The whole thing is regrettable, really. Shocking, truth to tell. And so sad, I'm sure, for those people, those blanket-wearing, beard-growing, false-god-worshiping, probably-related-to-terrorists, citizens of Afghanistan whose wives and children and babies were gunned down in their beds, shot, murdered, slaughtered, and then burned by one of America's finest Sunday morning. But hey, what are ya gonna do? These things happen.

It seems the soldier in question was not, in fact, representative of our brave fighting men and women. He was just another in the continuing series of lone gunmen who have been shooting up the world here and overseas for as long as any of us have been reading the newspapers. David Cortright, the director of policy studies at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, tells us "This may have been the act of a lone, deranged soldier." I saw a headline that said he was a rogue. OK; rogues do as often as not, "go rogue" as no less an authority than Sarah Palin would have us know. So given time to reflect a bit, I guess I'm sorry I impugned our noble troops.

President Barack Obama summed it up as succinctly and as eloquently as only a man of his unflappably cool reserve could, I suppose: "This incident is tragic and shocking, and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan." Well there. And yer goddamn right, Mr. President. Our boys kick butt! We take it to 'em! We light up the friggin sky! They don't mess with the U.S.A. and get away with it. You don't kill three thousand brave American heroes on September the eleventh, ten years ago, and expect your four year old girl to sleep in her own bed unmolested. Unkilled. Unburned. We do what needs to be done to keep America free, and sometimes along the way an enlisted man goes a little nuts. Just one. Just every little once in a while.

Mr. Obama got right on the telephone and called up our "partner" in this whole great reworking of Afghanistan, Mr. Hamid Karzai, and told him we were sorry. Or something like that. He expressed condolences. So did Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I'm sure those were awkward conversations, but you know, the buck does stop there, and that's why we pay those boys the long dollar. Speaking of which, compensation will be paid. You betcha. We have a formula. I don't know, fifteen hunnerd bucks or so. Each.

And we're even-handed and generous in spraying our condolences and compensations. When we kill civilians as a part of our regularly scheduled, officially sanctioned, presidentially authorized drone strikes, it makes Mr. Obama sad, too. It is regrettable, of course, that so many children will insist on living in the same hovels as the alleged terrorists we need to kill, or with somebody who kind of looks like one of them or who might once have been associated with them in some way. We were attacked, you know, and candidate Obama said his predecessor wasn't prosecuting the Afghanistan adventure vigorously enough, but he would, and he for sure, by God has, hasn't he?

Does it feel different to be dead by drone than dead by M-1? Does Obama have nightmares? Did Bush? Do they wash their hands, trying to scrub off the blood? We do not doubt this particular atrocity was perpetrated by a young man gone leave of his senses, but we are not encouraged that he will be tried in a military court, found crazy, demoted, dismissed, given cursory mental health treatment and some time in an institution. We wonder if our Congress and our President should be pronounced crazy, too. Or maybe just criminal. And what about us, neighbor, in our complicity? We who elected them and will re-elect them or others just as cold and cruel and as able to calculate that the life of an Afghan child is not worth much compared to our unending and unyielding compulsion to exercise extreme power in pursuit of God only knows what.

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in an interview Sunday that the United States should assume that Iran is actively preparing to build nuclear weapons.

Kissinger, 88, was asked on the CNN show GPS if the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon was so dire that Israel would need to launch a military strike in the near future.

"I am very uneasy with the so-called intelligence report that say we don't know whether they are actually working on nuclear weapons," Kissinger told CNN.

"I think we should start from the premise that they are undergoing all this in order to achieve a military capability. I don't think that is a disputable point."

A huge child pornography ring has been smashed, the police are jubilant and the guilty snared. Or so it seems, and in Italy nothing is ever as it seems.

Breezing through chat shows, offices and homes is the suspicion of a cover-up. Almost 1,500 people have been charged but not those in high places who are believed to form a "paedophile lobby".

My neigbours, echoing last night's chat shows, are certain a conspiracy is afoot. Whispers and denunciations will continue awhile but probably come to nothing. Italy will have another mystery.

The facts are these. Two years ago police, prodded by a campaigning Sicilian priest, set up a fake website to trap sellers and buyers of child porn.

A Belgian television station has broadcast a clandestine interview with the paedophile murder suspect, Marc Dutroux, who is awaiting trial on charges of abducting, raping and killing four girls.

Dutroux was arrested in 1996 in a case which rocked the nation. Two of the children who he abducted starved to death in makeshift dungeons under his house.

In the interview with the Flemish-language station VTM Dutroux admitted locking up the girls but did not acknowledge responsibility for their deaths.

He also said he had been part of a wider paedophile network but said the justice system did not want to pursue it.

"There is a well-grounded [paedophile] ring," he said. "I maintained regular contact with people in this ring. However, the law does not want to investigate this lead."

Dutroux has already served time for a paedophile conviction. He was set free in 1992 after serving three years of a 13-year sentence for raping five girls.

Punch-drunk Belgium is reeling from a new shock after a senior police officer confirmed last week what has long been rumoured: that some of the country's leaders indulge in sex parties, known ironically as "ballets roses".

Amusing and appalling in turn, the testimony of Georges Marnette, a senior Brussels policemen, might appear to make a welcome change from the horrors of recent months. But this is not mere entertainment: the stories may provide an important insight into the mores of a ruling class that has outraged ordinary people.

At times, Belgium has been in the throes of a near-revolution, with hundreds of thousands on the streets demanding an end to the political patronage that, they believed, had helped - by omission if not commission - a paedophile ring to murder children and escape arrest. It has not been a time of many laughs for anyone.

All the same, it was with a mixture of knowing winks and barely suppressed laughter that a parliamentary commission investigating another of the country's most mysterious scandals heard the evidence of M Marnette. Belgian newspapers usually refer to the portly M Marnette as "un superflic", and mean it. In fact, his evidence was more reminiscent of Inspector Clouseau.

"Yes, we used to go the bars, the gay and lesbian clubs and the sex parties," he said, his bushy moustaches bristling at the memory of his past achievements. Infiltrating such establishments was no easy matter; it was not a job to be done wearing "jeans and a leather jacket".

The fighting in Syria has taken an especially brutal turn as some 47 people, all women and children, have been reported killed in a massacre in the opposition stronghold of Homs, just as the U.N. envoy Kofi Annan said negotiations were on the "right track" to stop the slaughter. The bodies showed signs of incredible brutality, and both sides are blaming the other for the atrocity. Sky News and the Telegraph both reported the bodies of 26 women and 21 children had been found with stab wounds, some with their throats cut. "Some of the children had been hit with blunt objects on their head, one little girl was mutilated and some women were raped before being killed," said Hadi Abdallah, an activist in Homs quoted by both outlets. Syrian state television blamed the killings on "armed terrorist gangs" out to discredit the regime, Sky reported. But opposition activist Mulham al-Jundi told The Guardian he had extensive video proof that "only Assad's Shabbiha [mercenaries] are raping women and killing kids."

After earlier discovery of sex killings of children, revelations of more slayings shake public's confidence in judiciary, government.

In a dank basement by the oily waters of the Brussels-Charleroi canal, police diggers in black jumpsuits uncovered the latest trove of horrors: a skull, a wisdom tooth, bones from fingers, three kneecaps, scraps of undergarments.

For Boutiri family members--Moroccan immigrants next door--the grisly find filled them with such terror that they have put their two-story stone home up for sale.

"We feel we are living in a cemetery," said Zora Boutiri, 23, a clothing saleswoman whose mother is now too afraid to get out of bed for middle-of-the-night Muslim prayers. "Where will the next body be found? On our roof? In the canal out front?"

As chilling fogs linger in the streets of Brussels, police investigators are assembling gruesome details of the latest installment in a nation's nightmare.

Italian police have discovered a massive international paedophile network selling violent child-pornography videos to clients in Italy, the US and Germany.

Eight Italians have been arrested and 490 warned that they are under investigation, in a scandal that has shocked and outraged the country. Police are reportedly trying to identify 5,000 people who are suspected of attempting to purchase the videos, some of which appear to contain images of children being tortured and murdered.

The tapes, which were made in Russia, have allegedly generated revenues of £410m for their makers.

The directors of two state-run television news programmes resigned yesterday after brief excerpts of the paedophile videos were broadcast on Wednesday to illustrate reports. The images were apparently taken from internet sites promoting the pornographic films, which cost anything from £270 to £4,000.

The passing of a new law in France paving the way for a biometric database and requiring all citizens to carry a biometric ID card is a time bomb for civil liberties, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned.

On Tuesday, the French National Assembly passed a law for the creation of a national biometric database, ostensibly to fight identity fraud.

However, the EFF warns that biometric databases pose a mission-creep threat since the data can be used for reasons beyond identity fraud.

It points out that governments are increasingly demanding storage of citizens' biometric data on chips embedded into identity cards or passports and centrally held on government databases, with little regard to citizens' civil liberties.

The new laws compel the creation of an ID card that will contain information such as fingerprints, photograph, home address, height and eye colour. New passports will also contain the chip.

The case is almost seven years old now, but matters surrounding a mysterious group known as the Finders keep growing curiouser and curiouser.

In early February 1987, an anonymous tipster in Tallahassee, Fla., made a phone call to police. Two "well-dressed men" seemed to be "supervising" six disheveled and hungry children in a local park, the caller said. The cops went after the case like bloodhounds--at least at first. The two men were identified as members of the Finders. They were charged with child abuse in Florida. In Washington, D.C., police and U.S. Customs Service agents raided a duplex apartment building and a warehouse connected to the group. Among the evidence seized: detailed instructions on obtaining children for unknown purposes and several photographs of nude children. According to a Customs Service memorandum obtained by U.S. News, one photo appeared "to accent the child's genitals."

The more the police learned about the Finders, the more bizarre they seemed: There were suggestions of child abuse, Satanism, dealing in pornography and ritualistic animal slaughter.