until his father managed to get him late at night.

He was terrified, held for 10 hours, traumatized by the incident, and unable to sleep, "worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back" and do it again, which they did, and do repeatedly to hundreds of Palestinian youths, their siblings, parents and friends, guilty of being Palestinian on land Israel wants to make historic Palestine an ethnically pure Jewish state.

The action was taken "for security reasons" including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday.

Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam's holiest sites, fearing unrest.

The moves come after violent clashes at the site, which is also holy to Jews, during last week's Muslim prayers, and fresh tensions over Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.

Consumer advocates and environmentalists are outraged that the government resold products it deemed unsafe to live in, saying warning stickers attached to the units will not keep people from misusing them.

Besides formaldehyde, units may be plagued by mold, mildew and propane gas leaks, FEMA acknowledged.

"Proceed with caution, extreme caution, if you are tempted to respond to what appears to be an attractive offer for a travel trailer or manufactured home," Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wrote in a consumer alert.

Republicans now expect Democrats to pass health care through the House with a trick only Capitol Hill could dream up: approving the Senate bill without voting on it.

Democrats will vote on a separate bill that includes language stating that the original Senate bill is “deemed passed.”

So by voting for the first bill — a reconciliation measure to fix certain things in the Senate bill — that will automatically pass the second bill — the original Senate bill — without a separate roll call taking place.

It’s called the “Slaughter Solution” (prepare for a weekend of endless TV gabbing about it).

The current global financial and economic crisis once again confirms the fact that during economic upheavals the rich get richer and the poor become even more destitute.

On Thursday, Forbes Magazine carried an updated list of the world's wealthiest people.

As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011 and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. The number of Russian billionaires almost doubled, from 32 to 62.

A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter and growing shorter wings.

This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures.

Based on Biden's reaction, it seems that he (and, presumably, his boss) has decided that it is better to leave with a few sour grapes than to quarrel with the vineyard guard. In his speech at Tel Aviv University, he said he appreciated Netanyahu's pledge that there would be no recurrence. But what exactly does that mean? That next time he comes, the Planning and Building Committee will be asked to defer discussion of similar plans until the honored guest has left? With the media storm dying down, Netanyahu can breathe a sigh of relief.

In a sense, the uproar actually helped him: To wipe the spit off his face, Biden had to say it was only rain. Therefore, he lauded Netanyahu's assertion that actual construction in Ramat Shlomo would begin only in another several years.

A Toyota Prius owner who claims his hybrid malfunctioned, sending him speeding out of control down a Southern California freeway, is being accused of staging the so-called 'runaway' incident.

Jim Sikes called 911 on Monday afternoon and said his accelerator pedal of his blue 2008 Toyota Prius was stuck, pushing his car to speeds above 90 miles per hour on Interstate 8 in San Diego County.

A California Highway Patrol officer helped bring the vehicle to a safe stop.

Bloggers and radio listeners are now wondering whether this is a hoax, done for the publicity or the money.

Utah's House majority leader said late Thursday he paid a woman $150,000 to keep silent about going nude "hot-tubbing" with her when she was minor a quarter century ago.

Other in-flight wifi uses were OK, since terrorist don't tweet or email.

Judge Manfred Delong shut down the trial of Splitting The Sky versus George W. Bush on the second day of proceedings. The court denied STS his frequently emphasized request to have two witnesses give evidence in his defense. Those witnesses were myself and Cynthia McKinney. The trial came to an end just as Ms. McKinney arrived in Calgary from London.

AGAINST allowing Americans to support murder!!

The `degradable` plastic bags handed out in their millions by Tesco are more harmful than those they have replaced, a Government study has found.

A friend in Cairo mentioned that he had a laptop and some CDs that were intended for a friend of his in Palestinian Rafah. He knew that I planned to go to al-Arish, and if I could make it past the checkpoints, to Egyptian Rafah, and asked if I could arrange to have the items smuggled to Gaza. I agreed; the siege is an expression of moral bankruptcy and responsible human beings are compelled to undermine the regime in every way. Furthermore, the Palestinians of Gaza have very few options when it comes to receiving basic goods.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

A MOTHER is calling for three teachers to be suspended after her daughter and her classmates were subjected to a “cruel and unethical” Holocaust role play game.

Pupils at St Hilary’s Primary were “hysterical” after deputy head teacher Elizabeth McGlynn segregated nine youngsters in Gerry Blair’s P7 class and told them they were being taken away from their families.

The FBI says that the anthrax case is closed, and that they have proved that Dr. Bruce Ivins did it.

But Congress is not convinced.

Russia's envoy to NATO has sharply criticized the alliance's shift away from fighting drug trafficking in Afghanistan, saying the resulting surge in heroin smuggling is endangering Russia's national security.

In an interview late Thursday, Dmitry Rogozin also highlighted the lack of cohesion within NATO, saying Moscow is worried about declining public support in Europe for the war.

"(Russia) is losing 30,000 lives a year to the Afghan drug trade, and a million people are addicts," Rogozin said. "This is an undeclared war against our country."

Israel is moving to amend the country's planning procedures on sensitive political decisions following an embarrassing diplomatic flap during a visit this week by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a Cabinet minister said Friday.

Both Biden and the Palestinians sharply condemned the Israeli settlement decision.

Netanyahu apologized for the timing, though not the substance, of the announcement.

Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.

The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Muehleck said that no one had yet been arrested or charged in connection with the raid. Reached shortly before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, he declined to provide other details and would not say whether THC Ministry director and founder Roger Christie had been detained.

As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

Thousands of French protesters have rallied against the import of Israeli goods produced in Palestinian territories.

Monday's demonstration comes less then a month after the European Union's Court of Justice ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli.

The housing market is facing swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but have yet to lose their homes, and this is threatening a new wave of foreclosures that could hit just as the real estate market has begun to stabilize.

Wall Street was supposed to become the capital of a global carbon trading market worth a trillion dollars a year but now many who thought green trading desks would be the next big thing are fearing the pink slip.

Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

click on image to enlarge

The next Intifada could see the Palestinian people in struggle not only against Israel but also against the Palestinian Authority, writes Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah

It has been reported in Ha’aretz that President Obama submitted a letter of commitment to the Palestinian side to get these indirect “proximity talks” off the ground. The letter notes, “Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.” This is not the first time a US administration has used its creativity in creating new terminology to deal with the conflict instead of relying on the time-tested body of international law that provides the keys to real progress. In the past, in place of “independent state” the US has attached such adjectives to the word “state” as “contiguous,” “viable,” “economically viable,” “territorial continuity,” and the like.

It was hard to say goodbye to my wife and friends in the US. The last night was very meaningful as we were in New York seeing the performance of Najla Said, daughter of my friend and mentor, the late Professor Edward Said (for an earlier statement from Najla.

Deadlocked jurors in the Hal Turner hate blogger case were excused late Wednesday after deliberating two days. It’s the second mistrial in the government’s case to prosecute the New Jersey man for allegedly threatening to kill judges.

Three families from our area are among 50 now suing North Shore Hospital and two of its prominent neurosurgeons.

Leanne Vercher and her two daughters are still feeling debilitating effect of spinal surgery.

"They had vague back pain and now the pain is just indescribable," Vercher said.

As William K. Black said a year ago, the government's entire strategy now - as in the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").

Paul Krugman and others pointed out that Geithner has been trying to artificially prop up asset prices, but that such a strategy cannot succeed.

As I've pointed out numerous times, the stress tests were a total sham, with a pre-ordained passing grade for the banks.

As I've noted repeatedly over the last couple of years, the government has allowed the giant banks to hide their liabilities and maintain dizzying amounts of leverage by using off-balance-sheet gimmicks:

California is doomed for two simple but profound reasons: the cost structure is too high for most businesses to survive, and a boom-dependent economy.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued state prison officials and a private company Thursday, claiming violence is so rampant at the Idaho Correctional Center that it's known as "gladiator school" among inmates.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit against Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America in U.S. District Court in Boise.

A New Zealand anti-whaling activist was arrested in Japan Friday after a harpoon ship he boarded in Antarctic waters last month docked in Tokyo, greeted by police and nationalist protesters.

Peter Bethune, of the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), was engaged in months of high-seas clashes with the Japanese whaling fleet but has been in custody since mid-February when he boarded the Shonan Maru II.

About 20 angry nationalist protesters with Rising Sun flags, watched over by riot police, lined the pier and shouted through megaphones: "Step forward Pete Bethune! Apologise to the Japanese people! We will tear you apart!"

For years, "JihadJane" had been a joke to those who kept tabs on her online.

She flirted with people who commented on the extremist videos she posted on YouTube.

When Web-monitoring groups learned her true identity, they laughed at photos of Colleen R. LaRose, the Muslim sympathizer from Montgomery County, quaffing beer in photos on her MySpace page.

While the trial was initially cast as a First Amendment case, Mr. Turner’s background as a paid confidential informant for the F.B.I. became a larger issue at trial. The government had used him for years as an informant for intelligence on members of white supremacist groups, among whom he had a devoted following.

Authorities had said a surveillance camera outside the FBI's Middletown Mall office was aimed at temporary changing rooms and zoomed in on girls as they tried on prom gowns at a charity event.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Blake Robbins, claimed that he was reprimanded by an assistant principal for "improper behavior in his home" that was captured by the laptop camera.

Robbins told reporters, the Inquirer says, that the school official mistook Mike & Ike candies he was holding for illegal pills, and accused him of selling drugs.

The Washington Post reports that lawyers for Robbins plan to ask a federal court to stop the school from erasing any images captured by the Web cams.

DOES OUR GOVERNMENT RESPECT HUMAN LIFE?

The following list comes from declassified documents, news reports, videos, the National Archives, and from the final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/radiation/

It turns out that Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was a volunteer in mind-control experiments sponsored by the CIA at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Michael Mello, author of the recently published book, "The United States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski," notes that at some point in his Harvard years--1958 to 1962--Kaczynski agreed to be the subject of "a psychological experiment." Mello identifies the chief researcher for these only as a lieutenant colonel in World War II, working for the CIA's predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. In fact, the man experimenting on the young Kaczynski was Dr. Henry Murray, who died in 1988.

Their stories are a staple of conspiracy culture: broken men, suffering hallucinations and near-total amnesia, who say they are victims of secret government mind-control experiments. Think Liev Schreiber in The Manchurian Candidate or Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Journalists are a favorite target for the paranoid delusions of this population. So is Gordon Erspamer—and the San Francisco lawyer's latest case isn't helping him to fend off the tinfoil-hat crowd. He has filed suit against the CIA and the US Army on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and six former American soldiers who claim they are the real thing: survivors of classified government tests conducted at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland between 1950 and 1975. "I get a lot of calls," he says.

The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

A group of primary schoolchildren were left traumatised after their teacher told them they were to be taken away from their families during a bizarre Holocaust classroom 'game'.

Pupils became hysterical after a number of them were separated and told they were being sent away or might end up in an orphanage.

THE new swine flu vaccine ­contains a deadly brain toxin linked to autism, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis.

Mercury, a vaccine preservative, was withdrawn from childhood jabs five years ago after evidence linked it to brain damage.

However, the Sunday Express has discovered the pandemic ­vaccine, to be rolled out across the country within weeks, contains the heavy metal.

A senior army doctor has provided the first official support for claims that the cocktail of vaccines given to soldiers before the 1991 war in Iraq probably caused illnesses that became known as Gulf war syndrome, it was reported today.

For 13 years, the MoD has denied that vaccines could be blamed for the illnesses. Independent research has also failed to find conclusive proof of a common link between the vaccines and a Gulf war-related syndrome.

However, Lieutenant Colonel Graham Howe, clinical director of psychiatry with the British forces health service in Germany, has made a link between the vaccines and illnesses associated with claims of Gulf war syndrome.

American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares.

Elvis died in 1977.

But that didn’t prevent hackers from inserting his digital photo into a U.K. passport, and using it at a self-service passport machine at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to gain clearance to board a plane.

You have an entity that took on too much debt. It cooked its books. It failed to get its fiscal house in order. Its “executives” repeatedly refused to take the necessary steps to rein in risk.

But when the LOGICAL consequences occurred — investors began dumping its debt and equities … and driving up the cost of insuring against default risk — what happened? Did officials listen to the message of the markets, apologize, find religion, and try to right the ship?

Heck no! They blamed the messenger.

The United States provided some $200 million to fund a top secret laboratory and assembly line in Israel which developed and produced a vaccine for anthrax, according to the Internet news site Intelligence Online.

The exact location of the lab, which is reported to be run by the Nes Tziona-based Israel Institute for Biological Research, was not mentioned in the report.

The Intelligence Online story focused on the legal battle being waged by Israel Defense Forces soldiers who took part in an army-run test of the anthrax vaccine 13 years ago.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides are some of the additional catastrophes that climate change and its rising sea levels and melting glaciers could bring, a geologist says.