Wednesday, Nov 05th
Last update10:41:16 AM GMT
As CIA director in 2004, George Tenet terminated a secret program to develop hit teams to kill al-Qaida leaders, but his successors resurrected the plan, according to former intelligence officials.
Tenet ended the program because the agency could not work out its practical details, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.
We're on the map, but the wrong map: In 2008 Israel ranked eighth in the world's counterfeit pharmaceuticals trade, with 78 reported cases of fake drugs worth up to NIS 100 million. And those were only the cases that were caught.
The figures, based on data from the World Health Organization, Health Ministry and drug safety watchdogs, were released at a conference on drug counterfeiting last week, sponsored by the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Pharma Israel. But clearly, the figures reveal only part of the problem, as they reflect only fake drugs that were caught.
A prominent human rights worker who for a decade documented kidnappings and killings in Chechnya was snatched outside her home on Wednesday and found a few hours later near a highway, dead of gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
Natalya Estemirova, 50, had become a central source of information on abuses in Chechnya, whose separatist war has given way to a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.
Soldiers from a Colorado unit accused in nearly a dozen slayings since returning home - including a couple gunned down as they put up a garage sale sign - could be showing a hostility fueled by intense combat in Iraq, where the troops suffered heavy losses and told of witnessing war crimes, the military said Wednesday.
Seven weeks ago Patrick Fitzgerald, the most intimidating Federal prosecutor in America, sent my publisher (HarperCollins) and me a letter threatening to sue us for libel if Triple Cross, a book I wrote critical of his anti-terrorism track record, was published.
Yesterday marked the four week anniversary of the book’s publication date, and although it’s been out for a month, we’re still waiting for his summons and complaint.
The Israel Defense Forces used Palestinians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead last January despite a 2005 High Court ruling outlawing the practice, a Golani brigade soldier says. He says he did not see Palestinians being used as human shields but was told by his commanders that this occurred.
The soldier says his unit employed a variation of the practice, the so-called "neighbor procedure," when it checked homes for Palestinian militants.
The Precautionary Principle should/must be in place for all experimental drugs, genetically modified organisms, untested and/or poorly tested chemicals, and anything else that has the potential of causing grave harm BEFORE they are put on the market. This is not the reality.
And so the charade begins once again. A state ripped apart by war, poverty and corruption promises to hold elections, and optimistic Western leaders pump in money and troops in a bid to ensure a window of comparative peace for the ballot. The battered populace votes, the results are declared and everyone proclaims the triumph of democracy in another land.
The picture that emerges from the testimonies, which have been seen by The Independent, is one of massive fire power to cover advances and rules of engagement that were calculated to ensure, in the words attributed to one battalion commander, that "not a hair will fall of a soldier of mine. I am not willing to allow a soldier of mine to risk himself by hesitating. If you are not sure, shoot."
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