"What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban," Hersh added. "You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free. "What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place," he continued. "Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now."

Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004, the newspaper El País reports this afternoon, citing sources within the court.

The case relates to Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man. The Washington Post reported that CIA agents, fearing the consequences of releasing him, argued for his continued detention and in fact held him for at least several weeks after his release had been ordered. Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor to President Bush, intervened and directed his release. El-Masri’s CIA abductors entered Spanish territory using forged British passports, according to the prosecutors.

Authorities in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are planning to set up an outsourcing unit in a jail. The unit will employ 200 educated convicts who will handle back office operations like data entry, and process and transmit information. The project will begin at Charlapally Central Jail, near the state capital Hyderabad, in the next four months. India is a hub for the outsourcing industry, but this is the first time a unit will be set up inside a jail. The prison, with 2,100 inmates, is Andhra Pradesh's most modern with state-of-the-art facilities. The proposed outsourcing unit is a public-private partnership between the department of jails and an IT (information technology) company, Radiant Info Systems.

ZHENGZHOU - Authorities in Henan province have issued arrest warrants for three police officers suspected of torturing Zhao Zuohai, a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and jailed about 10 years. Two of the officers, Guo Shouhai and Zhou Minghan, have been detained while the third cop, Li Deling, is still at large. They are suspected of torturing Zhao, 57, into confessing to a murder 10 years ago. Authorities have also started a probe into the wrongful imprisonment on Wednesday, said Song Guoqiang, an official with the people's procuratorate in Shangqiu city. Song said the procuratorate has questioned everyone else involved in Zhao's conviction at the local public security bureau, procuratorate and court. AWIP: China clears murderer after 'victim' shows up alive.

US citizen faces a lifetime of solitary confinement in a Colorado supermax prison for a conviction based on a confession tape OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE in Saudi Arabia. Evidence of torture was not allowed to be presented at trial.

Megyn Kelly gave a succinct demonstration of how this works at propaganda shops like Fox News yesterday on her America Live program. To discuss net neutrality, she brought on Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute and Josh Silver of Free Press. Kelly proceeded to let Harper ramble uninterrupted at length, pitching the hogwash notion that "free enterprise created the Internet" (um, no it didn't). Then, when it was Silver's turn to talk, Kelly aggressively interrupted him, notably just as he was getting to the major point: Maintaining net neutrality is about ensuring that there will be no corporate censorship of content -- in other words, about maintaining the architecture that made the Internet the free and open medium that it is.

GAZA CITY: A Palestinian fisherman was killed his boat collided with an Egyptian security vessel off southern Gaza at dawn on Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses and medics said. According to reports, the fisherman’s 19-year-old son Ahmad and another three fishermen who were also on the boat suffered light injuries in what they said was a deliberate attempt to ram them by the Egyptian naval vessel.

In the three weeks since the April 20th explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the start of the subsequent massive (and ongoing) oil leak, many attempts have been made to contain and control the scale of the environmental disaster. Oil dispersants are being sprayed, containment booms erected, protective barriers built, controlled burns undertaken, and devices are being lowered to the sea floor to try and cap the leaks, with little success to date. While tracking the volume of the continued flow of oil is difficult, an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil (possibly much more) continues to pour into the gulf every day. While visible damage to shorelines has been minimal to date as the oil has spread slowly, the scene remains, in the words of President Obama, a "potentially unprecedented environmental disaster." (40 photos total)

Volunteer Nina Vroemen says she was told she was taking jobs away from Americans. "They told me to take off all my stuff from the bus and I watched the bus leave," she recalled. "Two women came with blue latex gloves … I was just in a panic." She was told to take off everything except her jumper and was patted down. Then she was fingerprinted and photographed.

A man who placed a poster of David Cameron containing the word "wanker" in his window has described how police handcuffed him in his home on election day, threatened him with arrest, and forcibly removed what they said was offensive campaign literature. David Hoffman, 63, said police went "completely over the top" when they visited his home in Bow, east London, and demanded he take down the poster, which had been fixed to his window for weeks.

Two US-led soldiers have been killed in attacks in southern Afghanistan, days after militants vowed to intensify attacks against foreign troops in the country. NATO said in a statement that the two troopers had died in separate incidents on Wednesday. The western alliance said one of the troopers was killed by a roadside bomb explosion while the other soldier was slain by small arms fire. The exact location of the incident and the nationality of the soldiers were not announced. In a Saturday statement, Taliban threatened to launch an offensive that would target "Americans, NATO members and their surrogates."

Reporting from Seoul — In his Christmas Day 2009 column for the Korea Times, Michael Breen decided to lampoon such national newsmakers as President Lee Myung-bak and the pop idol Rain. Headlined "What People Got for Christmas," the English-language column also poked fun at global technology giant Samsung Electronics, referring to past bribery scandals as well as perceptions that its leaders are arrogant. The piece was meant as a satirical spoof, the columnist says, but Samsung wasn't laughing.

SACRAMENTO — Jason Brannigan's eyes widened as he relived the day he says prison guards pepper-sprayed his face at point-blank range, then pulled him through the cellblock naked, his hands and feet shackled. An investigation into the behavior units, including signed affidavits, conversations and correspondence with 18 inmates, has uncovered evidence of racism and cruelty at the High Desert facility. Inmates described hours-long strip-searches in a snow-covered exercise yard. They said correctional officers tried to provoke attacks between inmates, spread human excrement on cell doors and roughed up those who peacefully resisted mistreatment.

A district attorney's report says an officer who fatally shot a bystander at a California pizzeria robbery was legally justified. Chino police Cpl. Claudia Lisner shot 23-year-old Daniel Balandran outside the restaurant on Feb. 1, 2009. Balandran was leaving a McDonald's and walked into a gunbattle between officers and two robbery suspects. The report released Friday says Balandran was wearing the same color shirt as the suspects and came from the same direction as the shots.

KARACHI, Pakistan — It's been a rough few days to be Pakistani, at least when it comes to the U.S. struggle against terrorism. Senior White House officials said that last week's Times Square bomb plot was the work of the Pakistani Taliban and not just Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan native now held in U.S. custody. (On Tuesday, Pakistani security officials denied that link). The U.S. is now considering adding Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, to a terrorism blacklist that would impose travel restrictions and financial sanctions on group members.

Scahill has done some good investigative reporting, especially in the area of exposing the mercenary group Blackwater, but as all reporters who get some name recognition and face time in the mainstream media he stops short when it comes to the bottom line of 9/11. In this video he stutters a little in his lies of Al Qaeda did it. He knows who pays his bills.