Pictures of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound detainees during mock executions were destroyed after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to avoid another public outrage, Army documents released Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union show.

As pressure mounts on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, the Syrian regime is adopting an old tactic: It is trying to wait out the criticism until the world's attention shifts.

The United States and Japan will declare Saturday for the first time in a joint agreement that Taiwan is a mutual security concern, according to a draft of the document. Analysts called the move a demonstration of Japan's willingness to confront the rapidly growing might of China.

Joel Bainerman is a parent who recently took his child off Ritalin after learning of the potential dangers of this narcotic. Read the revealing packaging label Novartis puts inside each box of Ritalin, he advises, and prepare for a shock.

A controversy over the U.S. military’s killing of journalists in Iraq has forced the resignation of the Cable News Network’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, who has been with CNN since 1982.In January, as a panelist at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Jordan said he thought several such journalists had been targeted. He soon backed off and apologized, saying they were killed "accidentally." Jordan was right the first time, evidence indicates -Paul W. Lovinger/LewRockwell.com

Most likely, Chalabi had reached some sort of secret agreement with the US that prevented his arrest and brought him back into Washington's orbit.Many in Iraq doubt if there was ever a quarrel to begin with, claiming that Chalabi's row with Washington was fabricated by both parties to polish his image in Iraq, prepare him for victory in the January 30 elections and enable him to become prime minister in February-March -Sami Moubayed/Asia Times

Karl Rove, the adviser President Bush called "the architect" of the 2004 Republican election win, said on Thursday the November victory was a triumph of conservative ideas and proof the movement had become the dominant force in American politics."We are the party and the movement of ideas," Rove, the White House political adviser who was recently named deputy chief of staff, told a celebratory conference of conservative activists meeting at a downtown building named for Ronald Reagan, the former president and conservative hero

Israel's attorney general lifted the threat of indictment against Ariel Sharon yesterday in a scandal over illegal campaign funds but charged the prime minister's son, Omri, with fraud and other crimes in the same case.But there is a widespread view within Israel's legal system and among the public that Mr Sharon escaped for political reasons and that his 40-year-old son and political adviser has accepted responsibility on his behalf -Guardian UK

To any intelligence analyst, it should be obvious that the United States has already embarked on a psychological warfare (psywar) campaign to keep Iran on tenterhooks in the hope of thereby breaking its will to resist US pressure to agree to the dismantling of its uranium enrichment capability -B Raman/Asia Times

Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte. Those reports to Congress were required under the Foreign Assistance Act, which in most circumstances prohibits the United States from providing military aid to nations whose governments engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights -Baltimore Sun 1995

Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos has promised to fight what he called a growing culture of death in the Latin American state.He was reacting to the murder of Cecilia Cubas, the daughter of a former Paraguayan president who was kidnapped last September -BBC

A judge dismissed charges on Thursday against four anti-gay Christians accused of violating hate crime laws when protesting at a gay street festival, saying free speech rights allowed them to do so.Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe said the four members of "Repent America" exercised their right to free speech when they refused to move away from the city's gay pride "Outfest" last October

President Bush, about to embark on a fence-mending trip overseas, said Thursday that Europeans wrongly believe his only interest is America's security.``We also care deeply about hunger and disease,'' he said.A primary objective of next week's trip is to make sure Europeans know that ``as we move beyond the differences of the past, that we can work a lot together to achieve big objectives,'' Bush said

"The most probable way they will start is to do a selected draft of medical people, those with specialized computer skills, and those with Arabic language skills and let it spread further," Milbury-Steen said…New recruits could be sent to boot camp within two weeks of the draft law's passage.

The three-year Joint Space Control Operations-Negation (JSCO-N) program will help the Pentagon figure out which satellite-killers to buy, and determine which procedures to follow when knocking the orbiters out.

The Pentagon has found that Iraqi insurgents can conduct up to 60 strikes a day and occasionally more, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Thursday.