Militants in northwest Pakistan have torched at least seven oil tankers carrying fuel for US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities say.

Pakistani authorities say that the trucks went up in flames after a bomb was detonated at a parking lot in Khyber Agency later on Tuesday, a Press TV correspondent reported. A militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Earlier in the day, unknown militants destroyed three NATO oil tankers in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province. NATO supply trucks have been the target of frequent attacks in Pakistan in recent months.

Pro-Taliban militants claim responsibility for such attacks, arguing that the assaults are in retaliation for non-UN-sanctioned US airstrikes on Pakistan's tribal regions. Washington claims the strikes target militants, but figures show the attacks have led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians. Despite the frequent attacks on NATO supply convoys, the US military has not stopped its unauthorized drone attacks on Pakistan's territory.

After a period of relative quiet since early April, the pace of demolitions appears to have picked up, with eight demolitions in five days.

Two self demolitions in East Jerusalem:

● 28 May 2011: Self-demolition of a residential structure of 90m2 following a court ruling that the home was built without a permit in a green zone. Three people were displaced and seven others affected, including two children. The house was built in 1999 and received its first demolition order in 2000 and the last in February 2011.
● 30 May 2011: self-demolition in Jabal al-Mukabber; more details will follow.

Four demolitions of residential and non-residential structures, all on 30 May 2011:

● Arab Abu Farda (south of Qalqiliya): two animal shelters demolished.
● Jinsafut (east of Qalqiliya): one storage room demolished.
● Hammamat al-Maleh al-Meiteh: two animal shelters demolished, affecting approximately 50 people from two families, including 24 children.
● Al-Farisiya Nab’a al-Ghazal: three tents and one animal shelter demolished, affecting one family (eight adults).

Two demolitions of cisterns:

● 26 May 2011: In Idhna (Hebron), two cisterns built in 1996 and 2010 were demolished for lack of building permits affecting approximately 47 people, including 26 children.
● 29 May 2011: In Kafr Dan (Jenin), eight artisanal wells were filled with sand and concrete. These were the main source of irrigation for 1,600 dunums of land, affecting approximately 80 farmers, 40% of whom are registered refugees.

Please note that we are still verifying numbers relating to some of the demolitions.

Jordan Valley Solidarity: Home demolitions in the Palestinian Jordan Valley
International Solidarity Movement: Israeli bulldozers destroy farmer’s land in Al Ma’sara

Iran's Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi says that the country is prepared to counter any “hostile and unwise behavior” initiated by the United States.

He made the remarks during a press conference in the capital of Bolivia, La Paz, on the sidelines of an inauguration ceremony of a defense academy for members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), which includes Latin American and Caribbean nations. The ALBA is an international cooperation organization built upon social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. “Powerful Iran is ready to deliver a firm response to any hostile and unwise behavior by the United States,” said Vahidi, quoted by Fars news agency.

PressTV: Israel resumes war bluster against Iran

Hamza Ali Al-Khatib, a 13 year old Syrian from Dar'a was arrested near his home as he attended a protest calling for freedom. He was subjected to severe torture, before being murdered & mutilated.

Frequency: Search Results for Hamza al-Khateeb

Libya has accused NATO of killing 718 civilians and wounding 4,067 in 10 weeks of air strikes.

The toll of dead and injured was given at a news conference on Tuesday in Tripoli by government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, who also warned the departure of Gaddafi would be a "worst case scenario" for Libya. "Since March 19, and up to May 26, there have been 718 martyrs among civilians and 4,067 wounded - 433 of them seriously," Ibrahim said, citing health ministry figures which cannot be independently verified. He said these figures do not include Libyan military casualties, a toll the defence ministry refuses to divulge.

Stephen Lendman: Waging War at Home and Abroad While Pledging Peace
Berliner Umscahu: Nato verlängert Libyen-Krieg um 90 Tage
BBC: Nato extends "mission" by 90 days

Tuesday - Going to war whether Congress likes it or not
Wednesday - Commander in chief of the economy
Thursday - It's OK, he's our imperial president!

Rising Republican star Herman Cain got quite the shock last week when he learned about the powers President Obama claims in the name of national security. "This is the first that I have heard," Cain exclaimed to his interviewer, the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf. "You're saying it's OK to take out American citizens if he suspects they are terrorist-related. Is that what you said?!" When Friedersdorf explained, yes, that's Obama's position, a horrified Cain replied: "If you're a citizen, no, it is not right for the president to think he has the power to have you assassinated. No."

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Tuesday ordered an investigation to discover "the full facts" of how Osama bin Laden [possibly][?] lived undetected, likely for years, on its soil until [allegedly] being killed in a US commando raid on May 2.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced that an independent commission would probe the circumstances of the Al-Qaeda chief's presence in Abbottabad, a garrison town north of Islamabad, where he [allegedly] was gunned down by US Navy SEALs.

The unveiling of an investigation into the episode, which threw ties between allies Pakistan and the United States into turmoil, follows demands from lawmakers in Washington and Islamabad for disclosure on the bin Laden affair.

The commission will comprise a five member panel headed by Justice Javed Iqbal, a senior judge of the Supreme Court, and is mandated "to ascertain the full facts regarding the [alleged] presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan."

The NATO command in Afghanistan Tuesday brushed aside President Hamid Karzai’s demand for a halt to air strikes and night raids on Afghan homes.

Karzai issued the demand in the face of mass popular outrage over a US air strike that killed 14 civilians—10 of them children and two of them women—in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on the night of May 28. It was only the latest in a series of atrocities carried out by American forces that have resulted in mass civilian casualties. Speaking at a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan president declared,

“From this moment, air strikes on the houses of people are not allowed.” [Karzai continued by warning:] “If after the Afghan government said the aerial bombing of Afghan houses is banned and if it continues, then their presence will change from a war against terrorism to an occupying force. And in that case, Afghan history is witness to how the Afghans deal with occupying forces.”

Jason Ditz: NATO Spurns Karzai Call to Stop Attacking Civilian Homes

There are a few questions that are unlikely to be properly addressed during the drawn-out legal circus of Mladic’s forthcoming trial.

Why did Srebrenica happen? For most commentators this is a simple issue: the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command was a demonstration of evil incarnate, the ‘worst act of genocide in Europe since Auschwitz’. What more need be said or asked about such a heinous crime against humanity? In reality, matters were slightly more complicated than such a black-and-white parable suggests. Srebrenica was not about good and evil, but about politics and war.

It can only be properly understood by being placed in the context of the bloody and bitter civil conflicts that followed the unravelling of Yugoslavia – conflicts that were perpetuated and intensified at every turn by the intervention of the US, Britain, Germany, France and other foreign powers. In those wars, atrocities were committed on all sides. For example, the Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica had been brutalising the surrounding Bosnian Serb villages before the counter-offensive.

A flashmob in Washington has felt the full force of the law, by being forcibly arrested by police - for dancing in public. They'd gathered at the Jefferson Memorial in defiance of a ban on dancing at the monument. Among those held were RT America presenter Adam Kokesh, who says he was slammed to the ground by officers. The ban came in during 2008 when an activist sued police for arresting her for public dancing. The group say they were paying tribute to her as a champion of the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom, and in response to US District Judge John D. Bates' ruling that denounced dancing on the site.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun field testing new technology designed to identify people who intend to commit a terrorist act.

Nature reported that the DHS has been conducting tests of Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) in the past few months at an undisclosed location in the northeast. The technology uses remote sensors to measure physiological properties, such as heart rate and eye movement, which can be used to infer a person's current mindset. According to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PDF) released by the DHS in 2008, the technology is intended to measure a person's malintent -- the intent to cause harm.

"Behavioral scientists hypothesize that someone with malintent may act strangely, show mannerisms out of the norm, or experience extreme physiological reactions based on the extent, time, and consequences of the event," the report stated. "The FAST technology design capitalizes on these indicators to identify individuals exhibiting characteristics associated with malintent."

The DHS has claimed accuracy rates of around 70 percent, but some scientists have questioned the results. "Even having an iris scan or fingerprint read at immigration is enough to raise the heart rate of most legitimate travellers," Tom Ormerod, a psychologist in the Investigative Expertise Unit at Lancaster University, told Nature.

For almost five years, Rustum Makhmudov had managed to avoid arrest. Now, the suspected killer of Russian journalist Anna Polikovskaya has been arrested in Chechnya. Investigators hope to learn who else might have been complicit in the murder.

On Oct. 7, 2006, a man wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes rushed out of a Moscow apartment block on Lesnaya Street. In the building's elevator, he left behind a dead woman, killed with several gunshots. The woman is Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had made a name for herself with incisive reporting about human rights abuses in the Russian province of Chechnya and fearless criticism of the Kremlin. Many, including the legal team of Politkovskaya's children as well as her former colleagues at the Novaya Gazeta, the journal where she had been working at the time of her death, have long since come to the conclusion that the man wearing the baseball cap is Rustam Makhmudov. Russian authorities also believe that Makhmudov fired the deadly bullets at Politkovskaya; and not long after the murder, his two brothers, Dzhabrail and Ibragim, were arrested. But Rustam remained at large. On Tuesday, Russian authorities announced that Rustam has finally been taken into custody. Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee, the country's top criminal investigative body, said that the elder brother was arrested in a Chechen town just west of the regional capital Grozny on Monday night. He is soon to be transferred to Moscow.

Global Post: Suspect arrested in murder of Russian investigative journalist
Raw Story: Suspect arrested for 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya