A judge on Wednesday struck down a portion of a law giving the government wide powers to regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists, saying it left journalists, scholars and political activists facing the prospect of indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights. - U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said in a written ruling that a single page of the law has a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights." She cited testimony by journalists that they feared their association with certain individuals overseas could result in their arrest because a provision of the law subjects to indefinite detention anyone who "substantially" or "directly" provides "support" to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She said the wording was too vague and encouraged Congress to change it. "An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so," the judge said. She said the law also gave the government authority to move against individuals who engage in political speech with views that "may be extreme and unpopular as measured against views of an average individual. "That, however, is precisely what the First Amendment protects," Forrest wrote.

Jason Ditz: Court Rejects Obama Arguments, Enjoins NDAA Detentions

Courthouse News Service: Judge Blocks Controversial NDAA - In a 68-page ruling blocking this statute, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest agreed that the statute failed to "pass constitutional muster" because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent. "There is a strong public interest in protecting rights guaranteed by the First Amendment," Forrest wrote. "There is also a strong public interest in ensuring that due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment are protected by ensuring that ordinary citizens are able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military detention."

A federal judge has granted class action status to a lawsuit that alleges the New York police department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy is unconstitutional and amounts to systemic racial discrimination.

Barring an effective appeal on behalf of the city, the decision paves the way for a trial that would require the department to defend before a jury its policy of stopping hundreds of thousands of minority New Yorkers each year. The decision comes less than a week after a report revealed the number of stop-and-frisks made by the NYPD of young African Americans in 2011 exceeded the number of New Yorkers who make up that racial group. Nearly nine out of 10 of the 685,724 citizens stopped by the police last year had committed no crime. In her latest 57-page decision, released Wednesday, Scheindlin described the city's attitude to the policy as "deeply troubling", noting there was "overwhelming evidence" that the policy has led to thousands of unlawful stops.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed Wednesday that some of its agents were aboard a U.S.-owned helicopter with Honduran police who opened fire on a small boat on a Honduran river, and a local official said two men and two pregnant women were killed. - Angry inhabitants of the largely Indian Mosquito coast region burned down several government offices in the area in response to the attack and issued a statement saying they wanted DEA agents out of the area. The shooting took place Friday on the Patuca River in northeastern Honduras. Honduran and U.S. officials said the helicopter team was part of an anti-drug mission and the Honduran officers on board fired only after their aircraft was shot at first. Local officials said the victims were diving for lobster and shellfish when their boat came under fire. "These innocent residents were not involved in the drug problem, were in their boat going about their daily fishing activities ... when they gunned them down from the air," Lucio Vaquedano, the mayor of the coastal town of Ahuas, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

John Glaser: US DEA Agents Kill Up to Six Civilians in Honduras - Initially keeping the incident under wraps, US authorities now claim Honduran forces did the shooting - U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed up to six innocent civilians and wounded several more in Honduras in a raid which took place at the end of last week. The dead included two pregnant women and two children. The DEA agents fired from helicopter gunships at a boat carrying the civilians, mistaking it for their intended target – a boat carrying drug traffickers.

After winding along a narrow mountain ridge, a caravan of 38 men and mules paused on the Turkish-Iraqi border. Then they heard the propellers overhead. Minutes later, Turkish military aircraft dropped bombs that killed all but four of the men. The strike in late December was meant to knock out Kurdish separatist fighters. Instead it killed civilians smuggling gasoline, a tragic blunder in Turkey's nearly three-decade campaign against the guerrillas. The killings ignited protests across the country and prompted wide-ranging official inquiries. The civilian toll also set off alarms at the Pentagon: It was a U.S. Predator drone that spotted the men and pack animals, officials said, and American officers alerted Turkey. The U.S. drone flew away after reporting the caravan's movements, leaving the Turkish military to decide whether to attack, according to an internal assessment by the U.S. Defense Department, described to The Wall Street Journal. "The Turks made the call," a senior U.S. defense official said. "It wasn't an American decision." The U.S. role, which hasn't previously been reported, revealed the risks in a new strategy for extending American influence around the globe.

The United States and its allies have started in Jordan what was described as the largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years, focusing on “irregular warfare,” top officers said on Tuesday. - “On Monday we began to apply the skills that we have developed over the last weeks in an irregular warfare scenario ... They will last for approximately the coming two weeks,” Major General Ken Tovo, head of the US Special Operations Forces, said in Amman. Eager Lion 2012 “is the largest exercise held in the region in the past ten years,” he said at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre in north Amman. More than 12,000 soldiers are taking part in the war games, representing 19 countries, including Bahr-ain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Australia.

Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has promised to display captured foreign "mercenaries" who have been fighting his regime and denounced western governments for failing to protest at the violence being perpetrated by his enemies. - Assad also issued a veiled warning to unnamed countries he said were interfering in Syria – an apparent swipe at Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have called for arming the rebels.

"For the leaders of these countries, it's becoming clear that this is not 'spring' but chaos. If you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself, and they understand this perfectly well."

Syria claimed from the start of the uprising it was facing armed terrorists rather than a popular and at least initially largely peaceful uprising. But the opposition has become more militarised and violent in recent months. Assad also mentioned religious extremists and al-Qaida members from abroad. "There are foreign mercenaries, some of them still alive," he told Rossiya-24 TV. "They are being detained and we are preparing to show them to the world."

PressTV: Washington coordinates arms supplies to Syrian rebels: US officials

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive material of a course taught on a US military base implying that Hamas has influenced the US government at the highest levels.

The course is called "Understanding the Threat to America." And in it are hundreds of slides that claim to link the Muslim Civil Liberties Advocacy Organisation (CAIR) and other American Muslim groups to the Palestinian group Hamas. It was taught to senior military officers at a base in the state of Virginia. The US military is conducting a review of all material taught to its officers after the website Wired.com exposed another course teaching anti-Islam material. One of the slides presented by Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley says the model he is presenting presumes that the Geneva Conventions are "no longer relevant," when fighting Muslims. It goes on to say that historical precendents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are applicable to "Mecca and Medina's destruction." Dooley's 31-page presentation entitled "So What Can We Do?" A Counter - Jihad Op Design Model, comes to some startling conclusions.

Foreign Policy: Seymour Hersh unleashed - [Hersh] charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative "crusaders" in the former vice president's office and now in the special operations community. "What I'm really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals* if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over," he said of his forthcoming book. "It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced." "In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting? ... Don't they get it? We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.'" [Hersh] then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta." Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to "defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering," according to its website. "Many of them are members of Opus Dei," Hersh continued. "They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function." "They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins," he continued. "They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community."

The Queen was dealt an extraordinary and calculated snub last night that threatens to tarnish her Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Just two days before Her Majesty was due to welcome the crowned heads of Europe’s royal houses to an elaborate Windsor Castle lunch, Spain’s Queen Sofia dramatically pulled out of the event. A spokesman for the Spanish royals snootily declared that Sofia’s presence would be ‘inappropriate in the current circumstances.’ The 11th-hour cancellation, engineered by the Spanish government, came just a week after it made a formal protest to Britain over Prince Edward’s visit to Gibraltar. The Prince and the Countess of Wessex are due to make a three-day visit to the fiercely British rock on June 13 as part of a Commonwealth-wide effort to mark the Jubilee with royal events.