TV News LIES

British troops handed a Pakistani man to US forces in "questionable circumstances" after the invasion of Iraq and appear, in the words of one of the UK's most senior judges, to have "sold the pass" – in other words, lost the possibility of influence – with regard to his future.

The appeal court in December ruled that Yunus Rahmatullah, 29, is being unlawfully detained in the notorious US jail at Bagram in Afghanistan. It ordered a writ of habeas corpus to be issued so he could be freed. Rahmatullah was handed over by the SAS to American forces in Iraq in 2004, from where he was taken to Bagram. He has been there ever since.

About half a million Afghans have fled their homes because of violence and are living in desperate conditions with little help from a government reluctant to deal with the problems, Amnesty International says in a report.

About 400 people a day are being driven to the cities by security worries, according to the report Fleeing War, Finding Misery, on refugees who stay within Afghanistan's borders but struggle to survive in slum-like camps, with little access to water, food, decent shelter, healthcare or education.

Palestinians are being regularly and illegally barred from reaching Dead Sea beaches in the occupied West Bank, according to a Supreme Court petition filed by Israel's leading civil rights organisation.

The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) in Israel is challenging what it says is the frequently imposed ban by the military on Palestinians seeking to swim or relax at beaches in the northern Dead Sea. The salt-saturated sea is the only open water accessible to Palestinians from the otherwise landlocked West Bank.

A week after apologizing for signing a controversial document describing homosexuality as "an illness" that can be "healed," Amsterdam's chief rabbi seems to have retracted his apology.

U.S.-born Aryeh Ralbag was suspended - and then reinstated by Amsterdam's Jewish community - after he apologized for signing the document. Some 180 Orthodox rabbis, educators and therapists signed the declaration, which characterizes homosexuality as an "unacceptable lifestyle choice."

For a monthly fee of $50,000 plus expenses, the U.S. agency offered a tantalizing prospect to the Rwandan government: a burnished image, a sophisticated media campaign – and a chance at “drowning out” those pesky opposition voices on the Web.

It was 2009, and the authoritarian regime in Rwanda was facing mounting criticism of its human-rights record. It was accused of censoring the media, suppressing freedom, shutting down newspapers and creating a climate of fear. So it turned to a public-relations agency, Racepoint Group, that had already polished the image of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Guatemala is taking steps to hold an ex-dictator accountable for genocide committed against Maya-Ixil Indians in the 1980s, even as the United States continues to honor the American president — Ronald Reagan — who helped make that genocide possible.

A Guatemalan judge orderedEfraín Ríos Montt to appear in court on Thursday in what could be the start of a process for trying the former military dictator on genocide charges for authorizing scorched-earth campaigns against Maya-Ixil villages suspected of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas.