The CIA, reeling from the assassination of seven of its operatives in Afghanistan earlier this week, said that its resolve to find and attack Taliban and al Qaeda leaders is “greater than ever.” CIA spokesman George Little would not discuss specifics of the Wednesday attack, the deadliest assault on the CIA since the 1983 bombing of the Beirut embassy. Little did suggest, however, that the loss would be avenged.

“There is much about the attack that isn’t yet known, but this much is clear: The CIA’s resolve to pursue aggressive counterterrorism operations is greater than ever,” Little told The Associated Press. The Association of Former Intelligence Officers said the deaths of the agents “should remind the public that the CIA is truly on the front lines in this war; one that remains officially unrecognized.”

Organization president Gene Poteat said he appreciated President Obama’s letter of condolences to agency staffers, but criticized Obama for “his silence” on the Department of Justice’s effort to prosecute CIA personnel over allegations of torture during the Bush administration.

“Yet we expect these patriots to continue despite such personal and professional risks abroad — and at home,” Poteat said. Few details have emerged that could be confirmed about the attack and its deadly consequences.

Read More: ABC News

President Hamid Karzai was effectively handed a second five-year term Sunday when his only challenger dropped out of the race, and the Obama administration said it was prepared to work with the man it has previously criticized to combat corruption and confront the Taliban insurgency.

President Barack Obama has been waiting for a new government in Kabul to announce whether he will send tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan. The war has intensified and October was the deadliest month of the eight-year war for U.S. forces.

Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to quit six days before the runoff election, after last-minute talks led by the U.S. and United Nations failed to produce a power-sharing agreement acceptable to Karzai, according to a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

In an emotional speech, Abdullah told supporters that he could not accept an runoff led by the same Karzai-appointed election commission that managed the fraud-marred vote in August. The runoff was set for Nov. 7 after U.N.-backed auditors annulled nearly a third of Karzai’s votes as fakes.

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“We have to ask ourselves if these were puppies and kittens being dropped into grinders, would we find that acceptable?” asked Nathan Runkle, the group’s executive director, at a news conference in Des Moines. “I don’t think that most people would.” The group said that tossing male chicks, which have little value because they can’t lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat, into grinders is common industry practice. United Egg Producers, a trade group for U.S. egg farmers, confirmed that.

The hatchery is owned by West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North America and is one of many operations in Iowa, the nation’s leading egg producer. The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards.

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine. In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.

Hy-Line said the video “appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies,” referring to chicks on the factory floor. But the company also noted that “instantaneous euthanasia” — a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder — is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community.

Company spokesman Tom Jorgensen said Tuesday an investigation was continuing, and once it’s completed the company would release more information. Runkle acknowledged that his group’s ultimate goal was to get people to stop eating eggs. He said he believe many would refuse to eat eggs if they knew what happened to male chicks.

“The egg industry is perhaps the cruelest industry on the face of the planet,” Runkle said. Mercy for Animals also sent letters to the nation’s 50 largest grocery store chains, including Walmart, Whole Foods, Safeway, Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s, asking them to include a label on egg cartons that says, “Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry.”

A spokesman for United Egg Producers called the proposal “almost a joke.” Spokesman Mitch Head said Mercy for Animals had no credible authority, as well as questionable motives. “This is a group which espouses no egg consumption by anyone — so that is clearly their motive.”

Mercy for Animals estimated 200 million male chicks are killed a year, which the United Egg Producers also confirmed. “There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens,” Head said. “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need.”

Using a grinder, Head said, “is the most instantaneous way to euthanize chicks.” There is no federal law that ensures the humane euthanasia of animals on farms or hatcheries, according to Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president and chief counsel of the Humane Society of the United States.

The Humane Society also says that virtually all egg farms, even those that sell cage-free eggs, get their hens from hatcheries that kill their male chicks.

Hy-Line says on its Web site that its Iowa facility produces 33.4 million chicks. Based on that figure, Mercy for Animals estimates a similar number of male chicks are killed at the facility each year. Hy-Line did not comment on that estimate.

Runkle, of Mercy for Animals, said most people would be shocked to learn that 200 million chicks are killed a year. “Is this justifiable just for cheap eggs?” he said. As to more humane alternatives to disposing of male chicks, Runkle said the whole system is inherently flawed. “The entire industrial hatchery system subjects these birds to stress, fear and pain from the first day,” he said.

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The recommendation is expected from a presidential task force on interrogation methods that plans to send some findings to the White House on Tuesday.

The official said the panel, which has not completed its work, has concluded that the unit of intelligence and law enforcement agencies should be created. The task force is unsure which agencies should have a role, though the CIA and FBI are expected to be important players, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the panel’s work and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, said President Barack Obama has not reviewed the task force’s recommendations. The spokesman declined to discuss any findings. The recommendation about the new unit was first reported in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

The unit’s structure would depart significantly from such work under the Bush administration, when the CIA had the lead and sometimes exclusive role in questioning al-Qaida suspects. The task force has not reached a conclusion as to which agency should lead the unit or where it should be based, the official said.

Such a unit would not alter the Obama administration’s decision against using harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, that were authorized by the Bush administration. The Obama task force is examining what other techniques could be used, the official said.

Obama signed executive orders when he took office in January calling for government task forces to recommend future policies for interrogating and detaining suspected terrorists. The deadline for those recommendations is Tuesday, but the work will take more time than that.

The coming week also marks the halfway mark to Obama’s deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

More than 90 percent of the detainees held at the U.S. military base in Cuba when he signed that order remain. To its critics, “Gitmo” is a concrete-and-steel symbol of an American gulag; to supporters, it is as a critical safeguard against terrorism.

Guantanamo’s detractors and defenders both say the administration’s efforts so far suggest that deadline may lapse.

LaBolt said the administration is “making steady progress in reviewing the status of each Guantanamo detainee and in strengthening the military commission system to ensure that the detainees are brought to swift and certain justice.”

He noted that Bush administration “succeeded in prosecuting only three detainees in more than seven years.”

When Obama became president in January, there were about 245 inmates at the facility. After six months, the U.S. has relocated fewer than 20. Most of those were sent to other countries; one has been brought to U.S. to face trial in a civilian criminal court.

The administration has reviewed more than half of the detainee cases at Guantanamo.

The government hopes to transfer many of the detainees — including up to 100 Yemenis — to other nations for rehabilitation or release. A much smaller number is expected to be brought to trial by the Justice Department, and a separate group will be tried in military commissions.

A final group probably will be held without formal charges, subject to some form of regular judicial review.

The Bush administration created the Guantanamo facility after the Sept. 11 attacks. The intent was to deal with what U.S. officials called “the worst of the worst” among suspected terrorists. But over the years the U.S. released or transferred more than 500 of the inmates once held.

Obama campaigned on a pledge to close Guantanamo. As president, he has seen members of his own party abandon him on the issue when Republicans mounted effective opposition.

Democrats and Republicans alike voted to withhold money for relocating detainees to U.S. soil — marking the first serious legislative setback of the Obama presidency.

“It demonstrates the president’s first executive order was a fundamentally flawed judgment,” said Rep. Peter King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee who recently joined the House Intelligence Committee.

“I have no doubt the average American wants terrorists held in Guantanamo — they want tough policies against terrorism,” he said.

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the legal issues surrounding Guatanamo too often have been pushed aside by politics.

“There’s been an ugly, angry backlash in Congress that’s based on a mix of fear-mongering and misunderstanding. Obama has pledged to restore the rule of law and abide by the rule of law, and he needs to act out of principle, not political pressure,” said Hafetz.

Hafetz argued the administration is subverting its own cause by pressing ahead with what he calls weak cases against particular prisoners. “That’s inconsistent with their stated desire to close the prison within a year,” he said.

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The statement issued by the leaders from the so-called BRIC nations contained no reference to developing new reserve currencies to complement the dollar, which Russia had called for at a separate event earlier in the day. Instead, the cautious wording appeared to reflect China’s concerns that any anti-dollar statements could erode the value of its currency reserves.

“There is a strong need for a stable, predictable and more diversified international monetary system,” the final statement said.

A reformed financial and economic architecture should be based on “democratic and transparent decision-making and implementation process at the international financial organizations,” it said.

The BRIC nations urged the international community to keep the multilateral trading system stable, curb trade protectionism and they stressed a commitment to “advance the reform of international financial institutions to reflect changes in the world economy.”

The group repeated long-standing calls that emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China be given greater representation at major institutions like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.

The document called for broader cooperation in the energy sphere, diversifying energy resources and energy transit routes.

It also underlined support for a “more democratic and just multipolar world order based on the rule of international law, equality, mutual respect, cooperation, coordinated action and collective decision making of all states.”

The wording reflected a longtime call by China and Russia, shared by other developing nations, for a bigger say in global affairs to counter what they see as the U.S. domination in global affairs.

The absence of any criticism of the U.S. dollar appeared to be a compromise by Russia. President Dmitry Medvedev said earlier Tuesday that the creation of new reserve currencies in addition to the dollar was needed to stabilize global finances.

Brazil will host the next summit of the BRIC meeting in 2010.

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Chen fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Xinhua said Lai was “taken away by police” but did not elaborate. A police officer who answered the telephone Saturday at a station close to the bridge confirmed the incident and said it was under investigation. He refused to give any other details and hung up.

According to Xinhua, Chen wanted to kill himself because he had accrued 2 million yuan ($290,000) in debt from a failed construction project. On Thursday, he made his way to the Haizhu bridge, where 11 other people have tried to take their lives since April.

Lai volunteered to talk Chen down but was turned away by police, Xinhua said. Lai then broke through the cordon, climbed to where Chen sat, greeted him with a handshake, then pushed. Photos in the Beijing Morning Post showed Lai, shoeless and in a T-shirt, saluting after Chen fell.

The paper said Lai was released on bail Friday but did not give any details. It said he had been on medication for “a mental illness” for decades and had been on his way to a hospital for his pills. Chen was recovering in the hospital, Xinhua said.

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Hundreds of active pharmaceutical ingredients are used in a variety of manufacturing, including drugmaking: For example, lithium is used to make ceramics and treat bipolar disorder; nitroglycerin is a heart drug and also used in explosives; copper shows up in everything from pipes to contraceptives.

Federal and industry officials say they don’t know the extent to which pharmaceuticals are released by U.S. manufacturers because no one tracks them — as drugs. But a close analysis of 20 years of federal records found that, in fact, the government unintentionally keeps data on a few, allowing a glimpse of the pharmaceuticals coming from factories.

As part of its ongoing PharmaWater investigation about trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, AP identified 22 compounds that show up on two lists: the EPA monitors them as industrial chemicals that are released into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water under federal pollution laws, while the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The data don’t show precisely how much of the 271 million pounds comes from drugmakers versus other manufacturers; also, the figure is a massive undercount because of the limited federal government tracking.

To date, drugmakers have dismissed the suggestion that their manufacturing contributes significantly to what’s being found in water. Federal drug and water regulators agree.

But some researchers say the lack of required testing amounts to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy about whether drugmakers are contributing to water pollution.

“It doesn’t pass the straight-face test to say pharmaceutical manufacturers are not emitting any of the compounds they’re creating,” said Kyla Bennett, who spent 10 years as an EPA enforcement officer before becoming an ecologist and environmental attorney.

Pilot studies in the U.S. and abroad are now confirming those doubts.

Last year, the AP reported that trace amounts of a wide range of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in American drinking water supplies. Including recent findings in Dallas, Cleveland and Maryland’s Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans.

Most cities and water providers still do not test. Some scientists say that wherever researchers look, they will find pharma-tainted water.

Consumers are considered the biggest contributors to the contamination. We consume drugs, then excrete what our bodies don’t absorb. Other times, we flush unused drugs down toilets. The AP also found that an estimated 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging are thrown away each year by hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Researchers have found that even extremely diluted concentrations of drugs harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs. Some scientists say they are increasingly concerned that the consumption of combinations of many drugs, even in small amounts, could harm humans over decades.

Utilities say the water is safe. Scientists, doctors and the EPA say there are no confirmed human risks associated with consuming minute concentrations of drugs. But those experts also agree that dangers cannot be ruled out, especially given the emerging research.

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Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.

However, the list of 22 includes other troubling releases of chemicals that can be used to make drugs and other products: 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone, 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches, 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochloride. Others include treatments for head lice and worms.

Residues are often released into the environment when manufacturing equipment is cleaned.

A small fraction of pharmaceuticals also leach out of landfills where they are dumped. Pharmaceuticals released onto land include the chemo agent fluorouracil, the epilepsy medicine phenytoin and the sedative pentobarbital sodium. The overall amount may be considerable, given the volume of what has been buried — 572 million pounds of the 22 monitored drugs since 1988.

In one case, government data shows that in Columbus, Ohio, pharmaceutical maker Boehringer Ingelheim Roxane Inc. discharged an estimated 2,285 pounds of lithium carbonate — which is considered slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates and freshwater fish — to a local wastewater treatment plant between 1995 and 2006. Company spokeswoman Marybeth C. McGuire said the pharmaceutical plant, which uses lithium to make drugs for bipolar disorder, has violated no laws or regulations. McGuire said all the lithium discharged, an annual average of 190 pounds, was lost when residues stuck to mixing equipment were washed down the drain.

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Pharmaceutical company officials point out that active ingredients represent profits, so there’s a huge incentive not to let any escape. They also say extremely strict manufacturing regulations — albeit aimed at other chemicals — help prevent leakage, and that whatever traces may get away are handled by onsite wastewater treatment.

“Manufacturers have to be in compliance with all relevant environmental laws,” said Alan Goldhammer, a scientist and vice president at the industry trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Goldhammer conceded some drug residues could be released in wastewater, but stressed “it would not cause any environmental issues because it was not a toxic substance at the level that it was being released at.”

Several big drugmakers were asked this simple question: Have you tested wastewater from your plants to find out whether any active pharmaceuticals are escaping, and if so what have you found?

No drugmaker answered directly.

“Based on research that we have reviewed from the past 20 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are not a significant source of pharmaceuticals that contribute to environmental risk,” GlaxoSmithKline said in a statement.

AstraZeneca spokeswoman Kate Klemas said the company’s manufacturing processes “are designed to avoid, or otherwise minimize the loss of product to the environment” and thus “ensure that any residual losses of pharmaceuticals to the environment that do occur are at levels that would be unlikely to pose a threat to human health or the environment.”

One major manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., acknowledged that it tested some of its wastewater — but outside the United States.

The company’s director of hazard communication and environmental toxicology, Frank Mastrocco, said Pfizer has sampled effluent from some of its foreign drug factories. Without disclosing details, he said the results left Pfizer “confident that the current controls and processes in place at these facilities are adequately protective of human health and the environment.”

It’s not just the industry that isn’t testing.

FDA spokesman Christopher Kelly noted that his agency is not responsible for what comes out on the waste end of drug factories. At the EPA, acting assistant administrator for water Mike Shapiro — whose agency’s Web site says pharmaceutical releases from manufacturing are “well defined and controlled” — did not mention factories as a source of pharmaceutical pollution when asked by the AP how drugs get into drinking water.

“Pharmaceuticals get into water in many ways,” he said in a written statement. “It’s commonly believed the majority come from human and animal excretion. A portion also comes from flushing unused drugs down the toilet or drain; a practice EPA generally discourages.”

His position echoes that of a line of federal drug and water regulators as well as drugmakers, who concluded in the 1990s — before highly sensitive tests now used had been developed — that manufacturing is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in the environment.

Pharmaceutical makers typically are excused from having to submit an environmental review for new products, and the FDA has never rejected a drug application based on potential environmental impact. Also at play are pressures not to delay potentially lifesaving drugs. What’s more, because the EPA hasn’t concluded at what level, if any, pharmaceuticals are bad for the environment or harmful to people, drugmakers almost never have to report the release of pharmaceuticals they produce.

“The government could get a national snapshot of the water if they chose to,” said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “and it seems logical that we would want to find out what’s coming out of these plants.”

Ajit Ghorpade, an environmental engineer who worked for several major pharmaceutical companies before his current job helping run a wastewater treatment plant, said drugmakers have no impetus to take measurements that the government doesn’t require.

“Obviously nobody wants to spend the time or their dime to prove this,” he said. “It’s like asking me why I don’t drive a hybrid car? Why should I? It’s not required.”

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After contacting the nation’s leading drugmakers and filing public records requests, the AP found two federal agencies that have tested.

Both the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey have studies under way comparing sewage at treatment plants that receive wastewater from drugmaking factories against sewage at treatment plants that do not.

Preliminary USGS results, slated for publication later this year, show that treated wastewater from sewage plants serving drug factories had significantly more medicine residues. Data from the EPA study show a disproportionate concentration in wastewater of an antibiotic that a major Michigan factory was producing at the time the samples were taken.

Meanwhile, other researchers recorded concentrations of codeine in the southern reaches of the Delaware River that were at least 10 times higher than the rest of the river.

The scientists from the Delaware River Basin Commission won’t have to look far when they try to track down potential sources later this year. One mile from the sampling site, just off shore of Pennsville, N.J., there’s a pipe that spits out treated wastewater from a municipal plant. The plant accepts sewage from a pharmaceutical factory owned by Siegfried Ltd. The factory makes codeine.

“We have implemented programs to not only reduce the volume of waste materials generated but to minimize the amount of pharmaceutical ingredients in the water,” said Siegfried spokeswoman Rita van Eck.

Another codeine plant, run by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Noramco Inc., is about seven miles away. A Noramco spokesman acknowledged that the Wilmington, Del., factory had voluntarily tested its wastewater and found codeine in trace concentrations thousands of times greater than what was found in the Delaware River. “The amounts of codeine we measured in the wastewater, prior to releasing it to the City of Wilmington, are not considered to be hazardous to the environment,” said a company spokesman.

In another instance, equipment-cleaning water sent down the drain of an Upsher-Smith Laboratories, Inc. factory in Denver consistently contains traces of warfarin, a blood thinner, according to results obtained under a public records act request. Officials at the company and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District said they believe the concentrations are safe.

Warfarin, which also is a common rat poison and pesticide, is so effective at inhibiting growth of aquatic plants and animals it’s actually deliberately introduced to clean plants and tiny aquatic animals from ballast water of ships.

“With regard to wastewater management we are subject to a variety of federal, state and local regulation and oversight,” said Joel Green, Upsher-Smith’s vice president and general counsel. “And we work hard to maintain systems to promote compliance.”

Baylor University professor Bryan Brooks, who has published more than a dozen studies related to pharmaceuticals in the environment, said assurances that drugmakers run clean shops are not enough.

“I have no reason to believe them or not believe them,” he said. “We don’t have peer-reviewed studies to support or not support their claims.”

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I was among the many journalists kept inside this police ring, established and eventually tightened as the afternoon wore on. Our press cards gave us the freedom to leave, but that would have meant we couldn’t return to continue reporting on the event. For the protesters, the police strategy meant that they were being held against their will.

The vast majority of those demonstrating on Wednesday were peaceful. Indeed, for most of the day the mood was festive, rather than furious. People were playing music and dancing, while others were juggling.

Kettling is a well-known tactic, which has been used in the past. London police used it against May Day protests around Oxford Circus in 2001. When separate protests moved in from different parts of London on Wednesday, converging outside the Bank of England, the “kettle” was once again implemented. Teams of police, including a riot squad, pushed into every street and lane, blocking demonstrators and locking them into a small area at the heart of London’s financial district.

By early evening, the tension had mounted and people began hurling objects at the police lines. A life-sized doll dressed as a bank executive was set on fire and barricades were moved and shunted. The police responded by pushing back, often with more force than the protesters had initiated.

Some demonstrators and police were injured. One protester we interviewed dressed in a dark green jacket, with blood pouring from his left eye, said: “I was only beaten because I was trying to get out”.

The crowd erupted in chorus, demanding: “Let us go, let us go!”. The tactic has caused enormous controversy. Many have asked if police should be keeping people against their will?

Duncan Campbell, writing about “kettling” in the Guardian, a British newspaper, says “what is significant about its use … is that it is now apparently being applied in a rigid, inflexible way — policing as video-game”.

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Five people have been arrested in connection with a suspected plot to use explosives made from fireworks to disrupt the G20 summit.

The three men, aged 25, 19 and 16, and two women, both 20, all live in Plymouth and the surrounding area. They are political activists unaffiliated to any terrorist organisation, and were arrested at addresses in Plymouth. They are being held under terrorism legislation. The explosive devices were made from simple fireworks, police said.

Paul Netherton, Devon and Cornwall assistant chief constable, said imitation handguns and an imitation Kalashnikov, as well as devices made from fireworks, had been seized. The deactivated weapons were “not major” and “probably not even lethal”.

Officers said they were investigating the possibility the group planned to attend the G20 summit, which they described as an “obvious line of inquiry”.

A police source told the Guardian that initial inquiries indicate the five were “not planning a Guy Fawkes plot”. “I think it was more designed to disrupt than injure or kill,” the source said.

Scotland Yard has issued warnings in recent days that protesters are planning to bring the capital to a standstill this week in potentially violent protests scheduled to coincide with the arrival of world leaders for the summit. So far, however, protests associated with the summit have been peaceful.

Netherton said the investigation was sparked when the 25-year-old man was arrested for spray-painting on a wall in Plymouth city centre. He would not comment on the nature of the graffiti.

Police searched the man’s flat in Plymouth, and found imitation firearms, improvised explosives made of fireworks, and “material related to political ideology”.

Asked to clarify the nature of the material, Netherton said: “It’s political, it relates to political organisations, it’s not extreme but it’s a different political view. It leads to motives and things like that.”

He confirmed that one of the arrested people was an international student but would not comment on where that suspect studied. The remaining four are all British nationals.

Asked about the potential scale of damage that could be caused by the weapons and devices discovered, Netherton said: “These are imitation firearms, the other devices were made of simple fireworks – they’re probably not lethal. But I can’t comment. Fireworks do have an explosive component to them but of a minor nature.”

Devon and Cornwall police said the five, who were arrested between Friday and Sunday, were being held for offences under the Terrorism Act.

A police statement said: “As the search progressed officers found a number of weapons and suspected imitation weapons as well as material relating to political ideology. Also found were suspicious devices that were seized and submitted for forensic examination.”

After investigations on Sunday, a 19-year-old man was arrested. Other addresses were searched during the weekend in the Plymouth area and further searches are being considered. Police said they would be applying for warrants of further detention this afternoon.

Police stressed that inquiries indicated there was no religious element to the investigation, and that those involved were political activists. They are not believed to be part of a national or larger operation.

Assistant chief constable Sharon Taylor said: “I would reassure local people and residents of Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly that they are not at any risk, and these arrests would appear to be isolated at this time. Those arrested people will remain in custody while further inquiries take place.”

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “The Met has been in liaison with Devon and Cornwall police regarding their ongoing investigation into five people arrested over the weekend. We would stress that the investigation is at a very early stage and that speculation regarding the capability, intention or motivation of those arrested is unhelpful. At the current time we have no information to suggest a change to the threat picture facing either the demonstrations or G20.”

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Geithner was asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York yesterday about People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s call for a new international reserve currency. He said while he had not read Zhou’s proposal, he understood it as a plan “designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.”

The dollar slid as much as 1.3 percent against the euro within 10 minutes of news accounts of Geithner’s remarks. It recouped much of the loss about 15 minutes later, when Geithner then predicted no change in the U.S. currency’s role. The dollar was down 0.22 percent at $1.3553 per euro as of 12:13 p.m. in Tokyo.

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The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing. The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it.

However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down. Scientists at the university used a math application known as synchronized chaos and applied it to climate data taken over the past 100 years.

“Imagine that you have four synchronized swimmers and they are not holding hands and they do their program and everything is fine; now, if they begin to hold hands and hold hands tightly, most likely a slight error will destroy the synchronization. Well, we applied the same analogy to climate,” researcher Dr. Anastasios Tsonis said. Scientists said that the air and ocean systems of the earth are now showing signs of synchronizing with each other.

Eventually, the systems begin to couple and the synchronous state is destroyed, leading to a climate shift. “In climate, when this happens, the climate state changes. You go from a cooling regime to a warming regime or a warming regime to a cooling regime. This way we were able to explain all the fluctuations in the global temperature trend in the past century,” Tsonis said. “The research team has found the warming trend of the past 30 years has stopped and in fact global temperatures have leveled off since 2001.”

The most recent climate shift probably occurred at about the year 2000. Now the question is how has warming slowed and how much influence does human activity have?

“But if we don’t understand what is natural, I don’t think we can say much about what the humans are doing. So our interest is to understand — first the natural variability of climate — and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,” Tsonis said.

Tsonis said he thinks the current trend of steady or even cooling earth temps may last a couple of decades or until the next climate shift occurs.

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It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.

It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.

The group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs. It doesn’t issue policy statements or resolutions, nor does it hold any events other than an annual meeting.

Past participants have included Margaret Thatcher, who attended the 1975 meeting at Turkey’s Golden Dolphin Hotel, former media mogul Conrad Black, who has been to more than a dozen conferences, and Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Juan Carlos of Spain and top officials of BP, IBM, Barclays and the Bank of England.

It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.

The fulminating is aggravated by Obama’s preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.

Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites.

The video sharing website YouTube alone is home to thousands of Bilderberg-related videos.

“I don’t laugh at the people who claim that they understand the connections, but I’ve never really spent much time tracing that through,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former presidential candidate whose libertarian sensibilities have made him a darling of the Bilderberg conspiracists.

“The one thing that concerns me is that the people who surround Obama or Bush generally come from the same philosophic viewpoint and they have their organizations – they have the Trilateral Commission, the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and the Bilderbergers, and they’ve been around a long time. And my biggest concern is what they preach: Keynesian economics and interventionism and world planning,” he said.

While it’s easy to dismiss the Bilder-busters as cranks, these voices have a way of making themselves heard on the margins of the debate in ways that can prove to be a real, if minor, distraction to Obama’s political team. Bill Clinton had trouble shaking rumors that he was behind a shady criminal syndicate operating out of the Mena airport. George W. Bush was sometimes portrayed as the puppet of clandestine Middle Eastern oil interests.

Obama’s selection of numerous Bilderbergers for key posts “certainly would verify their suspicions,” said Paul, referring to fears of the group’s influence.

“And I don’t think it’s just Obama. Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats – Goldman Sachs generally has somebody in treasury. And the big banks generally have somebody in the Federal Reserve. And they’re international people, too. And they’re probably working very hard this weekend, with the G20. And they get involved in the IMF. But that is their stated goal. They do believe in a powerful centralized government and we believe in the opposite.”

One popular website, “Prison Planet,” greeted Sebelius’ nomination with the headline “Obama Picks Bilderberger for Health Secretary.”

It’s obvious why Bilderberg is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, who’ve credited it with anointing aspiring presidents, selecting their running mates, creating the European Union and instigating the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, among other coups.

Bilderberg meetings are closed to the press, participants are asked not to publicly discuss the proceedings and the attendee list is only occasionally released. As a result, the group has come to be viewed as a more publicity-shy cousin to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations – other influential international think tanks that are staples of fringe group conversation.

Unlike Bilderberg, though, those organizations have opened their proceedings to public scrutiny, maintain websites and have long listed their members.

The Bilderberg group, in a rare press release last year, laid out a benign if vague mission: creating “a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.”

“Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced,” read the press release, which noted that a list of participants would be available by phone request between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on the second and third days of the conference.

The Bilderberg conspiracists first pounced on the Obama connection during the 2008 campaign, when news leaked in May that the candidate, who at the time was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, had initially tapped former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson, a top Bilderberger, to help him select a running mate.

IRS filings show that Johnson as recently as 2006 was the treasurer of a non-profit group called American Friends of Bilderberg. The group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to pay for meetings–including $125,000 in total contributions from Bilderberg stalwarts Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller in 2005 and 2006 plus $25,000 in 2005 from the Washington Post, whose chairman Don Graham has attended in the past.

Johnson did not return a message inquiring about his role at Bilderberg.

“The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made,” reported Prison Planet. “It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring ‘change’ to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.”

One month later, in June, Johnson was joined at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting by Geithner, Holbrooke, Summers and Ross, as well as Obama’s first choice for HHS secretary, Tom Daschle, and Sebelius, who at the time was included on some short lists of prospective Obama running mates and who also attended the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

According to the Bilderberg press release, the meeting was designed to “deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.” Approximately two-thirds of the 140 expected attendees came from Europe, according to the release, and the rest from North America.

Had the meeting been held outside the United States, that might have been the end of the Obama angle. But the conference, which took place from June 5 through 8, was held at a heavily guarded hotel in Chantilly, Va. in suburban Washington—coincidentally overlapping with an Obama campaign event in the area.

While Obama’s schedule indicated he was to fly home to Chicago for the weekend—and journalists were herded on a campaign plane under the impression they were headed there along with Obama—the future president slipped away for a private meetings and never actually boarded the flight.

As it turned out, Obama secretly met that evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C., but not before raising alarms among the Bilder-busters, who were convinced something was rotten in Chantilly.

Prison Planet connected the dots and concluded Obama and Clinton met at the Bilderberg meeting, declaring that “the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.”

“It is now seems increasingly likely that the secret meetings with Bilderberg this weekend will herald the decision to name Hillary Clinton as Obama’s VP candidate,” predicted a sister site, Infowars.net.

Even the snarky D.C.-based Wonkette blog weighed in, half-seriously positing that “really, it sounds like” Obama and Clinton rendezvoused “at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg.”

Curiously, though, the episode wasn’t the first time a Bilderberg meeting intersected with vice presidential selection machinations.

In 2004, both Time magazine and the New York Times noted that then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) had impressed Bilderbergers at that year’s conference in Stresa, Italy—roughly one month prior to his selection as Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) running mate– when Edwards debated Republican Ralph Reed. Then, as in 2008, Jim Johnson led the vice presidential vetting.

Time reported that then-Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Holbrooke attended and called Kerry “with rave reviews” about Edwards’ debate skills.

In its tick-tock of the vice-presidential selection process, the New York Times also noted the Bilderberg effect.

”His performance at Bilderberg was important,” a friend of Kerry told the Times. ”He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.”

An attendee of the 2004 meeting dismissed the notion that Edwards’ Bilderberg performance helped land him on the Democratic ticket.

“It wasn’t because of his performance at the meeting – he was at the meeting because he was going to get picked” said the attendee, who did not want to be identified breaching Bilderberg’s off-the-record rule. “He was there as a surrogate for Kerry” and to boost his foreign policy bona fides, said the attendee.

Either way, the attendee contended, the Bilderberg conspiracy theories don’t make sense on their face, if only because the wide array of ideologies represented would make it difficult to reach consensus.

“There were so many different people there with so many different viewpoints that it belied the opportunity to really conspire, because obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson,” the attendee said.

Besides, the attendee observed, it’s almost impossible to name a Bilderberger-free Cabinet.

“You’d be hard pressed to find an administration that hasn’t reached into those ranks into the last 20, 30, 40 years. “

GO TO FULL STORY

By: Kenneth P. Vogel

The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.

It sounds crazy, but that’s what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.

It turns out that Sebelius – like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross – is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.

The group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs. It doesn’t issue policy statements or resolutions, nor does it hold any events other than an annual meeting.

Past participants have included Margaret Thatcher, who attended the 1975 meeting at Turkey’s Golden Dolphin Hotel, former media mogul Conrad Black, who has been to more than a dozen conferences, and Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, King Juan Carlos of Spain and top officials of BP, IBM, Barclays and the Bank of England.

It is precisely that exclusive roster of globally influential figures that has captured the interest of an international network of conspiracists, who for decades have viewed the Bilderberg conference as a devious corporate-globalist scheme.

The fulminating is aggravated by Obama’s preference for surrounding himself with well-credentialed, well-connected, and well-traveled elites. His personnel choices have touched a populist, even paranoid nerve among those who are convinced powerful elites and secret societies are moving the planet toward a new world order.

Their worldview, characterized by a deep and angry suspicion of the ruling class rather than any prevailing partisan or ideological affiliation, is widely articulated on overnight AM radio shows and a collection of Internet websites.

The video sharing website YouTube alone is home to thousands of Bilderberg-related videos.

“I don’t laugh at the people who claim that they understand the connections, but I’ve never really spent much time tracing that through,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a former presidential candidate whose libertarian sensibilities have made him a darling of the Bilderberg conspiracists.

“The one thing that concerns me is that the people who surround Obama or Bush generally come from the same philosophic viewpoint and they have their organizations – they have the Trilateral Commission, the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] and the Bilderbergers, and they’ve been around a long time. And my biggest concern is what they preach: Keynesian economics and interventionism and world planning,” he said.

While it’s easy to dismiss the Bilder-busters as cranks, these voices have a way of making themselves heard on the margins of the debate in ways that can prove to be a real, if minor, distraction to Obama’s political team. Bill Clinton had trouble shaking rumors that he was behind a shady criminal syndicate operating out of the Mena airport. George W. Bush was sometimes portrayed as the puppet of clandestine Middle Eastern oil interests.

Obama’s selection of numerous Bilderbergers for key posts “certainly would verify their suspicions,” said Paul, referring to fears of the group’s influence.

“And I don’t think it’s just Obama. Whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats – Goldman Sachs generally has somebody in treasury. And the big banks generally have somebody in the Federal Reserve. And they’re international people, too. And they’re probably working very hard this weekend, with the G20. And they get involved in the IMF. But that is their stated goal. They do believe in a powerful centralized government and we believe in the opposite.”

One popular website, “Prison Planet,” greeted Sebelius’ nomination with the headline “Obama Picks Bilderberger for Health Secretary.”

It’s obvious why Bilderberg is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, who’ve credited it with anointing aspiring presidents, selecting their running mates, creating the European Union and instigating the war in Iraq and the bombing of Serbia, among other coups.

Bilderberg meetings are closed to the press, participants are asked not to publicly discuss the proceedings and the attendee list is only occasionally released. As a result, the group has come to be viewed as a more publicity-shy cousin to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations – other influential international think tanks that are staples of fringe group conversation.

Unlike Bilderberg, though, those organizations have opened their proceedings to public scrutiny, maintain websites and have long listed their members.

The Bilderberg group, in a rare press release last year, laid out a benign if vague mission: creating “a better understanding of the complex forces and major trends affecting Western nations.”

“Bilderberg is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced,” read the press release, which noted that a list of participants would be available by phone request between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on the second and third days of the conference.

The Bilderberg conspiracists first pounced on the Obama connection during the 2008 campaign, when news leaked in May that the candidate, who at the time was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, had initially tapped former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson, a top Bilderberger, to help him select a running mate.

IRS filings show that Johnson as recently as 2006 was the treasurer of a non-profit group called American Friends of Bilderberg. The group has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to pay for meetings–including $125,000 in total contributions from Bilderberg stalwarts Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller in 2005 and 2006 plus $25,000 in 2005 from the Washington Post, whose chairman Don Graham has attended in the past.

Johnson did not return a message inquiring about his role at Bilderberg.

“The news further puts to rest any delusions that Bilderberg is a mere talking shop where no decisions are made,” reported Prison Planet. “It also ridicules once again any notion that an Obama presidency would bring ‘change’ to the status quo of America being ruled by an unelected corporate and military-industrial complex elite.”

One month later, in June, Johnson was joined at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting by Geithner, Holbrooke, Summers and Ross, as well as Obama’s first choice for HHS secretary, Tom Daschle, and Sebelius, who at the time was included on some short lists of prospective Obama running mates and who also attended the 2007 meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

According to the Bilderberg press release, the meeting was designed to “deal mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran.” Approximately two-thirds of the 140 expected attendees came from Europe, according to the release, and the rest from North America.

Had the meeting been held outside the United States, that might have been the end of the Obama angle. But the conference, which took place from June 5 through 8, was held at a heavily guarded hotel in Chantilly, Va. in suburban Washington—coincidentally overlapping with an Obama campaign event in the area.

While Obama’s schedule indicated he was to fly home to Chicago for the weekend—and journalists were herded on a campaign plane under the impression they were headed there along with Obama—the future president slipped away for a private meetings and never actually boarded the flight.

As it turned out, Obama secretly met that evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington, D.C., but not before raising alarms among the Bilder-busters, who were convinced something was rotten in Chantilly.

Prison Planet connected the dots and concluded Obama and Clinton met at the Bilderberg meeting, declaring that “the complete failure of the mainstream media to report on the fact, once again betrays the super-secretive nature and influential reputation that the 54-year-old organization still maintains.”

“It is now seems increasingly likely that the secret meetings with Bilderberg this weekend will herald the decision to name Hillary Clinton as Obama’s VP candidate,” predicted a sister site, Infowars.net.

Even the snarky D.C.-based Wonkette blog weighed in, half-seriously positing that “really, it sounds like” Obama and Clinton rendezvoused “at that creepy Bilderberg Group meeting, which is happening now, and which is so secret that nobody will admit they’re going, even though everybody who is anybody goes to Bilderberg.”

Curiously, though, the episode wasn’t the first time a Bilderberg meeting intersected with vice presidential selection machinations.

In 2004, both Time magazine and the New York Times noted that then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C) had impressed Bilderbergers at that year’s conference in Stresa, Italy—roughly one month prior to his selection as Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) running mate– when Edwards debated Republican Ralph Reed. Then, as in 2008, Jim Johnson led the vice presidential vetting.

Time reported that then-Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Holbrooke attended and called Kerry “with rave reviews” about Edwards’ debate skills.

In its tick-tock of the vice-presidential selection process, the New York Times also noted the Bilderberg effect.

”His performance at Bilderberg was important,” a friend of Kerry told the Times. ”He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.”

An attendee of the 2004 meeting dismissed the notion that Edwards’ Bilderberg performance helped land him on the Democratic ticket.

“It wasn’t because of his performance at the meeting – he was at the meeting because he was going to get picked” said the attendee, who did not want to be identified breaching Bilderberg’s off-the-record rule. “He was there as a surrogate for Kerry” and to boost his foreign policy bona fides, said the attendee.

Either way, the attendee contended, the Bilderberg conspiracy theories don’t make sense on their face, if only because the wide array of ideologies represented would make it difficult to reach consensus.

“There were so many different people there with so many different viewpoints that it belied the opportunity to really conspire, because obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson,” the attendee said.

Besides, the attendee observed, it’s almost impossible to name a Bilderberger-free Cabinet.

“You’d be hard pressed to find an administration that hasn’t reached into those ranks into the last 20, 30, 40 years. “

GO TO FULL STORY

But the proposal would be “dead on arrival” if it’s sent to Congress, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said. Murray used that blunt terminology when she told Shinseki that the idea would not be acceptable and would be rejected if formally proposed. Her remarks came during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs about the 2010 budget.

No official proposal to create such a program has been announced publicly, but veterans groups wrote a pre-emptive letter last week to President Obama voicing their opposition to the idea after hearing the plan was under consideration. The groups also cited an increase in “third-party collections” estimated in the 2010 budget proposal — something they said could be achieved only if the Veterans Administration started billing for service-related injuries.

Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under “consideration. A final decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said. Currently, veterans’ private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.

Charging for service-related injuries would violate “a sacred trust,” Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Joe Davis said. Davis said the move would risk private health care for veterans and their families by potentially maxing out benefits paying for costly war injury treatments.

A second senator, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, said he agreed that the idea should not go forward.

“I think you will give that up” as a revenue stream if it is included in this April’s budget, Burr said.

Murray said she’d already discussed her concerns with the secretary the previous week.

“I believe that veterans with service-connected injuries have already paid by putting their lives on the line,” Murray said in her remarks. “I don’t think we should nickel and dime them for their care.”

Eleven of the most prominent veterans organizations have been lobbying Congress to oppose the idea. In the letter sent last week to the president, the groups warned that the idea “is wholly unacceptable and a total abrogation of our government’s moral and legal responsibility to the men and women who have sacrificed so much.”

The groups included The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

At the time, a White House spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the option was being considered.

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* Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.

* Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn’t actually use the word organic.

* Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.

* Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.

* Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.

* Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?

* Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.

* Section 207 requires that the state’s agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

* There are many more but by the time I got this far in the legislation I was so alarmed that I wanted to bring someone’s attention to it. (to the one person who reads my blog)

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And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

“At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.

“But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.”

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.

Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a “serious error” on Baxter’s part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.

On Friday, the company’s director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.

“It was live,” Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls “experimental virus material,” was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine — including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly — at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.

There is no suggestion that happened because of this accident, however.

“We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred,” said Andraghetti.

“And we have no evidence of any increased transmissibility of the viruses that were involved in the experiment with the ferrets in the Czech Republic.”

Baxter hasn’t shed much light — at least not publicly — on how the accident happened. Earlier this week Bona called the mistake the result of a combination of “just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure.”

He said he couldn’t reveal more information because it would give away proprietary information about Baxter’s production process.

Andraghetti said Friday the four investigating governments are co-operating closely with the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Control in Stockholm, Sweden.

“We are in very close contact with Austrian authorities to understand what the circumstances of the incident in their laboratory were,” she said.

“And the reason for us wishing to know what has happened is to prevent similar events in the future and to share lessons that can be learned from this event with others to prevent similar events. … This is very important.”

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* Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)

* Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the “Purpose” Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)

* Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)

* Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)

* Memorandum Regarding the President’s Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)

* Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)

* Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)

* Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)

* Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)

Due to public interest in this matter, the Department of Justice is releasing these documents in an inaccessible format. Accessible versions will be posted as soon as possible. If you have a disability and the format of any material on the site interferes with your ability to access some information, please email the Department of Justice webmaster at webmaster@usdoj.gov. To enable us to respond in a manner that will be of most help to you, please indicate the nature of the accessibility problem, your preferred format (electronic format (ASCII, etc.), standard print, large print, etc.), the web address of the requested material, and your full contact information so we can reach you if questions arise while fulfilling your request.

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The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”

The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

The letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.

But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel that viewed the tapes.

“The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs,” states the letter.

John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, was appointed to lead the criminal investigation out of Virginia.

He had asked that the requests for information in the civil lawsuit be put on hold until he had completed his criminal investigation. Durham asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work, and has not asked for another extension.

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That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States’ management of it is widespread.

At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings.

Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.

Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.

The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

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He wanted to know where GM field trials had taken place in his local area. The only EU-approved GM crop is a strain of corn developed by the US firm Monsanto. But GM trials for research are legal, under strict controls.

The court in Luxembourg ruled on Tuesday that “information relating to the location of the release can in no case be kept confidential”. It said “considerations relating to the protection of public order and other secrets protected by law… cannot constitute reasons capable of restricting access to the information listed by the [EU] directive, including in particular those relating to the location of release”.

On Monday, the European Commission failed in a bid to force the governments of France and Greece to allow Monsanto’s GM corn to be grown in their countries. Opponents of GM crops say more scientific data is needed, arguing that their long-term genetic impact on humans and wildlife could be harmful.

The biotech industry says the crops are as safe as traditional varieties, and that they would provide plentiful, cheaper food.

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These included detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture. It also said that the UK and the US have “actively undermined” international law by their actions.

It concluded that many measures introduced to fight terrorism were illegal and counter-productive. It called for justice systems to be strengthened and warned that temporary measures should not become permanent.

The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is a non-governmental organisation which promotes the observance of the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights. The panel of eminent lawyers and judges concluded that the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks on the US was robust and effective.

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“The worst cannot be ruled out,” Strauss-Kahn said in Kuala Lumpur, where he was attending a gathering of central bankers from Southeast Asia. “There’s a lot of downside risk.”

Ten days ago, the IMF cut its world-growth estimate for this year to 0.5 percent, the weakest pace since World War II. Stimulus packages alone won’t succeed in dragging the global economy out of recession unless confidence is restored in the banking system, Strauss-Kahn said today.

“All this will work if, and only if, the different countries are likely to do what they have to do in terms of restructuring the banking sector,” he said. “And today it’s not done.”

The U.S. economy has lost 3.57 million jobs since a recession started in December 2007, its biggest employment slump of any economic contraction in the postwar period as companies from Macy’s Inc. to Caterpillar Inc. cut costs. The U.K. economy will shrink this year by the most since 1946, the IMF forecasts.

“There is hope that the fiscal and monetary stimulus measures being implemented around the world can help turn things around,” said David Cohen, Singapore-based director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics. “But there is still the risk it can be short-circuited by further financial turmoil.”

$780 Billion Package

The U.S. Senate is due to vote early next week on an economic stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama said is needed to prevent the economy from sinking into a deeper recession. Asian nations from China to Singapore and India have pledged more than $685 billion on their own spending programs.

The Obama administration is considering subjecting banks to a new test to determine whether they require fresh capital injections as part of a rescue plan to be unveiled by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner next week, people familiar with the matter said.

Governments should be ready for “full-fledged” intervention, acting quickly to sell or wind-up insolvent lenders, Strauss-Kahn said. While the European Central Bank, which left interest rates unchanged this week, may have more room to cut borrowing costs, such a policy may not be as important as restructuring the region’s banks, he said.

Borrowing Costs

“We’re probably not very far from the point where the question of interest rates is not the most important question,” Strauss-Kahn said. “Providing direct liquidity to the market, restructuring the banking sector, may have more influence on demand than interest rates.”

In Asia, “there’s still room for bigger stimulus packages,” the IMF official said. Malaysia, for example, may introduce a second stimulus package larger than November’s 7 billion-ringgit ($1.9 billion) plan, he said.

Developing Asia will probably expand 5.5 percent this year, the slowest pace since 1998, the IMF said in last month’s update of its World Economic Outlook report. The region may expand 6.9 percent next year, the fund forecasts.

Asian nations will need a recovery in the global economy before the region can exit a slowdown, the IMF said this month. Strauss-Kahn said today the fund’s forecast for a recovery to start in 2010 is “very uncertain.”

Demand for Loans

Demand for IMF loans is rising in nations suffering from weaker export sales, banking industry turmoil and deteriorating investor confidence. The organization has so far agreed to lend $47.9 billion to countries affected by the crisis, including Belarus, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Pakistan, Ukraine and Serbia.

Strauss-Kahn said he agreed with Poland that the eastern European nation isn’t in need of assistance from the fund now, but may require financial aid in the future.

The fund may collaborate with some countries to restore confidence, without necessarily providing immediate loans, the official said.

“Some need for precautionary arrangements may appear,” he said, without naming specific countries.

Critics of the fund say it’s failed to keep up with the pace of change as the worldwide recession deepens.

The IMF and similar institutions are “incapable” of coping with the global financial crisis, because their resources can’t keep up with demand, former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Feb. 4.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has criticized the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organization as anachronistic organizations that give no voice to emerging economies.

The IMF and the World Bank were set up at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. The IMF was designed to prevent crises in the international monetary system and to provide financing to distressed countries.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, which has generally been harshly critical of President George W. Bush and praiseworthy of President Barack Obama, has fired a torpedo across the Obama bow.

After the British High Court ruled that evidence of a British resident’s rendition and harsh interrogation at the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay prison must remain secret because of threats made by the Bush administration to halt intelligence sharing, the Obama Administration offered a terse statement seemingly expressing support to the BBC.

“The United States thanks the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens,” a spokesman said.

In response, the ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, shot off a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the Obama Administration to clarify their position. Romero also issued a sharply-worded three sentence statement to the press, saying Obama has now offered “more of the same.”

“Hope is flickering,” Romero said in a statement. “The Obama administration’s position is not change. It is more of the same. This represents a complete turn-around and undermining of the restoration of the rule of law. The new American administration shouldn’t be complicit in hiding the abuses of its predecessors.”

The ACLU called on Clinton to “reject the Bush administration’s policy of using false claims of national security to avoid judicial review of controversial programs.”

Romero’s letter to Clinton follows.

February 4, 2009

The Honorable Hillary Clinton

U.S. Department of State

2201 C Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20520

Re: Clarification Requested on Position of the United States on Blocking Disclosure by a British Court of Its Report on Allegations of Torture

Dear Secretary Clinton:

The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges you to clarify the position of the United States on the publication of the full judgment in a lawsuit brought by a Guantanamo detainee, Binyam Mohamed, in a British court. Earlier today, the High Court in Great Britain published a judgment denying publication of its report detailing allegations of torture. The High Court stated that the United States had threatened that full publication of the court’s judgment would jeopardize intelligence cooperation between the two countries. Remarkably, the court reported that the British government claimed the U.S. position had not changed, despite the inauguration of President Barack Obama. We urgently request that you clarify the position of the United States in this matter.

Two of the British justices severely criticized the position of the United States in working to block publication of the judgment in the torture case. Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones stated today that: Indeed, we did not consider that a democracy [the United States] governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials … relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be. We had no reason … to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence-sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.

The court’s opinion specifically stated that attorneys for British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the court that the United States’ threat on the effect of publication on intelligence cooperation was continued by the United States, despite the inauguration of President Obama.

Specifically, the justices stated that, “it was submitted to us by Mr. David Rose that the situation had changed significantly following the election of President Obama who was avowedly determined to eschew torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and to close Guantanamo Bay. We have, however, been informed by counsel for the Foreign Secretary that the position has not changed.”

The claims made by the British justices that the United States continues to oppose publication of the judgment in the Binyam Mohamed case–to the point of threatening the future of U.S.-British intelligence cooperation–seems completely at odds with both the anti-torture and transparency executive orders signed by the President. We strongly urge you to clarify the position of the United States and remove any threat related to the publication of the court’s full judgment.

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this matter.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero

Executive Director

Caroline Fredrickson

Director, Washington Legislative Office

cc: Joan Donoghue, Acting Legal Adviser

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Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Obama. Oppostion MPs accused the Government of giving in to blackmail. The disclosure that the US has threatened to re-evaluate sharing intelligence with Britain came only 24 hours after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, lavished praise on the special relationship between the two countries.

Noting that it is contrary to the rule of law not to release the evidence, the judges said that it must remain secret otherwise “the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk”. Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at the base on Cuba, has launched a High Court challenge in London seeking that documents detailing his treatment to be made public.

But the judges ruled that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, had said that releasing the evidence could lead to America “revaluating” its intelligence sharing with the “real risk that it would reduce the intelligence provided”. The judges added: “It was and remains (so far as we are aware) the judgment of the Foreign Secretary that the United States Government might carry out that threat and this would seriously prejudice the national security of the United Kingdom.”

The judges called on the Obama Administration to reconsider. “If the information in the redacted paragraphs, which we consider so important to the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability, is to be put into the public domain, it must now be for the United States Government to consider changing its position or itself putting that information into the public domain.”

The Foreign Office insisted that it had not “engaged in detail” with the new Administration about the judgment in what appeared to be an attempt to minimise the embarrassment to Mr Obama.

The ruling discloses that the secret documents at the centre of the case — seven paragraphs amounting to 25 lines — “give rise to an arguable case of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” against Mr Mohamed.

It is also said that a British intelligence official may have been present when Mr Mohamed alleges that he was tortured. This raises the prospect of charges being brought against British officials.

David Davis, the former Shadow Home Secretary, called for the Government to explain what had happened. The US threat was a “matter of utmost importance” and urged Mr Miliband to “come clean”.

Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Mohamed’s lawyer, accused Britain of “capitulation to blackmail, pure and simple”. Last night Mr Miliband said that Britain’s continuing intelligence relationship with the US depended on mutual trust. “There has been no threat from the United States to ‘break off’ intelligence co-operation,” he told Channel 4 News.

“Intelligence co-operation depends on confidentiality. We share our secrets with other countries and they share their secrets with us. The founding principle for us and for them is that we can trust the confidentiality of that relationship. In this case, the United States made it clear, in documents that have been published, that there would inevitably be serious and lasting harm if that fundamental principle was breached.”

Mr Miliband said that there was no indication that the US position had changed under President Obama. He added: “We never condone or authorise the use of torture.”

The White House National Security Council said: “The United States thanks the UK Government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

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Speaking to NBC News, Mr Obama said “some banks won’t make it” but stressed that people’s deposits would be safe. He has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to draw up guidelines for banks receiving taxpayers’ money.

Meanwhile, he warned of a “difficult next few days” as the Senate begins to debate his $800bn (£567bn) rescue plan.

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The coal-mining heartland of Shanxi province had the biggest problem. China has reported the trend before, and it was not clear if Mr Jiang was commenting on new or old statistics. A 2007 commission report said the rate of defects had risen 40% since 2001, from 104.9 per 10,000 births to 145.5 in 2006.

Officials blame emissions from Shanxi’s large coal and chemical industry for the problems there. “The problem of birth defects is related to environmental pollution, especially in eight main coal zones,” said An Huanxiao, the director of Shanxi provincial family planning agency.

‘Prevention plan’

Mr Jiang said a child was born with physical defects every 30 seconds because of the degrading environment. Correspondents say the report suggests there is a human cost to China’s rapid economic development.

Researchers also blamed exposure to nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulates for the increase.

“The number of newborns with birth defects is constantly increasing in both urban and rural areas,” China Daily newspaper quoted Mr Jiang as saying.

“The rather alarming increase has forced us to kick off a high-level prevention plan.”

The commission had introduced a screening programme in the eight worst-affected provinces, Mr Jiang said.

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“He is not a drug peddler. But it is illegal, it is a banned substance,” he said. Mr Obama has denied the allegations. The US president and George Obama share the same father, but are thought to have only met each other briefly. George Obama, who is in his 20s, is due in court on Monday.

“They took me from my home,” George Obama told reporters in Nairobi from his jail cell. ” I don’t know why they are charging me.”

Kenyan family

Last year, George Obama told Vanity Fair magazine that he had only met his more famous half-brother twice, once when he was five and once when he visited East Africa in 2006. Of their second meeting, George reportedly said:”It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger.”

He has also said that he is studying to be a mechanic and works with a local youth group in Huruma, the area in Nairobi where he lives with his extended family. He is the youngest of his father’s seven children and was born six months after his father died in a car crash in 1982.

Several of the president’s Kenyan relatives went to Washington for his inauguration on 20 January, though George Obama did not.

The American president described his half brother as a ” handsome, roundheaded boy with a wary gaze” in his book, Dreams From My Father.

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In a speech, he will urge countries to avoid “muddling through as pessimists” and “make the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting the new rules for this new global order”, according to his office.

Official data confirmed Friday that Britain is in recession. Days earlier, the government unveiled a new package of measures to help the flow of credit in the economy, but Brown has argued global action is needed for a quick recovery.

He will warn Monday that the crisis has given the world a choice: “We could allow this crisis to start a retreat from globalisation. “As some want, we could close our markets — for capital, financial services, trade and for labour — and therefore reduce the risks of globalisation.

“But that would reduce global growth, deny us the benefits of global trade and confine millions to global poverty. “Or we could view the threats and challenges we face today as the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order — and our task now as nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global society.”

Britain is hosting a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) advanced and developing nations in London on April 2, and Brown has held preparatory talks with the French and German leaders, as well as new US President Barack Obama.

He will meet with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo and Japanese premier Taro Aso, as well as World Bank chief Robert Zoellick at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week.

Brown’s Downing Street office said he would discuss with them “how we can best work internationally on financial reform, economic expansion and the creation of jobs in new sectors such as the environment.”

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Meanwhile, a Hamas delegation is in Egypt for talks on cementing a truce. Israel ended its military operation in Gaza on 18 January, and Hamas declared a ceasefire hours later.

In Brussels, EU foreign ministers meeting to discuss the situation urged Palestinian factions to resolve their differences and speak with one voice. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said that without a Palestinian consensus government the organisation and delivery of humanitarian aid would be undermined.

No formal framework for a lasting ceasefire over Gaza has yet been agreed. While Israel says it requires Hamas to end weapons smuggling into Gaza and rocket attacks on Israel, Hamas has demanded that Israel lift its economic blockade of the territory.

In Gaza, Hamas has begun handing out cash to people who had their homes destroyed, or lost relatives. Hamas insists it will make payments based on the scale of each person’s loss, not on their political affiliation.

But the BBC’s Aleem Maqbool, in Gaza, says there are those who will simply see this as a way of buying support.

Soldiers ’safe’

In Israel, Prime Minister Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting that soldiers who had put their lives on the line for their country need not fear prosecution for war crimes overseas.

“The commanders and soldiers that were sent on the task in Gaza should know that they are safe from any tribunal and that the State of Israel will assist them in this issue and protect them as they protected us with their bodies during the military operation in Gaza,” he said.

Israel’s military tactics have come under intense scrutiny as evidence has emerged of the high numbers of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza.

Among complaints made by human rights groups are accusations of indiscriminate firing and the use of white phosphorus shells in civilian areas.

Israel has admitted using white phosphorus in Gaza but says it did not break international law in doing so.

White phosphorus is legal for creating smokescreens in open battleground. But rights groups and journalists say it was used in crowded civilian areas.

The weapon sticks to human skin and will burn through to the bone.

Truce talks

In Cairo, delegates from Hamas met Egyptian intelligence officials on Sunday as they sought to bolster the week-long calm in Gaza.

Representatives from Fatah, the main rival Palestinian faction, were also due to attend the talks.

There was no word of the substance of discussions in Egypt with Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief who brokered a previous six-month truce between Israel and Hamas.

Mr Suleiman held talks with an Israeli envoy on Thursday.

In a statement, Egyptian state media said Hamas and Mr Suleiman discussed “Egyptian efforts to consolidate the ceasefire, reach a [permanent] truce, reopen Gaza crossings and resume Palestinian national dialogue”.

Israel and Egypt tightened their blockade of Gaza when Hamas seized control of the territory in mid-2007.

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