Tuesday, Dec 10th
Last update03:10:27 AM GMT
SIX American sailors working as prison camp guards in Iraq face courts martial for abusing detainees, some of whom were sealed in a cell with pepper spray.
The US Navy said seven other sailors were given non-judicial punishments over the incident, which took place on May 14 at Camp Bucca, the vast desert camp in southern Iraq where the US military houses 18,000 of its 21,000 prisoners.
A report from the UN's committee on human rights hit out at Britain's terror and libel laws and use of the Offical Secrets Act.
The UN said provisions under the Terrorism Act 2006 covering encouragement of terrorism are too "broad and vague" which could infringe on freedom of expression.
Under the new law people convicted of encouragement of terrorism face up to seven years in jail even if they did not intend to incite violence.
And it said the use of the Official Secrets Act was gagging civil servants from bringing issues of genuine public interest to wider attention even when national security was not at risk.
The Israeli-Georgia connection is estimated to be worth $1 billion, according to a former Georgian ambassador to Israel. The Jewish state and private investors have provided military assistance and advisors to Georgia, where pipelines pump oil destined for Israel. A new pipeline is being built to bypass Russian territory.
A military judge on Thursday barred a Pentagon official from taking part in a second war crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay, providing more ammunition for detainee lawyers who allege that political interference taints the proceedings.
The ruling will fuel defense challenges in other trials at the U.S. Navy base, where a former chief prosecutor and defense lawyers have accused Air Force Brig Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the tribunals, of demanding that certain cases be pursued over others based on political considerations.
Many coastal areas of the world’s oceans are being starved of oxygen at an alarming rate, with vast stretches along the seafloor depleted of it to the point that they can barely sustain marine life, researchers are reporting.
The main culprit, scientists say, is nitrogen-rich nutrients from crop fertilizers that spill into coastal waters by way of rivers and streams.
An army of frenzied Barack Obama acolytes have been busy attempting to smear writer Jerome Corsi, author of Obama Nation, by citing his skepticism towards the official 9/11 story, seemingly ignorant of the fact that such doubts are shared by the majority of Americans.
The New York Times also got in on the act with a sneering attempt to validate the attack on Corsi, which is being supported by Obama’s own campaign staff.
The coordinated smear attempt is obviously born out of the concern that Corsi’s 2004 book, Unfit for Command, basically sank John Kerry’s presidential bid because it was the inspiration behind the Swift Boat Veteran’s For Truth campaign.
Participants in “A Real 9/11 Commission” are invited to review evidence, before it gets filtered by Bush and Cheney or hidden behind the “New Iron Curtain Around the U.S.A., a Media Iron Curtain”. They are invited to see documentaries of footage that was shown on live TV the morning of 9/11/2001. Then these participants are given the opportunity to “Render their Decision”, to participate and be a part of the tabulated results.
Russia said on Friday its forces had seized U.S.-made weapons from a Georgian military base near the town of Senaki, but added there had been no gunfire in Georgia in the past 24 hours.
"Our forces have seized 1,728 arms in Senaki," Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of Russia's General Staff, told a news conference.
There are now more than 400 known dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, compared to 305 in the 1990s, according to study author Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Dead zones occur when excess nutrients—usually nitrogen and phosphorus—from agriculture or the burning of fossil fuels seep into the water system and fertilize blooms of algae along the coast.
As the microscopic plants die and sink to the ocean floor, they feed bacteria, which consume dissolved oxygen from surrounding waters. This limits oxygen availability for bottom-dwelling organisms and the fish that eat them.
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