By Damien McElroy in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba | The United States is considering transforming the Guantanamo Bay terrorism prison into a base for a Marines "rapid reaction force" to deal with threats in Central America. In the first official admission that closure of the camp had entered the planning stage, the base commander, Captain Mark Leary, said regional US Marines commanders have surveyed the site to assess its suitability. "The ...

By DAVID STRINGER | Lawmakers pledged Sunday to study the movements of planes and ships traveling to the remote British outpost Diego Garcia amid persistent suspicion it is used by U.S. authorities to detain or transfer terrorism suspects. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee said it plans a thorough investigation of the use of the Indian Ocean island, which hosts a U.S. military base. Britain leased Diego Garcia, ...

There are revelations the United States military was planning to test deadly nerve gas in north eastern Australia in far north Queensland rainforest in the 1960s. Australian Defence Department files obtained by Australian television station Channel Nine, show the US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops by aerial bombing areas around Lockhart River. The plan never went ahead, but American survey teams ...

By Robert Scheer | As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling — but before we are too besotted with ourselves — might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend? Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the ...

By Manuel Roig-Franzia | Videos showing Mexican police learning torture methods appeared on the Internet this week as the country, soon to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug aid, is seeking to improve its human rights record. The videos show officers in the city of Leon, about 150 miles northwest of Mexico City, forcing one of ...

By Rebecca Smith | Instead of improving access to NHS dentistry the reforms have made it worse, the report by the House of Commons Health Select Committee found. The number of dentists working in the health service has fallen, the number of NHS treatments carried out has dropped and in many areas patients are still experiencing severe difficulties in finding a dentist to treat them. Worryingly, complex treatments carried out ...

By David Willman | The federal investigation into the deadly anthrax mailings of late 2001 was undermined by leaks and a premature fixation on a single suspect, according to investigators and scientists involved in the case. More than six years after the mailings, no one has been charged, and the top suspect, former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill was all but exonerated Friday when the U.S. Justice Department agreed ...

By ALISSA J. RUBIN | Iraqi government officials on Sunday criticized the American military for two recent attacks in which soldiers killed people who the government said were civilians. One death occurred during a raid by American soldiers on Friday near Karbala; two days earlier, three people described by the Interior Ministry as bank employees on their way to work were shot and ...

By Mike Adams | It's fairly obvious to anyone paying attention that the American Empire, as currently configured and operated, is simply not sustainable. Financial collapse is inevitable (and accelerating, it seems), and even mainstream America can no longer deny the obvious signs that things have gone terribly wrong: Skyrocketing fuel prices, unprecedented inflation in food prices, rampant epidemics of preventable degenerative disease, plummeting real estate prices, an increasingly-worthless national ...

Spiegel | A German-Lebanese victim of the CIA's extraordinary renditions program plans to sue the government in Berlin to force it to issue extradition orders against 13 American intelligence agents involved in his alleged kidnapping. Khaled el-Masri, the German-Lebanese abducted in Afghanistan as part of the CIA's extraordinary renditions program and detained without reason, is expected to file a lawsuit early ...

Mail Online | All British forces are set to be pulled out of Iraq within a year, it emerged today. Plans for a phased withdrawal are back on track after a reduction in violence in Basra over recent months. Whitehall officials are now working on a new timetable for the move....

You may have noticed there's many errors on the site at the moment, including a broken forum. We do not have an explanation just yet. After speaking with our ISP they are currently unable to determine what has caused these problems. On the face of it, it looks like a normal php error but we (and the ISP) are locked out of FTP access to the site and the log files have been ...

London: The Libyan government has freed a political prisoner after he was arrested 15 months ago, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said. Juma Boufayed was arrested along with 13 Libyan political activist in February last year. The group had planned to protest what they called police brutality. Boufayed was freed on Tuesday, erasing fears he might have been killed. Of the remaining group of 13 detained last year, 11 ...

By Robert Verkaik | A British resident who is facing the death penalty in Guantanamo Bay has made a final desperate plea to Gordon Brown to end his six-year ordeal and bring him home today. In a letter delivered to Downing Street, Binyam Mohamed, the last Guantanamo inmate with the automatic right to British residency, calls on the Prime Minister to ...

By Leslee Dru Browning | How do mercury emissions affect pregnant mothers, the unborn and toddlers? Do the level of emissions impact autism rates? Does it matter whether a mercury-emitting source is 10 miles away from families versus 20 miles? Is the risk of autism greater for children who live closer to the pollution source? A newly published study of Texas school district ...