French helicopter gunships launched rocket attacks on President Laurent Gbagbo's palace in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan on Friday night, according to witnesses.

The strikes came hours after mortar rounds and a rocket were fired at the residence of the French ambassador in Abidjan by pro-Gbagbo forces.

A spokesman for Mr Gbagbo denied that the French ambassador's residence had been attacked.

"The Ivory Coast government believes France is looking for a pretext to resume bombings on the presidential palace," Toussaint Alain, a representative for Mr Gbagbo, said in Paris. "If there are attacks on the embassy, it's not Gbagbo's forces. Nobody has been attacked."

The UN peacekeeping head said Mr Gbagbo's forces had regained ground in Abidjan and fully control the Plateau and Cocody areas.

Alain Le Roy said the Gbagbo camp had used a lull on Tuesday for peace talks as a "trick" to reinforce their positions and that they still had heavy weapons.

European Union finance ministers told Portugal it would have to implement tougher austerity measure than those proposed by its outgoing government if it hoped to secure a bailout.

The minister were meeting in Budapest on Friday to discuss the sovereign debt crisis that has haunted the bloc for over a year, with Portugal the main focus of their talks.

Debt-laden Portugal on Thursday became the third eurozone nation after Greece and Ireland to request financial help from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund after a spike in borrowing costs.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the Eurogroup, said the finance ministers had instructed the EU, the IMF and Portugal's politicians to negotiate the country's bailout by mid-May for implementation after June 5 elections.

"The package must be really strict because otherwise it does not make any sense to guarantee anybody's loan," Finland's Finance Minister Hyrki Katainen said.

Claims of Civilian Killings, Disappearances, Torture, Chemical Warfare Agents and Organ Theft From Victims of State Violence

When Saudi-led military forces intervened in Bahrain on March 14, it was declared by the Bahraini government and its allies among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates that the unprecedented move was a matter of urgency, needed to "restore order and stability" to the tiny Persian Gulf island kingdom. An arcane GCC defence pact was invoked - the Arabian Peninsula Shield - even though legal experts pointed out that such a provision was only applicable in the event of one of the six Gulf states coming under attack from an external enemy.

Three weeks later, the real nature of the Saudi-led intervention is becoming brutally clear. It can now be seen as an invasion that has led to foreign occupation, lawlessness and several categories of crimes against humanity committed by the very forces purported to bring order. In one sense, the rhetorical justification for invoking the Peninsula Shield force, "to restore order and stability", is literally correct. The aim was to restore the order and stability of the US-backed Al Khalifa Sunni dictatorship that had sat perilously on top of an oppressed Shia majority for decades. On February 14, the Shia majority (60-70 per cent of the indigenous population) along with disenfranchised Sunni and non-religionists from working class communities rose up in numbers that had never been seen before. Inspired by revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab region, Bahrain's surging pro-democracy movement rocked the royal rulers.

Gerald Celente Loses It (and rightly so) - When This Man Acts Like This It Means - WAKE UP!!!!

I spoke to Richard Goldstone several times after his eponymous Report came out, and it was obvious that the personal slander and vilification from so many in his own community was wearing him down. He was certainly naive and did not expect the excreta storm that would head his way.

He had always been a person of integrity and his editorial in the Washington Post, allegedly "retracting" the Report named after him is saddening. If it had appeared the day before, one would almost suspect it of being an April Fool's parody.

Indeed, the wording of the editorial, while confused and evasive, was eloquently indicative of heavy pressure -- not least since only two days before at a debate at Stanford University, he is reported as maintaining that "all the investigations showed that, thus far, the facts were as they were reported."

One cannot help wondering what happened in the next two days to change his mind. Did his daughter, ex IDF and self-confessed Israeli patriot, pull the family chains? It certainly betokens a personal tragedy, since it will detract from his reputation and integrity in the human rights and international law field, with no chance at all of earning the forgiveness of the rabid and vindictive Zionists who have been hounding him mercilessly for two years.

Indeed, reading the editorial reminded me of Comrade Rubashov in Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon -- a true believer doing one last duty for the group he had lived with for so many years. It reads like a "confession" rung out from someone trying to free hostages near and dear to him by giving the kidnappers what they want while trying to hold on to one's own integrity and dignity. Sadly, of course, those who attacked his morals and probity before, will never, ever forgive him for telling the truth originally -- and like Rubashov, he will be shown no mercy once his confession has served its purpose for the cause.

Look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in - because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can't be true

Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."

Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can't bear for innocent people to be tyrannised, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different". There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can't now. The best guide through this confusion is to look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in - because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can't be true.

Imagine a distant leader killed more than 2,000 innocent people, and his military commanders responded to evidence that they were civilians by joking that the victims "were not the local men's glee club". Imagine one of the innocent survivors appeared on television, amid the body parts of his son and brother, and pleaded: "Please. We are human beings. Help us. Don't let them do this." Imagine that polling from the attacked country showed that 90 per cent of the people there said civilians were the main victims and they desperately wanted it to stop. Imagine there was then a huge natural flood, and the leader responded by ramping up the attacks. Imagine the country's most respected democratic and liberal voices were warning that these attacks seriously risked causing the transfer of nuclear material to jihadi groups.

Suicide bombers and gunmen have stormed a police compound in southern Afghanistan, killing six members of the Afghan security forces.

Afghan officials say at least three insurgents attacked the complex in Kandahar province Thursday, waging a gun battle with security forces for several hours before being killed.

Witnesses say American Black Hawk Helicopters circled overhead and NATO armored vehicles responded to the assault, which killed members of the Afghan intelligence service, army and police. At least 12 people were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which took place near the main highway that connects Kandahar city with the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Also Thursday, NATO said coalition and Afghan troops killed an Afghan border policeman who shot and killed two American soldiers earlier this week in Maymana, the capital of northern Faryab province.

U.S. officials say the nation's health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite years of focus on the possibility of a terrorist "dirty bomb" or an improvised nuclear device attack.

A blunt assessment circulating among American officials says, "Current capabilities can only handle a few radiation injuries at any one time." That assessment, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 and stamped "for official use only,'' says "there is no strategy for notifying the public in real time of recommendations on shelter or evacuation priorities."

The Homeland Security report, plus several other reports and interviews with almost two dozen experts inside and outside the government, reveal other gaps that might increase the risks posed by a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.

One example: The U.S. Strategic National Stockpile stopped purchasing the best-known agent to counter radioactive iodine-induced thyroid cancer in young people, potassium iodide, about two years ago and designated the limited remaining quantities "excess," according to information provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ProPublica. Despite this, the CDC Web site still lists potassium iodide as one of only four drugs in the stockpile specifically for use in radiation emergencies.

The drug is most effective when administered before or within hours of exposure. The decision to stop stockpiling it was made, in part, because distribution could take too long in a fast-moving emergency, one official involved in the discussions said. The interagency group that governs the stockpile decided that "other preparedness measures were more suitable to mitigate potential exposures to radioactive iodine that would result from a release at a nuclear reactor," a CDC spokesperson said in an e-mail to ProPublica.

Unit would protect private sector firms and gov agencies

Israel is mulling the creation of a counter-cyberterrorism unit designed to safeguard both government agencies and core private sector firms against hacking attacks.

The proposed unit would supplement the efforts of Mossad and other agencies in fighting cyberespionage and denial of service attacks. Israel is, of course, a prime target for hackers from the Muslim world.

The country's hi-tech industries also make it an interesting target for cyberespionage from government-sponsored hackers from China and elsewhere. Spear-phishing attacks featuring targeted emails, custom malware and subsequent hacking action have been in the news over recent weeks, in the wake of cyberattacks against EU agencies and oil-prospecting multinationals, to quote just two recent threats.

Major General Isaac Ben-Israel, former head of the Defence Ministry's administration for the development of weapons and technological infrastructure, the main candidate to lead Israel's cyber-defenders, reportedly met with local and international experts for a brainstorming strategy development session late last year.

About ten hours before a warplane roared down the Red Sea, crossed into Sudanese airspace and let fly a missile at a sedan, killing both of the people inside, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Gilad offered a piece of advice about secret military actions to audience of diplomats and journalists in a Jerusalem hotel.

"Never boast," Gilad said. "Be humble. Be modest. Do it, what you have to do. Don't talk.''

The topic was Iran's nuclear ambitions, and what Israel might do military to impede them. As director general of political-military affairs for Israel's defense ministry, Gilad may be the person in Israel in the best position to answer, but he demurred on the grounds that saying things in public tended to impede the ability to do them. So it is that when asked about the Stuxnet worm that wreaked havoc with Iran's centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility, or the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists on their way to the office, Israeli officials limit themselves to a knowing smile and a "no comment."