Among the first to report the existence of CIA special prisons and concentration camps in a number of countries, for example, in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and on the territory controlled by the Kosovar Albanian regime, were the Swiss media. In December 2005 the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza confirmed that the «main European secret CIA prison» is located in Poland. The scandal which was at that time hushed up has now resurfaced. In Strasbourg hearings have begun in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on a suit brought by two prisoners of the American Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Palestinians Al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who assert that in the early 2000s U.S. intelligence agencies detained them in a Polish military prison...

For several months lawyers demanded that the court hearings be held behind closed doors and that the press not be admitted. However, the results of the investigation and the details of the abductions and tortures were made public anyway. It turned out that the Poles actively assisted in what the CIA calls «enhanced interrogation techniques», which include refined tortures and abuses like dehydration, hypothermia, and «putting the heat on» with death threats by putting a gun or a drill to someone's head. That is how they interrogated prisoners in the secret CIA prison near the village of Stare Kiejkuty, 170 km from Warsaw.

Barclays stoked the row over City pay on Tuesday by announcing a 32% fall in profits but a rise of 10% in the bonus pool for its 140,000 staff around the world.

Antony Jenkins, promoted to run Barclays in the wake of the £290m fine for rigging Libor, defended the decision to increase bonus payouts as he warned that between 10,000 to 12,000 jobs would be cut this year as he races to cut costs. Some 820 senior roles are to go along with 7,000 jobs in the UK.

In a move that sparked the fury of the TUC, which accused the bank of "sticking two fingers up to hard-pressed families across Britain", the bank announced it was paying bonuses of £2.4bn - up from £2.2bn a year ago - across the bank. Within that, the investment bankers enjoyed bonuses of £1.6bn compared with £1.4bn a year ago, even though the investment banking side suffered a loss in the fourth quarter and its annual profits tumbled 37%. The bank as a whole saw its profits fall to £5.2bn from £7bn.

Eleven days after the 2011 US elite forces raid that resulted in the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the head of US special operations ordered the destruction of all photos of the corpse or for them to be given to the CIA, new evidence shows.

The disclosure was revealed Monday in an email obtained and released by non-profit legal group Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The heavily-redacted email was sent by Admiral William McRaven, head of US Special Operations Command, to subordinate officers on May 13, 2011, instructing them that any remaining photos of Bin Laden's body must be destroyed or handed over to the CIA.

Bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011 at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by the special operations team commonly known as Seal Team Six during Operation Neptune Spear.

In the email, addressed to "Gentlemen," McRaven wrote, "One particular item that I want to emphasize is photos; particularly UBLs [Usama Bin Laden, as US military referred to him] remains. At this point - all photos should have been turned over to the CIA; if you still have them destroy them immediately or get them to the [redacted]."

The order to purge the photos came 11 days after the conservative government transparency organization Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Defense Department seeking "all photographs and/or video recordings of Usama Bin Laden taken during and/or after the U.S. military operation in Pakistan on or about May 1, 2011."

That's one of the questions expected to be asked this week in a Manhattan federal court when lawyers begin the defense of five former aides to the jailed Ponzi schemer, including Daniel Bonventre, former head of Madoff's back-office operations. One witness that the defense wants to call to the stand is Paul Babiak, Ph.D., described by Bonventre's attorney as a world authority on psychopaths in the workplace.

Bonventre and four other former Madoff colleagues stand accused by the government of having participated in Madoff's $17 billion swindle, for which Madoff is now serving a 150-year prison sentence in North Carolina. At issue is whether they were duped by Madoff or knew they were helping to perpetrate a crime.

Babiak, a licensed psychologist, is co-author with psychologist Robert Hare of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work.

Bonventre's attorney, Andrew Frisch, wrote in a court filing last week that Babiak has studied corporate psychopaths extensively. His expertise includes the ability of psychopaths to deceive and manipulate those around them, Frisch wrote in the filing. "If Dr. Babiak is called to testify, we expect him to say in substance that Mr. Madoff's conduct is consistent with that of a corporate psychopath," Frisch wrote.

According to Frisch, Babiak's research shows that the more time an employee spends with a psychopathic boss, the greater the employees' vulnerability to being duped and "the greater the likelihood [the employee] will buy into the con and accept the psychopath's legitimacy." So, was Bonventre conned? Did he believe in Madoff's legitimacy? Those are questions Babiak could address -- that is, if he were allowed to testify. The prosecution would just as soon that he did not.

The problems of Islamic countries have long been high on the agenda of global politics and the international media. The crisis there continues to grow, drawing in new countries and regions. If it reaches Saudi Arabia - the most influential country in the Arab world - what then? Will the United States continue to support its regional ally?

Saudi Arabia has challenged the entire world

Recent information has come to light that terrorists from the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunna have taken responsibility for the attacks late last year in Volgograd. The text of the militants' statement was posted on several Islamist websites, and a video by the mujahideen from the insurgency group Ansar al-Sunna, led by Emir Umar, was published on YouTube. A video clip posted on the Internet on Jan.19 showed two young men who call themselves Suleiman and Abdurrahman and are holding submachine guns. It claims that these were the bombers.

- Senior official: 'Alliance has grown by leaps and bounds'
- French attitude to Iran creates distrust on Capitol Hill

François Hollande and Barack Obama were seeking to put images of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and awkward marital situations behind them, as they began an unusually warm three-day state visit at the home of Thomas Jefferson on Monday.

The two presidents declared theirs to be the new special relationship, in a joint newspaper column that focused on improved military co-operation between the US and what Washington officials now rarely fail to call America's "oldest ally".

"A decade ago, few would have imagined our two countries working so closely together in so many ways," they wrote, pointing to French support for planned US-led strikes in Syria that Britain refused to back, leaving Obama looking keenly for a reliable foreign partner.

It's lights out for the National Security Agency (NSA). State lawmakers in Maryland have filed emergency status legislation that seeks to cut the NSA's Ft. Meade headquarters off from all material support stemming from the state.

"Maryland has almost become a political subdivision of the NSA," Tenth Amendment Center Executive Director Michael Boldin said in a statement. "The agency relies heavily on state and local help. This bill bans all of it."

House Bill 1074 (HB1074) would ban the NSA facility from all public state utilities, ban the use of NSA collected evidence in court, ban universities from partnering with the NSA and ban all political subdivisions from assisting the NSA from within the state.

Be careful when you answer the phone.

That's the message you might heed when considering National Security Operations and CIA operations in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, according to a new report.

According to documents and an interview with an alleged former drone operator, the United States uses geolocation targeting that tracks the location of mobile phones to plot strikes on targets in countries where it believes militants are hiding out. Trouble is, they're not necessarily coupling it with information on the ground, meaning that strike targets can be determined by the locations of their phones alone.

What's more, the fact that the U.S. may rely solely on phone locations means that others can easily become victims of a strike. According the former drone operator quoted in the report, published Monday by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill in First Look, those who believe they might be targets have taken to sharing SIM cards, meaning the actual identities of those carrying phones are obscured.

When American satirist Robert Benchley arrived in Venice, he sent a telegram saying "streets flooded, please advise".

These words must ring hollow in the ears of people living in the South West who have seen their streets turn into rivers as the flood waters continue to rise. But it is not like these floods were new or unexpected.

This is the same region that suffered so much in 2007 when the Labour government announced they would increase spending on flood defences. In 2004, a Government-commissioned report advised a massive increase in spending on flood defences.

What did our leaders do when presented with this evidence?

Well, in 2006, Gordon Brown cut the flood defence budget by £14million.

Since then we have seen flood defence budgets decline in real terms over the course of the spending review. Yet during all this time they have continued to allow the building of houses on flood plains in order to fulfil the immigration driven need for housing.

An intelligence leak to the Associated Press has indicated that the Obama Administration is considering a targeted drone strike on a U.S. citizen living abroad. If this takes place, it would mark the 5th American targeted for summary execution by the U.S. government.

The U.S. official spoke on conditions of anonymity because of the weight of the allegations. While the AP was privy to details such as the name of the target and the country where he resides, they have agreed to withhold this information because revealing details "could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations."

The Justice Department has reportedly not built a case on the target, meaning that the CIA can't kill him just yet unless the President authorizes the death warrant.

The further dilemma is presented due to the fact that the unnamed country is one that maintains its sovereignty and does not welcome wanton drone attacks from foreign superpowers.

Apparently, Obama's great dilemma is whether to target the individual openly with a drone, clandestinely through the CIA assassin program, or call off the mission in lieu of potential political fallout, according to the whistleblower.