Respondents were told that a nuclear attack on the lab would be twice as likely to succeed as a conventional attack. However, while 100 innocent bystanders would be killed in the non-nuclear assault, 25,000 people would die in the nuclear strike. In spite of the huge loss of life, 39% of the respondents chose the nuclear option. And 52% said they would approve of it as well if they learned about it after the fact.   read more

The institutionalized abuses in Iraq owe much to the abuses committed by U.S. and Iraqi forces during the U.S.-led occupation of the country, according to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The abuses set in motion over 10 years ago by the Bush administration’s ‘torture memos,’ and the brutal detention policies that followed, facilitated Iraq’s creation of a system that is today either unwilling or incapable of delivering justice to its citizens.”   read more

Ntaganda faced a rebellion within his own rebel group—referred to as M23—from those secretly working with the Rwandan government. The issue of whether or not to turn in Ntaganda to the government contributed to a recent split within M23, which resulted in scores of their members fleeing to Rwanda and being forcibly disarmed. “The Rwandans would have killed him,” Barnabé Kikaya bin Karubi, the DRC’s ambassador to Great Britain, was quoted as saying.   read more

Among the many contracts in the works are 36 Lockheed Martin F-16IQ Block 52 fighter jets, 25 Bell attack helicopters armed with Lockheed Martin laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 140 upgraded Abrams main battle tanks built by General Dynamics Land Systems and 160 Guardian armored security vehicles manufactured by Textron Marine and Land Systems.   read more

The governments of Turkey and Iraq don’t get along so well, but that hasn’t stopped Turkish goods and businesses from being invited into the war-torn country. Over the past 10 years, Turkey’s goods and services to Iraq have ballooned by more than 25% a year. In 2012, the total value of the exports reached $10.8 billion. Iraq is now the second biggest importer of Turkish goods (behind Germany). Turkish construction companies are also flourishing in Iraq.   read more

at least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died between the invasion in March 2003 and the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011. The civilian fatalities included those killed in the fighting and others who became ill as a result of nation’s crippled infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity). Iraqi civilians area still dying if war-related causes. According to IraqBodyCount.org, that included 345 in January 2013.   read more

Many of the “bad neighbors” are concentrated in India, Vietnam and Brazil. In fact, one ISP, BSNL in India, accounted for 7.4% of all spamming addresses in the world. But then there’s Spectranet in Nigeria, labeled the Internet’s most crime-ridden network because 62.5% of its addresses were found to distribute spam.   read more

At the end of the meeting, Peres said he was "very impressed" by the "courage" of Muslim leaders who came to Israel to denounce the crimes against their own communities and against the Jewish community. Many of them had traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories last year after the acts of murderous madness by Mohammed Merah.   read more

On Friday prison spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand denied that the hunger strike was widespread, but did acknowledge that 14 prisoners were “hunger strikers” and that at least five are being force fed through tubes. The hunger strike began on February 6 after guards confiscated detainees’ letters, photographs and legal mail, during which copies of the Koran were roughly handled during searches.   read more

American combat units officially left Iraq at the end of 2011, but the U.S. war effort in the country is still going strong, only now it’s the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) taking the lead. When American military units were still fighting in Iraq, U.S. Special Forces worked closely with elite Iraqi antiterrorism units to thwart al-Qaeda affiliates, such al-Qaeda in Iraq. With these American commandos largely gone, CIA agents have stepped in to help Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service.   read more

According to a new report from the Congressional Research Service, immigration to the U.S. has nearly matched the peak period of 1905-1915. As of 2010, foreign-born residents comprised 12.9% of the U.S. population, which is close to the key year of 1910 when it was 14.8%. Of the 1.1 million people who became legal permanent residents in FY2011, almost 65% did so on the basis of family ties. Another 16% were refugees or those seeking asylum.   read more

Over the last 15 years, 5,513 bodies have been recovered along the border. In 2012 alone, the total was 463. The border area near Tucson, Arizona, has proven the most deadly since 2001, with 177 bodies found in the last fiscal year. But fatalities have jumped significantly in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where the death toll went from 66 in 2011 to 150 last year.   read more

For a nation officially devoted to the egalitarian ideals of communism, China has no shortage of lawmakers making themselves extremely rich. The National People’s Congress, China’s mostly ceremonial legislature charged with approving edicts from the Communist Party, currently includes 31 legislators who possess $1 billion or more in personal assets. The U.S. Congress, for comparison’s sake, has zero billionaires.   read more

In January, in fact, the U.S.-NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed there had been a 7% drop in Taliban attacks last year—only to later admit the numbers were wrong and that there had been no reduction at all. So now the Pentagon just won’t bother publishing the number of times that Taliban forces engage American forces.   read more

TSA officials said they made the switch in order to bring U.S. rules impacting carry-on items in line with those of international carriers. They also said it will allow passengers to move through screening lines more quickly, since it reduces the number of prohibited items that TSA screeners have to deal with.   read more

India has decided that a domestic company can sell a generic—and much cheaper—version of a cancer drug manufactured by Germany’s Bayer AG, despite its patent protecting exclusivity and higher prices for the medication. Last year, the Indian patents office authorized Natco Pharma to sell generic Nexavar at 8,800 rupees ($160) for a month’s dose. Bayer had been charging 280,000 rupees ($5,120) for Nexavar.   read more