Secret papers withheld by Chilcot inquiry reveal Foreign Office fears over invasion. An invasion of Iraq was discussed within the Government more than two years before military action was taken – with Foreign Office mandarins warning that an invasion would be illegal, that it would claim "considerable casualties" and could lead to the breakdown of Iraq. A policy of "regime overthrow" is proposed, but roundly condemned. In an eerily portentous assessment of the consequences of taking military action, it states: "Such a policy would command no useful international support. An overt attempt to be successful would require a massive military effort, probably including a land invasion: this would risk considerable casualties and, possibly, extreme last-ditch acts of deterrence or defiance by Saddam."

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said. Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.

For almost ten years Harry Markopolos tried, and failed, to alert regulators and investors of Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. In his new book “No One Would Listen”, Markopolos writes of how he and a group of colleagues spent years gathering information about Madoff and sending it to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Initially they hoped it would level the playing field by eliminating a successful rival they believed was engaged in fraud, later it became a mission to bring down a man they believed posed a risk to the entire financial system.

A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding U.S. officials and raising concerns about the money's origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal. But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile illegal government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving US organized opium trade. And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some of the cash leaving Kabul has been smuggled overland from Pakistan.

The serviceman, from 3 Rifles Battle Group, was killed by small arms fire near Sangin, Helmand Province, said the Ministry of Defence. His death was not connected to Operation Mushtarak, a major US-led assault to clear Taliban insurgents resisting Afghans out of towns in Helmand, said officials. AntiWar: At Least Six NATO Troops Killed in Afghanistan.

Germany’s highest court overturned a two-year-old anti-terrorism law that requires telecommunications providers such as Deutsche Telekom AG to store Internet and phone data for six months, saying the rules violate privacy. The law, which came into effect in December 2007 during Chancellor Angela Merkel’s previous government, calls for phone companies to collect data on phone calls, Internet surfing and text messaging for potential use in criminal or terrorist investigations. The Federal Constitutional Court found that while the storing of communications data isn’t automatically unconstitutional, the law doesn’t sufficiently clarify what the information will be used for or provide for transparency.

Universities in over 40 cities across the world have begun to observe Israeli Apartheid Week in condemnation of the Zionist regime's suppression of the Palestinians. During Israeli Apartheid Week, which kicked off on Monday, the universities will hold protests and host related speeches, cultural performances, and movie screenings. The people who first proposed holding Israeli Apartheid Week in 2005 say it has become a very important international event for expressing solidarity with the Palestinians, supporting the opponents of Israeli apartheid across the globe, and reinforcing the call for sanctions to be imposed on Israel.

Iran's foreign minister says former US President George W. Bush's so-called war on terror has actually served as a guise for training terrorists. "Does fighting terrorism mean supporting professional killers?" Manouchehr Mottaki asked at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast who accompanied him on the trip. "The US must explain why it has scheduled a meting with AbdolMalek Rigi. The US must explain what AbdolMalek Rigi was doing at the US base in Afghanistan and why he was going to meet high-ranking US officials at the US Manas base near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek," he added. Last week, Iranian security forces captured ringleader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi, while he was on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan. PressTV: Iran summons Kyrgyz envoy over Rigi arrest remarks. AWIP: Iran captures top CIA agents, and break up US terrorist networks in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. AWIP/Webster Tarpley: The Battle for Baluchistan: Iran Nabs Top NATO Terrorist with Help from Pakistan.

In the wake of last week's "bipartisan summit" -- which proved that no Republicans in Congress will vote for health care reform -- an avalanche of Democratic senators are announcing today that they will vote YES for the public health insurance option if it is brought up in "reconciliation." Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are the latest to announce their support, raising the number of senators on record from 0 to 30 in under 2 weeks. LA Times: The question everyone should be asking: What do we need health insurers for anyway?

Paul Joseph Watson has reported on the 'Prison Planet' website that Microsoft founder Bill Gates told a recent TED conference that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2 emissions. Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Dick Cheney must be smiling from ear to ear, he and his conservative, war mongering neo-cons have nearly accomplished one of their goals, giving Iraq to Ahmad Chalabi. So what if it has cost a TRILLION dollars and untold lives AND LIES and misery? Wasn’t Cheney’s friend and confident, Chalabi worth it? Wasn’t that one of the hefty goals of Project for the New American Century? To get rid of Saddam Hussein and put Chalabi in charge!

We've all had that boyhood fantasy of hopping into a Magnum P.I.-style cruiser and blasting through exotic locales (well, we did at least...). In reality, though, rolling down foreign roadways may prove to be more problematic than you'd imagine. Here's a list of the 10 deadliest destinations to drive in, according to a recent report by the World Health Organization.

A few suggestions for anxious parents who typically hover on the edge of the playground with a first aid kit: Let your child lick a 9-volt battery, just to see what happens. Encourage them try to drive a nail. And by all means, let them play with fire.