WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is free to leave Sweden, after prosecutors said there was no arrest warrant against him for an alleged case of rape, one of his lawyers said Saturday. Bjorn Hurtig said an investigation was still under way but the head of the whistleblowing website had been given no summons for questioning. "I have been told that there is no arrest warrant against him," meaning Assange could do what he liked, including going abroad, Hurtig said. Assange, 39, has said the allegations against him are part of a "smear campaign" aimed at discrediting his website, which is locked in a row with the Pentagon over the release of secret US documents about the war in Afghanistan.

Tribesmen bury the victims of a US-led airstrike in Afghanistan.

A US airstrike has reportedly left 70 people dead in southeastern Afghanistan as the war-ravaged country votes to elect a new parliament.

According to Afghan officials, the incident took place in province of Paktia on Saturday when a Taliban convoy came under attack.

Provincial officials say the victims were all militants, however, locals and eyewitnesses say the attack claimed civilian casualties.

This is while Taliban militants have launched sporadic attacks to disrupt the parliamentary election, killing more than a dozen people.

Taliban militants and US officials have not commented on the attack so far. The loss of civilian lives at the hand of foreign forces has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in Afghanistan, causing thousands of Afghans to protest against US-led military presence in the country. Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a considerable number of civilians have lost their lives in US-led air and ground operations.

RAWA: 15 killed, 40 wounded on voting day in Afghanistan

Across a remote tract of southern Africa, naturally fortified by mountains and patrolled by hundreds of soldiers with dogs trained to tear intruders apart, teams of mining experts are hard at work. Yet they are not speakers of Shona, the native language of this land on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. No, thousands of miles from home, under a broiling African sun, these slim, pale-skinned figures are members of the Chinese military. Working alongside henchmen from one of Africa’s most murderous regimes — headed by Robert Mugabe — the Chinese are here to oversee Beijing’s investment in the world’s most controversial commodity: blood diamonds.

High-ranking officials of China’s People’s Liberation Army, they have been striving to escape detection for their role in this blood-thirsty — but hugely lucrative — trade. For here, carved out of the African bush, is a runway big enough for huge cargo planes. There is also sophisticated radar equipment, a fully-operational control tower and comfortable barracks for the Chinese officials overseeing the entire operation.

A new poll indicates that only about a third of Afghans have any confidence that Saturday’s parliamentary elections will be “transparent and fair,” a serious paucity of confidence for what US officials are calling a very important election. The pessimism is perhaps understandable, considering the massive number of fraudulent votes cast in last year’s presidential vote. Very little has changed in the meantime, except that the Karzai government has managed to cut the level of international oversight. Yet international concerns have focused almost exclusively on security. And even here officials have remained optimistic about the vote despite large numbers of pre-vote kidnappings, and insist that the sites will be secure even though security forces were unable to stop the killing of at least five candidates and the kidnapping of two others. But the reality is considerably less rosy, as security officials concede that roughly one in seven polling places won’t even open on Saturday because it is simply too dangerous.

PressTV: Afghanistan begins vote count
PressTV: Afghans cast ballot despite violence.
RAWA: Fraud casts doubt over Afghan election.
Axis of Logic: Voting in a Karzai-style election
WSWS: Another rigged election in Afghanistan
NYT: Afghan Votes Come Cheap, and Often in Bulk

The Documentation and Research Unit at the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) reported Saturday that the Palestinian resident from Jerusalem who was shot by an Israeli soldiers in Tel Aviv on September 14 was bound before he was killed. The center said that Hazim Adel Abu Al Dab’at, 22, from Al Thoury neighborhood in East Jerusalem was shot to death after being forced to the ground while cuffed. The report contradicts the statement of the Israeli police in which the policemen claimed that they stopped a group of young Palestinians from Jerusalem, and that while a policeman was cleaning his gun a bullet was accidentally fired hitting Abu Al Dab’at in the chest causing instant death.

Arab states remain adamant about bringing Israel to account for its nuclear activities by proposing a relevant draft resolution to UN's nuclear watchdog for its upcoming annual conference. As the 54th annual general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is set to convene next week, there is great international anticipation for a major focus on Tel Aviv's nuclear activities, after so many years of ignoring the issue. "The Arab Group urges to keep the item 'Israeli nuclear capabilities' on the agenda of the general conference and ... will submit a draft resolution," said the Sudanese envoy to the organization, Mahmound El-Amin on behalf of 22 Arab states, AFP reported.

AWIP: Non-Aligned Movement: IAEA could die saving Israel.

Today on The Intel Hub, award winning journalist Dahr Jamail reported some starling information on the situation in the gulf. The Gulf of Mexico has been poisoned beyond relief yet BP has continued to spray toxic dispersant. How is this happening in America? Agencies within the government have seemingly merged with the private sector, essentially creating a fascist American dictatorship.

Two weeks after President Barack Obama proclaimed the end of the US “combat mission” in Iraq, a night raid by US troops in the city of Fallujah has claimed the lives of at least eight Iraqi civilians. Wednesday’s raid provided one more indication that the US occupation of Iraq continues and American troops are still battling to suppress Iraqi resistance. While the US military has reduced its deployment in the country, the nearly 50,000 troops that remain are prepared for and are engaged in combat, the August 31 official deadline for an end to combat operations notwithstanding.

[Photo: Homeless Romani, living under a highway in Italy. They are given no support, financial or otherwise. The stigma attached to the Romani people prevent them from aquiring and keeping a job. They struggle to survive in the shadows of a flourishing country that refuses to help them. Taken on November 12th. Photo by Stano Daniel. roma.rights (flickr)]

The attempt of European Union commissioner Viviane Reding to make the French government accountable for its mass deportation of Roma came to a grinding halt after a few hours. After the head of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and a number of European heads of government had criticised her choice of words, Reding apologised for drawing parallels with the deportations carried out by the Nazis. French President Nicolas Sarkozy indignantly rejected the charges made by Reding and insisted that his government would not budge in its deportation policy. Sarkozy’s stance immediately won the support of the Italian head of government, Silvio Berlusconi.

At the EU summit on Thursday, Sarkozy then lashed out at Barroso in what most observers regarded as a further undermining of the status of the Commission by the most powerful member states. Now the 27 European heads of state and government have agreed to address “a long-term strategy for the solution of the problem” at their next meeting.

This gives rise to the fear that the dispute over the Roma is merely the starting point for the removal of one of the few freedoms granted by the European Union to workers up to now—free movement, the right to live and work in any EU member country. Even prior to the outbreak of the current conflict, EU Commission President Barroso had told the Spanish newspaper El Pais on 9 September, “It is a mistake to say that freedom of movement is absolute”.

It would appear that nationalism—and the xenophobia and racism bound up with it—is advancing irresistibly across Europe, irrespective of the reservations made by individual representatives of the ruling elite such as Reding. In the process, human rights and citizen’s rights are being swept aside. Why?

Axis of Logic/Al Jazeera: Roma row boils over at EU summit
AWIP: European leaders disavow criticism of France’s Roma deportations.

Global warming could be a thing of the past, thanks to the Barack Obama administration. No, the White House has not single-handedly managed to stop the apparent rising temperature – but it does think the terminology oversimplifies the problem. According to U.S. science adviser John Holdren, the public should start using the phrase ‘global climate disruption’ because it makes the situation sound more dangerous.

Referring to the Democrats launch of a new logo, Republican pollster Adam Geller told Fox News: ‘They’re trying to come up with more politically palatable ways to sell some of this stuff.’ Mr Geller added that the phrase ‘global warming’ is easy to criticise. ‘Every time we’re digging our cars out – what global warming? (Global climate disruption is) more of a sort of generic blanket term, I guess, that can apply in all weather conditions.’

Zomblog: John Holdren in 1971: “New ice age” likely

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that more than 80 percent of Pakistanis, who were rendered homeless by floods, are still left without shelter. The IOM says it only has enough funding to provide 17 percent of the victims with shelter. "We have probably reached something like 2.1 million people, that is only about 17 percent or less than a fifth of the families that actually need emergency shelter," said a senior official from the organization. The organization is taking part in the UN led relief efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan.

The United Nations is to launch a fresh appeal for funding later this week to help the victims of the worst natural disaster in Pakistan's history. The floods have affected more than 21 million people and left 10 million without shelter. More than eight-million people rely on aid handouts for their survival.