Family of Arafat Jaradat claim traces of blood found on the body; Israeli Health Ministry says results of autopsy inconclusive.

Palestinian Authority Minister for Prisoners Affairs, Issa Qaraqi, claimed Sunday that Arafat Jaradat, the Palestinian prisoner who died in Meggido Prison on Saturday, had been subjected to severe torture.

Qaraqi told reporters in Ramallah that an autopsy performed earlier on Jaradat's body "proved that he had been severely tortured" while in detention.

Qaraqi claimed that the autopsy did not provide any evidence that Jaradat had died of a heart attack, as announced by the Israeli authorities.

Qaraqi said that the Israeli version regarding Jaradat's death was a "lie" and held Israel fully responsible for "this cruel crime."

Israel, he added, "must be held fully accountable for this war crime." Qaraqi reiterated his call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry to investigate Jaradat's death.

Baluchistan, Pakistan - long target of Western geopolitical interests, terror wave coincides with Gwadar Port handover to China.

Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province, bordering both US-occupied Afghanistan as well as Iran, was the site of a grisly market bombing that has killed over 80 people. According to reports, the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the attack. Billed as a "Sunni extremist group," it instead fits the pattern of global terrorism sponsored by the US, Israel, and their Arab partners Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The terrorist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group was in fact created, according to the BBC, to counter Iran's Islamic Revolution in the 1980's, and is still active today. Considering the openly admitted US-Israeli-Saudi plot to use Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups across the Middle East to counter Iran's influence, it begs the question whether these same interests are funding terrorism in Pakistan to not only counter Iranian-sympathetic Pakistani communities, but to undermine and destabilize Pakistan itself.

The US-Saudi Global Terror Network

While the United States is close allies with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is well established that the chief financier of extremist militant groups for the past 3 decades, including Al Qaeda, are in fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While Qatari state-owned propaganda like Al Jazeera apply a veneer of progressive pro-democracy to its narratives, Qatar itself is involved in arming, funding, and even providing direct military support for sectarian extremists from northern Mali, to Libya, to Syria and beyond.

Cardinal O'Brien, 74, faces claims of inappropriate attention by four priests

One priest alleges 'unwanted behaviour' after late-night drinking

Another priest said he was 18 when 'inappropriately approached

O'Brien now faces demands for his immediate resignation

But a former archbishop says people 'must listen' to the cardinal's side

Britain's most senior Catholic clergyman, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has been reported to the Vatican for alleged inappropriate behaviour, it emerged last night.

Three priests and one former priest have sent statements to the papal nuncio, Antonio Mennini, alleging impropriety dating back to 1980.

As head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, next week O'Brien will be part of the conclave choosing the next Pope, but now he faces demands for his immediate resignation.

As reported by The Observer, one of the priests alleges that he has needed counselling after an inappropriate relationship with O'Brien.

A second complainant said that he was 18-years-old when O'Brien made an inappropriate approach after night prayers.

A third said he was invited to 'get to know' O'Brien at the archbishop's residence only to face 'unwanted behaviour' from O'Brien after late-night drinking.

The four are all from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

A spokesman for the cardinal said that he contests the allegations.

Minister dismisses Israeli claim that Palestinian prisoner died of heart attack, as thousands protest over his death.

The Palestinian government is alleging that a Palestinian man who died in Israeli custody was tortured to death, dismissing claims that his death was due to a heart attack.
Arafat Jaradat's autopsy showed torture resulting from fractures in his body and bruises in his face, while his heart was in good condition, said Issa Qaraqaa, the minister in charge of prisoner affairs, citing a Palestinian doctor who took part in the autopsy.

"These results prove Israel killed him," Qaraqaa told a news conference on Sunday.

Jaradat died on Saturday in an Israeli jail from what prison authorities initially said appeared to have been a cardiac arrest.

The 30-year-old man from Sair near Hebron in the occupied West Bank was arrested last Monday for alleged involvement in a November 2012 stone-throwing incident that injured an Israeli, according to Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.

Abby Martin takes a look at a terrifying new ad by General Dynamics on the future of MAVs, mini drones capable of eavesdropping and discrete assassinations.

Small producers face poverty as ever more commodities are controlled by a coterie of multinationals

As you sip your morning coffee or tea, accompanied perhaps by a chocolate biscuit, or a banana for the more health-conscious, think hard about where your breakfast comes from. Increasingly, a handful of multinationals are tightening their grip on the commodity markets, with potentially dramatic effects for consumers and food producers alike.

The livelihoods of millions of smallholders who produce the drinks and snacks we consume every day are "seriously under threat", warns a report to be published tomorrow to mark the start of Fairtraide Fortnight. Extreme price volatility, high food prices and more concentrated food markets threaten to leave farmers "condemned to poverty".

Three companies now account for more than 40 per cent of global coffee sales, eight companies control the supply of cocoa and chocolate, seven control 85 per cent of tea production, five account for 75 per cent of the world banana trade, and the largest six sugar traders account for about two-thirds of world trade, according to the new publication from the Fairtrade Foundation.

Article 2, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution reads as follows: The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice for matters arising out of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

If perjury and obstruction of justice constitute high crimes or misdemeanors, then doesn't it seem rather obvious that the murder of an American citizen by the president would also constitute a high crime or misdemeanor, especially if the citizen is a child?

That's precisely what President Obama, acting through U.S. national-security state agents, did on October 14, 2011. He murdered a 16-year-old American boy who was traveling in Yemen. The boy was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was the son of accused terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, who the CIA had assassinated two weeks before.

Why did President Obama and the CIA or the military kill Abdulrahman? The president, the CIA, and the Pentagon have all chosen to remain silent on the matter, refusing to even acknowledge that they killed the boy. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs implicitly provided the justification: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."

So, there you have it: the boy was apparently killed because he was considered to have the wrong father.

What US and Britain did to Iraq is nothing short of state terrorism

It's been almost 10 years since the US and Britain unleashed 'Shock and Awe' on the Iraqi capital Baghdad ostensibly to punish a rogue dictator for hoarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in non-compliance with binding UN Security Council resolutions. In reality, Saddam Hussain had shut down his nuclear programme and destroyed Iraq's chemical and biological weapons more than a decade earlier.

UN weapons inspectors were almost certain of this fact and were on the point of giving Iraq a clean bill of health until they were leant-on by Uncle Sam. Indeed, the man who had supervised Iraq's WMD programme for a decade Saddam's son-in-law Hussain Kamal confirmed as much to CIA intelligence officers and UN officials following his defection to Jordan in 1995.

What was done to Iraq was nothing short of state terrorism beginning with 10 years of crippling sanctions that brought Iraq to its knees and were believed to have been responsible for the deaths of up to 500,000 children who died from malnutrition, lack of medicine and disease from polluted water supplies.

Rather than heed growing international calls to lift those sanctions, George W. Bush and his neoconservative band chose war which they and their British cohort Prime Minister Tony Blair then sold to gullible Western populations on lies too numerous to list. They were aided by a complicit right-wing media with Rupert Murdoch leading the charge, according to the diaries of Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

A Montana Republican state legislator has introduced a bill that would give corporations the right to vote in municipal elections. According to Think Progress, Rep. Steve Lavin (R-Kalispell) has introduced Montana House Bill No. 486, which would grant to "a firm, partnership, company or corporation" that owns property within a district the right to vote as a citizen of that district.

Echoing former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's 2011 assertion that "corporations are people, too, my friend," the law, if enacted, would empower a representative of each company in the district to cast a vote in the company's interest. The representative would be required to present proof of the company's registration with the secretary of state and that they are that organization's designee.

North Korea on Sunday warned the top U.S. military commander stationed in South Korea that his forces would "meet a miserable destruction" if they go ahead with scheduled military drills with South Korean troops, North Korean state media said.

Pak Rim-su, chief delegate of the North Korean military mission to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, gave the message by phone to Gen. James Thurman, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, KCNA news agency said.

It came amid escalating tension on the divided Korean peninsula after the North's third nuclear test earlier this month, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, drew harsh international condemnation.

A direct message from the North's Panmunjom mission to the U.S. commander is rare.

North and South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.