Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh has left the capital, Sana'a, for the United States to receive medical treatment.

Saleh says his US journey is for medical treatment and he will return home to continue leading the ruling party. Saleh has been granted full immunity from prosecution, based on a parliamentary law. It was approved on Saturday, under an Arab-initiated power-transfer deal backed by the US. The law also grants limited immunity to Saleh's aides.

It sparked widespread protests by the people who want Saleh to stand trial. They blame him for deadly crackdown on months of anti-regime rallies.

Nearly, two thousand people have lost their lives. The protesters also accuse Saleh of leading a corrupt government during his long-time rule.

Press TV talks with Mark Glenn, with the Crescent & Cross Solidarity Movement, to shed more light on the issue.

Photographs and amateur video footage have provided the first compelling evidence that professional snipers shot to kill when they opened fire on an anti-government demonstration in Yemen that left at least 52 protesters dead.

Image after image of the dead, men and boys, showed that those killed in the most violent day in the capital city Sana'a for 30 years had been systematically shot through the head and neck by gunmen positioned on city rooftops.

Yet even as the international community condemned Friday's violence, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's president of 32 years, remained unbowed as his security forces visited more bloodshed on protesters in the port city of Aden, a strategic British colony until 1963.

Police used live fire to disperse demonstrators calling for Mr Saleh's resignation. Local human rights groups said that at least four people died, while more than a dozen more were wounded.

A series of bizarre coincidences has left several African countries experiencing significantly reduced Internet traffic. The Register reported 28 February that an undersea cable was cut off the coast of Kenya on 25 February, severely reducing Internet traffic along the Eastern side of the African continent. The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable pipes Internet and telecommunications from its landing points in Fujairah in the UAE to Mombasa, Kenya. A ship had apparently "dropped anchor in a restricted area", though no further details, in particular the ship's name, were provided. But what had apparently gone unnoticed up until this incident, at least in Western media, was the severance of three other submarine communications cables further north in the Red Sea on 17 February. The three cables in question were the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), the Europe India Gateway (EIG) and the South East Asia Middle East Western Europe-3 (SEA-ME-WE-3). EASSy issued a press release on 29 February stating that:

• The EASSy cable was cut on 17 February 2012 at 14:27
• The cable cut is at a depth of 165m
• The cut section of cable is located in the Red Sea between the EASSy landing stations at Port Sudan and Djibouti
• The vessel believed to be responsible for the cable cut has been identified.
• The cut is believed to have been caused by the anchor of this vessel, a cargo ship, being dragged more than 150km along the sea bed

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his meeting with Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Friday with a public declaration that Iran poses a "grave threat" to global security - adding that Israel is prepared to "defend" itself if necessary.

"The warnings that I and others have been giving over the years will materialize unless Iran is stopped. And that's why I say the international community must do everything it can to stop it. And the danger is not only to Israel - it is obviously a danger to Israel - but I think it's a danger to the whole world," Mr. Netanyahu said.

The Israeli Prime Minister arrived in Canada against a backdrop of growing fears that Israel could unilaterally strike suspect Iranian nuclear facilities to delay or destroy that country's nuclear capabilities.

"They hang gays, they stone women. This what they're doing today without nuclear weapons and imagine what a regime like this would do if they had atomic weapons," Mr. Netanyahu said.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that 20 years ago people couldn't even imagine cell phones, but now they are commonplace because Americans "recognize the rights God has given every person."

Speaking to supporters in Chillicothe, Ohio on Friday, the former Pennsylvania senator explained that the U.S. had "transformed the world" with the a new form of government.

"In the previous 2,000 years, life did not change," he said. "And then America came around and said, 'No, no more dictators, no more kings, no more classes, no more nobility.' We believe in limited government, not an all-powerful state. We believe that if we liberate people, we recognize the rights that God has given every person then the world will change."

"The national housing market took a hit in the latter half of 2011, falling to new lows not seen since the housing crisis began six years ago, according to data out Tuesday by S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices......The index is down 33.6 percent from its peak in mid-2006."

- Washington Post

The reason that housing prices have dipped only 33.6 percent in the United States instead of 60 percent as they have in Ireland, is because the big banks have been keeping inventory off the market. If the millions of homes - that are presently headed for foreclosure - were suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would plunge and the biggest banks in the country would be declared insolvent. That's why the banks have slowed the flow of foreclosures. According to Amherst Securities Group's Laurie Goodman, "....2.8 million borrowers haven't made a payment in over a year. Add that to the over 450,000 real estate owned (REO) units and you have approximately 3.2 million that are in the shadows. We are liquidating about 90,000 homes a month. That's about 36 months of overhang; a really shocking number." (See the whole interview here.)

Indeed, it is shocking, but what's more shocking is that the banks are allowed to game the system this way and get away with it. New home buyers are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would be if the banks were not manipulating inventory, so there are real victims in this scam. . And is it really conceivable that Fed doesn't know that nearly 3 million people are living in their homes for free? Of course, they know; they're in on it too. The bankers even have a name for this arrangement; they call it "squatters rent" and they estimate it costs them an extra $60 billion per year. They would rather pay that hefty sum then foreclose quickly and have to write down the losses which would leave them broke.

A wealthy New York woman is facing criminal charges after being accused of keeping an illegal immigrant as an indentured servant and forcing her to live in a closet for nearly six years.

Documents posted on the Smoking Gun allege that Annie George, 39, and her now-deceased husband, Mathai Kolath George, hired an illegal immigrant from the Indian state of Kerala. The immigrant, identified only as "V.M.," was promised about $1,000 a month in wages to live in the family's 34-room, 30,000-square-foot home, known as Llenroc mansion, which houses a helicopter pad, 15 fireplaces, marble flooring, 24-karat gold gilded ceilings and a glass elevator. V.M. was tasked with taking care of the Georges' four young children, along with performing household duties in the mansion located about 20 miles north of Albany.

New York's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Even if V.M. had been allowed to leave the residence at the end of a regular 40-hour workweek, she would have been entitled to a minimum, pretax income of $290 per week, or $1,160 per month.

All but two of the EU's 27 leaders have signed a new treaty to enforce budget discipline within the bloc.

The "fiscal compact" aims to prevent the 17 eurozone states running up huge debts like those which sparked the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts.

To take effect, the pact must be ratified by 12 eurozone states.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who with the Czechs refused to sign, said the summit had accepted his ideas for cutting red tape and boosting growth.

On Thursday he had complained that his ideas, contained in a joint letter signed by 12 EU leaders, were being ignored.

But after the talks he said "our letter really did become the agenda for this meeting... We now have a plan that we must stick to in the months ahead".

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria had peace and calm until Washington intervened belligerently.

Strategies and tactics vary. Objectives are consistent. They involve replacing independent regimes with pro-Western ones by any means, including war.

Three unwinnable ones rage. Nonetheless, Obama plans more. Syria's target one. For the past year, US-instigated violence ravaged parts of the country. Thousands have been killed, many others injured.

Syria's gripped by fear. Heavily armed killer gangs rage out of control, and direct foreign intervention looms. More on that below.

Assad's wrongly blamed. The blame game targets victims, not villains. As a result, ongoing conflict continues.