In an era where cops are killing citizens at every turn, many unarmed, I took a little comfort that it had not happened in my small bit of the world for over 30 years. Until last night. - This should not have happened. This young man did not deserve to die at the hand of Sheriff's deputies who were out of control. Cannon County deputies shot and killed a man they claim attempted to run over them while doing donuts in his front yard. But the family is calling the shooting death senseless.

Butcher says his brother Richard, known to his family and friends as "Rick" was doing donuts in the front yard; the tire marks are still visible. He said two Cannon County officers showed up, and things took a tragic turn. Lawmen claim he tried to run over them.

Sherburne was standing in her front yard, and watched the tragic events unfold. "After he let that first round go the car immediately had started to roll backward and he kept firing. He unloaded his gun on him, and didn't stop until it was empty I'm sure," Sherburne said. The truck came to rest in a pit of mud. Authorities said Butcher was pronounced dead at the hospital. Family members aren't buying it. "He died in the truck they let him sit in the truck for 45 minutes and bleed out. The ambulance was here. There were several witnesses," Butcher said.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command have begun a preliminary review of U.S. military options against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, as violence throughout the country continues to escalate. - The most significant violence is reported to have taken place in the city of Homs, where government security forces have bombed civilian areas in their attempt to extinguish an armed uprising against the Assad regime, led by army defectors in the Free Syrian Army. As the crisis worsens, Washington has begun openly talking about intervention. [The] rhetoric from U.S. officials has become increasingly aggressive. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said in comments directed at President Assad, “Your days are numbered. It is time and past time for you to transfer power responsibly and peacefully.” Influential members of Congress, like Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman, have also openly argued for providing military and other support to the opposition in Syria. Senator John McCain this week said, “There’s a lot we can do to provide moral support and to provide material support, along with Turkey and other nations, in assisting these people with medical care and other assistance.”

Justin Raimondo: Our Bloodstained Hands In the Middle East
Russia Today: Syria: White House preaches peace as Pentagon preps for war

The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional U.S. troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect U.S. interests in the two longtime war zones, U.S. officials said. - U.S. officials said that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years, even if they shrink from record staffing levels set at the height of American efforts in those nations to fend off insurgencies and install "capable governments". The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in December has moved the CIA’s emphasis there toward more traditional espionage — monitoring developments in the increasingly antagonistic government, seeking to suppress al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the country and countering the influence of Iran. In Afghanistan, the CIA is expected to have a more aggressively operational role. U.S. officials said the agency’s paramilitary capabilities are seen as tools for keeping the Taliban off balance, protecting the government in Kabul and preserving access to Afghan airstrips that enable armed CIA drones to hunt al-Qaeda remnants in Pakistan.

PressTV: CIA assassination drone raid kills 10 in NW Pakistan
John Glaser: US May Expand Role of Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan
AWIP: U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners

Hey, Iraq, don’t say we never gave you anything. In addition to hundreds of thousands dead and untold injured, the United States is leaving behind enough toxic waste sites to kill your rats. - “Open-air burn pits have operated widely at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Department of Veterans Affairs notes on its website. On hundreds of camps and bases across the two countries, the U.S. military and its contractors incinerated toxic waste, including unexploded ordnance, plastics and Styrofoam, asbestos, formaldehyde, arsenic, pesticides and neurotoxins, medical waste (even amputated limbs), heavy metals and what the military refers to as “radioactive commodities.” The burns have released mutagens and carcinogens, including uranium and other isotopes, volatile organic compounds, hexachlorobenzene, and, that old favorite, dioxin (aka Agent Orange).

The United States’ oldest aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, and its strike group are running naval drills, which seem to indicate potential conflict with Iran, off the US East coast ahead of being deployed to the Persian Gulf. - The drill map, referring to Florida shores as "The Treasure Coast," depicts nine countries, two of which - Garnet and North Garnet, are identified as 'fundamentalist Islamic theocracies' suspected of supporting terror groups, Russia Today reported on Tuesday. According to the report, the drill map also depicts a 56-km (35-mile) wide strait located some 320 km (200 miles) from the coast. The mock strait’s shape and width is identical to the Strait of Hormuz - the Persian Gulf’s key oil shipping route, part of which is controlled by Iran. US military officials have denied the maneuvers being connected with escalated tensions around Iran, saying the strike group is "training for all the mission areas."

Nima Shirazi: Obama Lies about the Iranian Nuclear Program: Super Bowl Sunday Edition

The “E1” area of the West Bank, comprising 12 square kilometers, lies between the Maale Adumim settlement and occupied East Jerusalem, curling around and separating the Palestinian towns of Anata and Abu Dis. While E1 is home to roughly 2,600 Bedouins, Israel has prevented any Palestinian development there so that Maale Adumim might expand and new settlements can go up. Though the settlement development project was temporarily postponed in 2008 due to disapproval from the United States, Israel has long planned on emptying the space of its Palestinian inhabitants in order to implement the plan. Many of these communities have been displaced several times since the 1970s to make way for Israel’s settlement enterprise. Two years ago, rumors began circulating among the Bedouins living in the EI area of Israel’s intentions to displace them once more. These rumors have been buttressed by waves of demolition orders in most of the Bedouin encampments. Twenty communities, in which 2,600 persons live, are facing displacement, stated Abu Suleiman, mukhtar (or leader) of Qeserat, a Bedouin community within E1.

Khader Adnan is on the 53rd day of hunger strike. Passing his 42nd day, the Palestinian political prisoner entered the fatal high-risk stage of starvation, where he is risking cardiac arrest and the inevitable shutting-down of major organs.

The Palestine News Network reports what awaits Adnan:

[A]fter the 42nd day of a hunger strike, it is expected that individuals will begin to lose their hearing and vision, and suffer bleeding in the gums, intestines, and esophagus. The body will gradually stop functioning. After the 45th day, there is a high risk of death due to vascular system collapse and/or cardiac arrest.

Responding to the political prisoner’s dire health condition, advocates are desperately calling for the termination of the graduate student's detention. In the past 48 hours Samidoun, the Palestinian political prisoners solidarity network petitioned, pressured, and demanded support for Adnan from Israeli embassies and U.S. officials. And though the pressure has not yielded life-saving intervention--life-saving--the narrative of Adnan’s imprisonment without charge or trial is circulating.

Vandals attacked a monastery in Jerusalem and a prominent school with a mixed Jewish-Arab student body on Tuesday, and police said they suspected Jewish extremists were behind the violence. - "Death to Christians" and other Hebrew-language graffiti were scrawled on the Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, while "Death to Arabs" was sprayed across a wall outside the bilingual "Hand in Hand" school in another part of the city.

Chabadniks in the southern Indian city of Kochi on Tuesday vehemently denied a report that appeared in local media earlier in the day accusing them of being part of an Israeli covert operation. - Rabbi Shneor Zalman and Yaffa Shenoi told The Jerusalem Post they were stunned by a story run by the Times of India in which unnamed Indian security officials said they were secret Israeli agents that would soon be deported from the country.

British and Pakistani journalists said Sunday that the C.I.A.’s drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan have repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals. - The report, by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, found that at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile. The bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals. The findings were published on the bureau’s Web site and in The Sunday Times of London. The bureau’s findings are based on interviews with witnesses to strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, where reporting is often dangerous and difficult. American officials have questioned the accuracy of such claims, asserting that accounts might be concocted by militants or falsely confirmed by residents who fear retaliation.

AWIP: U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners

Argentina says it will file a formal complaint with the United Nations over Britain's “militarization” of the disputed Malvinas (Falklands) Islands. - Amid growing tensions between Buenos Aires and London, Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner on Tuesday criticized Britain for militarizing their quarrel over the archipelago, saying she would take the case to the UN. "We will present a complaint to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as this militarization poses a grave danger to international security,” Kirchner said.

PressTV: UK militarized South Atlantic: Argentina

Scientists, environmentalists and even World War II historians have reacted with a mixture of excitement and concern to news that Russian geologists have drilled through to a huge subterranean lake in Antarctica, some 20 million years old.

It has taken more than 30 years to work through 3,700 meters of thick ice – drilling in temperatures as low as minus 80 centigrade. But it will have been worth it, if even half the claims being made about the lake are true. Sealed off below the ice for millions of years, the lake is a unique environment. “According to our research, the quantity of oxygen there exceeds that on other parts of our planet by 10 to 20 times. Any life forms that we find are likely to be unique on Earth,” says Sergey Bulat, the Chief Scientist of Russia’s Antarctic Expedition to Russian Reporter magazine. But there is one place not on Earth that has similar conditions – Europa, the mysterious satellite of Jupiter.

USA Today: Russian drillers reach huge lake below Antarctica