At least four Americans have been killed in an aircraft crash in southeastern Afghanistan which the Taliban claim to be behind shooting it down. A US Air Force Osprey aircraft went down near the town of Qalat in Zabul province late Thursday. Afghan provincial officials say the helicopter crashed near a village 7 miles from the provincial capital, Qalat. The CV-22 Osprey is a hybrid aircraft with giant rotors at the ends of its wings. It takes off and lands like a helicopter and can tilt the rotors to fly like a fixed-wing turbo-prop plane.

In order to justify the US-led War on Terror, the Bush administration deliberately kept hundreds of 'innocent' terror suspects in the notorious Guantanamo prison camp. According to new documents recently obtained by the Times, former US president George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld refused to free scores of innocent Guantanamo inmates for fear that their release would harm the US-led campaign for war in Iraq and the broader 'War on Terror.' Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, made the revelations in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantanamo detainee Adel Hassan Hamad. Hamad, a Sudanese man who was held at Guantanamo Bay from March 2003 until December 2007, claims that he was tortured by US agents while in custody and yesterday filed a damage dction against a list of American officials. According to Wilkerson, both Cheney and Rumsfeld knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible” to let them walk free. TimesOnline: George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a visit to the US where he was to attend a summit on nuclear security, Israeli officials say. Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal, the officials said. Mr Obama is due to host dozens of world leaders at the two-day conference, which begins in Washington on Monday.

The Bilderberg group will conduct its annual meeting June 3-6 in Sitges, Spain (a small, exclusive resort town about 20 miles from Barcelona) behind a wall of armed guards who will seal off the resort in a futile attempt to keep the event secret. Bilderberg’s meeting will follow that of its brother group, the Trilateral Commission, which will gather at the Four Seasons Resort in Dublin, Ireland May 6-10. Leaders of Bilderberg also attend the Trilateralists’ meeting to map their common agenda. About 300 attend Trilateral Commission meetings, which are conducted behind sealed-off, guarded floors of their hotel. About 100 will attend Bilderberg, which seals off the entire resort behind platoons of uniformed police and private security.

Google condemns the Chinese Government for censoring its results, and Australia for planning to do the same. Meanwhile, its lawyers and security experts have told employees to 'be intentionally vague about whether or not we've given access to end-user accounts,' according to engineer James Tarquin, hinting that Google may be sharing its data with the US government.

The British government plans to collect lifelong records on all residents starting at the age of five, in order to screen for those who might be more likely to commit crimes in the future. In a plan being piloted by Lincolnshire Community Health Services, all parents of children starting school are being sent an 83-question survey that asks detailed questions about their lives and their children's behavior.

On April 7 the United Nations began its annual commemoration of the anniversary of what we know as the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, when as many as one million Rwandans were slaughtered in 100 days. The ceremonies raise several questions for all those who contest the received history of the Rwanda Genocide: How to honor Rwanda’s dead without honoring the lies? And, how to honor six million more Congolese dead, but not commemorated, in the ongoing aftermath of the Rwanda Genocide when Rwanda’s war crossed its western border into neighboring D.R. Congo?

Wikileaks' most compelling aspect is its ability to dig up the raw data behind the scandals it exposes. You can't argue with documents produced by the culprits themselves! That's why 30 minutes of missing footage in their helicopter video matters. You've all seen the edited, 17 minute video of U.S. Apache helicopters killing two Reuters journalists in Iraq. Some of you may have sat through the 39 minute 'Full Version.". But even this video has a full half-hour of footage cut out from the middle. At 31:08, the video fades to black and—according to the time-stamp on the footage—resumes about 30 minutes later to show an additional missile attack

Rodrigo de Almeira had dug for 15 hours through mud and debris, and he looked like it. Auburn mud covered his head, his ripped shirt, his torn jeans and his rubber sandals. When asked yesterday if he had been able to save anyone from the massive landslide in the slum where he lives, he silently shook his head. Of the 145 people confirmed dead from Rio de Janeiro's heaviest rains on record, at least 18 died in his shantytown, Pleasure Hill. "Right there at least 15 people I know died," Almeira said, staring at a massive mound of mud and debris.

At the pace of a fast bicycle, a solar-powered plane took to the skies for its maiden flight yesterday, passing an important test on the way to a historic voyage around the world - a journey that would not use a drop of fuel. The Solar Impulse lifted off from a military airport in Switzerland at a speed no faster than 45km/h after briefly accelerating down the runway. It slowly gained altitude as villagers watched from the nearest hills. "There has never been an airplane of that kind that could fly - never an airplane so big, so light, using so little energy. So there were huge question marks for us," said Bertrand Piccard, who is leading the project. In 1999, he co-piloted the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight.

Two million years after he died in a deep death-shaft cave along with a sabre-toothed cat, a horse, wild dog, hyena and other animals, the remains of a human-like juvenile male - potentially a missing link in the evolutionary transition of apes to humans, and estimated to have been nine years old when he died - have been discovered by a boy of the same age. ABC News: Remains of new species of early human have been found in South Africa at the base of what was once a network of underground caves, described by scientists as a "death trap".

Belostomatidae is a family of insects better known as "giant water bugs" or "toe-biters." Most species in the Belostomatidae family are relatively large and nearly reaching the dimensions) of some of the larger beetles in the world. All of them are fierce predators which stalk, capture and feed on aquatic crustaceans, fish and amphibians. They often lie motionless at the bottom of a body of water, attached to various objects, where they wait for prey to come near. They then strike, injecting a powerful digestive saliva and suck out the liquefied remains. Yum! Their bite is considered one of the most painful that can be inflicted by any insect. The saliva liquefies muscle tissue. In rare instances, their bite can do permanent damage to humans. So don't get drunk and pass out with your face near one of these guys. Occasionally when encountered by a larger predator, such as a human, they have been known to "play dead" and emit a fluid from their anus to make them look less appetizing.