President Barack Obama will be able to send any mobile phone in the United States a text message warning of imminent danger, from a terror attack to a natural disaster, under plans announced on Tuesday.

From next year, new phones and other hand-held devices will be required to be fitted with special chips to receive the alerts, which will also be sent by state and local authorities. Users will be able to opt out of every type of alert except those from the president, said the Federal Communications Commission. The system will include alerts about missing children and will supersede all other phone traffic to avoid delays.

Five NATO missiles struck Moammar Gaddafi’s compound early Thursday, hours after the Libyan leader made his first public appearance in nearly two weeks.

Three people died and 27 were injured in the attack, a Gaddafi spokesman said. The strikes appeared to be part of a stepped-up NATO campaign in recent days that reflects better coordination with Libyan rebels and has helped the rebels make significant advances in the key city of Misurata. Libyan government officials escorted foreign journalists to tour the stricken Gaddafi complex Thursday afternoon, showing them damage from the missiles in several places — including an underground chamber that had been blown open and was emanating heat, suggesting that a fire was burning below.

Americans celebrating the alleged extra-judicial
killing of terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden

Finally, a new Gallup Poll reveals this morning, the American public has settled on who should get a chunk of the credit for that daring, deadly raid on Osama bin Laden's housing compound over there in Pakistan: Members of Congress.

No, really. Those brave folks who make only $174,000 a year and take vacations back home for every conceivable holiday, are basking in a newfound approval among Americans. Gallup reports today that following the "assassination of Bin Laden," the approval of that congressional crowd jumped by almost half from 17% to 24%. Amazing the effect a little righteous killing can have on the American mind. Yes, yes, that's still only one-in-four approval. But it's way better than they'd been viewed for a long time. In fact, 24% is one point higher than Congress' approval rating has been since the beginning of 2010.

A resolution to expand the "legal basis" for the global war on terror is moving through Congress

Paul Craig Roberts: A people as gullible as Americans have no future

AWIP: Statement From the Family of Osama bin Laden - I Omar Ossama Binladin and my brothers the lawful children and heirs of the Ossama Binladin (OBL) have noted wide coverage of the news of the death of our father, but we are not convinced on the available evidence in the absence of dead body, photographs, and video evidence that our natural father is dead. Therefore, with this press statement, we seek such conclusive evidence to believe the stories published in relation to 2 May 2011 operation Geronimo as declared by the President of United States Barrack Hussein Obama in his speech that he authorized the said operation and killing of OBL and later confirmed his death.

US officials who have analysed the documents seized during the Abbottabad raid told the Associated Press that Mr. Goldstein reportedly considered targeting smaller cities on significant dates, such as the July 4 Independence Day and the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Above all, he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible in a single attack. In one particularly macabre bit of mathematics, Mr. Goldstein's writings show him musing over just how many Americans he must kill to force the US to withdraw from the Arab world. He concludes that the smaller, scattered attacks since 2001 had not been enough. He tells his disciples that only a body count of thousands, something on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001 would shift US policy.

Though he was out of the public eye and The Brotherhood seemed to be weakening, Mr. Goldstein never yielded control of his worldwide organisation, US officials said. His personal, handwritten journal and his massive collection of computer files reveal his hand at work in every recent major Brotherhood threat, including plots in Europe last year that had travellers and embassies on high alert, two officials said.

Pakistani officials said today they're interested in studying the remains of the U.S.'s secret stealth-modified helicopter abandoned during the Navy SEAL raid of Osama bin Laden's compound, and suggested the Chinese are as well. The U.S. has already asked the Pakistanis for the helicopter wreckage back, but one Pakistani official told ABC News the Chinese were also "very interested" in seeing the remains. Another official said, "We might let them [the Chinese] take a look."

The chopper, which aviation experts believe to be a highly classified modified version of a Blackhawk helicopter, clipped a wall during the operation that took down the al Qaeda leader, the White House said.

CNN: China to get stealth chopper technology? - VIDEO

The US-led forces in Afghanistan have killed a young Afghan girl and a policeman in the east of the Asian country nearly two months after the foreign forces took the lives of nine Afghan children, NATO says.

According to a NATO statement on Thursday, the US-led troops killed the young girl and the policeman in Nangarhar province's Surkh Rod district on Wednesday during an overnight raid, the Associated Press reported. According to a neighbor, the girl was only 12 years old. In May, a US-led airstrike in northeast Afghanistan killed nine children, aged between seven and nine, who were collecting firewood.

A non-UN-sanctioned US drone strike has claimed the lives of at least eight people and left four others wounded in Pakistan's northwestern tribal area of North Waziristan, local security forces reported.

The incident occurred on Thursday morning when a US drone aircraft fired missiles at a vehicle in the Datta Khel area, near the border with Afghanistan, a Press TV correspondent reported. The United States frequently carries out such attacks on Pakistan's tribal areas. The aerial attacks, initiated by former Republican US President George W. Bush, have escalated under Democratic President Barack Obama, who had earlier promised major changes in the American militaristic policies. The United States claims that the air raids target Pakistani militants, but Pakistani officials say many civilians are also killed in the attacks. Pakistani sources have stated that the US drone strikes kill 50 civilians for every one militant. Islamabad has frequently slammed the United States over the drone attacks, saying they violate its sovereignty.

Al Jazeera: Drone strike kills several in Pakistan

The New York Times yesterday reported on a wave of execution-style murders of former Libyan government internal security personnel in Benghazi. The killings, the Times noted, “have raised the specter of a death squad stalking former Gadhafi officials in Benghazi, the opposition stronghold.”

The bodies of two men, Nasser al-Sirmany and Hussein Ghaith, were found within days of each other, in farmland on the outskirts of Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city and the centre of the so-called rebel leadership. Sirmany was discovered with his hands and feet bound. He had been shot twice in the head, after reportedly disappearing earlier in the day, after visiting a market. Ghaith was kidnapped from his home by masked and armed men during the night, and was later found dead with a single bullet to the forehead. Both men had reportedly worked as interrogators for Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal internal security agencies.

Stephen Lendman: Libyan Rebels Killing Civilians in Benghazi
Voice of Reason: Mercenaries killing people with anti-aircraft rounds and terrorizing hospitals [Warning: Graphic Photos]

A new study in The American Journal of Public Health, expected to be published Thursday online, estimates that nearly two million women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with women victimized at a rate of nearly one every minute.

The study, one of the first comprehensive looks at the prevalence of rape in Congo, indicates that the problem is much bigger and more pervasive than previously thought. Women have reported alarming levels of sexual abuse in the capital and in provinces far from Congo’s war-torn east, a sign that the problem extends beyond the nation’s primary conflict zone. “Not only is sexual violence more generalized,” the study said, “but our findings suggest that future policies and programs should focus on abuse within families.”

Al Jazeera: Rape of women in DR Congo 'tops 1000 a day'
CBC News: Congo the most dangerous place on Earth for women

It was just weeks ago that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki absolutely ruled out the continued US presence in his nation beyond December. At the time, Maliki said Iraq didn’t need the troops anymore. In the wake of the comments, the US continued to press for “an answer,” ignoring what seemed to be a pretty clear one. It seems this strategy has worked and that Maliki has backed off his previous comments. Now, the Iraqi PM insists he will not make any decision, but will engage in “consultation” with other ruling parties until a consensus is reached.

The epicentre was registered in a mountain range
close to the town of Lorca ( Tercia) Photo: EPA

Residents of southern Spain are surveying the damage after two earthquakes struck in quick succession, killing at least ten people and bringing down scores of buildings in the historic city of Lorca.

Eight people including one child perished in the deadliest tremors to hit Spain in more than five decades. Another 167 were injured including three in grave condition in hospital, health officials reported. The quake collapsed the fronts of buildings and ripped open walls. Streets were littered with crumbled buildings, chunks of masonry, fallen terraces and crumpled cars. A church clocktower tumbled and smashed into pieces, narrowly missing a television reporter as he conducted an interview on Spanish public broadcaster TVE. A bronze bell lay in the rubble.

About 10,000 people were evacuated from the cordoned-off city-centre. In an outdoor basketball court and children's playground, dozens of people spent the night on the ground wrapped in blankets.

BBC: Deadly earthquake rocks Lorca in southern Spain
CBC News: Spanish officials put earthquake death toll at 8

Following the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the Prime Minister is increasingly determined to start bringing the Afghan mission to an end. He has told defence chiefs he wants to start the withdrawal this summer, as the US begins to reduce its troop numbers.

But British commanders have warned David Cameron that an early exit could jeopardise the counter-insurgency mission, allowing the Taliban to regain territory and popular support. As a compromise, defence chiefs have reluctantly drawn up plans to withdraw 450 of Britain's 10,000 troops from Afghanistan. Mr Cameron wants to agree their withdrawal with Barack Obama when he visits London later this month.

Jason Ditz: British PM: Begin Afghanistan Pullout Now

CNN posted David Frum’s latest screed, in which the former speechwriter for George W. Bush asked: “Has our mission in Afghanistan become obsolete?” Frum, who authored the “axis of evil” phraseology that set the tone for the Bush presidency, isn’t having second thoughts about the interventionist foreign policy he’s always championed: no, he’s just wondering if, as he puts it, “The world’s most important terrorist safe haven is visibly not Afghanistan, but instead next-door Pakistan.”

According to Frum, “Because the U.S. presence in Afghanistan requires cooperation from Pakistan, the Afghanistan mission perversely inhibits the United States from taking more decisive action against Pakistan’s harboring of terrorism.” The US has got it “upside down,” he says: Pakistan is the real Enemy. He then goes into a laundry list of aggressive actions he would like us to engage in, including US military action to “disable” Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

An Israeli soldier watches Palestinians flee the West
Bank across the Allenby bridge into Jordan after the
1967 war. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Israel stripped thousands of Palestinians of their right to live in the West Bank over a 27-year period, forcing most of them into permanent exile abroad, a document obtained under freedom of information laws has disclosed.

Around 140,000 Palestinians who left to study or work had their residency rights revoked between 1967 and 1994. Those leaving the West Bank across the Allenby bridge border crossing to Jordan were required to deposit their identity documents with Israeli officials. In return they were given a card, valid for three years, which could be extended three times for an additional year. If they stayed abroad more than six months beyond the expiration of the card, Israel deemed them "NLRs" – no longer resident – and their right to return was revoked.

"The mass withdrawal of residency rights from tens of thousands of West Bank residents, tantamount to permanent exile from their homeland, remains an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law," said Hamoked, an Israeli NGO that filed the freedom of information request.

Some of the 140,000 were later allowed to return, but an estimated 130,000 are still deemed NLRs. "I doubt there is a family in the West Bank that does not have a relative who lost their residency rights in this way," Dalia Kerstein of Hamoked said. Requests to extend residency rights while abroad nearly always went unanswered, she added.

MEMO: UN report: Israel confiscated 35% of Jerusalem territories for settlements

One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach--the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China. I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?

BBC: China rejects US criticism of human rights record