With NATO already urging civilians to “stay put” during the invasion of the Marjah region of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, the US is making it virtually impossible for anyone to leave, as Marines have now effectively circled the area. The units are said to be in foxholes all along the edge of the town, Taliban forces have been firing mortars at the troops as officials vow a quick victory and the installation of a Karzai appointee as the new governor. No date has been set for the start of the invasion, but officials say it will be the single largest operation in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. Officials are also saying that after the month of lead time, it is the “largest minefield that NATO has ever faced.” AWIP/The WE!: Fallujah: Dresden in Iraq.

The damage done to Israel's image by allegations of Gaza war crimes in a United Nations report has ignited a battle between right and left-wing advocacy groups over freedom of expression in the Jewish state. An Israeli civil rights group is accused of aiding South African jurist Richard Goldstone's inquiry into the war last year, and there are calls for an investigation by parliament. Naomi Chazan, president of the New Israel Fund which backs civil rights groups, has been vilified by rightists who accuse her of aiding Goldstone, a Jew who has been called a "traitor."

As we have seen in the blizzards in Washington and New York 100s of crews of snowploughs and front-end loaders work feverishly to open roads, airports and railway tracks. But, what if you lived in the Cheyenne Sioux Indian Reservation of South Dakota and there were only three snowploughs to clear an area nearly the size of Connecticut?

Most of the reservation is covered with rural 2-lane asphalt and dirt roads that even this meagre snow removal equipment cannot reach because of the drifts. Their only hope is for the temperature to rise above freezing. If 8,000 telephone poles snapped in Potomac, Westchester, or Greenwich, crews would work 24/7 to restore power. Yet many in the Cheyenne Sioux Reservation have been without power or heat for more than five days. They daily brave temperatures and wind chills of -19◦. “Many people have died, not only of exposure but of complications from sugar diabetes,” said Russell Means, Chairman of the Lakota Republic. “Diabetes is an epidemic on Indian Reservations,” he continued “and in rural areas of Sioux country the reservations are very isolated.”

Five US citizens held in Pakistan on suspicion of plotting attacks have alleged that US officials directed their torture to extract confessions. The US embassy in Islamabad has dismissed the claims as "baseless". The men, who are being held in the city of Sargodha, earlier stated in court that they had been tortured by the Pakistani authorities. They deny claims they were plotting attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan and had sought links with extremists.

Global sea level and Earth’s climate are closely linked. Using speleothem encrustations from coastal caves on the island of Mallorca, we determined that western Mediterranean relative sea level was ~1 meter above modern sea level ~81,000 years ago during marine isotope stage (MIS) 5a. Although our findings seemingly conflict with the eustatic sea-level curve of far-field sites, they corroborate an alternative view that MIS 5a was at least as ice-free as the present, and they challenge the prevailing view of MIS 5 sea-level history and certain facets of ice-age theory.

Business & Media Institute: Bill Nye 'The Science Guy': Denying Climate Change 'Unpatriotic,' 'Inappropriate' -Video. A pretty wacky guy, this Bill Nye, and Rachel Maddow panders to him.

n decisively disproven. CO2 is not a driver of temperature. And it certainly wasn't so in the past. AGW is not only a sub-prime science; it has become a religion. This is problematic in itself. But serious environmental issues are being left by the wayside and this is the real problem that we have.

Israel has rejected United Nations demands of an independent probe into its last year war on the Gaza Strip which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians. A senior official in the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday that the report Israel gave UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the investigations it is conducting into Operation Cast Lead earlier this month is sufficient. "Sufficient"? -This is the way war criminals and sociopaths talk.

"An explosion occurred at a joint Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) / International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) combat outpost in Paktiya province, eastern Afghanistan this evening," the US military said in a statement. "Several ISAF service members from the United States were injured. There were no reported fatalities to ISAF or ANSF personnel," AFP quoted the statement as saying. On Sunday, two British soldiers were killed as a result of a roadside bomb attack near Sangin in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province. CBS News: Afghan Suicide Bomber Injures 5 Americans. Rebel Reports: Pentagon Releases Names of Soldiers Killed in PAKISTAN.

The moment during last weekend’s Tea Klux Klan conclave in Nashville when, on live television, Sarah Palin stole a glance at crib notes on her palm of her own talking points has become a classic — right up there with George Bush I’s impatient check of his watch during his 1992 presidential debate with Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. We have posted the gallery of photos of Palin and her teleprompters on Facebook, which you can see by clicking here.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS: Another Senate Sell-Out on the Horizon: How the 59-Vote Majority Plans to Ignore the 72% 'Minority' on Jobs.

The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been. It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones, but their cell-phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times—either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.

On Wednesday, Virginia's House of Delegates passed a bill that forbids companies from forcing their employees to be implanted with tracking devices, a move likely to be applauded by civil libertarians. But Virginia state Delegate Mark Cole's reasons for proposing the law have as much to do with the Book of Revelation as they do with concerns over privacy in the digital age.

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist." Raw Story: Majority in unscientific FOXNews.com poll pegs Tea Party movement ‘racist’.

China Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu on Friday fiercely protested against the planned meeting. "China firmly opposes the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and US leaders' contacting with him," Xinhua quoted Ma as saying. "We urge the US side to fully understand the high sensitivity of Tibet-related issues, honor its commitment to recognizing Tibet as part of China and opposing "Tibet independence."

The U.S. has warned its relationship with Britain has been harmed by the court ruling that revealed Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed was tortured at the behest of American authorities. The White House expressed dismay after the Government lost its bid to suppress the documents which showed MI5 knew about the treatment of Mohamed. It declared that it was 'deeply disappointed' by the ruling and warned it would make intelligence sharing with Britain more difficult.

The European Parliament has blocked a key agreement that allows the United States to monitor Europeans' bank transactions - angering Washington. The US called the decision a "setback for EU-US counter-terror co-operation". Raw Story: European Union denies US snoops access to electronic banking data.