A 12-MONTH trial of police Tasers, which was used to justify arming every frontline officer in the state with the controversial weapon, was characterised by a litany of misuses and abuses that were covered up by police and the government. The proof comes in internal police documents relating to the trial in 2008-09, which the Herald obtained after a year-long freedom-of-information battle. The documents reveal that police and the government used the trial as window dressing to affirm a decision they had already made - to give the weapon to all general duties police - and ignored worrying results. The many abuses the Herald uncovered include:

■ Stunning a handcuffed child at a juvenile detention centre. ■ Stunning two suicidal people covered in fuel, which can be ignited by a Taser blast.

The authors say: "Women felt trapped for fear of death from bombs falling on them or their families in the home, street, or hospital; and from childbirth if a birth attendant was not available or emergency care was not attainable. Midwives expressed their fear of assisting women giving birth under duress, and their lack of preparedness—material and psychological—to attend births outside hospitals. Women came to terms with what they had lived through by focusing on everyday life, as suggested in the writings of Veena Das, and by looking after the survival of their families, which seemed to be essential for reconstructing their fragmented existence." They conclude: "Women expressed the severe trauma they had endured, but also their heroic struggles to give or assist birth, and to survive with their families. These women were living a process of healing while surrounded by destruction, and with nowhere else to go, they had begun to remake their lives."

Turkey has for the first time threatened to break diplomatic ties with Israel over its raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May. Turkey's foreign minister said a break could only be averted if Israel either apologised or accepted the outcome of an international inquiry into the raid. The Israeli government said it had nothing to apologise for. Ankara curtailed diplomatic relations with Israel after the naval raid, in which nine Turks were killed. Turkey - which until recently was Israel's most important Muslim ally - withdrew its ambassador and demanded that the Israelis issue an apology, agree to a United Nations inquiry and compensate the victims' families. AWIP: No apology for attack on flotilla.

Abstract: The topic of executive compensation has received tremendous attention over the years from both the research community and popular media. In this paper, we examine a heretofore ignored consequence of rising executive compensation. Specifically, we claim that higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers results in executives perceiving themselves as being all-powerful and this perception of power leads them to maltreat rank and file workers. We present findings from two studies - an archival study and a laboratory experiment – that show that increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy. We discuss the implications of our findings for organizations and offer some solutions to the problem.

A Chinese-born American geologist has been sentenced to eight years in jail in China for stealing state secrets. Xue Feng, 44, was detained in 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employers, an American consultancy company. Mr Xue said the information he had acquired about China's oil industry was publicly available. He claimed he had been tortured while in detention. The US embassy said it was "dismayed" and called for his immediate release.

US and British intelligence services are working on a fake video clip aimed at diverting blame for failures in Afghanistan to Iran, an informed US military source says. A source at the US base in Bagram, told Press TV on condition of anonymity that the US and British spies have employed renowned American film editors to produce the video. The video consists of footage doctored in a way to show that Iran is providing weapons and military equipment to "anti-government forces" in the war-torn country. The montage sequence will rely on false satellite imagery and radar images allegedly taken by spy drones. This is while pressure is mounting on the US over its failure in Afghanistan, amid rising causalities among foreign troops in the country.

Five US soldiers have been killed after a convoy carrying supplies for the US-led troops was attacked by the Taliban militants in Afghanistan's Zabul province. The US soldiers were killed Saturday after an improvised explosive device blew up a tanker passing the area near the Pakistani border, Pakistan's The Nation newspaper quoted Taliban sources as saying. Militants frequently attack NATO fuel and supply convoys, which provide the wherewithal for the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Over the past year, approximately 22 attacks were conducted against NATO fuel convoys in Pakistan.

[Editor's Comment:] That's what happens -ignorant and unempathic young men sign up as a hired killers for the waning US empire and sooner or later they return in a coffin. Their shabby deaths are not a great loss to America as such. Yet. -There still are plenty of young fools who will fill the boots of their reckless predecessors. Plus this: These hired killers didn't die for peace, democracy, or for the the women in Afghanistan or anything of the sort. But they did die for war & plunder. Let's face it, Petraeus' men are a pathetic bunch of fools that kill for the thrill, for the money and for the evil empire. -In fact, they're not a great loss to anyone except their grieving families. Their family members are experiencing a living hell right now. And why does it have to be like this? -Why do all these young fools pay more attention to the masters of war than to their own flesh & blood? It's a mystery.

The legislation provocatively targets 1) foreign companies selling refined petroleum products, such as gasoline and diesel, to Iran, including producers, insurers and those involved in transportation and 2) foreign banks and corporations doing business in Iran and sets out unilateral US penalties against those that do not fall into line.

Companies could be denied access to the US Export-Import Bank, restricting their ability to sell into the US market, or denied US government contracts. Democrat congressman Ron Klein told the Wall Street Journal: “Foreign companies are going to have to make a choice: Do they want to do business with us or with the Iranians?” By threatening to penalise foreign banks and companies for activities that are not banned under UN resolutions, the law will inevitably fuel international resentment and intensify frictions. PressTV: Sanctions won't hurt Iran: Ahmadinejad.

Gloabal Research: Obama’s New Iran Sanctions: An Act of War. When the UN refused to agree to the severe sanctions that the U.S. wanted, Obama responded with typical Bush flair and went solo. The new U.S. sanctions against Iran — signed into law by Obama on July 1st — are an unmistakable act of war. If fully enforced, Iran’s economy will be potentially destroyed.

Daily Telegraph: Britain, Germany and UAE refuse to refuel Iran planes. ArabianBusiness: UAE airports open to refuel Iranian passenger jets.

(London) - The new UK coalition government should repeal an abusive counterterrorism power that has led to hundreds of thousands of people being stopped and searched without reasonable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 64-page report, "Without Suspicion: Stop and Search under the Terrorism Act 2000," examines the use of the stop-and-search power under section 44 of the act. The power is intended to prevent terrorism. But despite almost 450,000 section 44 stops and searches throughout the United Kingdom between April 2007 and April 2009, no one was successfully prosecuted for a terrorism offense as a result.

Egypt has destroyed hundreds of Palestinian tunnels across its border with the Gaza Strip as part of the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the enclave. Egyptian authorities on Sunday announced that they have destroyed some 400 tunnels since the beginning of 2010 to counter what it alleges to be smuggling of goods and weapons, Ma'an news agency reported. This is while years of a crippling Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip has left its impoverished people with a network of cross-border underground tunnels as the last resort to push their basic needs into the territory.

Iran's foreign minister has dismissed recent remarks by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying "people in the region and in the whole world do not take her comments very seriously." Manouchehr Mottaki's statements came in reaction to Clinton's remarks that a missile defense shield agreement between the United States and Poland aims to counter the Iranian threat, reported IRNA. He told reporters that the US-Poland missile defense deal is an issue between the United States and Russia, recommending the two states settle the case peacefully. Mottaki further underlined that he and his opposite numbers from Brazil and Turkey are trying to set a date for a trilateral meeting on nuclear fuel swap.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a "controversial opinion," according to an internal email obtained by CBS News. The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon. It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed "inappropriate for government access."

This is where it gets ugly... police rush in and grab protesters, unprovoked, and arrest them. There was even a couple hugging each other, with cops all around them... till they got hauled off and arrested too.

AWIP/Denis Rancourt: They’re not just pigs. The targeting, intimidation, and terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy” in a war – was, like with all recent anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns described by the thousands of victims (from psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs. These thugs had to be trained to execute these manoeuvres against civil society. These cops are not just racist individuals because of their particular personal circumstances. Their language and actions show that they are trained into a military culture where protestors and activists are the enemy and are to be rooted out and intimidated away from societal participation. They aren’t just pigs. They are anti-democracy commandos.

AWIP: Torontonians gather at police HQ to condemn abuses -Video.

Some people cite scientists saying there is a “CO2 control knob” for Earth. No doubt there is, but due to the logarithmic effect of CO2, I think of it like a fine tuning knob, not the main station tuner. That said, a new data picture is emerging of an even bigger knob and lever; a nice bright yellow one. AWIP articles on the effect of the sun HERE.

Richard S. Lindzen, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of meteorology who disagrees with Mann's work, called the school's investigation a "whitewash." Lindzen was interviewed by the Penn State panel during its investigation. "Penn State has clearly demonstrated that it is incapable of monitoring violations of scientific standards of behavior internally," Lindzen said in an e-mail from France.

More than five months after the IPCC was accused of making assertions on the fate of the Amazon forest on the basis of a non-peer reviewed WWF report, it now appears that the original source of the IPPC's claim is a Brazilian educational website which was taken down in 2003. Furthermore, it appears that this is the only source of the IPCC's claim that made up the basis of "Amazongate" – that the IPCC was, once again, using unsubstantiated material which exaggerated the threat. This website, therefore, is the "smoking gun", the latest evidence to suggest that the IPCC is breaking its own rules.

While everyone seems to be watching the Arctic extent with intense interest, it’s bipolar twin continues to make enough ice to keep the global sea ice balance near normal. These images from Cryosphere today provide the details. You won’t see any mention of this in the media. Google News returns no stories about Antarctic Sea Ice Extent.

The spectacle of seven-year-old children confronting heavily armed and visibly confused soldiers offers one of the clearest perspectives of the lopsided power dynamic that animates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also highlights the reality of life for children in the Occupied Territories. They play soccer and dodgeball between phalanxes of soldiers firing lethal projectiles at their neighbors just a few meters away — everyday life is an act of resistance.

Because grown men are particularly vulnerable to imprisonment and adolescent boys are targeted with just about any kind of violence the Israeli army wants to level against them, young children have led the Nabi Saleh demonstrations on at least three occasions.