The UN have evacuated all their staff and the 1.5 million people of Gaza are preparing for another massacre.

Israeli apache helicopters open fire at Palestinian houses in the heavily populated neighbourhood of Shuja’eya east of Gaza. There are also reports of Israeli military boats firing at houses. Palestinian sources say that an ambulance was hit in one of the strikes. Five people have been killed, one a man of 50 by an Israel tank shell and the latest victim is Saleh Tarabin (38). Some 30-40 people have been wounded. Israeli warplanes are opening fire on Khan Younis city, south of Gaza, but so far no casualties have been reported. Heavy shelling in Rafah and tunnels being targeted. Bombs are falling on the border between Gaza and Egypt. F-16s over Gaza City now. Israeli airtsrikes have targeted two high voltage electricity converters in Khan Younis and Gaza City causing power outages. All hospitals in Gaza have now declared a state of emergency. UN staff have been evacuated from Gaza. (Occupied Palestine Updates)

This is the number for the IDF Gaza War Crimes office +97286741400 or from abroad +97286741400. Flood their lines, get your Embassy to call and let them know what you think.

دماء ودمار بتصعيد للاحتلال في غزة :SAFA.ps
BBC: Israeli strikes kill nine as ceasefire threatened
BBC: Israeli new missile defence in action
Bloomberg: Israeli Retaliation Attack Kills Three in Gaza, Brings Toll to 14

Virtually all the numbers you're seeing about the radioactivity coming out of Fukushima are based on iodine-131 which only has a half-life of 8 days, not the far more dangerous cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years. So while the mainstream media reports that "radiation levels are falling rapidly" from the 7.5 million times reading taken a few days ago, what they're not telling you is that the cesium-137 radioactivity will take 30 years just to fall by 50 percent.

It's the great global cover-up in all this: What happens to all the radioactive cesium being dumped into the ocean right now? It doesn't just burn itself out in a few months like iodine-131. This stuff sticks around for centuries.

Freshman Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said on the Senate floor Thursday that President Barack Obama might have been planning for the government to shut down all along.

"When the president had both Houses under the control of his party, why did he opt not to pass a budget for fiscal year 2011?" Lee asked. "It was either irresponsible on one hand or deliberate and malicious on the other with intention to bring about a sequence of events that would culminate inevitably in a government shutdown," he continued.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) conceded Thursday morning that a government shutdown was likely, after a late-night meeting Wednesday between Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, and himself. The government will be forced to shut down unless a spending measure is approved by midnight on Friday.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that a majority of Americans want to see the two parties compromise and reach a budget deal, but a majority of Republicans wanted their leaders to "[h]old out for the basic budget plan they want, even if that means the government shuts down."

Raw Story: Shutdown looms as Obama budget talks end
Politico: With shutdown looming, riders threaten deal

Patrick Martin: Partial shutdown of US federal government threatens layoff of 800,000 - A partial shutdown of the federal government appeared more likely Thursday night, as negotiations between President Obama and congressional leaders continued. Obama met with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a protracted session around lunch time and then reconvened in the evening, with none of the participants revealing any details of the talks. Authorization for further federal government spending expires at midnight Friday night, when the last of six temporary spending extensions expires. At that point, all but “essential” federal operations will begin to shut down, beginning with the closure of weekend operations like museums, parks and other cultural facilities. On Monday, all federal workers are to report to their workplaces to begin closing them down, except for those services designated as “essential.” Some 800,000 out of 1.9 million workers will be laid off—the bulk of the civilian work force.

When asked about the proposed $5.8 trillion in cuts to the US budget Faber stated, “Well I think what they are discussing in terms of cutting the budget is far too little, and the problem is that you can’t actually cut a lot of expenditures because they have to be met. In other words social security, medicare, medicaid, that you can’t really cut. Also the military budget is really difficult to cut because the military complex in the Unites States, the lobbyists are very powerful.”

The destruction of the middle class will be a huge issue going forward for the United States. As the chasm between the rich and the poor widens, in all likelihood we will see civil unrest in the US. I suspect in the end Faber will be right, Bernanke will continue to be a murderer of the middle class. He will be the “great destroyer” of the standard of living for most Americans.

Both men killed were Sudanese citizens, say officials - denying reports that one was a Hamas arms smuggler. Sudan will report Israel to the UN Security Council over an air strike on a car which killed two people near a town in the country's north-east, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

"We have started the process to make an official complaint to the Security Council," said spokesman Khaled Musa. "This was a desperate Israeli attempt to damage Sudan's image and link it to terrorism and illegal practices to derail an understanding with the United States to remove Sudan from the state sponsors of terror list," read a ministry statement.

The men in the vehicle were identified as Eissa Ahmad Haddab, of the Amrar tribe, and driver Ahmad Jibril. The destroyed car had previously been owned by another Sudanese citizen, who transferred its ownership to Haadab, said investigators.

AWIP: Israeli Official Admits to Tuesday Attack on Sudan

Spider Refuge [Photograph courtesy Russell Watkins, U.K. Department for International Development]

Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons line the edges of a submerged farm field in the Pakistani village of Sindh, where 2010's massive floods drove millions of spiders into the trees to spin their webs.

Beginning last July, unprecedented monsoons dropped nearly ten years' worth of rainfall on Pakistan in one week, swelling the country's rivers. The water was slow to recede, creating vast pools of stagnant water across the countryside. (See pictures of the Pakistan flood.)

"It was a very slow-motion kind of disaster," said Russell Watkins, a multimedia editor with the U.K.'s Department for International Development (DFID), the organization tasked with managing Britain's overseas aid programs.

According to Watkins, who photographed the trees during a trip to Pakistan last December, people in Sindh said they'd never seen this phenomenon before the flooding.

During what will likely be his last visit to Iraq as US defense secretary, Robert Gates suggested Thursday that combat soldiers would stay on past the end of 2011, the date the Obama administration has claimed would see the end of the American military presence in the country. Well over 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of the illegal 2003 invasion and occupation of their country, several million have been made refugees, real unemployment remains close to 50 percent, and basic infrastructure—including water, sewerage, and electricity—has never recovered from US bombing. Gates suggested, in the mendacious language of imperialism, that the continuation of a large-scale American military presence would be provided only if requested by the Iraqi government.

“We are willing to have a presence beyond [2011], but we’ve got a lot of commitments,” Gates said, referring implicitly to US military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya. “So if folks here are going to want us to have a presence, we’re going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning.”

In fact, there has never been any serious doubt that the US would carry on a large-scale and long-term military presence in Iraq, which has the world’s fourth largest proven oil reserves and is in a critical strategic location in the Middle East. Under Obama, who capitalized on broad popular anger over the US war on Iraq to win the presidency in 2008, a significant share of the US “drawdown” of combat troops has been done by giving new names to the same roles.

Voice of Russia: America to stay longer in Iraq as Afghan tensions grow

As WL Central reported on Tuesday, in an adjournment debate in the UK House of Commons on Monday evening, Henry Bellingham, parliamentary undersecretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, confirmed that Bradley Manning acquired British citizenship at birth.

The video of the debate is now available here.

The opening argument of MP Ann Clwyd (Labour - Cynon Valley) is notable for emphasizing that Bradley Manning's citizenship is not the sole reason a government of laws should be concerned about his treatment. She had earlier raised the interpretation of the British Nationality Act with the foreign minister in committee and in the Commons, but in this address, she reminds the government of its commitment to speak out against human-rights abuses everywhere, regardless of the victim's nationality. She also asks for assurances that Manning's British family will receive UK consular assistance in their future attempts to visit him at the US Marine base at Quantico, Virginia.

Google/AP: UK to press US over treatment of WikiLeaks suspect
MSNBC: About 35 arrested at rally for Wikileaks suspect

A famous artist is the latest to disappear in China's crackdown. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei posed an important question about the one-party state in this newspaper's Asian op-ed pages last year: "The question . . . is how a state based on limiting information flows and freedom of speech can remain powerful." And if that's possible, "what kind of monster" will it become?

Mr. Ai's detention Sunday at Beijing's airport as he attempted to travel to Hong Kong brings this juggernaut into sharp relief. The police have provided no information about the 53-year-old's whereabouts or explained why he was arrested. The same day, Mr. Ai's wife, nephew and a clutch of his employees were arrested and questioned. Authorities raided his Beijing studio and carted away computers and other items.

Mr. Ai has thus joined the growing ranks of China's new "disappeared." In February amid the popular Arab revolt, an online petition urged a similar Jasmine Revolution in China. The government has reacted by criminally detaining dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of the country's most prominent human rights lawyers, bloggers, democracy activists and others.

ContactMusic: Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan Criticised For Keeping Quiet Over Ai's Detention
Yale Daily News: Ai! Weiwei too much confusion
AWIP: Ai WeiWei, Chinese Pro-Democracy Dissident, missing

LIBYAN insurgents and civilians stampeded out of Ajdabiya overnight on rumours that loyalist forces were outside the eastern town, hours after an air strike tore into the rebels' defences. The panicked flight came as a top American general said it was unlikely the rebel forces could launch an assault on Tripoli and oust Muammar Gaddafi, while France confidently predicted the strongman's downfall.

Families packed into cars and trucks joined rebel military vehicles in a charge northeast towards the insurgent stronghold of Benghazi, some 160 kilometres away, AFP correspondents said. The administrator of the hospital in Ajdabiya said many civilians fled in panic because of the unconfirmed rumours of advancing Gaddafi forces, but that the rumours were unfounded. Four journalists were reported missing in east Libya, while 26 foreign reporters were expelled from Tripoli and Microsoft said it was seeking the release by the Libyan authorities of its country manager.

LA Times: No apology but NATO statement of regret after airstrike hits rebels
Voice of Russia: Gaddafi troops seize Ajdabiya
Oriental Review: The Last Victory of Muammar Gaddafi [Mar 9, 2011]

Donald Trump, the man whom no pundit took seriously as a presidential candidate, is sitting comfortably in second place, on the shoulder of the leader, in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows. Trump is tied at 17 percent with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and just behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 21 percent among Republican primary voters, according to the poll published Thursday. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for the full sample. The rise of Trump, a television personality, wealthy businessman, developer and owner of beauty pageants, is a testament to the power of media publicity and his pugnacious personality as well as to the weakness of the Republican field of at least a dozen possible presidential aspirants.