Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates moves for damage control amid revelations that he advocated the use of military action against Iran in a top secret memo. In the classified three-page memorandum, which crept into public view on Sunday, Gates had reportedly warned the White House that it lacks an effective long-term plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program and should therefore come up with new options, including the use of military force.

AntiWar: Gates Memo Sought ‘Military Options’ Against Iran:

The real issue raised by the Gates memo is that the presumptive future status of Iran as “virtual” nuclear power, without actually violating the nuclear NPT in any way or doing anything but continuing their civilian nuclear program, would be sufficient justification for a military attack. This would seem to lower the bar considerably, and would moot the issue of the inability of the Bush and now Obama Administrations to provide any specific evidence of Iranian wrongdoing.

1. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad drew applause at a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran attended by representatives of 60 countries when he called for the destruction of all atomic weapons, starting with those in the U.S. arsenal.

2. Ahmadinejad took particular aim at President Obama's announcement this month of a new U.S. policy that does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and North Korea. "Threatening with nuclear weapons only dishonored the American government officials and more fully exposed their inhumane and aggressive policies," Ahmadinejad said.

3. He demanded an end to what he called the United States' "blind support" for Israel, which he said has 200 atomic warheads but has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ahmadinejad also called for veto power for all members of the United Nations, a right now accorded only to the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Al-ManarTV: Tehran Summit Urges Nuclear Free World

US President Barack Obama grapples with confidence as opinion polls indicate Americans' trust in his administration stands at a near all-time low. A survey from the Pew Research Center released on Sunday shows nearly 80 percent of Americans do not trust Washington, compared with only 22-percent who say they can trust the federal government almost always or most of the time.

This is just my attempt to use statistical analysis to determine which congressman is bought and (if so) by which special interests they are likely bought by. It attempts to do this by looking not only on how much money a congressman receives from an interest, but if he/she also votes with that interest on bills.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place--wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold's care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay's significant role in Harold's life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold's "roommate." The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold's bank accounts to pay for his care. What happened next is even more chilling.

Not sure what's going on? Here's the simple story, and it's the best place to start (updates follow at the end): Link (The bottom line: LA County superior court judges have been caught deciding cases in the County's favor in exchange for being paid illegal "bonuses" of $57,000 per year (in addition to their legal state salaries of $178,000 plus apx. $30,000 in benefits), received from corrupt members of LA County's Board of Supervisors. After they were sued, palms were greased and legislation was secretly passed (Senate Bill SBX2-11) to try to protect them and make it seem as if they had been given retroactive immunity from prosecution. AWIP: Richard I. Fine's Judicial Lynching.

Goldman Sachs is facing a potential backlash in Europe over the fraud case brought against it in the United States, with Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown calling for authorities there to investigate and accusing the investment bank of "moral bankruptcy." Germany also said it would ask for detailed information about the case. Both governments had to bail out banks that lost hundreds of millions of dollars on investments marketed by Goldman, according to the fraud suit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, in Britain's case Royal Bank of Scotland through its acquisition of parts of ABN Amro. The SEC said the Royal Bank of Scotland paid Goldman $841 million to unwind ABN Amro transactions. Royal Bank of Scotland is now 84 percent owned by British taxpayers after being partly nationalized by the government. Germany's IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, an early victim of the credit crunch, lost nearly all its $150 million investment, the SEC said.

Britain joined Germany in calling for a probe of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was suing the company for fraud. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he wants the Financial Services Authority open an inquiry, declaring he was “shocked” at “moral bankruptcy” indicated in the suit. The German financial regulator, Bafin, asked the SEC for details on the suit, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “This is probably one of the worst cases we’ve seen,” Brown said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr program in London today. “It looks as if people were misled about what happened. The banks are still an issue. They are a risk to the economy.” AWIP: Germany Reviews Legal Action Against Goldman After Fraud Case.

The Finnish air force has released images showing the effects of volcanic dust ingestion from inside the engines of a Boeing F-18 Hornet fighter, while it prepares to make inspections on several additional aircraft. Five of the air force’s Hornets were involved in a training exercise on the morning of 15 April, just hours before the imposition of airspace restrictions due to the ash cloud spreading from a major volcanic eruption in Iceland. Canada.com: Finnish fighter jets damaged by volcanic cloud.

Air traffic disruption caused by Iceland's volcanic activity over Europe will make the airlines lose at least $200 million per day, the industry's governing body says. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Sunday that its members would also lose further earnings due to costly contingency plans. "At current levels of disruption, IATA's initial and conservative estimate of the financial impact on airlines is in excess of $200 million per day in lost revenues," Anthony Concil, a spokesperson for the airline association said. Swedish Wire: EU emergency talks after volcano ash havoc. PressTV: Flight bans over ash contested. SignOnSanDiego: Austria reopens airspace, many flights canceled. WGST.com: Pressure builds to get Europe flying again. LA Times: Airlines carry out test flights in Europe's ash-filled skies. Daily Telegraph: Iceland volcano: flights to start again in UK tomorrow.

Climate skeptic, Malcolm Roberts, mounts a lucid rebuttal of the man-made global warming theory in his publication, 'Two Dead Elephants in Parliament.' Among others, Roberts exposes two fatal flaws in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) greenhouse gas theory. Firstly, the IPCC incorrectly relies on the analogy that the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a giant greenhouse, which it doesn’t. Secondly, Roberts then points out that by their own admission, the IPCC admits to ‘low’ or ‘very low’ understanding of 80% of all factors impacting climate. Glass Greenhouse is Not Analogous to Earth's Atmosphere: The evidence provided by Malcolm Roberts appears even more credible in light of the alleged data fraud controversy made public since the Climategate scandal of November 2009. ‘Two Dead Elephants in Parliament’ cogently refutes the greenhouse analogy because it improperly envisions the Earth as having a glass barrier acting like a greenhouse. But in truth, this is a bogus comparison because the properties of glass prohibit convection: the greatest remover of heat from the Earth's surface.

A former US Army specialist, who was part of the same unit that killed Iraqi civilians from a helicopter in 2007, says dehumanization is part of basic US army training. In an interview with Press TV, Josh Steiber explained the three years he spent in the US Army before he asked to be released as a conscientious objector. Steiber said "the dehumanizing of people from other countries" was the main reason that he quit the Army. "As far back as basic training, we were singing songs as we were marching around, joking about killing women and children," he told the Press TV correspondent in Washington. The whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, released a shocking video earlier this month showing US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killing dozens of Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees, in cold blood. AWIP: U.S. pilot seen firing on people in Iraq. AWIP/Chris Floyd: Dead Souls: The Pentagon Plan to Create Remorseless "Warfighters".

[Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland] Volcanologists have warned that previous Eyjafjallajökull eruptions have triggered eruptions of neighbouring Katla, one of the largest volcanoes in Iceland. Katla erupted every 40 to 80 years in the thousand years before the last eruption in 1918. "The eruption is long overdue at Katla and there is quite a bit of anxiety in Iceland about the potential size of eruption," says Dave McGarvie of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.

The larger volcano, beneath the larger Mýrdalsjökull glacier, has a reputation for triggering huge jökulhlaup – the Icelandic term for the sudden release of meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets. Its last eruption generated a peak discharge of 1.6 million cubic metres per second within 4 to 5 hours and moved so much debris that Iceland's coastline was extended by 4 kilometres. A new Katla eruption would be unlikely to kill anyone, because the area is sparsely populated and eruptions are usually preceded by earthquakes that would give plenty of time to evacuate. It would cut the main road link in the south of the island, however. ScientificBlogging: Eyjafjallajökull, Gígjökull, Jökulhlaup, Gosmökkur.