Dafniya/Al-Qawalish, Libya - Muammar Gaddafi threatened to take the war in Libya to Europe on Friday while rebels came under heavy fire as they renewed their push against his forces.

Tens of thousands of Gaddafi supporters rallied in Tripoli's Green Square for Friday prayers, underscoring his refusal to step down after four decades in power and five months of fighting.

Large numbers also turned out in the desert town of Sabha, 800 km (500 miles) to the south in an apparent attempt to show that Gaddafi still enjoys support in the areas of Libya he still controls.

In a speech on Libyan television, Gaddafi threatened to send hundreds of Libyans to carry out attacks in Europe in revenge for the NATO-led military campaign against him.

"Hundreds of Libyans will martyr in Europe. I told you it is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But we will give them a chance to come to their senses," the Libyan leader said in an audio speech.

While the insurgents have advanced on two fronts in the past two weeks, they took casualties on Friday. At least six rebels were killed and 17 injured on the front line near Misrata, on Libya's Mediterranean coast, according to local medical workers.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), a contender for the Republican Party's nomination to the presidency, has numerous fans and detractors who agree upon very little - but one thing nearly everyone who sees him can agree to is that he's remarkably consistent about his political positions.

For a long time, Paul has called for government regulations on airport security to be repealed, leaving that responsibility to the airlines, so the statements below aren't entirely new.

However, in an interview Friday with the conservative Fox News Channel, he again pitched this position, but with an ear-grabbing new approach, insisting that by not allowing private citizens to carry firearms on jumbo-jets, U.S. officials literally "set the stage for 9/11."

He also appeared to support the practice of racial profiling over what he called the victimization of average Americans - a position that may be every bit as controversial as the TSA's current policy of invasive pat-downs and x-ray scanning machines.

This video is from MSNBC, broadcast by Fox News on July 8, 2011, snipped courtesy of Think Progress.

James Murdoch could face criminal charges in America over News of the World payments to police officers, it was claimed today.

The deputy chief operating officer of News Corp could be prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

It has emerged that U.S. prosecutors could seek to bring criminal charges, fines and possibly seize assets from the American-registered News Corp.

Any payments to UK police could trigger a justice department inquiry under American laws because News International is a British subsidiary of the U.S. company.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2011 documents that in the past two years, more than 1 billion people around the world have been newly protected by tobacco control interventions, including mass media campaigns, graphic health warnings, and smoke-free policies. In addition, there has been significant progress toward protecting children and adults from tobacco in countries throughout the world.

Large and graphic warning labels and hard-hitting mass media campaigns have proven effective in reducing tobacco use and encouraging people to quit. According to the report, more than 1 billion people now live in countries with legislation requiring large graphic health warnings on every cigarette pack sold in their countries, and 1.9 billion people live in the 23 countries that have aired high-quality national anti-tobacco mass media campaigns within the past two years. During this time in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration proposed and recently issued final requirements for more prominent, graphic cigarette health warnings on all cigarette packaging and advertisements in the United States. A number of mass media campaigns in the U.S. also were conducted at national, state, and community levels.

According to the report, national-level smoke-free laws covering all public places and workplaces have been newly enacted by 16 countries with a total of 385 million people; an additional 100 million people are newly protected by comprehensive smoke-free laws at the sub-national level. In the United States over the past decade, 25 states and the District of Columbia enacted laws for smoke-free workplaces, bars and restaurants. However, despite increased adoption of state and local smoke-free laws, approximately 88 million nonsmoking Americans aged 3 and older are still exposed to secondhand smoke each year. More than half of children over age 3 are exposed to secondhand smoke.

Canadian activists trying to deliver aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip have decided to put off their voyage for now.

Organizers announced the decision Saturday after the Canadian ship, known as the Tahrir, had been prevented from leaving a port in Greece for several weeks.

Greece has banned vessels heading to the blockaded strip, citing safety concerns.

After inspections and administrative delays, the Canadian ship tried to leave for Gaza on Monday but was quickly turned back to shore by the Greek coast guard.

Organizer David Heap, who was aboard the Tahrir, said he's disappointed the ship wasn't able to bring aid to Gaza.

But the group succeeded in drawing attention to the conditions there, he said.

"Obviously some individuals are disappointed," he told The Canadian Press in a phone interview from Greece on Saturday.

"But we have had remarkable success.. in getting this issue into the spotlight."

After detailing the "War on Terror" racket, many readers emailed asking us to cover the profiteering that is occurring within the "War on Drugs." As we work hard to dig up dirt on all the major problems confronting us, we have compiled a database of thousands of the most hard-hitting and informative news reports. So ask and you shall receive. Here you go.
Anyone who researches the "War on Drugs" already knows that it has been a very costly disaster. As the Global Commission on Drug Policy recently reported:

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world....

Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption....

Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction."

The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed a $649 billion defense spending bill that boosts the Pentagon budget by $17 billion and covers the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The strong bipartisan vote was 336-87 and reflected lawmakers' intent to ensure national security, preserve defense jobs across the nation and avoid deep cuts while the country is at war.

While House Republican leaders slashed billions from all other government agencies, the Defense Department is the only one that will see a double-digit increase in its budget beginning Oct. 1.

Amid negotiations to cut spending and raise the nation's borrowing limit, the House rejected several amendments to cut the Pentagon budget, including a measure by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to halve the bill's increase in defense spending.

Israeli authorities deployed hundreds of police officers to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian visitors. The Minister of Tourism announced that "good tourists" will be greeted with flowers

Panic. There is no other way to describe the Israeli reaction to a plan organized by a few activists - no more than a thousand, according to the most generous estimates - to try and travel to the West Bank via Ben Gurion International Airport. A handful of those visitors arrived (five of them have already been deported), and it seems that the whole country has gone mad.

Haaretz has reported a special deployment of hundreds of police officers and special units both inside and outside the terminals, "in case one of the arrivals tries to set himself on fire." The Petach Tikva court, in charge of the airport area, is to have more arrest judges on alert, and the minister for Hasbara (propaganda) Yuli Edelstein demanded that the government take no chances, "because we should remember what happened on 9/11."

All this, lets not forget, in order to welcome between a few dozen to a few hundred Westerners (most of them quite old, according to reports), who would arrive on separate flights and on different hours, who went through extensive security checks before boarding their planes, and who openly declared their intentions to visit the Palestinian territories. This is the national threat that has captured all the headlines for some days now in a country armed with one of the strongest armies in the world as well as an extensive arsenal of nuclear bombs.

While events at the airport are more absurd than tragic (there is a torrent of jokes on twitter about this, like: "attention all units, attention all units, a Swedish woman is now getting off flight 465″, or "security personnel have been ordered to report all those not singing 'Heve'nu Shalom' at landing"), one cannot watch the government's handling of this situation and not question the judgment of Israeli decision makers, or wonder about the things they are capable of doing if and when they sense a more substantial threat. One of the sole voices of reason was Yedioth's Eitan Haber, former secretary of Prime Minister Rabin, whose commentary today had the title: "We simply lost it" ("ירדנו מהפסים").

Police use tear gas and arrest more than 600 as thousands rally in Kuala Lumpur to demand electoral reforms.

Police in Malaysia have fired tear gas and arrested hundreds of protesters in the biggest opposition-backed rally in years.

More than 20,000 demonstrators massed across Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, demanding electoral reforms, activists said.

The federal police force said that it detained 644 people in a clampdown called Operation Erase Bersih, referring to the Bersih coalition, the group organising the rally.

Those arrested included several senior opposition officials.

"The public is reminded not to be involved in any demonstration," the federal police force said in a statement and warned of "stern action ... against those who disobey".

Witnesses said riot police armed with batons charged at some protesters and dragged them into trucks.

Numerous restaurants and stores were closed because of the transportation disruptions and fears of violence.

The government had declared the demonstration illegal, and police had sealed off parts of the capital in advance.

The United States' most senior military officer has accused Iran of pouring arms into anti-American militias in Iraq as the two powers battle for influence in the country.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Iran was responsible for arming militant Shia groups responsible for a recent upsurge in killings of American servicemen.

"Iran is very directly supporting extremist troops which are killing our troops," he said at a Washington briefing.

The weapons the Pengtagon believe are being smuggled into the country by the Revolutionary Guard include improvised mortars and an armour-piercing bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP.

Two American servicemen were killed by an EFP outside their base in Baghdad in an attack on Thursday, on top of 14 killed across the country in the previous month, the highest figure for two years.

The last American troops are due to leave Iraq at the end of this year, having been pulled out of combat operations last August. But American strategists and Washington's allies in the Gulf fear that withdrawal will leave a strategic gap into which Iran will step.