Helicopter-borne US marines and Afghan troops backed by British forces swooped down on the Taliban-held town of Marjah in the centre of Helmand province early on Saturday. Thousands of US and Afghan troops are taking part in the offensive, which seeks to undermine support for the Taliban and re-establish government control in the area. The offensive, known as Operation Moshtarak, the Dari word for "together", is the biggest joint Afghan-international offensive of the war. It is the largest combat operation since Barack Obama, the US president, ordered 30,000 US reinforcements to Afghanistan last December. Danish, Estonian and Canadian troops are also involved in the campaign. War crimes will be committed. AntiWar: Family: US Troops Killed Civilians in Latest Afghan Night Raid What Really Happened: WHAT OUR CHILDREN ARE DYING FOR IN AFGHANISTAN. Pacific Free Press: The Killing Long Promised Begun in Marjah.

US forces have shot eight Iraqi people, most of them 'innocent bystanders,' in a raid in a village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi provincial officials say. Iraqi provincial council officials described the US raid as slaughter and demanded financial compensation for the relatives of the victims. Maysan province governor Mohammed Shia al-Sudany told state-run television that eight people were killed, one wounded and 12 arrested in the village 75 km (46 miles) north of the provincial capital of Amara. "What happened this morning was a massacre in every sense of the word. Eight people were killed. Most of them were innocent," Reuters quoted Sudany as saying.

Recently I interviewed professor Tim Ball on my TV show. Ball is a highly qualified and experienced academic with an expertise in historical climatology who rejects most of the current hysteria around climate change and global warming. He is a modest, gentle man who, in spite of his enormous work in the field and the chairing of inquiries and commissions into environmental causes, is now libelled, slandered, abused and threatened for his opinions.

The police in El Salvador have begun an investigation into whether a man suspected of leading a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls is also a legal adviser to the Americans charged with trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without permission. When the judge presiding over the Haitian case learned on Thursday of the investigation in El Salvador, he said he would begin his own inquiry of the adviser, a Dominican man who was in the judge’s chambers days before.

The inquiries are the latest twist in a politically charged case that is unfolding in the middle of an earthquake disaster zone. A lawyer for the group has already been dismissed after being accused of trying to offer bribes to get the 10 Americans out of jail.

The adviser, Jorge Puello, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he had not engaged in any illegal activity in El Salvador and that he had never been in the country. He called it a case of mistaken identity. “I don’t have anything to do with El Salvador,” he said, suggesting that his name was as common in Latin America as John Smith is in the United States.

The Federal Appeals Court in Philadelphia has begun working on a government appeal meant to authorize the law enforcement to obtain cell-phone tracking information of "suspected individuals" from telecommunication companies without having to give a possible reason for their probe. The case, originally filed in a Pennsylvania court in 2008, has stirred media frenzy in the US and reached the Congress over its conflicts with privacy laws, with some Senate democratic members pledging to launch investigations into the matter. Cnet News: Feds push for tracking cell phones.

The rapid mobilization of U.S troops in Haiti was not primarily done for humanitarian reasons; we're likely to see a neoliberal economic plan imposed, at gunpoint if necessary. Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. While both the Pentagon and the United Nations claimed more troops were needed to provide "security and stability" to bring in aid, according to nearly all independent observers in the field, violence was never an issue. Instead, there appears to be cruder motives for the military response. With Haiti’s government "all but invisible" and its repressive security forces collapsed, popular organizations were starting to fill the void. But the Western powers rushing in envision sweatshops and tourism as the foundation of a rebuilt Haiti. This is opposed by the popular organizations, which draw their strength from Haiti’s overwhelmingly poor majority. Thus, if a neoliberal plan is going to be imposed on a devastated Haiti it will be done at gunpoint. Pacific Free Press: The Earthquake and Haiti's Hidden Oil.

When I heard about Binyam Mohamed I felt a certain sense of relief that finally some of the truth was coming out into the public arena. But it's not a revelation to me as it's something I have ­maintained since my release: that the British intelligence services were present at every stage of my ­incarceration and knew what was happening to me and to many other British prisoners. I am a British citizen and the British intelligence services were, as far as I'm concerned, complicit in the torture of their own citizens – the ones they're supposed to protect.

World’s most powerful wind turbine will be seen erecting in Norway. The country plans to increase profitability of costly offshore wind farms with the new technology. Under the project that was announced yesterday, a 162.5 meters tall wind turbine will be constructed by Norwegian company Sway. Claimed to be the world’s largest wind turbine, the main aim behind developing the technology is to obtain higher energy generation for offshore wind power.

The 10-megawatt prototype with a rotor diameter of 145 meters is expected to be nearly three times more powerful than conventional wind turbines. The prototype costing 400 million Norwegian kroner is expected to power nearly 2,000 homes. Aimed to be installed in 2011, this wind turbine will be tested for two years on land in Øygarden, southwestern Norway.

Police forces all over the UK will soon be able to draw on unmanned aircraft from a national fleet, according to Home Office plans. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers, and will be in place in time for the 2012 Olympics.

The most famous female politician in the world today is a vain and sanctimonious woman of boundless ambition and no vision. If anyone had wanted deliberately to undermine the presence of women in public life, they couldn't have chosen better than Sarah Palin.

GERMANY 1940.........ISRAEL 2009

Palestinians confront a group of IDF who have entered Beit Ommar with a list of youths to arrest.
As the situation becomes more heated an IDF soldier uses a live round on a bystander. Hybrid States: IDF rules in Gaza allowed killing those without ‘means or intentions’ to do harm: Now an IDF commander from Gaza confirms what we knew all along. The significance, of course, is that Israel went on to commit war crimes (as it has itself admitted in the case of white phosphorous) and now the political climate is sufficiently charged that this commander is dropping a bombshell (pun intended).