U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was charged on Friday with 17 counts of premeditated murder, a capital offense that could lead to the death penalty in the massacre of Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said.

The 38-year-old soldier is accused of walking off a U.S. military base with his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, before dawn on March 11, killing nine Afghan children and eight adults and burning some of the bodies. It was the worst allegation of civilian killings by an American and has severely strained U.S.-Afghan ties at a critical time in the decade-old war.

It's unclear what prompted the killings, but the case has drawn new attention to the debate over mental health care for the troops, who have experienced record suicide rates and high incidences of post-traumatic stress and brain injuries during repeated deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Six other Afghans - a man, a woman and four children - were wounded in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. Bales also was charged with six counts of attempted murder and six counts of assault in those cases, according to Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan who disclosed information from the charging document.

Bales, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Washington, was officially informed of the 29 charges just before noon local time at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is confined.

Syria now faces punishing sanctions from the Arab League, as a diplomat from the body says Damascus ignored Friday's deadline to accept foreign observers. Meanwhile, France is actively seeking international support for a humanitarian corridor to be set up in the crisis-torn country. This is also the first time a major power has formally called for foreign intervention in the uprising against President Assad. But there are questions about Paris 'go-to' efforts.

Thierry Meyssan has written "Operation Sarkozy".

(Mr Sarkozy and the CIA. Based on Thierry Meyssan's "Operation Sarkozy" )

Here are some of the points Meyssan makes about Sarkozy and his government:

1. The CIA planned Sarkozy's rise to power and has influence on his government.

2. When Sarkozy became president, Alain Bauer was put in charge of the French intelligence services.

Bauer is the grandson of the Grand Rabbi of Lyon.

He is also former Grand-Master of the Grand Orient of France (a top mason).

And he is former number two at the USA National Security Agency in Europe.

The official story on the final denouement of the Toulouse shootings drama is in. Like so many other official narratives around 'Muslim terror attacks', it's full of holes and requires anyone attempting to believe it to engage in some serious mental gymnastics.

Mohamed Merah, was a 23-year-old French guy of Algerian descent who loved cars, worked in a car repair/supply store, wanted to join the French army to "defend the French flag" but was refused, was partying in a nightclub three weeks before his alleged shooting spree, had a history of petty criminal offences and was due in court in April for driving without a license. He also had, allegedly, visited Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan for some, as yet, unknown reason, perhaps "ideological indoctrination".

That's about as much as we can say about him without disseminating dubious government propaganda, specifically the claim that he was the author of the recent shootings in Toulouse. That particular claim is in serious doubt given that an eyewitness at one of the shootings stated clearly that the gunman, who always wore a motorbike helmet, was "quite fat". Other eyewitnesses said the the man they saw shooting was "of European descent". Here's a recent picture of Mohamed Merah:

In the wake of a horrific rampage, in which Mohamed Merah (now dead after a 32-hour standoff with police) reportedly murdered three French soldiers, three young Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has begun calling for criminal penalties for citizens who visit web sites that advocate for terror or hate. "From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished," Sarkozy was reported as saying.

Apart from the obvious flaws in Sarkozy's plan--users, can, of course, use anonymizing tools to view the material or simply access it from a variety of locations to avoid appearing as "habitual" viewers--there are numerous other reasons to be concerned about criminalizing access to information.

First, there's no guarantee that criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism. Extremist violence didn't start with the Internet and it won't end with it, either.

Second, who defines "hate speech"? In France, that definition includes Holocaust denial, which in the past resulted in Yahoo! discontinuing auctions of Nazi memoribilia (the collectors of which are not, by any stretch, all sympathizers). And negative comments about France's Muslim community have also resulted in criminal penalties, most notably in the case of actress Brigitte Bardot, who has been convicted five times for "inciting racial hatred." While Holocaust denial and comments about Muslims such as those made by Bardot may be deplorable, they should not be criminal.

Finally, while Sarkozy is not--yet--calling for websites to be blocked, it wouldn't be a stretch; after all, France already offers mechanisms for blocking child pornography and "incitement to terrorism and racial hatred." If Sarkozy were to decide censorship is the answer, one major risk would be overblocking: there's nary a country in the world that censors the Internet without collateral damage (in Australia, for example, testing on a would-be censorship regime found the site of a dentist blocked, among others).

EFF has serious concerns about the implications of Sarkozy's comments. When a democratic country such as France decides to censor or criminalize speech, it is not just the French that suffer, but the world, as authoritarian regimes are given easy justification for their own censorship. We urge French authorities to judge crime on action, not expression.

The following are important facts that may help you understand the background to the recent shocking events in South Western France.

Three servicemen have died and in another attack on a Jewish school, a teacher, two of his own children and a third child were tragically gunned down by a masked man riding a motor scooter.

Important fact number one: the first round of the French presidential election is scheduled for April 22nd. A final encounter between the two front runners is scheduled for May 6th, should no clear winner emerge from the first round.

And number two: the incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy is fighting for his political life. He has trailed his socialist opponent Francoise Holland for months now. He has not led in the polls against any socialist contender since November 2009.

To sum up, Sarkozy is one of the consistently least popular presidents in the history of the Fifth Republic. He looked every inch the loser engaged in a race to the bottom. His populist lunges at the over-bearing EU, playing the anti-Turkish card over the Armenian genocide issue, barely registered more than a temporary flicker on the political Geiger counter.

Fifteen men across eastern Australia, some of them fathers, have been charged with child pornography offences following the discovery of hundreds of thousands of images and videos of children including toddlers.

Seven men were arrested in Victoria, five in NSW, two in the ACT and one in Queensland following a tip-off from Interpol to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in December.

The arrests over the past week have disrupted a network of online child predators, the AFP alleges.

The peer-to-peer file-sharing network, which involves the sharing of information without using a central server, was originally discovered in Germany.

Thirteen Australians have been arrested in several police raids on an international child pornography ring.

Australian Federal Police raided 19 properties in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT, arresting the 13 men, with one of those in possession of images and videos requiring 24 standard laptops to store.

Nigel Farage commenting on Barroso's message that the signing of the European Fiscal Compact treaty signifies the "irreversibility of the euro."

In 2001, at an Ozar Hatorah school in Paris, a classroom was burned down. This turned out to be an inside job. The perpetrator turned out to be a pupil. (From Middle East to France, a Jewish school's journey Reuters)

On 19 March 2012, in Toulouse, an Ozar Hatorah school was reportedly attacked. This followed the shooting of three Moslems in Toulouse earlier in March 2012.

Witnesses of the March 19 attack described the shooter as being "of European descent". ("School Shooting".)

On 21 March 2012, the French Interior Minister Claude Gueant says the shooting suspect is 24 years old, of French nationality and "belongs to al-Qaeda," the mercenary group reportedly set up by the CIA.

Apparently, the suspect wants to damage the cause of the Palestinians, by associating himself with the Palestinians.

The suspect reportedly says he "wants to take revenge for Palestinian children" killed in the Middle East. (Toulouse siege: live)