Amid concerns about the continuing presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranian president advises the White House to withdraw its troops from the region. Addressing a large crowd in Iran's southwestern city of Yasuj on Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the era of occupation and plundering other nation's national resources is over. "You'd better listen to the Iranian nations' advice: Abandon your stubbornness; live with other nations based on justice and friendship, like human beings; leave the region; leave Afghanistan; leave Iraq; withdraw to your borders and mind your own business," the president said.

Up to 104 people have been killed in a plane crash in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Libya's Afriqiyah Airways said its Airbus-330 arriving from South Africa was coming in to land when it crashed on Wednesday morning. The airline said 93 passengers and 11 crew were on board the plane.

Libyan state television showed footage of a large field scattered with small and large pieces of plane debris and dozens of police and rescue workers with surgical masks and gloves, some of them carrying at least one body away. "All of the passengers and crew died except one child, " a Libyan security official at the airport said. The survivor was said to be an eight-year-old boy with Dutch nationality.

US planned nerve gas attack on Australian troops: Newly declassified files reveal that US military scientists wanted to bomb and spray 200 "mainly Australian" troops with the deadly nerve agents in the 1960s

London, England (CNN) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron started his first full day of work Wednesday, walking through the black lacquered door of his office at No. 10 Downing Street and into a raft of decision-making. High on the agenda will be appointing ministers to as many as 20 Cabinet positions. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, whose party entered a coalition with Cameron's Conservatives on Tuesday, was named deputy prime minister. In addition to Clegg's appointment, a Conservative Party source said Conservative Parliament member George Osborne has been named Chancellor of the Exchequer -- which is equivalent to treasury secretary -- and former Conservative Party leader William Hague has been appointed foreign secretary. Four other Cabinet posts will be filled by Liberal Democrats, Downing Street said. Formal announcements of Cabinet posts were expected later Wednesday. Reuters: UK's Cameron brings party in from the cold. James Delingpole: If Cameron's Tories won't admit their mistakes, they don't deserve power. Craig Murray: Lib-Cons Get Off Virtually "Scot Free". + Very Bad Signs for the LIb Dems - Cameron, Osborne, Hague, Fox and May dominate the great offices of state from the far right. New Statesman: All change at No 10. WSWS: The Tory press and “democracy”. + Labour brings Tory-Lib Dem coalition to power.

In the following interview, Dr. Willie Soon, a solar and climate scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, questions the prevailing dogma of man-made global warming and challenges his peers to “take back climate science.” His remarks are his personal opinion based upon 19 years of scientific research.

ANTONIO GONZALEZ is, ironically enough, delighted with Arizona’s new law against illegal immigration. He is president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), which works to mobilise American Latinos as a political force. Its motto is su voto es su voz, your vote is your voice. The Latino movement usually grows by spurts in response to xenophobic overreactions by conservative America, and the Arizona law may be the biggest overreaction yet, according to Mr Gonzalez. It has “done more to organise our community than we could have done” and made it “the most vibrant social movement in America today, 100 times larger than the tea-party movement.”

Mordechai Vanunus norske kjæreste skriver nå brev til norske politikere i håp om at Vanunu slippes fri. Kristin Joachimsen var grunnen til at den tidligere israelske atomteknikeren ble arrestert mandag, nå henvender hun seg til Raymond Johannsen, Kristin Halvorsen og Audun Lysbakken for at restriksjonene mot sin kjære skal opphøre. NRK: Vanunu arrestert igjen. Google Translate

Repressive practices long used in the West Bank and Gaza are now being used to limit civil liberties within Israel. Last Thursday, in the early hours of the morning, a Palestinian community leader's home was raided by Israeli security forces. In front of his family, the wanted man was hauled off to detention without access to a lawyer, while his home and offices were ransacked and property confiscated. While this sounds like an all-too typical occurrence in West Bank villages such as Bil'in and Beit Omar, in fact, the target in question this time was Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and head of internationally renowned NGO network Ittijah. After being snatched last week, Makhoul's detention was subject to a court-enforced gagging order, preventing the Israeli media from even reporting that it had happened. This ban was finally lifted yesterday, as Israeli newspapers were being forced to report on angry protests by Palestinians in Israel without explaining the specific provocation. It turned out that another Palestinian citizen of Israel, Balad party activist Omar Said, had also been arrested, and interrogated by the Shin Bet since the end of April. Now, both Makhoul and Said are to be charged with espionage and "contact with a foreign agent" – namely, Hezbollah. On Monday night, hundreds of demonstrators rallied in Haifa to protest against what they call "an escalating campaign to crack down on Israel's Palestinian citizens".

Palestinian patients at the Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre in Gaza, recieve help with the adjustment of their atificial limbs. Demand for the center's services has increased dramatically after the late war of 2008-2009 in Gaza. Uruknet: ECESG eyewitness report: The tragedy that is Gaza today and the role of the EU.

Six children and one teacher have been stabbed to death and at least 20 others wounded in an attack at a kindergarten in China's northern Shaanxi province. Wednesday's assault in the city of Hanzhong was the latest in a string of similar attacks, despite a push to boost security in and around schools across the country. The official Xinhua news agency said a 48-year-old man used a kitchen cleaver to kill the victims and then returned home and committed suicide. No motive was known, although reports indicated the assailant and the school's administrator may have known each other. The incident in Hanzhong was the sixth attack in and around Chinese schools this year.

Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan, reporting from Beijing, said news of the attack had been taken off Chinese language media websites."It looks like the government is trying to contain information about this, perhaps to prevent a nationwide hysteria," she said. She said there had been no attempts by authorities to explain the recent string of attacks, but that a lot of discussions were taking place among Chinese citizens over the internet. "A lot of people online have been talking about the possibility that there is very little recourse in China if someone has a grievance," Chan said. "Perhaps this has become a way for somebody with a grievance to attract attention to their particular issue. "The rule of law is a big problem in China. Going to court does not necessarily help a person in need so you might have situations where someone is making a last desperate attempt." TimesOnline: Nine dead in Chinese school knife attack.

Iran's military warned off a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft trying to approach Iranian naval manoeuvres, the semi-official Fars News Agency said on Tuesday. The incident involving the two old adversaries happened on Monday, it quoted the armed forces chief as saying. Iran's navy last week launched eight days of exercises in the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, a region crucial for global oil supplies. "A U.S. reconnaissance aircraft which had intended to approach our operational war games left ... upon the timely warning of our air defence forces," Fars quoted armed forces commander Ataollah Salehi as saying. He was speaking to reporters as the military test-fired two surface-to-sea missiles in the Gulf of Oman, it added. There was no immediate U.S. comment on the report.

A senior advisor to US President Barack Obama says delivery of a Russian anti-aircraft system to Iran would have serious consequences for US ties with Moscow. Gary Samore, the White House coordinator for arms control, weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism, said he thought Russia understood Washington's position and he would be surprised if Moscow shipped the S-300 anti-aircraft system that Iran has ordered.

[Editor's Comment:] -The gall! The US is in no position to warn Russia about anything. The overextended American forces are very vulnerable. When eventually the American fools learn the facts of life (and death), it may be too late.

We have been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a "mega-disaster." Plans by BP to sink a 4-story containment dome over the oil gushing from a gaping chasm one kilometer below the surface of the Gulf, where the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and killed 11 workers on April 20, and reports that one of the leaks has been contained is pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. ABC News: U.S. Coast Guard Led Big Oil Spill Exercise Prior to Rig Explosion. + No Press Allowed? ABC Reporter Turned Away from Oil Spill Command Center.

Today’s Justice system of the world is left just for those who have power, but on top of these powers is the so called superpower US left alone against whomever they turn aginst… US has hundreds of secret prisons all over the world most of them are in Europe, Asia, Sout America, from which Gitmo is the famous one…Abu Gharib is a page of shame not only for the US military, but the whole government, as well, something worse is under the US control in Afghanistan, Kabul, the Bagram Air Base for Pashtun=Afghan detainees, who are being held since the invasion of Afg by the US, these detainees are in one case lucky to be alive, because under the US command in northern provinces of Kunduz, Mazar etc were packed over 7000 Pashtuns=Afghans in the name of Taliban, who lost their lives in truck containers, where they couldn’t breath & all of them died inside the trucks driven by Hazara, Tajik & Uzbik drivers & its famous by the “”Convoy of Death”, however, these detainees suffer worse than those who were killed by the aggressor…

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base. However, it has said it will look into the abuse allegations made to the BBC. PressTV: ICRC confirms secret jail at Bagram.

"Going beyond prior purification effects in the moral domain, physical cleansing seems to more generally remove past concerns, resulting in a metaphorical "clean slate" effect," the CBS quoted the co-authors of the study, Spike W. S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz, as saying. According to the research published in the journal Science, the psychological impacts of physical cleansing reach beyond the moral domain. "Much as washing can cleanse us from traces of past immoral behavior, it can also cleanse us from traces of past decisions, reducing the need to justify them," the survey says.

Fifty years ago, American family structures were remarkably uniform. The rich married at roughly the same rate as the poor and middle class. Divorce rates were low for the college educated and high school graduates alike. Out-of-wedlock births, while more common among African-Americans, were rare in almost every region and community. That was a long time ago.

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday blamed the church's own sins for the clerical sex-abuse scandal -- not a campaign mounted by outsiders -- and called for profound purification to end what he called the "greatest persecution" the church has endured. His strongly worded comments placed responsibility for the crisis squarely on the sins of pedophile priests, repudiating the Vatican's initial response to the scandal, in which it blamed the news media as well as advocates of abortion rights and legalizing same-sex marriage for mounting what it called a campaign against the church and the pope.

More than 50 percent of the people in Norway are opposed to their country's entry into the European Union, a recent poll has suggested. According to an opinion poll conducted by the Norstat institute for public broadcaster NRK, only 32.3 percent of Norwegians support the EU admission and another 12.7 percent are yet to decide on the issue. "It is clear that what is currently happening in Europe has caught the attention of Norwegians," Heming Olaussen, who heads the No to EU organization, told NRK. A similar poll administered by NRK last month almost rendered the same results, putting 30.6 percent in favor of the decision, 55.8 percent opposed to the plan and 13.6 percent undecided about the issue.

A dog that has been seen at nearly every demonstration in Athens over the last two years has turned up again during the recent protests against new austerity measures. Now it has been looked as a protest mascot and even has a account on facebook. AWIP: Mysterious 'Rebel Dog' of Greek riots becoming latest Web icon. True/Slant: The Greek Financial Crisis Explained…In Cartoons!

Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand has retained his World Chess Championship title after defeating Bulgarian Veselin Topalov in Sofia, Bulgaria. The 40-year-old Anand beat Topalov, 35, in the nail-biting 12th and final game in 56 moves with the black pieces to claim his title with a score of 6.5-5.5 on Tuesday.