Feroz Abbasi spent several years in extrajudicial detention at Guantanamo - two of them in solitary confinement - before being released without charge. He took part in the previous mass hunger strike and shared details of his experience with RT.

RT: Your time in Guantanamo. How were you treated there?
Feroz Abbasi: In Guantanamo, because I can speak English, I was treated better than the other detainees. So, those Arabs, who didn’t speak English, who came from a different culture, were treated harshly, very harshly. But my treatment wasn’t so much physical, we did get beatings, when we were transferred from camp to camp, it was psychological. So, for some reason on the same night when Iraq was bombed in March 2003, I was moved into isolation, solitary confinement, and I was there for two years. Six months of which were without sunlight.

US President Barack Obama has reportedly requested more funding to further upgrade American nuclear weapons at the cost of reduced spending on nuclear nonproliferation measures, which it demands from other nations. The Obama administration’s funding request for continued modernization of its atomic arsenal has reportedly been included in its 2014 federal budget proposal that was released on Wednesday, according to a report in US-based Foreign Policy magazine. The Obama administration's plan to further “modernize” American nuclear weapons comes nearly four years after the US president received the Noble Peace Prize in 2009 for the promotion of “nuclear non-proliferation.”

PressTV: US posing nuclear threats to China, Russia: US analyst

Arthur Silber lays out the only sane position on the murder program. Everything else is rationalizing - an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. - "I think it is important, especially for those of us who oppose the vile, barbaric practices of this abominable State, always to keep in mind just how pathetically dumb and inept these people are when considered individually. As I watch these ludicrous buffoons go through their paces — and the Brennan hearing is entirely typical of all such hearings, commissions, etc. — I often think that a strong, persistent gust of wind would simply sweep all of them away, and onto the stomach-churning dung heap where they fully deserve to spend the rest of their days. … But about the question of oversight, and the related pleas for ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’: keep in mind what the Murder Program is. The executive branch claims that it can murder anyone it chooses anywhere in the world, for any reason it wishes. Someone needs to explain to me how oversight, accountability and transparency will make such a program better. But they can’t explain that — because it cannot be done. A program that is evil in the manner the Murder Program is evil cannot be ‘improved,’ or ‘managed’ so as to make it decent and humane. The Murder Program is an abomination. You don’t ‘fix’ abominations of this kind. You end them. You end them this very moment."

American Bear: An Inconvenient Truth | Micah Zenko
Russia Today: Leaked report: Nearly half of US drone strikes in Pakistan not against al-Qaeda

Egypt's armed forces participated in forced disappearances, torture and killings across the country – including in Cairo's Egyptian Museum – during the 2011 uprising, even as military leaders publicly declared their neutrality, according to a leaked presidential report on revolution-era crimes. - The report, submitted to President Mohamed Morsi by his own hand-picked committee in January, has yet to be made public, but a chapter seen by the Guardian implicates the military in a catalogue of crimes against civilians, beginning with their first deployment to the streets. The chapter recommends that the government investigate the highest ranks of the military to determine who was responsible. More than 1,000 people, including many prisoners, are said to have gone missing during the 18 days of the revolt. Scores turned up in Egypt's morgues, shot or bearing signs of torture. Many have simply disappeared, leaving behind desperate families who hope, at best, that their loved ones are serving prison sentences that the government does not acknowledge.

India has reiterated that it will not halt its oil imports from Iran despite the US-engineered sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s oil sector, a report says. - Quoting senior Indian government officials, the Economic Times reported on Thursday that New Delhi will continue its energy ties with Tehran. Meanwhile, India’s state-run General Insurance Corp (GIC) has recently agreed to provide insurance cover for tankers carrying Iranian crude oil. India is among Asia’s major importers of energy, and relies on the Islamic Republic to satisfy a portion of its energy requirements. Indian refiners HPCL, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) and Essar are the main clients of Iranian crude oil.

PressTV: Chinese tanker takes in 2 million barrels of crude at Iranian terminal

A Chinese supertanker with the capacity to carry two million barrels of crude has docked and embarked at an Iranian port, the first such move since the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil in July. - According to data from HIS Fairplay, a research company based in England, the Chinese vessel, belonging to the country’s biggest shipping company China Ocean Shipping, was seen at Kharg Island, Iran’s largest export terminal, on March 21, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Since July 2012, when the EU imposed new bans on Iran to prevent its member states from purchasing, trading and insuring the Iranian oil, it is the first time that a Chinese tanker has visited a port in Iran, the company said. Over the past six months, China has depended on National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) for the delivery of Iran’s crude oil to its refineries. Official figures show that China imported nearly 410,000 barrels of crude from Iran in January and February this year, up two percent from a year ago. “As far as I can see, this is the first confirmed visit to an Iranian port by a Chinese-owned crude oil carrier since the ban,” said Richard Hurley, senior maritime data specialist at IHS Fairplay.

Subsequent to the simulated nuclear attack by the US strategic bomber command, with a highly sophisticated B-2 strategic stealth bomber, the military high command of the Democratic Peoples´ Republic Korea, which has previously warned, that the ongoing, one months military exercises in the region may be a precursor and cover for mounting an actual attack on the country, has seen itself forced to put its strategic missile command on highest alert to counter the perceived and very real risk of a nuclear attack on North Korea. However, the North Korean Statement, that North Korea has entered a “state of war” which almost all eastern and western mainstream media and top diplomats interpret as bellicose positioning by North Korea, is more an assessment of the actuality and the situation, as it is a bellicose threat.

Margaret Thatcher buttressed an ugly policy of imperialism in the world arena and unleashed an egregious class war in Britain which is still raging, a prominent analyst says. - “The rightwing nihilistic capitalism that Thatcher gave vent to was and became a zeitgeist for North America, Europe and globally,” international affairs expert Finian Cunningham wrote in an article on Press TV website on Tuesday. The former British Prime Minister died on Monday at the age of 87 after suffering from a series of strokes. Cunningham added,

“Thatcher declared war on the British people themselves,” with her reign consisting of “snake-oil economic policies.” “She famously proclaimed that 'there was no such thing as society' and went on to oversee an explosion in the gap between rich and poor and the demolition of social conditions in Britain. That legacy has been amplified by both successive Conservative and Labour governments and is central to today’s social meltdown in Britain, more than two decades after Thatcher resigned.”

Cunningham added that as a result of Thatcher's policies, the rich became richer and the poor became more numerous and poorer.

Julie Hyland & Chris Marsden: Thatcher’s legacy
John Pilger: How Thatcher gave Pol Pot a hand

Music is used to regulate mood and arousal in everyday life and to promote physical and psychological health and well-being in clinical settings. However, scientific inquiry into the neurochemical effects of music is still in its infancy. In this review, we evaluate the evidence that music improves health and well-being through the engagement of neurochemical systems for (i) reward, motivation, and pleasure; (ii) stress and arousal; (iii) immunity; and (iv) social affiliation. We discuss the limitations of these studies and outline novel approaches for integration of conceptual and technological advances from the fields of music cognition and social neuroscience into studies of the neurochemistry of music.