Julian Assange wants the Pentagon’s help. His secretive WikiLeaks website tells The Daily Beast it is making an urgent request to the Defense Department for help in reviewing 15,000 still-secret American military reports to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be endangered when the website makes the reports public.
The request follows statements of regret from Assange and others at WikiLeaks that the site may have unintentionally endangered Afghan civilians with its first massive document dump—72,000 leaked classified American military reports from Afghanistan that revealed the names and home villages of hundreds of local informants who cooperated with American forces there.
Wikileaks wants Pentagon’s aid in reviewing a new batch of U.S. military secrets
GOP House Members Are Setting the Stage for Investigations of Obama
President Barack Obama has stubbornly taken a "look forward, not backwards" philosophy to possible criminal acts during the Bush administration. But Republicans are sending signals that they will not take such an approach if they are able to win back the U.S. House of Reprsentatives in the November elections.
U.S. group launches campaign against West Bank settlement construction
Americans for Peace Now, a sister group to the dovish Israeli group Peace Now, has announced the launching a unique campaign on Monday, meant to sway public opinion against containing settlement construction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the construction freeze West Bank settlements, due to expire on September 26, in last November, after months of pressure from the Obama administration, and following a Palestinian refusal to begin talks without one.
Well spilled 4.9M barrels, new numbers reveal
The blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico gushed even more oil than the worst case scenario envisioned, a whopping total of 4.9 million barrels, or 205.8 million gallons, according to a new analysis by government scientists charged with estimating the flow rate.
BP's Macondo well spewed 62,000 barrels of oil a day initially, and as the reservoir gradually depleted itself the flow eased to 53,000 barrels a day until the well was finally capped and sealed on July 15, according to scientists in the Flow Rate Technical Group, supervised by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy.
SEC probes BP as it poised to "kill" Gulf well
U.S. regulators were investigating BP Plc on Monday for possible insider trading related to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a move that may hurt the energy giant's efforts to restore investor confidence.
Details of the probe emerged as BP prepared to deliver the first of what it hopes will be two knockout blows to "kill" its ruptured Macondo well, 105 days after it started gushing out millions of gallons of oil, causing an environmental disaster.
Immigration memo may be a break for immigrants
An internal memo prepared for the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it is possible to provide green cards or delay deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are now living and working in the United States without papers or permanent residence.
The recent memo to USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas, released in Washington late Thursday, said one group that could receive green cards are the almost 400,000 current holders of Temporary Protected Status who include Salvadorans, Haitians, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.
Israel Cannot Handle Its Past
Israel cannot handle its past. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu decided this week to extend from 50 to 70 years the time state archives remain classified. Israel realizes that it has too much to hide.
Haaretz reported this week (in its Hebrew edition only), that the first documents will be released to the public only in 2018 (1948+70). Many of the documents that are stored in the archive are relevant to the history of the first 20 years of the Jewish state: the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, the massacres in Deir Yassin, Tantura and many others, the 1956 Suez conflict, the Israeli nuclear project and so on. Disclosing such documents may bring to light some facts that could “shatter myths and cause embarrassment to many entities and individuals” said the Israeli paper. I guess that president Shimon Peres is one of those ‘many individuals’.
More than 70 countries make being gay a crime
Acomprehensive study of global lesbian, bisexual and gay rights, seen by The Independent on Sunday, reveals the brutal – and, in many instances, fatal – price people pay around the globe for their sexuality.
The research, which was conducted by the charity network the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), shows that 76 countries still prosecute people on the grounds of their sexual orientation – seven of which punish same-sex acts with death.
Afghanistan: The unsustainable in pursuit of the unbeatable
It is, especially for the Afghan people, a war without end, and one to add to their history of other fruitless conflicts. An Independent on Sunday assessment, using records kept by Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire and the UN, puts the civilians killed as a direct result of the war since 2001 at 13,746.
Last year, the toll of those who died directly or indirectly was estimated by another US academic to be as high as 32,000.
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