Move against Spanish magistrate, who pursued Pinochet over human rights abuses, seen as politically motivated. The stellar career of the crusading Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón may have come to an abrupt end today after he was suspended from his post as an investigating magistrate at Madrid's national court. The higher council of judicial power, which oversees Spain's judges, temporarily suspended Garzón while the supreme court tries him on charges of distorting the law by opening an investigation into crimes against humanity carried out by the Franco regime.

Facebook has downplayed the significance of a company-wide meeting to discuss privacy issues. The blogosphere described the meeting as a panic measure following weeks of criticism over the way it handles members' data. Several US senators have made public calls for Facebook to rethink its privacy safeguards. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, launched a petition directed at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It called on him to regain the trust of users by giving them control over all the information shared via Facebook. Earlier this week European data protection officials weighed in on the controversy and called privacy changes "unacceptable".

A German sets his dogs on a Jew in Rabka. (HEART)

The Israelis indeed internalised the Shoa experience. Very much like notorious Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka who reportedly unleashed his dog against camp inmates, the IDF Border Guard employs dogs against Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli political opposition.

Ynet reported today that Security forces arrived near the village of Dir Nizam accompanied by the Border Guard's canine unit. "They chased us with vicious dogs," one of the protesters said. Israeli security officials say the new tactic helped spot and detain stone throwers. "The dogs help us apprehend people without hurting them. They are not attack dogs – they are patrol dogs trained to use their sense of smell and vision to conduct short chases, pinning the suspects to the ground until the soldiers arrive." As usual, the Israeli official lies. Watch this film and judge for yourself. One protestor told Ynet. "The IDF wants to set dogs on us, which reminds us of a dark time in the history of the Jewish people" I may as well mention that nothing in Jewish history is as remotely cruel and vicious as the current Israeli barbarism for the brutality performed by the Jewish state is a collective affair. It is committed by a popular army in the name of the Jewish people.

A video of the plane crash which killed the president of Poland apparently shows survivors being shot. The film, which is being circulated on the internet, has fuelled conspiracy theories about the accident. It purports to show armed Russian-speaking men killing passengers minutes after the crash which killed Lech Kaczynski and dozens of members of the Polish government and military elite. The grainy, blurred footage - on which sounds like that of gun shots are heard - has been dismissed as a 'malicious hoax' by a Russian aviation expert. Washington Times: Russia refuses to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.

[5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.]

Thai authorities imposed a curfew on a jittery Bangkok after a weekend of violence that left 25 people dead. The government has also ordered schools to be closed from Monday as anti-government Redshirt protesters continue to battle troops through the streets of the capital. As protesters torched a police traffic post and set fire to a barricade of tyres, sending a towering column of black smoke rising over the city, army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said: “There will be a curfew announcement so that police and soldiers can differentiate people from terrorists.” The violence ignited on Thursday after the army started forming a cordon around the protesters’ encampment and a sniper shot and seriously wounded a protester believed to be the Red Shirts’ military adviser.

Mexican Head of Political Party PAN tweets that ex Presidential Candidate Diego Fernandez de C's body has been found in a military camp (translated)

A man whose same-sex "marriage" has become a symbol of the struggle for gay rights in Africa has vowed to become a martyr rather than give in to homophobia, campaigners say. Tiwonge Chimbalanga and his partner Steven Monjeza are facing a possible 14 years in prison with hard labour after becoming the first gay couple in Malawi to declare their commitment in a public ceremony.

''The rebel leader asked me two things: 'Do you want us to be your husband? Or do you want us to rape you?'" -Congolese mother-of-eight Clementine speaks in a quiet and hesitant voice: "I chose to be raped." She explains: "I told myself, if I tell them that I want to be their wife, they will kill my husband. I didn't want my children growing up saying the one that made our father die is our mother." But that sacrifice was not enough. Her husband left her for another woman. "After they raped me, my husband hated me. He said I was dirty. I often ask myself: 'Surely, I gave up my dignity for him, how come he can abandon me this way?'" Asian Human Rights Commission: PAKISTAN: A girl of 14 year was gang raped to take revenge from her father for nominating accused persons in a theft case.

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. “There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.” ABC News: Scientists fear BP spill far worse than thought. Rense: Currently, the oil gusher in the Gulf produces an Exxon Valdez disaster about every four days.

DUBLIN, Ireland—Trilateral Commission (TC) members, angry over their failure to establish a world government and the economic crisis they generated, called for war with Iran when they gathered behind closed doors here in Dublin, Ireland May 7-10. War plans were revealed by Mikhail Slobodovsici, a chief adviser to the Russian leadership, when he strolled off the grounds of the Four Seasons resort, where TC had hunkered down behind armed guards and locked doors. He thought he was talking to a TC colleague when speaking with Alan Keenan, who operates the web site WeAreChange.org. “We are deciding the future of the world,” Slobodovsici said. “We need a world government,” he said, but, referring to Iran, said “we need to get rid of them.”

Russia plans to open naval bases in Ukraine in response to NATO's eastward expansion, military sources have said. Ukraine may agree to the re-opening of a Soviet-era submarine base in the Crimea and the establishment of three naval bases on Black Sea coast, said the Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoting Russian military sources. “The planned expansion of the Black Sea Fleet is Russia's response to the NATO expansion to the East,” said Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, former Black Sea Fleet Commander, referring to the establishment of NATO bases in Romania and Bulgaria, both Black Sea coastal states.

The coded communications, if decrypted, would reveal some of NATO's most intimate secrets, such as plans for defenses and even the identities of agents or allied eavesdropping sources. Other Polish and NATO secrets also were believed to be aboard the jet, and so far Russia's government is refusing to cooperate fully with Poland's government in providing details on the cause of the crash, or even to turn over the Polish jet's black boxes.

The instinctive response of the president to social disasters affecting large numbers of people, befitting the class character of his administration and his own history and personality, is a decided lack of interest. At an April 30 press briefing, for example, ten days after the oilrig explosion off the coast of Louisiana, by which time the monumental dimensions of the disaster were obvious to anyone paying attention, Obama issued a perfunctory statement. He made not a single reference to the 11 workers who had died, nor to the potentially devastating ecological and economic impact of the giant oil spill. On the contrary, he devoted the final portion of his brief comment April 30 to defending, by implication, his government’s support for offshore drilling and making clear that he continued “to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security.” As far as concern for human life and the environment went, the remarks could not even be called going through the motions.

The UK's Liberal Democrats have abandoned their agenda in a bid to join in a coalition with the Conservatives, says a former British Member of Parliament. The Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat Deputy Nick Clegg both echo the same sentiments about a "united" and "strong" coalition government. Yet, the former Respect MP from Britain told Press TV that what they remain to be united about are unfortunately the war in Afghanistan and the savage reduction in the public services and a system that makes working people pay for an economic crisis they have not created. "In fact the Liberal Democrats have abandoned the policies which made them different. The policies of, for example, not wishing to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system, at least no replica of that system," George Galloway said.

Galloway went on to criticize the hereditary nature of government in Britain, saying it is not as eulogizing as some describe it. He said that a system "where the head of state is hereditary, where the House of Lords is packed with unelected people" cannot be described as a democratic system. Galloway said that the Government in the United Kingdom "is not as good as, for example, the United States of America, which has had a written Constitution and which has proper checks and balances within its system." "If you get 36 percent of the votes, you should get exactly 36 percent of the seats in the parliament, and if you get 5 percent, as we might do, then you get 5 percent of the seats."