The Saudi-led coalition's air strikes hit a market in Yemen's Haja province on Tuesday, killing 41 civilians and injuring 75 others, according to a senior provincial health official.

The director of Haja health department, Dr. Ayman Mathkour, told Reuters that three airstrikes hit the market in the Mustaba disctict.

There have been conflicting reports as to the number of casualties resulting from the strike on the market. Saba Net, a Yemeni news agency controlled by the Houthis, says that 65 people have been killed and 55 more injured in the air strike in Mustaba.

The bloody attack in Ankara on March 13 that left 35 people dead and 120 injured provoked universal condemnation across the globe. Russia's President Vladimir Putin almost immediately sent his condolences to the Turkish people after the attack. Turkish officials decided that the coverage of this attack in the media would be closely monitored and censored. Moreover, Turkish citizens found their access to certain social networks blocked by Turkish security agencies. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has immediately assembled an urgent meeting of the Security Council in the aftermath of the attack.

Naturally, the question arises: who may be behind this outrageous crime and who benefits from it? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to point the finger in the direction of ISIS, since its members have been roaming Turkish territory freely while being particularly unhappy about the fact that the process of national reconciliation has begun in Syria. It would even be easier to push the blame on the militants of the Kurdish PKK or their supporters from among the Syrian Kurds who are dissatisfied with the fact that Turkey has been continuously shelling their settlements, in spite of the declared cease-fire.

It didn't take Turkish security services long to announce that they had found a "trace" of the PKK behind the attack. But there's just one question nobody can answer: how could the car that was used in the attack, the one that was allegedly stolen last January from an old woman, be allowed to be taken to the city of Diyarbakir (located in Turkish Kurdistan) first, and then once filled with explosives be driven across Turkey to become a murderous weapon in Ankara? It has been announced repeatedly that in recent years Turkish authorities have seriously tightened security measures in Ankara, Istanbul and other major cities, especially in south-eastern Anatolia, where ethnic Kurds are being literally slaughtered by the Turkish army. So how could this be possible?

Doctor Ben Carson's endorsement of Donald Trump on Friday appears to have come at a price, in the form of a promised position within the Trump administration, which may be illegal.

"I didn't see a path for [John] Kasich, who I like, or for [Marco] Rubio, who I like. As far as [Ted] Cruz is concerned, I don't think he's gonna be able to draw independents and Democrats unless has has some kind of miraculous change... Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn't available," Carson told NewsMax TV on Monday, clarifying that he would have preferred to back another candidate.


Carson admitted that Trump promised him a role in his administration, "certainly in an advisory capacity," but when asked if that meant a cabinet position, the doctor said that he could not "reveal any details about it right now, because all of this is still very liquid."

Under federal election laws, candidates are expressly prohibited from directly or indirectly promising "the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy." Violation of this law includes fines or a year in jail, two years if the violation was willful, ThinkProgress reports.

 Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for American complicity in the dirty war.
Dear Mr. President,

After a historic visit to Cuba, later this month on March 24, you plan to be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the 40th anniversary of a vicious military coup that resulted in the secret kidnapping, torture, and murder of more than 20,000 people, including leftist guerrillas, nonviolent dissidents, and even many uninvolved citizens caught in the web of terror.

In an October 1987 article in The Nation, I broke the story about how the murderous generals and their neo-Nazi minions received a "green light" for their clandestine repression from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Although buttressed by other sources, the Nation story was largely based on a memorandum of conversation I received from Patricia Derian, the wonderfully feisty activist and Mississippi civil-rights hero.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the first assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, Patt played a key role in bringing to life Carter's desperately needed post-Vietnam and post-Watergate Human Rights Revolution.

The neoliberal ideology that is the engine of corporate capitalism spews its poison around the globe. Constitutions are rewritten by judicial fiat in a mockery of democracy. Laws and regulations that impede corporate exploitation are abolished. Corporations orchestrate legally sanctioned tax boycotts.Free-trade deals destroy small farmers and businesses along with labor unions and government agencies designed to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from usurious creditors and lenders. The press is transformed into an echo chamber for the corporate elites. Wages stagnate or decline. Unemployment and underemployment soar. Social services are curtailed or abolished in the name of austerity. The political system becomes a charade. Dissent is criminalized. The ecocide by the fossil fuel industry accelerates. State enterprises and utilities are sold to corporations. The educational system mutates into vocational training. Culture and the arts are replaced by sexual commodification, banal entertainment and graphic depictions of violence. Infrastructures crumble.

1. Office Depot

> Closings: 400 (2013-2016)
> Annual net income: $8 million
> 1-year share price % chg.: -42%
> Industry: Office supply

As workspaces across the country transition from pen and paper to digital tools, traditional office supply retailers suffer. Office Depot has reported losses in six of the last eight years, and is currently in the process of closing hundreds of locations. Another factor leading to these closings may have been the company's 2013 merger with OfficeMax. The new company needs to consolidate operations and said it will be closing 400 locations by the end of 2016.

Early last year, rival office supplier Staples announced its intention to acquire Office Depot in an effort to compete against Amazon and other e-commerce companies. The deal requires the approval of both the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission, and would likely result in more store closings. So far, the EC has approved the merger while the FTC has denied it.

International Military Review & Analysis - Withdrawal of Russian Military from Syria

After the transparent false-flag bombing of civilians in Ankara on Sunday (see: Erdogan slaughters Turkish civilians in Ankara and takes immediate vengeance on the Kurds), Erdogan has ramped up his mad rhetoric, calling for the definition of terrorism to be broadened to anyone indirectly involved in or supporting terror activity: "It's not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should also be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title." By that definition, Erdogan himself is guilty: he may not personally torture and behead innocent civilians in Syria, but he and his government provide those who do with money, arms, and logistical support.

But that's not what he means. He wants anyone who supports groups like the Kurds in their struggle for self-determination to be deemed terrorists. In other words, anyone with a conscience. The hypocrite-in-chief also had this to say:

The bloody terrorist act was directed against all of Turkey, against all 79 million citizens of the country. Through this attack, the terrorist organization has revealed its despicable face. The attack aimed to sow fear among our people, forcing Turkey to reject its principles. But they will never succeed in this. Those using terror as a tool will never make Turkey kneel. On the contrary, they will kneel themselves.

As I mentioned in my article with Joe Quinn linked above, Turkey took immediate "vengeance" against Kurds in Iraq and Turkey after the bombing. A police officer and three PKK militants are the latest victims of the Turks' blood-lust in Diyarbakir, where over 120 civilians have been murdered and almost 7,000 houses have been damaged in the last months' assault (that's the official number, local Kurds say it's much higher). The city is blockaded and under curfew. Unsurprisingly, Turkey has also continued bombing Syrian Kurdish territory since the Ankara car-bomb. The YPG informed both the Russian and American centers about the ceasefire violations. If anyone has a right to self-defense, it's the Kurds.

Retired FBI Laboratory supervisor Fred Whitehurst provided professional consultation to the Nebraskans for Justice beginning in 1999. Whitehurst, a sixteen-year FBI veteran, was for a number of years the FBI Laboratory top explosives expert. Whitehurst turned his forensic investigative skills to the Omaha Two cases of Edward Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa (former David Rice).

Whitehurst ended his career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998 as a whistleblower against sloppy science at the FBI Laboratory. Whitehurst's disclosures uncovered and reported scientific misconduct which forced the Bureau to adopt forty major reforms, including an accreditation process.

Mondo and Poindexter were leaders of Omaha's affiliate chapter of the Black Panther Party called the National Committee to Combat Fascism. The two men were also named targets of the clandestine COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation conducted by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division was in a fierce rivalry with the FBI over the investigation of bombings and had also targeted Mondo and Poindexter under the so-called Midwest 22 investigation.

Agents of both the FBI and ATF joined the Omaha Police Department in making a case against the two Panther leaders for the August 17, 1970 bomb murder of Patrolman Larry Minard, Sr. One of the key pieces of evidence used against the Omaha Two were purported dynamite particles in a shirt pocket of Poindexter and pants pocket of Mondo. ATF agents took custody of the clothing and sent the garments to the ATF Laboratory where the dynamite trace was allegedly found. Both Poindexter and Mondo tested clean for dynamite at the time they were booked.

Whitehurst wrote a series of email messages to the Nebraskans for Justice about the pocket particles. Whitehurst wrote, "It is strange to me that "particles" of dynamite were found in clothing."

"Dynamite is not a loose material," explained Whitehurst. "When you stick a blasting cap into a cartridge of dynamite you don't open the cartridge up. You poke a hole into the cartridge and put a cap into it....Something ain't right here."

If you thought things had much changed under Obama, think again. There has been much publicity for the news that US forces have captured an alleged ISIS chemical weapons expert, Suleiman al-Afari. There was considerably less publicity for the news that he is being held in yet another new US black prison detention site. It is situated on the territory of the USA's Kurdish allies in Irbil, Iraq, but was constructed and is run entirely by the US military. Many detainees have vanished into its gates. Very few, if any, have come out again.

Yet again the US is simply disappearing people into secret prisons on foreign soil. Obama has in effect maintained the Bush doctrine that "enemy combatants" are neither alleged criminals nor soldiers. They do not get the rights of alleged criminals to decent treatment and a fair trial, nor do they get the Geneva Convention rights of soldiers captured during a war. They are non-persons who can simply be pitched into a black hole.

Even if they actually are terrorists, that does not leave them devoid of rights. I would also argue that to treat terrorists other than as common criminals, deserving of formal criminal process, contributes to their glorification and gives them a status they do not deserve. But formal process is essential because we know for certain that they often pick up people who are entirely innocent.

I leave aside the argument that it is the United States which caused the collapse of Iraq and it is with Blair and Bush that the guilt ultimately lies. But I leave it aside with the comment that it is an argument deserving of much weight.

I never quite made up my mind whether Obama was a decent man who was corrupted/bullied into adopting the neo-con agenda, or whether he was a play-acting sociopath all along. I do know that Clinton is a hardened warmonger who positively relishes the notion of "enemies" being killed. She is just a sociopath; she doesn't bother much with the acting.