As inflation and shortages expose billions to hunger worldwide, agricultural giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Company revealed a 42 percent leap in quarterly profits. The announcement follows similarly skyrocketing earnings reports from half a dozen other agribusinesses and suppliers, as well as from major oil companies BP, Shell, and Exxon. Facts not Fairies: Man-made crisis pushing 100m into poverty.

This picture was a press release from Israeli sources purported to show Palestian terrorists. However one of the suspected terrorists forgot to take off his star of David before being photographed. The sunglasses are most likely to hide his blue eyes also.

May 1 marked the fifth anniversary of the infamous “mission accomplished” speech delivered by President George W. Bush aboard a US aircraft carrier. Five years after what Bush proclaimed to be the end of “major combat operations” in Iraq, US casualties have reached a seven-month high, while the Iraqi death toll continues to mount.

It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel.

PHILIPPE SANDS, author of The Torture Team was introduced last evening to a capacity-filled, chandeliered room at The Law Society, 119 Chancery Lane, London WC2. QCs, lawyers and distinguished guests were present, eager to hear the person who was being sponsored by The Guardian. Editor, ALAN RUSBRIDGE opened the evening: “Mr. Sands has a way of orchestrating things. What motivates him? He has a passionate sense of justice and a belief in how lawyers should behave. I am here as a fan and am a big admirer of what he does, and of his bravery, “ Mr. Rusbridge said. The Guardian published several articles (see References) concerning this extraordinary, and quietly spoken, Englishman. Jonathan Cooper, who organises the excellent Human Rights course at The London School of Economics, also spoke briefly. Mr. Sands spoke for over an hour, giving a synopsis of his book about the lawyers involved in decisions concerning new tactics to get information from U.S. prisoners. “What were the crucial issues, what is the centre of gravity,” he wondered. They emerged. He was particularly interested in these two subjects, he said.

Destitution and food insecurity among Gaza's 1.5 million residents has reached an unprecedentedly critical level, according to unpublished UN findings that they now need "urgent assistance" to avert a "serious food crisis" in the occupied Palestinian territories.

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how President George W Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) carried out an eight-hour work stoppage at West Coast ports on May 1 to demand an end to the war in Iraq.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's three-nation tour of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India and the welter of agreements and understandings reached between Tehran and these governments serve notice beyond the mere issue of energy security and Iran's expanding role in the sub-continent's energy market; rather, these developments signify a new stage in Iran's foreign policy that is best described as "pan-regionalism".

The War Party has a reliable strategy when faced with a rising political figure who threatens their monopoly on American politics, one that is time-tested and invariably successful: when all else fails, they bring out the Smear Bund.

Douglas J. Feith's new book War and Decision. Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism is an old-fashioned morality tale written by a man with little discernible moral sense or any real concern for the truth... Feith, like all neoconservatives, lives in a parallel universe where he defines reality and only his ideas are valid, pure, and good for America... Feith unwittingly explains how he and Rumsfeld's team brought America unmitigated disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also shows how delusional the Bush administration is in its day-to-day modus operandi; to paraphrase a Celtic warrior's words about the Romans, the Bush administration creates catastrophes for America and calls them successes.

The unprovoked aggression launched by the US and Britain against Iraq five years ago has already gone down across the world as, in the words of President Roosevelt, “a day which will live in infamy”. These five years have seen the physical and social destruction of Iraq, mass killings, tens of thousands thrown into jail without trial, rampant torture, an epidemic of sectarian terror attacks, widespread poverty and the complete breakdown of basic services and supplies. Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country.

On a frozen island near the North Pole, a huge hole has been blasted out of the side of an Arctic mountain, and a tunnel has been drilled deep into the rock. When the facility under construction here is completed, it will be lined with one-meter-thick concrete, fitted with two high-security blast-proof airlock doors, and built to withstand nuclear war, global warming, terrorism, and the collapse of the earth's energy supplies. It's known as the "Doomsday Vault,"

He doesn't care if we're in Iraq for a hundred years, but when it comes to the veterans who've served over there, the senator is AWOL.

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has hit out at the US treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison where he was held for nearly six and a half years. Saying that "rats are treated with more humanity", al-Hajj said inmates' "human dignity was violated".

Six people died and at least 35 were hurt on Friday when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle went off outside a mosque in Yemen's northern city of Saada. The blast happened as worshippers, including army officers, were leaving the Salman Mosque after Friday prayers, officials and security sources said.