A US appeals court Tuesday rejected an effort to revive a lawsuit by Jose Padilla, a US citizen arrested in 2002 for an alleged "dirty bomb" plot who claims he was illegally detained and tortured.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a lower court decision which said former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Pentagon chief Leon Panetta are immune from the suit for actions taken in their official capacity.

"The political branches, exercising powers explicitly assigned them by our constitution, formulated policies with profound implications for national security," the appeal panel decision said.

"One may agree or not agree with those policies. One may debate whether they were or were not the most effective counterterrorism strategy. But the forum for such debates is not the civil cause of action pressed in the case at bar."

Padilla, who is incarcerated at a high security jail in Colorado, previously sued in an attempt to hold Rumsfeld and other US officials accountable for his alleged suffering, but a district court judge dismissed the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed in the suit that Padilla was imprisoned without trial for four years and subjected to a range of abuse.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has backed down from a possible court battle with the European Union and pledged to alter laws that have jeopardised Budapest's bid to secure vital financial aid.

His climbdown yesterday came as neighbouring Romania braced for an eighth night of protests against the government and its austerity measures, and Croats prepared to vote whether to join the EU at a time of economic uncertainty and political tension between members.

"If we take stock of the issues that have emerged, I do not see any particularly difficult issues . . . Naturally, several laws may have to be modified, but the government cannot do it, this can be done only by parliament, and we will make proposals to this end," Mr Orban said.

The EU and International Monetary Fund have refused to start aid talks with Hungary until Mr Orban scraps plans to merge Hungary's central bank and financial regulator, which critics say will deeply undermine the bank's independence from government meddling.

"Regarding the central bank law . . . the easiest will be to abandon the merger of the two institutions," Mr Orban said, in a conciliatory tone that was long absent from his robust dealings with the EU and IMF.

On 25 June 1992, Dr. D. Corydon Hammond of the University of Utah delivered a talk at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia. It was entitled 'Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse'. In it, he described a strange set of symptoms that he and other clinicians had discovered (often independently) in patients, which indicated a massive, nationwide, well-coordinated program of systematic abuse and mind control, which was often, although not always, indicated in family members of NASA, CIA and military personnel. Using ideomotor responses elicited under hypnosis, Dr. Hammond and his colleagues uncovered layers of 'programs' that were installed in victims (often starting in infancy) via repeated abuse (really amounting to torture), sensory deprivation, disorientation, hypnosis, hallucinogens and other drugs.

Many different layers of programming were found, each with a different purpose, e.g. sexual, suicidal (i.e., 'self-destruct'), ritual and 'psychic killing' programs, as well as built-in shutdown codes, among others. Victims were also programmed with booby traps (called the 'green bomb'), so that if they ever began to recover they would go insane. Incidentally, the number and frequency of individuals 'going off' and killing for no reason seems to have been increasing in recent years. Virginia Tech gunman Seung Hui Cho in 2007; Vince Li, the man who decapitated another man on a Greyhound bus in Canada in 2008; and the Fort Hood shooter(s) of 2009 are just a few examples who have made big headlines and show indications of possible mind programming.

The story Hammond pieced together in his practice goes as follows. At the end of World War II, Allen Dulles and others from the U.S. intelligence community recruited Nazi scientists and doctors who were conducting mind control research in concentration camps and brought them to the United States, where they began doing similar research for military intelligence in military hospitals. A teenager raised according to Hasidic Jewish tradition and with a background in Kabbalistic mysticism (themes from the Kabbalah turned up repeatedly in the programming), saved himself by collaborating and assisting in the death-camp experiments, and he was brought to the United States as well. The boy Americanized his name, obtained a medical degree, became a physician and continued work that appears to be at the center of cult programming today. Patients throughout the country know him by the name 'Greenbaum'. Of course, this is just a story. Hammond apparently had no means of verifying what he was able to piece together from the victims.

How did Newt Gingrich win the South Carolina primary? Answer: there are no free elections in the USA. There is no 'democracy' in the USA. There hasn't been for a long time.

When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.

Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, censorship is still a serious threat.

Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement are just as pernicious as anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan.

Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes, with unelected bureaucrats working closely with entertainment industry lobbyists to craft the provisions in the treaty. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it.

Indeed, we've already signed on to the treaty. All it needs now is Senate ratification. The time to stop the treaty is now, and we may need a second global internet blackout to call attention to it.

Does the "key to future wealth" divide along racial lines? OR is it more of a representation of a system entrenched in marginalization of our communities? It seems there would need to be an attitude adjustment.

Washington - At the height of his career in Congress, Newt Gingrich used to tell audiences that renewing American civilization was "the central challenge of the rest of our lives."

He first laid out this theory in January of 1993, in a hand-written treatise outlining the "five pillars of American civilization": 1) quality, 2) technological advance, 3) entrepreneurial free enterprise, 4) principles of American civilization, and 5) psychological strength. Over the next five years, the thesis would serve as a speech, a political framework, and a battle cry for Gingrich, who said the pillars would "allow [Americans] to break out of the welfare state dilemma of more taxes or less government."

But before Gingrich could deliver his grand new theory to the public in a speech later that month, his deeply divisive racial stereotypes would need to be removed.

Hundreds of angry Libyans on Saturday stormed the transitional government's headquarters in the eastern city of Benghazi, carting off computers, chairs, and desks while the country's interim leader was still holed up in the building.

Libyans have grown increasingly frustrated with the pace and direction of reforms in the country more than three months after the end of the civil war that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Those concerns spurred residents in Benghazi, where the uprising against longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi broke out in February, to begin protests nearly two weeks ago to demand transparency and justice from the country's new leaders.

The melee at the National Transitional Council's headquarters began after protesters broke through the gates using hand grenades and streamed into the grounds of the headquarters. They banged on the building's doors and demanded officials meet with them.

Russia has signed a contract to sell combat jets to Syria, a newspaper reported Monday, in apparent support for President Bashar Assad and open defiance of international condemnation of his regime's bloody crackdown.

The respected business daily Kommersant, citing an unidentified source close to Russia's Rosoboronexport state arms trader, said the $550-million deal envisions the delivery of 36 Yak-130 aircraft. A spokesman for Rosoboronexport refused to comment on the report.

If confirmed, the deal would cement Russian opposition to international efforts to put pressure on Assad's regime over its attempts to snuff out the country's uprising. The U.N. says more than 5,400 people have died over 10 months. The report of the sale comes the same day that Human Rights Watch called Russia's backing of the Syrian regime "immoral."

Hosni Mubarak is still the president of Egypt and the court trying him has no legal jurisdiction to do so, his defense lawyer said on Sunday, trying to undermine the prosecution's case against the leader deposed in a popular revolt last year.

Lawyer Farid el-Deeb was defending Mubarak for the fifth and final day of his closing remarks in a trial that Egyptians who rose up against Mubarak's 30-year-rule hope will bring justice.

The prosecution is seeking the death sentence on a charge that Mubarak was involved in the killing of some 850 protesters in the uprising.

Mubarak's defense has denied those charges and attacked the prosecution's case on other charges of corruption and abuse of power. Many Egyptians who want to see Mubarak held to account worry the case is not as strong as it should be.

A light sentence or an acquittal may fuel more rage and is likely to lead to street protests. Activists are calling for mass demonstrations on January 25, the anniversary of the uprising.

Britain has sunk deeper into debt. Three years after bubble burst, the UK has barely begun to tackle the crushing burden left by Gordon Brown. The contrast with the United States is frankly shocking.

The latest report on "Debt and Deleveraging" by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that total public and private debt in the UK is still hovering at an all-time high. It has risen from 487pc to 507pc of GDP since the crisis began.

As the chart above shows, as recently as 1990 Britain's debts were still just 220pc of GDP. Has a rich country ever been debauched so fast in peace time?

The ordeal of belt-tightening will be grim, dragging out for a generation if Japan is any guide. The Japanese at least began their post-bubble debacle as the world's top creditor nation with a trade super-surplus and a savings rate of 17pc. Britain has no such buffers.

It is a very different picture in the US where light is emerging at the end of the tunnel. American banks, firms, and households have been chipping away at their debts, more than offsetting Washington's double-digit deficits.

The total burden has dropped to 279pc, down from 295pc at the peak of the boom. Households have purged roughly a third of the excess, roughly tracking the historic pattern of post-bubble deleveraging.