US military forces have fired on a vehicle and killed four people and wounded more than a dozen others in Afghanistan's eastern province of Khost. The Afghan government said it has launched a joint investigation into the incident, a Press TV correspondent reported. The US military claimed its forces opened fire after the driver ignored flares and other warnings — including hand signals — to slow down. At least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting last year, an increase of 14 percent from 2008, according to the United Nations.

AWIP/Marc W. Herold: Obama’s Unspoken Trade-Off: Dead US/NATO Occupation Troops versus Dead Afghan Civilians?

Buried in the public relations blather of U.S. Marine legions “liberating” Helmand and Afghan (sham) “elections” as democracy-restored (1) is an unspoken trade-off over who disproportionately dies in America’s modern wars in the Third World. Under George W. Bush, U.S politico-military elites chose to fight the Afghan war with minimal regard for so-called collateral casualties. But the soaring toll of killed Afghan civilians swayed world public opinion and stoked the Afghan resistance as grieved Afghan family members sought revenge. Enter Barack Obama. Faced with the prospect of NATO forces being withdrawn as restless NATO country citizens mobilized against the war, the Obama war machine took the decision to trade-off (mostly) lower-class U.S. “volunteer” soldiers from rural America (2) for fewer rural Afghan civilians killed. The decision had nothing to do with valuing Afghan lives and everything to do with a careful political calculation. In outlying areas such as in the Pakistan borderlands or in isolated rural areas of Afghanistan, Obama’s war machine cavalierly slaughters innocent civilians with the same impunity and at the same rate as his maligned predecessor did as drone strikes in Pakistan and U.S air strikes in Farah and Logar have demonstrated.

While Goldman Sachs contends with the government’s civil fraud charges, an equally serious problem looms: a damaged reputation that may cost it clients. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s bombshell civil fraud charge against Goldman has tarnished the Wall Street bank’s already bruised image, analysts say. It could also hurt its ability to do business in an industry based largely on trust. AWIP: Goldman Sachs faces questions in Europe. WSWS: Fallout from Goldman Sachs indictment spreads.

The Guardian: Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con:

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Regardless of the rhetorical attacks Republicans have lobbed at him for being soft on terrorism, President Barack Obama is continuing much of his predecessor’s policies and strategies for the war on terror. Regardless of the rhetorical attacks Republicans have lobbed at him for being soft on terrorism, President Barack Obama is continuing much of his predecessor’s policies and strategies for the war on terror.

"The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunams of fruit-bearing trees does not fit Israel’s self-image as a society that knows how to “make the desert bloom.” And the contention that the green Arab landscape had been destroyed because of the necessity of adapting the crops to the agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion that it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance of the specific human community that had shaped the landscape in accordance with its needs and preferences."

A Palestinian research centre, specialised in monitoring Israeli violations, revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities destroyed 14000 olive trees in the Palestinian territories during 2009. Such assaults included the uprooting of thousands of olive trees, for the sake of expanding the Israeli settlements, and the burning and cutting of thousands more by settlers.

Scores of Neturei Karta members staged a demonstration in the city's Shabbat Square on Sunday evening to coincide with a ceremony held to honor Israel's dead soldiers. Israeli security forces clashed with the protestors when one of the latter torched an Israeli flag just after the "Memorial Day" siren went off. The man identified as Yehiel Hazan was immediately arrested by undercover police and indicted the next day in an expedited procedure. Disorderly conduct and "desecration" of the Israeli flag are among the offenses attributed to Hazan. The Neturei Karta sect has been a thorn in Tel Aviv's side for its vocal criticism of Israel's policies and its mistreatment of the Palestinians.

A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck in mountains north of Afghanistan's capital early toy, killing at least seven people and injuring 30, officials said. The temblor hit just before 1:00 am (2030 GMT Sunday) in Samangan province, about halfway between Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to the province's deputy governor, Kulam Sakhi Baghlani. Roads and communications are sparse in the area, and casualty reports take time to reach authorities. The quake was felt in Kabul as well as the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Rescuers continued to find survivors buried in debris yesterday even as the death toll climbed to 2,039 on the sixth day since a devastating earthquake hit northwest China's Qinghai Province, leaving another 195 still missing. The magnitude-7.1 quake, which struck the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu last Wednesday, left 12,135 injured, 1,434 of them in a serious condition, a spokesman for the rescue headquarters told a press conference. Two Tibetan women and a small girl were pulled out alive from rubble yesterday.

The last time Mt Eyjafjallajokull erupted, it kept going for more than a year. Then it triggered a more powerful eruption from its neighbouring volcano, Katla. Volcanologists warn that the Icelandic volcano causing havoc over the skies of Europe has a history of long eruptions. The eruption from 1821 to 1823 was followed by a much bigger eruption of Katla in 1823. But New Zealand volcanologist Gill Jolly said that disruption to air travel would last only as long as the weather pushed the ash over Europe.

"History does matter ... if a volcano tends to erupt in short sharp bursts that's what it will tend to do in the future but volcanos are also very unpredictable beasts," she said. A change of wind direction could soon limit the disruption to Iceland and Scandinavia even if the ash kept coming. "The winds have brought it down over Europe - it is quite an unusual wind direction for there. A couple of good depressions ... .should blow it all away." Míla: "Eyjafjallajökull" frá Valahnúk (WEBCAM) + "Hvolsvelli" frá Valahnúk (WEBCAM). Boston.com: Volcano spewing less ash as lava boils up.

Craig Murray: Volcanic Ash - Crying Wolf Again or Real Threat?

Consider the really major government scares of the last few years - things which were supposed to result in the death of millions - which proved to be nothing like the threat alleged. SARS, avian flu and swine flu all come instantly to mind. And what about the most ramped threat of all, the War of Terror, said by Tony Blair to be an "existential threat" and by John Reid to be a threat "On the scale of World War 2".

There is an absolutely clear history of governmental over-exaggeration of threat, but also that governments have no difficulty in finding backing for this fear-mongering from government scientists and both techincal and inter-governmental international bodies. There are always virologists, vulcanologists and security experts willing to go on TV and tell us we are all doomed (oh, and can they get a bigger research grant to combat the threat).

A new Pew poll finds historic levels of unhappiness about the federal government and its role in the lives of average Americans, unrest that is at the foundation of what is shaping up to be a strongly anti-incumbent political year. The current conditions in public opinion amount to a "perfect storm" of disgust/distrust toward government, according to Pew poll director Andy Kohut, who cites "a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials" as the critical factors in this building tempest. AWIP: Poll: US hit by confidence crisis.

Government denials of such abuse are the result of a "head in the sand" attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. They are the latest allegations of British complicity in torture following investigations into MI5 and MI6. Human rights lawyers have assembled details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, electrocution, and whipping with rubber cables. The Guardian: UK accused over Taliban torture risk when handing over "insurgents".

More than three quarters of the U.S. Senate, including 38 Democrats, have signed on to a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly rebuking the Obama Administration for its confrontational stance toward Israel. The letter, backed by the pro-Israel group AIPAC, now has the signatures of 76 Senators

When answering FOI requests, departments prepare a schedule of records listing each document they hold by data and title. Looking at this list (available here) it becomes clear that for some time now the Department of Justice has been proposing the introduction of internet blocking in Ireland – and has been doing this under the radar, without any public consultation or legislative approval. Indeed, it is clear from the list that the Department is not planning on introducing legislation but instead intends to introduce this new form of censorship without any legal basis, based on the now discredited Norwegian and Danish models.

The Police want the power to order dangerous suspects to be injected with a sedative. They claim this would help them deal with people suffering from "Excited Delirium Syndrome" [pure nonsense], a "condition" said to give victims very high levels of strength and aggression. Allowing paramedics to sedate such people could reduce deaths in custody, the Police Federation believes.

A couple have won a legal battle to prevent social workers taking their five-year-old son into care after the authorities claimed that his health had been damaged by a meat-and-dairy-free diet. Social services even tried to get police to investigate the family and threatened to seize the boy’s two older siblings during the two-year ordeal. The parents, Ken and Marie, were forced to represent themselves in court after their legal aid was removed — simply because they had insisted on contesting the case.