At least eight people have been killed in a fresh airstrike by US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan's eastern province of Laghman.

According to local officials, the victims of the air raid were Taliban militants.

A Taliban commander is said to have been killed in the attack, which apparently had no civilian casualties.

The development comes amid an intensified campaign of airstrikes by US-led foreign forces mainly in eastern Afghanistan.

On September 14, an airstrike by a US assassination drone claimed the lives of at least two people in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Kunar.

Uncovering information that should be available to the public has become increasingly difficult under the presidency of Barack Obama, an Associated Press bureau chief says. In some cases, it surpasses the secrecy of the George W. Bush administration.

The White House's penchant for secrecy does not just apply to the federal government, according to AP's Washington bureau chief, Sally Buzbee. During a joint meeting of news editors, she stated that the same kind of behavior is starting to appear in state and local governments.

China has fined UK pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline $490m (£297m) after a court found it guilty of bribery.

The record penalty follows allegations the drug giant paid out bribes to doctors and hospitals in order to have their products promoted.

The court gave GSK's former head of Chinese operations, Mark Reilly, a suspended three-year prison sentence and he is set to be deported.

Other GSK executives have also been given suspended jail sentences.


The guilty verdict was delivered after a one-day trial at a court in Changsha, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Chinese authorities first announced they were investigating GSK in July last year, in what has become the biggest corruption scandal to hit a foreign firm in years. The company was accused of having made an estimated $150m in illegal profits

GSK said it had "published a statement of apology to the Chinese government and its people".

"Reaching a conclusion in the investigation of our Chinese business is important, but this has been a deeply disappointing matter for GSK," said chief executive Sir Andrew Witty in a statement.

"We have and will continue to learn from this. GSK has been in China for close to a hundred years and we remain fully committed to the country and its people," he said.

"We will also continue to invest directly in the country to support the government's health care reform agenda and long-term plans for economic growth."

Mick Cooper, analyst at Edison Investment Research in London, said: "GlaxoSmithKline will hope that this will draw a line under events in China, but it will take time for its Chinese commercial operations to recover."

The United States and Israel have "shared values" but not when it comes to upholding democracy and the rule of law. Their shared values are perpetual war, torture, indefinite detention, and military courts. Guantanamo is a perfect example of this. Both states have been in a state of perpetual war for quite some time with Israel against the Palestinians since its founding in 1948 while the U.S. can trace back its war to its founding in 1776 and the colonization of Native American lands. Today's global war on terror is the latest chapter in that saga. Under perpetual war, the United States and Israel can justify a litany of draconian policies, such as indefinite detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing.

International human rights law prohibits torture and detention without charge or trial. The UN Convention Against Torture strictly forbids torture, even in "exceptional circumstances" like "a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency." Meanwhile, article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention." The rights to a fair trial, due process, and to be free from torture and inhumane treatment are basic human rights that governments are obliged to uphold. Yet, both the United States and Israel practice indefinite detention - also known as "administrative detention" in Israel - and torture.

Those of us in the United States often like to think - rightly or wrongly - that our overall human-rights record is in pretty good order. However, even those who view the US as a global human-rights leader have had to take a deep breath when considering the past year of Big Brother-like surveillance revelations. A major UN body highlighted these revelations - along with a decidedly sobering array of other US human-rights issues - in a set of recommendations back in April. In order to keep drawing attention to these surveillance-related problems, CDT and the ACLU submitted comments this past Monday to the United Nations describing five particularly egregious surveillance programs that have had a grievous impact on human rights around the world.

Every four years, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) evaluates all of a country's human-rights commitments during a process called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). During the UPR, the UN HRC examines the promises a country has made - i.e., in human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and evaluates to what extent that country is living up to its obligations.

This story has been updated to include comment from Sen. Tom Carper.
Following a series of hearings on alleged agency stonewalling of inspectors general, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday approved a bipartisan bill to expand watchdogs' subpoena power and streamline ethics probes by the IG council.

The Inspector General Empowerment Act (H.R. 5492) would authorize inspectors general to write testimonial subpoenas for federal government contractors and former federal employees.

"With inspectors general facing obstruction by agencies, this legislation provides much-needed tools to our independent watchdogs as they work to reduce agency waste and mismanagement," said Oversight panel Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who introduced the bill with ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.

"Under this administration, inspectors general have encountered unprecedented hindrance to their oversight efforts," Meadows said. "This important legislation will ensure that IGs, who provide impartial insight into the conduct and management of federal agencies, will not be politically stonewalled."

Despite more than two million people voting to keep Scotland a part of the United Kingdom yesterday and acceptance from Alex Salmond that the outcome of the vote was the "the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland", a petition saying the outcome of the referendum vote was rigged has garnered more than 70,000 supporters.


It may have been the largest turnout in UK history with a majority vote of 'No', but thousands are demanding a revote because of "strange occurrences", that have already been dismissed as examples of vote rigging.

The petition states:

Countless evidences of fraud during the recent Scottish Referendum have come to light, including two counts of votes being moved in bulk into a No pile, Yes votes clearly being seen in no piles and strange occurrences with dual fire alarms and clear cut fraud in Glasgow. We demand a revote be taken of said referendum, where each vote shall be counted by two individuals, one of whom should be an international impartial party without a stake in the vote.

Apparently terrorized by the fear-mongering tactics of the British establishment media, in the form of hysterical warnings about food price rises and "societal disintegration", the fiercely independent Scottish people voted to remain in the UK. Or so the British establishment media would have us believe.

The official result matched the predictions of polls conducted by huge for-profit City of London market research companies. Prime Minister David Cameron declared that "this settles the independence debate for a generation." Case closed? I don't think so. We're being asked to believe that a majority of Scots voted 'Yes' to more austerity, 'Yes' to more wars in their name, 'Yes' to keeping nuclear weapons, 'Yes' to the continued theft of Scottish natural resources and 'Yes' to less democracy.

If all of that sounds unbelievable, it's because it is:

"It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes."

~ Attributed to Stalin

Margo MacDonald MSP, who says she believes there are undercover agents operating in the SNP, told MI5 chief Andrew Parker that his staff should only be used to thwart criminal and terrorist acts, rather than engage in dirty tricks against those who support Scottish independence.

A Home Office spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

The purpose of MI5 is to protect the UK "against threats to national security", a form of words that could be interpreted as resisting the break-up of Britain. Some Nationalists have long believed the SNP was infiltrated in the 1970s by agents worried booming North Sea oil revenues could lead to independence.

MacDonald, a former deputy leader of the SNP and now an independent MSP, believes MI5 was active during the constitutional debate in this period and wants a commitment that such activity has ceased.

The Russian Union of Engineers released a report on the crash of MH 17. Below is an excerpt of their findings. You can read the full report here for the impressive evidence they marshal to back up their conclusions.

"Between 17.17 - 17.20, the Boeing 777 was in Ukrainian airspace near the city of Donetsk at the height of 10100 m. An unidentified combat aircraft (presumably a Su-25 or MiG -29), which was a tier below, on a collision course, in the cloud layer, sharply gained altitude and suddenly appeared out of the clouds in front of the civilian aircraft and opened fire on the cockpit, firing from a 30 mm caliber cannon or smaller. The pilot of a fighter jet can do this while in "free hunting" mode (using onboard radar) or with the help of navigational guidance using airspace situation data from ground-based radar.

As a result of multiple hits from shells there was damage to the cockpit, which suddenly depressurized, resulting in instant death for the crew due to mechanical influences and decompression. The attack was sudden and lasted a fraction of a second; in such circumstances the crew could not sound any alarm as the flight had been proceeding in regular mode and no attack was expected.

Since neither the engines or hydraulic system, nor other devices required for the continuation of the flight were out of commission, the Boeing 777, running on autopilot (as is standard), continued on its horizontal flight path, perhaps gradually losing altitude."