President Francois Hollande arrived in Mali Saturday to push for African troops to replace French forces who led a lightning advance that drove back radical Islamists from the country's desert north.

The French leader's whirlwind tour came as troops worked to secure Kidal, the last bastion of the radicals who seized control last year after a coup, raising fears that an area larger than France could become a safehaven for al-Qaida-linked fighters. Hollande was met by French and Malian troops in Timbuktu, whose sandy streets were patrolled by armored vehicles, after starting his trip in the central garrison town of Sevare, where he joined up with Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore. Hollande, whose surprise decision to intervene in Mali three weeks ago has won broad support at home and made him a hero in the former French colony, is due to visit the 700-year-old mud mosque of Djingareyber and the Ahmed Baba library for ancient manuscripts. [...] While largely supported by the French public, the intervention has not yet paid domestic political dividends for Hollande, failing to reverse a steep slide in his approval ratings as the economy struggles.

Drones could help human workers "safeguard" the 4 million miles of U.S. highways crisscrossing the country. The flying robots could inspect bridges and roads, survey lands with laser mapping, and even alert officials to traffic jams or accidents. One such project focused on studying the use of drones recently received $74,984 from the Federal Highway Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation. Researchers plan to spend the next year figuring out how drones could help workers as they go about inspecting and maintaining the safety of public roads and highways.

During the marathon confirmation hearing of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Israel and Iran topped the list of issues with each being mentioned 166 and 144 times respectively. - The “ill-prepared” former Nebraska senator answered questions on Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee in a meeting that lasted roughly eight hours. Hagel was undoubtedly expected to face an uphill battle since his past policy comments against Israel and his opposition to White House’s decisions about Iran had assured the powerful Jewish lobby in the US, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that they needed all their ammunition for the fight against Obama’s nominee as the Pentagon chief. Several senators took aim at Hagel who had in the past branded the supporters of Israel as “the Jewish lobby” which “intimidates” US senators into doing “dumb things.”

■ Instead of asking about crucial issues like budget cuts in the Pentagon, US drawdown in Afghanistan and America’s new focus on Asia, Hagel faced “a risible array of hyperbolic, ill-informed, gotcha questions and expressions of narrow parochial concerns that had almost nothing to do with the challenges facing the next secretary of defense,” Michael Cohen wrote in the Guardian on Friday.

■ Professor Stephen M. Walt, who co-authored The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy with professor John Mearsheimer in 2007, wrote on the website of Foreign Policy on Friday that the hearing provided “such a compelling vindication” of the views they presented in their landmark publication. "The bottom line is that AIPAC, which bills itself as ‘America's Pro-Israel lobby' has an almost unchallenged hold on Congress ... Open debate about U.S. policy toward Israel does not occur there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. (p. 162),” the duo wrote in the book.

Bill Van Auken: US Defense nominee Hagel bows to right on Israel, Iran and militarism - Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing for Chuck Hagel at times assumed the tone of an inquisition, with Obama’s nominee for defense secretary pushed to recant previous positions critical of Israel and swear his support for unbridled US militarism. Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, did his best to present himself as an unwavering proponent of the use of American armed might around the globe.

Justin Raimondo: Hagel Hearing: The War Party’s Waterloo - Interestingly, Hagel didn’t back down: He said "I don’t know." As to what motivates any particular member of Congress on any specific "dumb thing" they do – well, he couldn’t know, could he? But of course, everybody knows about the Israel lobby: and if its power and vindictiveness were ever in danger of being forgotten, then surely the battle over Hagel’s confirmation has reminded us. To anyone who lives outside the Washington bubble, there was something profoundly weird about the ritualistic invocations of undying loyalty to Israel.

With the latest verdict, now more than two dozen Americans have been tried in absentia and been found guilty for the 2003 abduction in Milan of Egyptian cleric Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, aka Abu Omar. - A Milan appeals court on Friday vacated acquittals for a former CIA station chief and two other Americans, and instead convicted them in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The decision means that all 26 Americans tried in absentia for the abduction now have been found guilty. The ongoing trials, which have dragged on for years, brought the first convictions anywhere in the world against CIA agents involved in a practice alleged to have led to torture.

AWIP: Italian judge convicts 23 in CIA kidnap case
AWIP: Looking back: Italy judge clears way for CIA "rendition" trial
John Foot: The Rendition of Abu Omar
Steve Hendricks: Torture: Benighted Americans
Fausto Giudice: ”Extraordinary rendition” -The hunt for ”Mister Bob” and the 18 bastards
John Goetz and Matthias Gebauer: CIA Rendition Case: US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary
Chris Floyd: The Inhuman Stain: Saying Yes to State Terror
Harper's: Judgment in Milan
Harper's: More on the Verdict in Milan
ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: Convicted CIA Spy Says "We Broke the Law"

Reko Diq Gold & Coppermine, Pakistan (Balochistan)

Balochistan is a key province in Pakistan that is filled with natural resources as well as a volatile mix of Afghan Taliban leaders, anti-Shiite militants, and ethnic separatists. Why is Balochistan important? - Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province in terms of size, and its smallest in terms of population. The province has always been seen as occupying a geo-strategic position. It has the country’s longest coastline, with a lucrative deep-sea port at Gwadar in the south, and a shared border with Afghanistan and Iran. Balochistan also has extensive tapped and untapped resources, including copper, gold, oil, lead, and zinc. The province has always been seen as a strategic asset, first by the British colonial power who saw it as a buffer zone holding off Afghan and Russian forces. Today, it is a key source of gas and minerals for Pakistanis across the country, and seen as a strategic transport route.

Foreign-backed opposition in Syria has stopped short of throwing its weight behind the Syrian government’s possible retaliation against the Israeli airstrike on a research center near the capital Damascus. - On Friday, the opposition contented itself with promising the Syrians to use political and diplomatic means to bring a halt to such attacks by the Israeli regime. In a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that “Israel and those who protect it at the [UN] Security Council are fully responsible for the repercussions of this aggression.”

Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry: This aggression comes after the failed attempts of the armed terrorist groups for months to seize the location and after Israel in cooperation with the enemies of the Syrian people used their tools to strike vital and military selected sites in the Syrian state.

Stephen Lendman: Ban Ki-moon Fails to Condemn Israeli Aggression
Russia Today: Israel deliberating further strikes on Syria
Naharnet: Russia in Rare Talks with Syria Opposition Leader
RIA Novosti: UN Confirms Brahimi’s Meeting with Lavrov, Biden
SANA: Lavrov: "Terrorism unjustified to overthrow legitimate regimes"
SANA: Military Operations against Terrorists Continue, Killing Many
SANA: Army Inflicts Heavy Losses upon Terrorists in Several Provinces

During a field visit General Ayyoub paid to a number of the armed forces units and formations, the army Chief of Staff asserted Damascus’ commitment “to our national and pan-Arab stances,: adding: “we are aware of the volume of challenges we face." “Mistaken anyone who thinks that he can test our military capabilities,” General Ayyoub told the Syrian army units, in a real message to the Zionist entity, which launched an airstrike on a scientific research center on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring five others. According to state news agency, SANA, Ayyoub said that the war with the Israeli enemy is continuous; indicating to there is a tight relation between the Zionist entity and its tools of the criminal gangs which practice the organized terrorism against the Syrian people.