Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent
KY Election Officials Arrested, Charged With 'Changing Votes at E-Voting Machines'
Clay County uses the horrible ES&S iVotronic system for all of its votes at the polling place. The iVotronic is a touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) device, offering no evidence, of any kind, that any vote has ever been recorded as per the voter's intent. If the allegations are correct here, there would likely have been no way to discover, via post-election examination of machines or election results, that votes had been manipulated on these machines.
A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments
While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens.
A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.
U.N. rights envoy sees Israeli war crimes in Gaza
Richard Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Geneva Conventions required warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.
More...
Israel's Katsav charged with rape
Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav has been formally charged with rape and other sexual offences.
The charges relate to accusations by a number of female employees who worked for Mr Katsav while he was tourism minister and president.
Dollar slides after US Fed plan
The dollar fell by 3.8% against the euro and by 3.6% against the pound.
The US currency also declined against the yen, the Norwegian krone, the Australian dollar and Brazilian real.
The Fed's decision to buy debt means it is effectively creating new money, leading to concern from investors about the over-supply of dollars.
TVNL Comment: Mission accomplished. What you are watching is wealth un-distribution. The people who make (create out of nothing) the money are taking all our stuff. They will start all over and sell everything back to us. Just like after the Depression.
Blackwater still works for U.S. in Iraq
The U.S. State Department re-signed the security firm formerly known as Blackwater despite Iraq saying it didn't want the company there, records show.
The State Department said $22.2 million deal signed with Blackwater, since renamed Xe, in February was a contract modification concerning aviation work, The Washington Times first reported. The contract expires in September, months after its contract for work in Baghdad was to have run out.
One observer said the deal raises questions about why the United States would want to pay a contractor for work in Iraq if the government won't approve its operating license.
Baghdad's water still undrinkable 6 years after invasion
Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, 36 percent of Baghdad's drinking water is unsafe, according to the Iraqi Environment Ministry - in a good month. In a bad month, it's 90 percent. Cholera broke out last summer, and officials fear another outbreak this year.
The U.S. bombing campaign that forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait damaged the water system and cut the resources needed to fix it.
A decade of international economic sanctions impoverished Iraq, and the water got worse. The U.S.-led invasion six years ago led to wide looting of offices and the abandonment of purification systems.
Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day
The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.
Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.
ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.
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