Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the U.S. military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service. Gone were photographs of the suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, as well as a recounting in his base's newspaper of a 2007 battle in Iraq involving his unit, a report that quoted him extensively. But they weren't really gone.

Given the myriad ways that information remains accessible on the Internet, despite the best efforts to remove it, the material about Bales was still out there and available, such as in cached versions of Web pages. Within minutes of the Pentagon leaking his name Friday evening, news organizations and others found and published his pictures, the account of the battle - which depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light - and excerpts from his wife's personal blog.

So why did the Pentagon try to scrub Bales from the Internet in the first place?

A defrocked Philadelphia priest pleaded guilty Thursday to a sex-abuse charge, just days before a landmark priest abuse trial is set to start.

Edward Avery, 69, pleaded guilty to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and conspiracy to endanger the welfare of a child. He was immediately sentenced to 2½ to five years in prison and was ordered to surrender within 10 days.

The charges stemmed from Avery's abuse of an altar boy at St. Jerome's Parish in northeast Philadelphia.

Another day, another false-flag terror event in another advanced Western democracy. This time, the people of France are the target of Western state-sponsored terrorism and the strategy of tension. The patsy's name is Mohammed Merah. The names of the people who were murdered by the French state are Jonathan (Yonatan) Sandler, plus two of his young children named Aryeh and Gabriel, and another child named Myriam Monsonego.

This is an ordinary state-run terrorist operation to increase tension, fear, and hatred in Western society. This is what the fascist State does when it is free to write history on the spot and blow stuff up. It kills innocent children to make the submerged public gasp for air, hate the scapegoat, and demand security and steel nerve from the leaders of the State.

Vincenzo Vinciguerra, an Italian neo-fascist and terrorist, described in 1984 the existence of a shadow network of military officials and political leaders in Italy who frequently organized terror attacks to keep the country within the sphere of right-wing politics. This network was part of a larger structure known as Gladio that included government fascists in Europe, America, and NATO. Vinciguerra, who was a mercenary of this secret state-terror network until the day he raised awareness of its existence, said in the famous documentary, Operation Gladio:

You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.

When Libya's former spy chief flew to Mauritania last week, he was looking for a safe haven. Instead the man known as "Muammar Gaddafi's black box", the last of the fallen dictator's henchmen still at large, walked into a trap set by French and Mauritanian intelligence.

Gaddafi's head of intelligence, right-hand man and brother-in law, Abdullah al-Senussi, was arrested in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, last week. The still murky circumstances of his capture set Libya on a collision course with France and the International Criminal Court, which both want Senussi.

Libya wants Senussi to stand trial in Tripoli for a catalogue of crimes. It sent a delegation to Mauritania but it returned without him after officials there said the legal formalities for his extradition were not complete.

Western and Arab powers are all too aware of the secrets Senussi holds, and are anxious to deny him the opportunity to say what he knows in public and expose the Arab and Western governments that used Gaddafi to plot against their enemies.

"He is Gaddafi's black box," said Noman Benotman, a senior Libyan analyst at the Quilliam Foundation. "He knows all the secrets about the dirty deals, plots to kill - and even what underwear Gaddafi wore."

Amman - The U.N. Security Council, including Russia and China, threw its weight on Wednesday behind efforts by Kofi Annan to end the bloody conflict in Syria, providing a rare moment of global unity in the face of the year-long crisis.

In a statement approved by all its 15 members, the council threatened Syria with unspecified "further steps" if it failed to comply with Annan's peace plan, which calls for a ceasefire and demands swift access for aid agencies.

Although the original statement was diluted at Russia's demand, editing out any specific ultimatums, the fact that all world powers signed up to the proposal dealt a serious diplomatic blow to President Bashar al-Assad as he battles a popular uprising.

"To President Assad and his regime we say, along with the rest of the international community: take this path, commit to it, or face increasing pressure and isolation," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Washington.

The conflict spilled over Syria's borders late on Wednesday when several shells hit the Lebanese border village of al-Qaa and nearby fields, injuring one person, residents said.

Al-Qaa, 10 km (six miles) from the Syrian border, has been the first stop for many of the 7,000 Syrian refugees who have fled fighting into Lebanon.

Refugees complain that they are pursued by Syrian forces, who have often fired across the border, but al-Qaa residents said this was the first time artillery has been used.

US, Washington - A classified war simulation held this month to assess the repercussions of an Israeli attack on Iran forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead, according to American officials.

The officials said the so-called war game was not designed as a rehearsal for American military action - and they emphasized that the exercise's results were not the only possible outcome of a real-world conflict.

But the game has raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran, the officials said. In the debate among policy makers over the consequences of any Israeli attack, that reaction may give stronger voice to those in the White House, Pentagon and intelligence community who have warned that a strike could prove perilous for the United States.

The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who were briefed on the results and spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature. When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.

The two-week war game, called Internal Look, played out a narrative in which the United States found it was pulled into the conflict after Iranian missiles struck a Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, killing about 200 Americans, according to officials with knowledge of the exercise. The United States then retaliated by carrying out its own strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

One week after the murder of a soldier in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) and three days after the death of two parachutists in Montauban and the serious wounds undergone by a third, investigations are continuing into the identity of the killer.

Investigators have in particular the testimony of one resident of Montauban who exchanged glances with the person who coldly and methodically unloaded bullets on three soldiers of the 17th RGP of Montauban in front of astonished passersby. The Montalbanaise described a rather corpulent man of intermediate size.

The killer hustled me, it was turned over and in the movement, the visor of its helmet was concerned a few centimetres, I then saw a tattooing or a scar on the level of his left cheek. I also foresaw his eyes through the visor. It had a cold glance of an alarming clearness. A glance which one does not forget, he told the Dépêche Midi and RTL.

On Friday, judicial authorities formally connected the murder in Toulouse to the double-assassination in Montauban, gathering files from the hands of the District Attorney of Haute-Garonne. The motivations of the killer remain a enigma and the investigators do not privilege any line of enquiry. Despite the absence of anyone being held in police custody or any arrests being made, the investigation continues.

As fellow Occupy Wall Street protesters who had been arrested on Saturday were being arraigned, Dallas Pesola remained in a holding cell on Sunday night, essentially being punished for not submitting to what was supposed to be a voluntary photograph of his irises.

Mr. Pesola was released on Monday after spending 48 hours in custody, double the maximum time for arraignments set in 1990 by a state Supreme Court judge. After his release, he said that he declined the iris photographs because he did not believe the police were entitled to pictures of his eyes.

"I got that creepy feeling like Big Brother wants to get closer to me," he said. "They really don't have a right to that information."

It remains unclear whether there is compelling state interest in forcing retina scans on peaceful protesters exercising their right to free speech in a public place, but that's just what the New York Police Department is doing to the Occupy Wall Street activists.

Over 90 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested Saturday afternoon, and some were arraigned yesterday in Manhattan Criminal Court, but not before learning that the cost of their bail would spike exponentially - or that the opportunity to post bail would be denied arbitrarily - if protesters did not submit to retina scans.

Activists and lawyers alike were surprised yesterday to learn that the size of protesters' bail was being punitively affected by whether defendants were willing to have the distinctive patterns of their irises photographed and logged into a database.