Chicago police terrorized six children in the wrong apartment, demanding at gunpoint that an 11-month-old show his hands, and telling one child, "This is what happens when your grandma sells crack," the family claims in court

Lead plaintiffs Charlene and Samuel Holly sued Chicago, police Officer Patrick Kinney and eight John Does in Federal Court, on their own behalves and for their children and children.

The six children were 11 months to 13 years old at the time. Plaintiffs Connie and Michelle Robinson are Charlene Holly's daughters.

The complaint states: "On November 29, 2012 in the early evening hours Charlene Holly was in the first floor apartment at 10640 S. Prairie in the front room helping minor Child #1, Child #2, Child #4, and Child #5 rehearse songs for their church choir. Charlene was also caring for Child #3, who was 11 months old. Child #6 was in the upstairs apartment alone.

"Charlene and the children heard a loud boom outside and a voice cry out 'Across the street!'

Chavez proved that radical policies work and win support and that defiance of US imperialism is possible and popular - Chris Nineham writes on why he will be missed in every corner of the globe

One of the great figures of the 21st Century has died. At a time of universal mediocrity and ubiquitous buy-in to neoliberal orthodoxy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood out amongst politicians as a massive personality of independence, principle and courage. He didn't just speak about socialism and social justice, he ensured his successive governments delivered measures that genuinely improved the lives of millions of people in his country, particularly the poorest. His charisma and radicalism was such that it is no exaggeration to say his example helped produce progressive governments and movements across the region.

His galvanising presence and his left wing politics were themselves the product of a widespread grass-roots radicalisation. The neoliberal policies that Pinochet brutally pioneered in Chile in the 1970s were rolled out accross the continent from the early 1980s onwards. Venezuelan President Carlos Andrez Perez broke with his corporatist past to introduce the IMF backed 'Great Turn' at the end of the 1980s. Between 1981 and 1997 the richest 10% of Venezuelans saw their share of national income grow from 22 to 33%. The Venezuelan poor responded to the turn too with occupations, mass protests and riots popularly known as the Caracazo.

Inspired by this movement, the young Hugo Chavez, then a junior officer in the Venezuelan army, launched a long-prepared coup attempt in 1992. The coup had popular support, but was headed off by the Perez government. On his arrest Chavez made a characteristically courageous statement, "unfortunately" he said, "for the moment the objectives that we set ourselves have not been achieved...New possibilities will arise and the country will be able to move definitely towards a better future." Instantly the red beret of Chavez's parachute regiment and the phrase 'for the moment' became symbols of resistance amongst the country's poor.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said President Hugo Chavez's enemies had poisoned him with cancer before announcing that two US Air Force officials would be expelled from the country for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.

Maduro identified one American as the Air Force attaché and said he had 24 hours to leave the country.

"We are aware of the allegations made by Venezuelan Vice President Maduro over state-run television in Caracas, and can confirm that our Air Attache, Col. David Delmonico, is en route back to the United States," spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale said in a statement.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua later announced that two Air Force officials in total had been named "persona non grata" and were being kicked out of Venezuela, AFP reports.

Maduro also accused President Hugo Chavez's enemies of poisoning him with the cancer he has been battling for nearly two years.

"Behind all of [the plots] are the enemies of the fatherland," he said on state television.

Russian nuclear forces hold large exercise involving movement of strategic and tactical warheads

Russian nuclear forces conducted a major exercise last month that tested the transport of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons near Europe, according to United States officials.

The exercise raised concerns inside the Pentagon and with the U.S. European Command because it was the largest exercise of its kind in 20 years and involved heightened alert status of Russian nuclear forces.

The nuclear drills were part of other military maneuvers in Russia carried out between Feb. 17 and Feb. 21.

The exercises followed a recent surge in Russian strategic bomber flights that include a recent circling of the U.S. Pacific island of Guam by two Tu-95 Bear bomber and simulated bombing runs by Tu-95s against Alaska and California in June and July.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley P. Miller sought to play down the nuclear exercise but declined to comment on the movement of nuclear weapons and whether nuclear forces went on a heightened state of alert. "We don't comment on intelligence matters," he said.

On Wednesday night's episode of "The Ed Show," host Ed Schultz listed off numerous actual instances of Republican-spun voter fraud schemes, mocking the seemingly perpetual paranoia many conservatives have about the community group ACORN, which doesn't even exist anymore.

He instead recalled the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP pleading guilty to conspiring to jam phones during an election in 2002; the 2011 conviction of a Republican campaign manager in Maryland for authorizing misleading robocalls in minority districts on Election Day; and the 2012 conviction of Indiana's Republican secretary of state for voter fraud, among other crimes.

The heart of the matter

It was a case destined for the X-Files and conspiracy theorists alike, when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez speculated that the US might have developed a way to weaponise cancer, after several Latin American leaders were diagnosed with the disease. The list includes former Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner (colon cancer) Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff (lymphoma cancer), her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (throat cancer), Chavez (undisclosed), former Cuban president Fidel Castro (stomach cancer) Bolivian president, Evo Morales (nasal cancer) and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo (lymphoma cancer). What do they have in common besides cancer? All of them are left-wing leaders. Coincidence? In his December 28, 2011 end-of-year address to the Venezuelan military, Chavez hinted that the US might have found a way to give Latin American leaders cancer. "Would it be so strange that they've invented the technology to spread cancer and we won't know about it for 50 years?" Chavez asked. "It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America.

It's at the very least strange," he said. Chavez said he received warning from Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, who has survived hundreds of unsuccessful assassination attempts. "Fidel always told me, 'Chavez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat ... a little needle and they inject you with I don't know what'," he said.

Where are the civil libertarians in the president's party that we must rely on a Tea Party Republican to champion this issue?

You could say that a filibuster occurs when a senator drones on and on. The problem with the US Senate was that there were too few senators speaking about drones this week.

President Barack Obama's controversial nomination of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency was held up Wednesday afternoon by a Senate filibuster. The reason: Brennan's role in targeted killings by drones, and President Obama's presumed authority to kill US citizens, without any due process, if they pose an "imminent threat". The effort was led by Tea Party Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined by several of his Republican colleagues. Among the Democrats, at the time of this writing, only Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had joined in the genuine, old-fashioned "talking filibuster", wherein the activities of the Senate floor are held up by a senator's speech.

Members of Congress, tasked with oversight of intelligence and military matters, have repeatedly demanded the memoranda from the White House detailing the legal basis for the drone program, only to be repeatedly denied. The nomination of Brennan has opened up the debate, forcing the Obama administration to make nominal gestures of compliance. The answers so far have not satisfied Senator Paul. Nearing hour six of his filibuster, Senator Paul admitted:

"I can't ultimately stop the nomination, but what I can do is try to draw attention to this and try to get an answer ... that would be something if we could get an answer from the president ... if he would say explicitly that noncombatants in America won't be killed by drones. The reason it has to be answered is because our foreign drone strike program does kill noncombatants. They may argue that they are conspiring or they may someday be combatants, but if that is the same standard that we are going to use in the United States, it is a far different country than I know about."

Kentucky senator speaks in protest at comments from officials over possibility of carrying out drone strikes on US soil

Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday began a rare talking filibuster in order to try and block the appointment of John Brennan as CIA chief over his attitude to President Barack Obama's controversial drones policy.

The move, made famous in popular culture by James Stewart in the film Mr Smith Goes to Washington, involves trying to block a piece of legislation by speaking for as long as possible, though rule changes have largely reduced it to a publicity stunt.

In an unexpected development, Paul was joined by Democratic senator Ron Wyden, from Oregon, who warmly praised the Kentucky Senator's move and gave the anti-drones protest a sudden flush of cross-party support. Like Paul, Wyden has been a longstanding critic of aspects of Obama's use of drones. Five Republicans also joined in by making statements.

Paul, a Kentucky senator and son of libertarian hero and former presidential hopeful Ron Paul, said he was making the filibuster attempt out of outrage at recent comments made by Obama officials on the possible legality of carrying out drone strikes against US citizens on American soil.

Brennan's confirmation hearing as CIA director was a crucial test of the Senate's exercise of oversight. It failed; now it's up to us

The American public still does not know how the Obama administration legally justifies its vast killing program. But thanks to years of quietly accumulating political pressure, mounting criticism from important US allies, and a very public airing of widely-held concerns last night, that may soon change.

Europe raises the red flag on the so-called targeted killing program

The United States has reportedly killed 4,700 people in "war on terror" operations outside of declared war zones. On Wednesday, the European Parliament heard a special briefing on the US kill programs from the ACLU's Hina Shamsi and the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Ben Emmerson. Following the briefing, the parliamentarians issued a statement calling into question the legality (and morality) of US strikes. The United States cannot hide its legal justification for these operations from the world any longer, they wrote:

"We are deeply concerned about the legal basis, as well as the moral, ethical and human rights implications of the United States' targeted killing programme that authorises the CIA and the military to hunt and kill individuals who have suspected links to terrorism anywhere in the world.

"Despite having abandoned the 'war on terror' rhetoric, the US sticks to the notion that it is in the realm of a war, and not organised criminality, when fighting terrorism. It has a destabilising effect on the international legal framework ...

"There are a growing number of reports demonstrating that hundreds of civilians are being killed in the framework of the targeted killing program. This is being done without any transparency in justification of a 'wartime' policy. We urge our American allies to address the pressing questions over the legal criteria at the basis of a policy that, in targeting so-called militants, destroys both innocent human beings and our common legal heritage." [My emphasis]

The members announced that the European Parliament will hold hearings next month to look further into the US program. Amid such fierce criticisms from key US allies, one has to wonder what the Obama administration is hiding in the legal memos justifying its killing operations. If everything the US is doing is truly above board and complies with international and domestic law, why don't officials release the memos?

What does the president have to hide?

Cases of insurgents captured by the UK military after 2004 battle in south-east Iraq being heard at al-Sweady inquiry in London

British military doctors failed to give any pain relief to Iraqi insurgents with gunshot wounds - although they did check their pulses and breathing before they were sent for interrogation, a public inquiry into allegations of murder and the abuse of unarmed prisoners by UK forces heard on Thursday.

One man who had three bullet wounds and several shrapnel wounds to his right leg and foot says he told an army doctor that he was "in agony", but his detention record showed that he received no analgesics. He later needed surgery.

Others with gunshot wounds, or injuries including cuts, bruises or broken noses that they say were inflicted after capture by British troops, say that they were medically examined before interrogation but not given pain relief.

Jonathan Acton Davis QC, counsel to the al-Sweady Inquiry, said that the records showed that men captured after a fierce battle near the town of Majar al-Kabir in south-east Iraq were weighed on arrival at the Shaibah logistics base, and that doctors also checked their pulses, respiration, body temperatures, analysed their urine for blood, glucose or protein, and even asked whether they had any allergies. They were then passed as being fit for detention, and sent for interrogation sessions, during which some are alleged to have been assaulted.