CIA director Leon Panetta has told Pakistani intelligence officials that the US has no intention of stopping its unauthorized drone operations in Pakistan, a report says. During Monday talks with Panetta, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, asked Washington to halt its drone attacks in the country, AFP reported on Thursday. The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, however, responded by referring to the spy agency's "duty" to protect America by carrying out such operations against militants in Pakistan, the report added.

Jason Ditz: US Ignores Pakistan Warning, Continues Drone Strikes
Keith Jones: Drone attacks trigger fresh crisis in US-Pakistani relations

An American journalist says that the US and NATO forces are using missiles and bombs with depleted uranium (DU) in their airstrikes on Libya. Conn Hallinan, a columnist with Foreign Policy in Focus, based in Berkeley, California, has told Press TV that “The fact that the US is denying the use of depleted uranium munitions is just nonsense.” Hallinan noted that in the West's air assaults, the explosions of Libyan tanks produced “enormous fireballs,” which is a unique characteristic that only DU bombs can cause. “The long-term consequences are going to be very severe,” Hallinan added. Impacts caused by the use of DU weapons include a range of health problems ranging from different kinds of cancer, such as leukemia, to genetic mutations. It also contaminates the air, water and soil with radioactivity.

Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi brazenly drove through the streets of Tripoli today as Nato bombed the capital.

In an outfit which appeared to resemble those of the Blues Brothers, fashion conscious Gaddafi, who apparently changes his outfits several times a day, stepped out in a green safari hat, dark glasses and a black jacket for the public show of defiance in the face of Nato air strikes. Images broadcast on Libyan state television show the leader standing through an open sun-roof, pumping his fists and waving as his convoy toured the streets followed by hundreds of pedestrians.

It comes as opposition rebels have asked for more help in the fight against Libya, warning that Misrata is on the verge of a massacre by Gaddafi troops. As former foreign minister Moussa Koussa is removed from an EU sanctions list, the rebels say they need Nato to intensify its attacks on government forces. Tripoli Street, which links the west of the city with the centre, has come under heavy bombardment by the dictator's loyalists while a heavy rocket assault near the port prevented a Qatari vessel from docking. A rebel spokesman who identified himself only as Abdelsalam said: 'A massacre will take place here if Nato does not intervene strongly.'

State TV channel, Al-Libiya, was reporting that there had been air strikes in the city, resulting in civilian casualties. There were four blasts and plooms of smoke were seen rising from the south east of the city. Meanwhile, round the negotiating table in Berlin, world leaders said they were committed to providing all necessary resources for military operations in Libya.

Stefan Steinberg: Divisions deepen as NATO digs in for a prolonged war against Libya
BBC: Noam Chomsky explores the decision to intervene in Libya - AUDIO
Ellen Brown: Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?

Big Agribusiness is trying to keep the public in the dark about the sordid realities of life on the factory "farm" with a gag order preventing filming or photographing animals on farms; would punish whistleblowers and protect animal abusers. On Thursday, A.G. Sulzberger of The New York Times reported on the latest efforts by agribusiness interests and their legislative allies to keep the public in the dark about the realities of factory farming. I wrote recently about the series of bills, introduced in Florida, Iowa, and Minnesota, to make it a crime to take pictures or video of animals on farms. Undercover investigations of the meat industry have a long and important history in the United States. As Sulzberger writes:

“The use of undercover investigations to expose abuse in agriculture dates back more than a century. The journalist Upton Sinclair spent weeks working in meatpacking plants while researching his book ‘The Jungle,’ and his graphic descriptions of unsanitary conditions prompted federal regulation of the industry.”

Sinclair's own investigations led directly to the enactment of the country's first federal slaughterhouse regulations, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, in 1906. Unfortunately, more than a century later, the need for such investigations has only increased.

A mass grave of more than 800 people has been discovered in western Iraq. According to Reuters, the head of the Human Rights Ministry says claims they were the remains of former opponents of Saddam Hussein. They had been executed and dumped in one of 25 trenches in the vast desert in Western Iraq's Anbar Province. Some of the remains were identified as being of women and children. 'This location is a mass grave and it is one of the mass graves of the former regime. It dates back to the 1980's - the period between 1982 and 1987. The area of the mass grave is five acres and contains twenty-five trenches where a lot of victims were killed by security forces of the former regime,' said Khudier Hamdan, head of Iraq's Human Rights Ministry. The remains were thought to be mostly of Shi'ites and Kurds, who were marginalised under Saddam.

A former UN weapons inspector has been convicted of having unlawful contact with a minor, after being nabbed in an online sex sting. Scott Ritter, 49, exchanged explicit messages with a detective posing as a 15-year-old girl and masturbated even after the undercover officer stressed during the chat that he was a minor, prosecutors said. A jury in the US state of Pennsylvania found Ritter guilty on six counts on Thursday, with sentencing set for next month. Ritter took the witness stand in his own defence on Wednesday and said he believed the person he met in a Yahoo chat room on February 7, 2009, was an adult acting out her own fantasy. Neither Ritter nor his lawyer, Gary Kohlman, commented outside the court on Thursday.

A Spanish judge has thrown out a request that he probe six senior Bush administration officials accused of creating a legal framework for the torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay prison. Judge Eloy Velasco said in a four-page ruling issued Wednesday that the United States has told Spain the U.S. government is holding investigations of its own. Velasco said for this reason, Spain cannot apply its doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which holds that, under some circumstances, crimes allegedly committed in other countries can be prosecuted in Spain's National Court. The judge was acting on a complaint brought by human rights lawyers in 2009. The six Bush administration officials included former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The New York Crank: Franco’s fascist Spain, unconscionable torture, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and the utter repulsiveness of their political hackwork [November 05, 2007]

The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said. That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June. A further 10% rise would push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said. And it warned that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor.

Congress gave final approval to legislation cutting government spending by $38.5 billion as lawmakers’ first major battle this year over the federal budget drew to a close. The Senate approved the measure, 81-19, and forwarded it onto President Barack Obama for his signature after it cleared the House, 260-167. House Republicans needed Democrats to approve the legislation; it was opposed by 59 Republicans while 81 Democrats supported it. A stopgap bill currently funding the government expires tonight and, without action, federal agencies would begin to close. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, urged his colleagues to back the legislation to implement the budget deal worked out last week among himself, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

PFAW: Anatomy of a Koch-a-Thon: Sham Budget Hearings Brought to You by the Koch Brothers
Alternet: Here's a Real Democratic Budget that Serves the Interests of the American People

North Korea has confirmed that it has arrested a US citizen and is preparing to charge him with "committing a crime" against the country. Jun Young-su was arrested in November last year, the official KCNA news agency said. The US state department announced the arrest on Tuesday and is calling for the detainee's release on humanitarian grounds. The US has not named him, but said that Swedish diplomats had visited him. The Swedish embassy in Pyongyang looks after American interests, as there are no diplomatic relations between North Korea and the US.