A massive fire swept through an overcrowded prison in Honduras and killed more than 350 inmates, including many trapped screaming inside their cells, officials said on Wednesday.

A senior official at the attorney general's office, Danelia Ferrera, said 357 people died in the blaze that began late on Tuesday night at the prison in Comayagua, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa. It was one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America, and local radio reports said many of the inmates were burned to death inside their cells.

Worried and angry relatives surrounded the prison on Wednesday morning with some throwing rocks at police and trying to force their way into the prison. Police responded by firing shots into the air and tear gas at the protesters, who were mostly women. There was confusion over the death toll, with some reports that the 357 figure included more than 100 inmates who escaped during the fire and others that the dead and missing totaled 402 people - almost half the prison's inmates. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, and there are frequent riots and clashes between members of rival street gangs in its overcrowded prisons. But it was not yet clear if the fire was started during a riot or if it was accident.

City police officers stopped and questioned 684,330 people on the street last year. - The number of so-called "stop and frisks" is rising. City police officers stopped and questioned 684,330 people on the street last year, a record since the NYPD began yearly tallies of the tactic in 2002 and a 14 percent increase over 2010. It couldn't be determined how many people were patted down during the encounters, according to the Wall Street Journal. Typically, half of the potential suspects who are stopped are frisked or searched.

A new study by the Pew Center on the States has found that one out of every eight voter registrations in the United States is invalid. - According to the survey published on Tuesday, more than 1.8 million dead US citizens are enrolled as active voters while around 2.75 million people are actively registered in more than one state in the country. The study by the non-partisan think tank has also found that US electoral systems “are plagued with errors and inefficiencies that waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.” Mainly paper-based voter registration in the United States “has not kept pace with advancing technology and a mobile society,” it added.

Russia Today: Two million dead Americans set to vote

Bahrain has deported six US citizens for joining pro-democracy demonstrations, a statement said, as the opposition reported dozens of arrests on the first anniversary of a Shiite-led uprising. - The deportations bring the number of Americans expelled from Bahrain to eight after two human rights activists were ordered out the country on February 11 after being accused of "illegal" activities. The six had entered the country on tourist visas in the past week and were sent home after "participating in illegal demonstrations," an Information Affairs Authority statement said. They were briefly questioned at a local police station and "agreed to leave the country without further legal procedures," the statement added.

The wife of hunger striker Sheikh Khader Adnan has said that he was adamant on continuing in his struggle to the finish but denied that he was in a coma.

The wife, Um Abdurahman, told the PIC reporter on Tuesday that the Sheikh was very weak and could not move but did not lose consciousness. “He is always dizzy and frequently vomits but his morale is high and his will is of steel,” she said of her husband’s health condition. She said that the Israeli court ruling that ordered his detention for four months and refused his lawyer’s request for his release made him more determined to continue in his hunger strike that entered its 59th day. Um Abdurahman asked the media and all official and private sectors in Palestine and outside to stand beside her husband who is struggling on behalf of all prisoners.

Hamas MPs in the West Bank participated in a sit-in on Tuesday in solidarity with Adnan, an Islamic Jihad leader, and expressed surprise at the Arab official silence toward his case. They asked the world community to intervene and pressure Israel to free Adnan and their kidnapped colleagues, who were detained in violation of the international laws and norms. They called for internationalizing the issue of Palestinian prisoners and raising their issue at all international platforms and humanitarian organizations.

Stephen Lendman: Israeli Hanging Judge Sentences Khader Adnan to Death

Google/AFP: Palestinian man arrested by Israel, held without charge, is on day #59 of a hunger strike

A silent, mysterious killer that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past decade is stalking the manual laborers of Central America. At least one in four Central American men are already silently afflicted. As the death toll mounts, local and international authorities are scrambling to identify the culprit, and to halt its spread. - As reported by the AP, since 2000, at least 24,000 workers across Central America have died from the onset of kidney failure, many victims between the ages of 30 and 50. The prime commonality appears to be that the sick and dying men are manual laborers, particularly those working in construction, agriculture, and mining. The disease also affects women, but in much lower numbers. It is believed that one-in-four men across the region has signs of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). The Pan American Health Organization has also reported that incidence of the disease is also rising rapidly, doubling in the past decade alone. However, no specific cause has been identified. All that's understood is that the men develop kidney failure and suffer painful deaths. Adding to the mystery is the regional nature of the disease. Such rates of CKD are seen nowhere else in the world, except Central America.

NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has admitted that eight Afghan children were killed in the coalition’s bombing in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kapisa last week. - "Eight young Afghans lost their lives as the result of an airstrike by coalition forces," General Lewis Boone, communications director of ISAF, told reporters on Wednesday. US-led forces carried out aerial attacks in Nejrab district of Kapisa province on February 8, leaving eight children dead. According to Afghan government officials, the victims were bombed twice while herding sheep in heavy snow. On Monday, the ISAF’s spokesman, Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, said an assessment showed the victims were “young Afghans of varying ages.” Following the airstrikes, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered an "investigation" into the deadly incident.

PressTV: US assassination drone crashes in eastern Afghanistan

Apparently we've entered the most sacred part of the the Jewish year, the False Flag Season, a time which leads us to reflect on the nature of the Jewish State itself, and to reconsider the concept of terrorism: "Iranian counter-terrorism?" I note there is no reason to consider these attacks as Iranian, and Woodward himself notes the method used in Delhi is a "method favored by Mossad", and the method used in the recent killings in Iran. The incompetence of the attacks also points away from Iran and towards Israel, as does the relatively inconsequential nature of the targets.

Of course, the key point here is the unique nature of the Jewish State itself, killing people and stealing land through the misuse of the term 'terrorism' (and using 'counter-terrorism' to kill more people and steal more land, while infecting the rest of the world with the 'war on terror' with 'counter-terrorism' just a violent form of state-run Islamophobia), while uniquely using terrorism to achieve state goals. Sure, other states use terrorist methods from time to time, but there is no other state that uses terrorist attacks on civilians in other counties so much, and as general policy. It is not enough to call Israel a 'state supporter of terrorism' It is the first 'terrorist state'. Many of these attacks are of the false-flag variety, a fact that is now recognized around the world.

PressTV: Israeli regime, source of terror
PressTV: Iran denies Israeli claims on Thai blasts
Stephen Lendman: Iran Falsely Charged with India and Georgia Attacks
Ivan Eland: Provocations Against Iran Follow a Rich Tradition

Iran on Sunday called on Azerbaijan to halt anti-Iran espionage operations by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, on Azeri soil. - Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Iran, Javanshir Akhundov and demanded that Baku end facilitating Mossad’s alleged spy activities in Azerbaijan. “Some of the terrorists linked to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists have travelled to Azerbaijan… [where they are] facilitated to travel to Tel Aviv,” the Iran’s foreign ministry said to explain its complaint against Baku. The Iranian Foreign Ministry also protested what it called “inappropriate behavior” by Azeri officials toward representatives of Iranian institutions working in Azerbaijan, the “systematic anti-Iran propaganda in the Azeri media” and called for an end to “such unfriendly behavior towards Iran.” On Monday, Azerbaijan rejected as “slander” Iranian claims that Baku has been collaborating with Israel’s spy services and helping assassins who have killed Iranian nuclear scientists.

AIPAC trying to block a brief that states it is "an arm of the Israeli government in the US" whose standard is to "obtain classified information ... that endangered US National Security"! - The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is attempting to block a brief filed by Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) Grant F. Smith in the DC Court of Appeals on February 3, 2012. The 78-page IRmep filing asserts "AIPAC has never abandoned its original role as an arm of the Israeli government in the United States."http://www.IRmep.org/ila/rosen. Citing declassified criminal investigations, IRmep underscores the public's interest in the outcome of the case. "AIPAC's observable standard for employees is 'solicit, obtain and leverage classified information without being criminally indicted.' AIPAC is never held publicly accountable for these types of activities which harm governance and public perception of rule of law." Exhibits include State Department files declassified on January 20, 2012 revealing in detail how former AIPAC Director Morris Amitay endangered US national security when he obtained Department of Defense secrets in 1974. The IRmep brief also analyzes ongoing financial damages from a 1984-1987 incident. The FBI investigated how AIPAC acquired an International Trade Commission report full of still-classified confidential business information.

(Alan Dershowitz Exposed) Omar Baddar: I've been perplexed by Alan Dershowitz's ability to maintain his respectable status in spite of his extensive record of intellectual dishonesty, so I decided to create this video based on my original research into two of Dershowitz's books to expose him for the dishonest "intellectual" he is. I will add more info to this description later on. [Source]