Libya's interim leaders have given pro-Gaddafi forces until Saturday to surrender or face military force. - Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who leads the National Transitional Council (NTC), said the ultimatum applied to loyalists of Col Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte and in other towns. The announcement came after Col Gaddafi's wife and three of his adult children fled to neighbouring Algeria. Algeria has defended the move, which the NTC called an "act of aggression". Col Gaddafi's own whereabouts are unknown - rumours have variously placed him in Sirte, in regime-controlled Bani Walid south-east of Tripoli, and in the capital itself.

Al Jazeera: Surrender deadline set for Gaddafi forces

Lizzie Phelan: The truth about the causes and effects of the NATO war on Libya - VIDEO

The post-9/11 years at the Department of Defense have seen an enormous increase in no-bid contracts, with the lack of competition approaching 50% during the first six months of this year - Over the course of the last 10 years, the amount of money spent by the Pentagon on non-competitive contracts has almost tripled, from $50 billion in 2001 to $140 billion in 2010, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. And the reliance on no-bid deals has only gone up so far in 2011—to 45%—the highest rate recorded since 2001. Like other federal agencies, the Defense Department is supposed to demand competitive bidding. But numerous loopholes in federal law make it possible for contracting officers to bypass restrictions and select a single company to provide goods and services.

Al Jazeera: Pentagon 'wasted $30bn' on contracts

Women and children had their hands tied behind their back and were shot in the head in house raid, which was covered up by the military. - As revealed by a State Department diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last week, US forces committed a heinous war crime during a house raid in Iraq in 2006, wherein one man, four women, two children, and three infants were summarily executed. The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, addressed to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. American troops approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, a farmer living in central Iraq, to conduct a house raid in search of insurgents in March of 2006.

“It would appear that when the MNF [Multinational Forces] approached the house,” Alston wrote, “shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued” before the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.

Incredible speech given by Brian Becker, National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition. The event on June 24 was sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition.To learn more, go to http://www.answercoalition.org/national/index.html video credit ~ http://www.youtube.com/user/liamh2

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word to discuss the memoir recently published by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“He’s wounding his former colleagues,” she said in regards to his depiction of Condoleezza Rice. “He’s shown nothing but contempt.” “And I think it is so ironic that Dick Cheney, who touts his national security prominence and expertise, has never once accepted any responsibility, nor regret, for the outing — the betrayal — of a CIA officer that was working on nuclear weapons — finding them, stopping them.”

Medea Benjamin: Ten Reasons to Move Cheney’s Book to the Crime Section

They aren't attacking Libya because of Gaddafi, they're attacking Gaddafi because of Libya. - At least fifty more people have been found killed in the expanding Tripoli massacres, Many of these, I think around three dozen, were burnt to literally skeletal remains in a warehouse. This is blamed saqurely, by a self-described escapee of the fire and a couple of others, as committed by the Gaddafi regime against those in the uprising. The find was made in the just-overrun area near the headquarters of the much demonized "Khamis brigade," long reported to engage in serious crimes against humanity. The incident remains, in this researcher's mind, extremely questionable.

On 19 August, 16-year-old Yazen Abbasi was brutally beaten by a gang of soldiers after noon prayer outside the mosque in Ras al-Amud, a neighbourhood in Silwan in East Jerusalem.

Over 100 soldiers were present for Friday prayers that day. According to worshippers, the closure of Al Aqsa mosque for Ramadan brings many more worshippers to Ras al-Amud’s mosque. Yazen, waiting for his family outside the mosque, was startled by the loud bang of a firework set off. Unknown youths threw it in the direction of an assemblage of soldiers, his older brother, Hussein, tells The Palestine Monitor. Yazen was peering over a wall, looking for the source of the firework, when three soldiers attacked him from behind. “Witnesses told us the soldiers beat him with batons and the butts of their rifles,” Hussein notes, “before army commanders arrived and joined in until about ten soldiers were involved.”

They dragged him into an army jeep, preventing passersby efforts to free the boy using cans of pepper spray. From there they drove Yazen to an East Jerusalem police station. His father came to the station after being notified of Yazen’s arrest. During questioning by police officers, Yazen denied accusations of stone throwing. Yazen was then taken to a police station in West Jerusalem where police took his DNA and fingerprints. He was released at 19:00 that evening and taken to hospital where doctors discovered severe damage to his left eye. Along with serious bruises and cuts to the head, he has been left with blurry sight in this eye. Hussein told The Palestine Monitor the damage may be permanent.

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The commission on wartime contracting blamed an over-reliance on contractors, poor planning and fraud for the waste. It had evidence of lax accountability and inadequate competition, it said. Writing in the Washington Post, the report's authors warn that investments in the two countries could be wasted even after US involvement there ends. Among the examples cited was a $40m prison for Iraq that the country did not want and was never completed. US-funded projects in those two countries also risk going to waste because host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain them.

The UK government, in yet another Islamophobic step, has instructed university staff including lecturers, chaplains and porters to report Muslim students who are depressed or isolated to the police. - As part of the government's new strategy and under its new guidance to combating extremism, university lecturers and student union officials are obliged to inform the police in case they witness a Muslim student behaving as if he/she is depressed or isolated, or there is fear the student might become radicalized. But, student union officials and university lecturers expressed shock at the new guidelines, which have resulted in deep discomfort among them and are seen as an infringement of students' civil liberties.

Files declassified in America have revealed covert public relations and lobbying activities of Israel in the U.S. The National Archive made the documents public following a Senate investigation. They suggest Israel has been trying to shape media coverage of issues it regards as important. You can download the files from the web-site of the Institute for Research on Middle Eastern policy. And we can cross to Washington now and talk to Grant F. Smith who is a director at that Institute.

The Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Monday that its former head Dominique Strauss-Kahn paid a visit to the global lender and met with its chief and staff members. - He visited IMF headquarters Monday afternoon, and current IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde met him prior to his meeting with Fund staff, an IMF spokesman said in a short statement. "These were private meetings, arranged at his request. We have no further comment to offer," noted the statement. IMF spokesman David Hawley said on Aug. 25 at an IMF press conference that Strauss-Kahn was scheduled to make a "personal visit" to the IMF as early as this week. Strauss-Kahn resigned from the IMF in May to fight criminal charges in New York.

WASHINGTON — At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday. - Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found. Within that group, "we believe that there were 83 deaths," said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November. Among the 1,300 people exposed to STDs during research between 1946 and 1948, "under 700 received some form of treatment as best as could be documented," Hauser said.

Robert Parry: Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression