House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Buck McKeon (R – CA) and 10 other members of the committee took a one day trip to Guantanamo Bay last week, and are all back to regale us with stories of happy detainees, most being held without charges for the rest of their lives, reading books and enjoying soccer in the pleasant, Caribbean atmosphere.

Uruknet: Countering Pentagon Propaganda About Prisoners Released from Guantánamo

Amnesty International asserted that British Army personnel have been training in Israel on UAVs deployed in the Gaza Strip. The London-based human rights group said the British Army was learning how to use Israeli UAVs in counter-insurgency operations. “It would seem wholly inappropriate for UK forces to be trained in the use of drones by a country with a track record of applying this technology in grave abuses of people’s human rights,” Amnestry director Tim Hancock said. The British Army has ordered at least 30 Israeli-origin UAVs under the Watchkeeper program, the prime contractor of which was identified as Thales UK. The platform, called WK-450, has been based on the Hermes-450 UAV, produced by Israel’s Elbit System. In an interim measure, the British Army has ordered the Hermes-450 for its contingent in the NATO stabilization mission in Afghanistan.

Amnesty said the Israeli military deployed the Hermes-450 during the war against Hamas in 2009. The organization did not detail the operations of the Hermes in the Gaza Strip. “Amnesty International has documented the role of drones in serious human rights violations by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza,” Hancock told Britain’s Sky News television. “There is already growing international concern over the use of drones in remote unlawful killings, sometimes amounting to extrajudicial executions.” Palestinians have accused Israel of using its UAVs in attack operations in the Gaza Strip. They said unidentified Israeli unmanned platforms have fired small rockets at Hamas and other targets. The British government has acknowledged that the British military was training in Israel on UAVs. A government statement said the British Army would receive a non-combat version of the Hermes-450.

Rafeef Ziadeh recites her poem, Hadeel, on Remember Palestine, a show broadcast on Press TV. Very moving and touching performance.

Food prices have hit record highs due to a string of crop failures together with an upsurge in speculation, resulting in rising living costs. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization recently announced that the food price index has now broken a previous record set in 2008, when food prices nearly doubled over the course of 18 months, leading to popular upheavals in dozens of countries. Rising food prices, which have shot up 25 percent in the past year, have precipitated riots and demonstrations in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Mozambique and Yemen in recent weeks. Skyrocketing costs were a contributing factor in the popular upsurge in Tunisia that toppled the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last week. In Algeria, at least three people have been killed in clashes with police after the government slashed food subsidies. Over the past year, the commodity food price index for corn has risen 52 percent, for wheat 49 percent and for soybeans 28 percent. Non-staple cash crops have also risen dramatically, with coffee up by 53 percent and cotton 119 percent. The sharp rise in food prices is partly attributable to a bad crop year, exacerbated by a series of natural disasters. Droughts in Argentina and Russia, both major food producers, have decreased output, while recent floods in Brazil and Australia have completely wiped out some crops.

British authorities have refused to publish notes that Tony Blair sent to President George W Bush before the Iraq war, prompting a complaint from the chief of a public inquiry into the divisive conflict. Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service, turned down the Iraq Inquiry's request for the communications between the then-British prime minister and Bush to be declassified and made public. The notes deal with the period leading up to US-led 2003 invasion. O'Donnell declined, saying publication "would, or would be likely to, damage the UK's international relations." Iraq Inquiry chairman John Chilcot and the other members of his panel have seen the correspondence. Chilcot said on Tuesday (local time) that the inquiry was "disappointed that the cabinet secretary was not willing to accede to its request."

"This means that in a narrow but important area the inquiry may not always be able to publish as fully as it would wish the evidential basis for some of its comments and conclusions," Chilcot said.

Blair is due to testify before the inquiry for a second time on Friday, and will face tough questions about his support for the war.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in the U.S. capital of Washington Tuesday for a four-day state visit aimed at enhancing the positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship between China and the United States.

"I look forward to having in-depth discussions with President (Barack) Obama on China-U.S. relations and major international and regional issues of shared interest," President Hu said in a statement released upon his arrival at the airport.

He said the purpose of his visit is to enhance mutual trust, promote friendship, deepen cooperation and move forward the positive, cooperative and comprehensive China-U.S. relationship for the 21st century. "I also look forward to meeting American friends from various sectors to strengthen mutual understanding and friendship between our two peoples," he said.

Noting that the international situation is undergoing profound and complex changes, Hu said China and the United States have growing common interests and responsibilities and enjoy broader prospect for cooperation. Hu said the long-term, sound and steady growth of China-U.S. relations is conducive to the fundamental interests of the Chinese and American peoples and to world peace and development.

Xinhuanet: Chinese president attends private dinner hosted by Obama

Police officer sets up then shoots and kills an unarmed optometrist in a SWAT raid, gets suspended for 3 weeks. Police howl at severity of punishment. The SWAT team came to Culosi's house because another Fairfax County detective, David Baucum, overheard him and some friends wagering on a college football game at a bar. "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends," a friend of Culosi's told me shortly after his death. "None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting 50 bucks or so on the Virginia/Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation." Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi. During the next several months he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were friendly wagers. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day, enough under Virginia law for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. That's when they brought in the SWAT team.

On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team moved in. Moments later, Bullock, who had had been on duty since 4 a.m. and hadn't slept in 17 hours, killed him. Culosi's last words: "Dude, what are you doing?"

A cat has been summoned to do jury service in the US - even after his owners pointed out he was "unable to speak and understand English". Anna Esposito, wrote to Suffolk Superior Crown Court in Boston, to explain that a mistake had been made, reports the Daily Telegraph. But a jury commissioner replied insisting that the cat, named Tabby Sal, "must attend" on March 23. Mrs Esposito had included a letter from her vet confirming that the cat was "a domestic short-haired neutered feline". Tabby Sal had been entered by Mrs Esposito under the 'pets' section of the last census. She asked: "When they ask him guilty or not guilty? What's he supposed to say - miaow? "Sal is a member of the family so I listed him on the last Census form under pets but there has clearly been a mix-up." A website for the US judicial system states that jurors are "not expected to speak perfect English".

A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 has hit southwest Pakistan, the US Geological Survey says. The quake was centred near the border with Afghanistan, about 34 miles west of Dalbandin, a town in a sparsely-populated area of Baluchistan province. It struck at about 1.20am local time (8.20pm GMT) and caused widespread panic as it was felt throughout several provinces, according to local TV reports.

In Karachi, there are reports that tremors caused buildings to shake. Tremors lasting at least 20 seconds were felt as far away as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and in India's capital, New Delhi. The quake was also felt by British troops in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, where the UK Forces media team described the tremors as "very noticeable". A member of the team wrote on Twitter: "Felt like a ship moving on a choppy sea." There have been no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The exact epicenter was in a remote area some 200 miles southwest of the Baluchistan capital of Quetta and about the same distance from the Iranian city of Zahedan, both home to hundreds of thousands of people. Quakes often rattle the region. In 2005, one measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale killed about 80,000 people in northwestern Pakistan and Kashmir and left more than three million homeless.

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Tuesday that his country is evacuating some of its citizens from Tunisia, which is undergoing a major political change. Crowley said that State Undersecretary for Management Pat Kennedy has approved the "authorized departure" of dependents of U. S. diplomatic personnel from Tunisia, which means those dependents had the option of departing. He said a Tuesday flight from Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, to Rabat, the capital of Morocco, has taken roughly 70 U.S. citizens, including official and private passengers, out of the country. The U.S. State Department had previously issued a travel warning for Tunisia. Crowley said the situation on the ground has improved "somewhat " over the last couple of days, but it is still "a very fluid situation."

Haitian authorities arrested Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier Tuesday, barely two days after the former dictator flew back to the country after a quarter of a century in exile. Riot-equipped police surrounded the upscale Karibe Hotel in the wealthy suburb of Petionville, where Duvalier and his entourage had encamped after their arrival at Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport Sunday night. The Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor and a judge met with the 59-year-old Duvalier before he was taken away in an armored SUV equipped with bulletproof windows. A small group of the former dictator’s supporters tried to chase the vehicle, chanting “Free Duvalier.” Haiti’s Chief Magistrate Harycidas Auguste subsequently announced that Duvalier was being charged with “government corruption, embezzlement of funds, money laundering and assassination.” During the nearly three decades of US-supported rule by the Duvaliers—first Francois “Papa Doc” and then Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”—tens of thousands of Haitians were murdered and tortured by the regime and its hated Tonton Macoutes secret police, while hundreds of millions of dollars were embezzled and funneled into the dynasty’s foreign bank accounts.

VILA NOVA DE GAIA, Portugal, Jan. 6 (UPI) — More than 1,200 pounds of dead octopus have washed ashore on a 1.8-mile stretch of beach in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, concerned scientists say.

“It’s very strange that so many should be killed, and in such a confined area,” said Nuno Oliveira, head of the Gaia Biological Park. “There’s nothing in the scientific literature for this kind of mass mortality among octopus.”

An estimated 1,100 pounds of octopus all ages and sizes washed up dead Saturday and another 110 pounds Sunday, said Mike Weber, head of the Aguda coastal station in Gaia. “That suggests that it wiped out the entire local population,” Weber told Time magazine in a story published Wednesday. Firefighters gathered up the dead animals, with many sent for testing at a laboratory in Lisbon. Biologists have ruled out pollution as the cause of death because no other species were affected. The cause is likely some form of disease-causing parasite or bacteria, Oliveira said.

Palestinian graves found damaged after Israeli settlers' visit - If this happened to Jewish graves, it would be anti-Semitic and a crime worthy of an air raid.

Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area. Palestinians said they had seen Jewish pilgrims, escorted by Israeli soldiers, in the area, which is also a Jewish burial site.

The Israeli military said it viewed the incident very seriously and was opening a military police investigation. It comes a month after an arson attack on a mosque in the same area.

At least two tombstones were damaged in the cemetery outside the village, and food and rubbish were left on graves. In the village, offensive slogans about Arabs were found scrawled in Hebrew, English and Russian. Israelis are forbidden from entering Awarta, but the Israeli military occasionally organises group trips for settlers to visit nearby Jewish tombs.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has reaffirmed recognition of a Palestinian state, saying Moscow will not change the position adopted by the former Soviet Union when it recognised independence for Palestinians in 1988.

"Russia's position remains unchanged. Russia made its choice a long time ago," Medvedev said at a news conference in the West Bank city of Jericho on Tuesday. "We supported and will support the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to an independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem."

Medvedev made the comments during his first visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as Russian head of state.

Reuters: Russia's Medvedev backs independent Palestine

[Ms. Hass starts her lecture at the 8:00 point.] Amira Hass, an Israeli, moved to the Gaza Strip to cover the Palestinian side of the peace process for Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, Ha’aretz. She argues that over the past 20 years, Israel has placed the Palestinians under severe and complex movement restrictions, forcing them to live in disconnected and congested enclaves of limited self-rule. Perceived by many Israelis (and even Palestinians) as a coincidental process of ad hoc measures against terrorism, she has discovered a pattern at odds to both the Oslo accords and security considerations.

A mansion house in central France that was kept locked up for 100 years has just been opened to the public, in accordance with its owner's last wishes. Louis Mantin, a wealthy gentleman from the town of Moulins, stipulated in his will that his house should be turned into a museum a century after his death. Assistant curator Maud Leyoudec showed the BBC's cameras around the house.

In Finland it is a law that every structure larger than 600 square meters must have a bomb shelter. Below Helsinki a vast network of nuclear fall-out shelters underpin the whole city. Even parking a car in an underground car-park in the Finnish capital means driving into a fall-out shelter, but things have changed considerably since the country’s neighbour, the Soviet Union, fragmented into a country that will host the 2018 Soccer World Cup and is somewhat less likely to fire off nuclear weapons… although one never knows.

Although the average December temperature in Helsinki is below freezing point, Finland is hot right now. The country is officially the least corrupt in the world, the number one in the Global Wealth and Happiness index, top in utility patents in the European Union and last year the Harvard Business Review rated it as the 2nd Innovation Hot Spot in the World.

According to Technopolis Online, there is a cluster of 813 high-tech companies in Helsinki. These include 67 cleantech companies, 175 mobile companies, 359 software companies, 16 nanotechnology companies and 100 life sciences companies. The city has undoubtedly benefited from the so-called Nokia effect, a company that was named after the Nokia river and was originally a paper manufacture business until it merged with the Finnish Rubber Works and Finnish Cable Works in 1967. You may know it slightly better as a handset maker.