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Pilger: The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate to discredit Chavez
I walked with Roberto Navarrete into the national stadium in Santiago, Chile. With the southern winter's wind skating down from the Andes, it was empty and ghostly. Little had changed, he said: the chicken wire, the broken seats, the tunnel to the changing rooms from which the screams echoed. We stopped at a large number 28. 'This is where I was, facing the scoreboard. This is where I was called to be tortured.' Thousands of 'the detained and the disappeared' were imprisoned in the stadium following the Washington-backed coup by General Pinochet against the democracy of Salvador Allende on September 11 1973. For the majority people of Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and historical lesson of the first '9/11' have never been forgotten.

Jury convicts Padilla in terrorism trial
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held by the military for 3 1/2 years as an 'enemy combatant,' was convicted on Thursday in a trial seen as a centerpiece of the Bush administration's efforts to battle terrorism. Padilla faces a possible life prison term, as do two co-defendants convicted alongside the convert to Islam who was initially accused by the U.S. government of plotting a radiological 'dirty bomb' attack. Jurors in Miami found him guilty of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism, and providing material support for terrorism.

How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla
In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty speaks for the first time about her experience interviewing Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health. When asked if she concluded that he had been tortured, Dr. Angela Hegarty replied, 'Well, “torture,” of course, is a legal term. However, as a clinician, I have worked with torture victims and, of course, abuse victims for a few decades now, actually. I think, from a clinical point of view, he was tortured.

CIA Officer Confirms Oswald's CIA Employment
Hunter Leake, a CIA officer who was second in command at the New Orleans's field office in 1963, confirmed in interviews with a historian that Lee Harvey Oswald was, as long suspected, associated with the Central Intelligence Agency. That historian is Michael L. Kurtz, a professor of history and dean of the graduate school at Southeastern Louisiana University, who describes his interviews with Leake in his 2006 book The JFK Assassination Debates, published by the University Press of Kansas. Leake stated that Oswald came to New Orleans in 1963 because the CIA intended to use him for certain operations. His job at the Reily Coffee Company served as a cover for his actual role. Leake personally paid Oswald sums of cash for his services.

Army suicides highest in 26 years
Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report. The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991. 'Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts,' the report said. The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren't. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said.

Climate change demonstrations spread to two more airports
The environmental campaign against air travel moved towards a more confrontational phase and spread outside the climate-change camp at Heathrow yesterday as small groups of protesters launched simultaneous demonstrations against two airports in the South-east. Eleven people were arrested outside Biggin Hill in Kent, an airport popular with business figures and celebrities flying private jets, after protesters chained themselves to gates and lay down on the main access road to the airport yesterday morning.

Pension funds lose £27bn in market turmoil
Britain's pension funds were last night plunged into a £15bn deficit after the biggest fall in London share prices since the eve of the Iraq war in 2003 cut the value of the stock market by £60bn in a single day's frenetic trading. After years of building up the value of funds following the dotcom collapse at the start of the decade, funds are now facing the prospect of new black holes after seeing a £12bn surplus eradicated by the market turmoil of the past month. Last month, Britain's top 100 companies celebrated stock market gains that pushed their pension schemes into surplus for the first time since 2000.

Mattel's real toy story: slave labour in sweatshops
This week Mattel recalled nearly two million Chinese-made toys over concerns they contain excessive levels of lead paint and loose parts. Dirt-cheap labour and a massive expansion in capacity means China makes more than three-quarters of the world's toys, with an export value in excess of £7 billion. But increasingly, there is evidence of inadequate safety standards, poor quality control and slave labour. In an extract from his book about the toy industry, ERIC CLARK reveals the real cost of cheap toys from China.

Call for public inquiry into 7/7
Survivors of the 7 July London bombings have threatened legal action over the government's refusal to grant an independent public inquiry. A group of survivors and relatives of those killed have handed a letter into the Home Office. This document outlines the group's intention to pursue a Judicial Review if the government does not allow a public inquiry to be held. The four suicide bombings killed 52 people and injured nearly 800. The group of survivors and relatives of the dead have said they would prefer not to pursue a formal judicial challenge and incur potentially costly litigation.

Buncefield fire destroyed crime data
The Buncefield oil depot fire caused millions of pounds worth of damage in 2005 but it also damaged a vital crime fighting system Channel 4 News understands that a vital back-up system to the police national computer was damaged by the Buncefield fire, with knock-on effects still felt today. It has been learnt that as a direct result of the fire, the government has scrapped an attempt to join the Shengen Information System (SIS), an important crime-fighting tool, because vital software was damaged.

Virus Spreading Alarm and Pig Disease in China
A highly infectious swine virus is sweeping China’s pig population, driving up pork prices and creating fears of a global pandemic among domesticated pigs. Animal virus experts say Chinese authorities are playing down the gravity and spread of the disease. So far, the mysterious virus - believed to cause an unusually deadly form of an infection known as blue-ear pig disease - has spread to 25 of this country’s 33 provinces and regions, prompting a pork shortage and the strongest inflation in China in a decade.

US and Israel agree $30bn arms deal
Burns, third right, shakes hands with Stanley Fisher, after signing the deal [AFP]
The US has agreed to provide Israel with $30bn in defence grants over the next decade, a 25 per cent boost aimed at countering a 'resurgent' Iran and its allies. At a signing ceremony in Jerusalem on Thursday, Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said the US would help Israel to maintain a military advantage over its enemies. Burns said these enemies include Iran and Syria to groups within Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories.

450 killed in Peru quake
At least 450 people have been killed and more than 1,500 injured after a powerful earthquake hit the coast of Peru today. The quake - which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and struck near the capital, Lima - toppled buildings, set off landslides and generated a tsunami alert that was later lifted. The UN said Peruvian government figures suggested that at least 450 people had been killed and more than 1,500 injured.AFP reported that Roberto Ocano, the head of the country's firefighter service, said at least 387 people had died, with around 1,050 injured.

Stock market crash in slow motion?
Red screens drenched the City in the worst day on the London Stock Exchange for four and a half years. Turmoil, upheaval and panic selling. The language of the world's trading floors said it all today. What began as a downturn in the US housing market, is now, a month on, a global crisis in the stock market that tonight showed no sign of easing. The FTSE 100 index lost more than 4 per cent of its value today in the worst day on the London Stock Exchange for four and a half years.

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest in Martial Law
Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us. If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie 'The Siege', easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.

Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns
Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says there are no plans for a federal database of drivers' information. The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

Another Record Poppy Crop in Afghanistan
U.S. officials are aghast that this year Afghanistan is set to produce about 95% of the world’s opium poppy, the raw product required to produce heroin. State Department officials want to increase the number of areas in the country where American troops are allowed to burn down poppy fields, and also wish to encourage farmers to switch to alternative but less lucrative crops. Although this carrot-stick approach does address the supply, little is being done to affect the massive demand for heroin all across the world or its root causes.

Mexican Congress denounces violations by U.S. agencies
A plenum of the Permanent Commission of Mexico’s Congress today denounced the humiliations, abuse, violations of human rights and deaths of immigrants in U.S. border facilities. A proposal by legislators from the Convergence for Democracy Party asked the foreign minister to intervene in order to clarify the circumstances of the death of a Mexican citizen, Rosa Contreras. A few days ago, Contreras died at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in El Paso, Texas where she was being held. The woman, who was two months pregnant, died three hours after complaining of pain behind her knee, when her blood pressure dropped and she lost consciousness.

Economic Collapse As Precursor To Open Plan For Martial Law?
The open announcement of a program on behalf of the federal government that is recruiting clergy to aid the authorities in 'quelling dissent,' gun confiscation and forced relocation in the event of martial law has many worried that the current economic plunge could be the precursor for a state of emergency in America. A KSLA 12 news report out of Louisiana confirmed a story we originally broke last year - that religious leaders are being enrolled into a federal program that trains them how to 'quell dissent' and make people obey the government in the aftermath of a declaration of martial law following a mass casualty terror attack or a natural disaster.

'We have broken speed of light'
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled 'instantaneously' between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.