A suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated explosives in an Afghan district close to the border with Pakistan, killing at least 10 people including children, officials said on Saturday.

The attack comes one day ahead of a NATO summit in Chicago, where the coalition intends to spell out its role in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

"The bomber blew himself up in a crowded market and it was powerful," said Sardar Mohammad Zazai, police chief of eastern Khost province.

He said the assailant was heading for a police checkpoint in the Ali Sher district along the border with Pakistan's "lawless tribal areas".

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed six children, one civilian adult and three policemen.

Eleven years into the NATO-led war against the Taliban, the Islamist group holds large sway in Afghanistan's restive south and east, where they enjoy enormous popular support.

Afghan security officials have said they expect this year's summer fighting season to be bloody as the third phase of a security handover from NATO to Afghan forces gets underway.

Several bomb blasts have struck a professional institute in the southern Italian city of Brindisi, killing one student and injuring seven. The three blasts hit as students arrived for morning lessons at the institute.

Local authorities report that the incendiary devices were planted in a trash bin opposition the professional institute Morvillo Falcone.

One of the injured has died in hospital while another has been transferred to nearby Perrino for emergency surgery.

"I was opening the window when I felt the force of the blast. I saw children thrown to the floor, blackened by the explosion, their books on fire. A truly terrifying scene. Who could've have done such a thing?" said a witness of the blast to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The explosions went off at around 8am local time (06:00 GMT), causing widespread panic among the students arriving at the school.

At least it's on the record: Most House Republicans support the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens.

During Thursday's floor debate over the latest national defense authorization act, the House GOP brought out their long knives for Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who, in their view, had collaborated on a nefarious plot to undermine national security. Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) accused the lawmakers of wanting to "coddle terrorists," while Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) warned that under an amendment they'd introduced, "as soon as a member of Al Qaeda sets foot on US soil, they hear you have the right to remain silent." National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who has never heard of a same-sex marriage supporting, pro-financial regulation liberal who wasn't secretly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that their proposal was the result of "libertarian extremists" teaming up with liberals with an "obsession" with giving "more rights" to "mass murderers."

A new video of torture in Libya has surfaced on the Internet. The victim is allegedly a former supporter of ex-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. According to our Libyan Observer, this kind of vengeful brutality often goes unpunished.

The video was published on YouTube on May 16 by a user going by the name of Libya Albadeel. It was then re-posted by dozens of other users. It is impossible to establish with certainty the date at which it was shot; however, according to our Observer, such retributions remain frequent today. The video's title claims that the torture perpetrators are "militiamen" in Misrata, a coastal town located 200 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli.

WARNING: These images may shock viewers

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed.

"Hasty military operations in foreign states usually bring radicals to power," Medvedev, president for four years until Vladimir Putin's inauguration on May 7, told a conference in St. Petersburg in remarks posted on the government's website.

"At some point such actions which undermine state sovereignty may lead to a full-scale regional war, even, although I do not want to frighten anyone, with the use of nuclear weapons," Medvedev said. "Everyone should bear this in mind."

Medvedev gave no further explanation. Nuclear-armed Russia has said publicly that it is under no obligation to protect Syria if it is attacked, and analysts and diplomats say Russia would not get involved in military action if Iran were attacked.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is urging Members to reject H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act, FY 2013 because it prepares the way for a disastrous war with Iran. Even if the House accepts a proposed amendment by John Conyers (D-MI) to state that the authorization is not a specific declaration of war, the bill still calls for aggressive redeployment of our armed services to begin "credible, visible preparations for a military option."

Global banks see market rally on Greek exit ... Major global banks are advising clients to prepare for a stock market rally and a resurgence of the euro if Greece is forced out of monetary union, betting that world authorities will flood the international system with liquidity. Bank of America said EU authorities will pull out the stops to keep Greece in the system as they weigh the full dangers of contagion. Should that fail, it expects a series of dramatic moves ... Mr Bloom said the ECB is playing a game of chicken by waiting until it has secured maximum compliance from EMU's wayward states before coming to the rescue. "Once again it is holding everybody over the edge of the abyss until they scream for mercy," he said. - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard/UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Oh, no. Greece is leaving!

Free-Market Analysis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, with some of the best sources in the world, has buried his lead once again.

Just look at the excerpt from his latest article, above. The headline is that there will be a global rally. We figure this is a pretty good speculation.

He was told there would be, no doubt by fairly prominent people who want the word to get out.

But then he can't help report the rest, that the ECB is "playing a game of chicken by by waiting until it has secured maximum compliance from EMU's wayward states before coming to the rescue."

Say ... what? You mean all this breast-beating over Greece's expulsion from the EU was a kind of theatre?

From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy's Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It's a restricted area, and inhospitable - in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site's security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing - accurately - that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.'s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration's fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Haaretz reported yesterday that, "Israel, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea were ranked most negatively by 24,000 people surveyed in an annual BBC poll."

It would appear that in spite of the extensive Hasbara campaign and the Jewish lobby buying every morally lax living politician, people of the world increasingly see Israel for what it is.

The broad international survey was an initiative of the BBC World Service. Over 24,000 people from 22 countries took part in the poll, which was conducted from December 2011 to February 2012.

Haaretz confirms that the survey's findings on global attitudes toward Israel are "worrying indeed." Last year's survey already confirmed that attitudes toward Israel were negative, but the situation has become more serious this year: Some 47% of participants in the 2011 survey had negative views of Israel's influence on the world, but this year the number has gone up to 50%.

Human rights campaigners have orgainsed a protest outside the Bahraini embassy in London to raise their voices against the invitation of 'Bahraini tyrant' to a Diamond Jubilee event.

Human rights activists are outraged that the King of Bahrain will lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle - after his regime was accused of a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners.

Protestors say the guest list at today's special Jubilee lunch features a range of foreign monarchs who have been widely condemned for their human rights records, or their extravagant lifestyles.

Among the guests sitting down with the Queen is the King of Bahrain, where demonstrations calling for more democratic involvement in the country's government were violently suppressed, with the help of Saudi troops. At least fifty people have been killed in the tiny Persian Gulf island nation since February last year.