James Cameron offered to help BP find a solution to their leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico but the company turned him down. Now the Academy Award-winning director is taking his suggestions directly to the media.

Senator Bill Nelson was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell this morning on MSNBC and confirmed reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is heading to China this week to discuss the threat of new UN sanctions over Iran's nuclear program, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said world powers have the necessary votes at the Security Council.

His visit to Security Council veto-wielding permanent member China takes on particular significance as a vote on a new sanctions package looms after the United States introduced a draft resolution last month.

China, which has emerged in recent years as Iran's main trading partner, continues to insist on diplomacy to resolve the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program but US officials say they have Beijing's support for the sanctions resolution.

Back in 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that exposure to the antidepressant paroxetine (sold as Paxil, Paxil CR, and Pexeva) in the first trimester of pregnancy might increase the risk for birth defects, especially heart problems. Did this halt the widespread prescribing of paroxetine and other antidepressants for pregnant women? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Whether or not Clapper is confirmed by the Senate, illegal wars of aggression will continue; drones will still rain death and destruction upon unarmed civilians; America's pit bull in the Middle East, Israel, will carry out international acts of piracy and murder on the high seas with impunity as Gaza starves; and the Executive Branch will complete the destruction of the Constitution and the rule of law at home to "keep us safe."

“They even shot those who surrendered. Many of our friends saw this. They told me that there were handcuffed people who were shot,” (quoted by Press TV)

The Israeli Commando had an explicit order to kill.

There are indications that the US was consulted at the highest levels regarding the nature of this military operation. Moreover, in the wake of the attacks, both the US and the UK have unequivocally reaffirmed their support to Israel.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was set to leave for North America Sunday night to meet with Israeli diplomats, as well as with Jewish communities in the US and Canada, to explain the Israeli government's position on the Gaza flotilla affair.

Lieberman and his deputy Danny Ayalon will speak before the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and meet Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev, Ambassador to Canada Miriam Ziv and consul generals stationed throughout the US.

As I read the myriad of reactions to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy last Sunday, I'm struck by one recurring theme: the sense of astonishment that these activists responded to the Israeli Navy with violence.

In other words, they didn't act according to the script. They didn't behave like proper practitioners of civil disobedience. The implication: if they had responded like the non-violent activists they were purported to be, this whole tragedy could well have been avoided.

There's only problem with this calculus: non-violent Palestinian protests have actually been ongoing throughout the Occupied Territories for years - and the Israeli military has been responding to them with much the same kind of brutality that was used against the passengers of the Mavi Marmara.

President Obama's choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and current undersecretary of defense for intelligence, will be the next DNI. President Obama announced Gen. Clapper as his nominee Saturday, saying he must not fall victim to Washington politics.

With the Obama Administration pushing for additional UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, to punish them for their defiance, officials are expressing concern that the government is actually “too defiant” for the sanctions to even work.

“As long as the regime doesn’t care about what the outside world thinks of it, as long as it doesn’t care about the well-being of its people, there is not a lot you can do about it,” warned Gates, “unless you are willing at some point to use military force.

In exchange for money, a certain group of people have agreed to let your kids be killed. That group is the United States Congress. And for the last several years, many of them have been accepting money from AIPAC, a supposed lobbying group that stands exposed as a spy operation for a foreign government, in order to promote that foreign government's agenda, which includes war in the Mideast, waged against that foreign government's enemies.

This selling of America's children to a foreign government to be that government's mercenaries has to rank as the greatest single betrayal of a people by their government in all of history.

Despite the ‘apology’ the video still appears at YouTube.

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that he would send a delegation to the Gaza Strip to seek reconciliation with the Islamist Hamas movement after Israel's deadly aid flotilla raid.

"The best answer to (the raid)... is for Palestinian groups to reconcile and resist Israel hand-in-hand," Abbas told Turkey's NTV news channel in Istanbul where he was to attend a meeting of an Asian security grouping.

"We have put together a delegation from the Palestinian leadership to go to Gaza and persuade Hamas to reconcile," he said with a voice-over translation into Turkish.

I never saw such twisted logic on the part of the Israelis. Do they really think that Palestinian anger will be directed at Hamas for the blockade?

The reception that Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat, received here one night last week as he faced a small group of constituents was far more pleasant than his encounters during a Congressional recess last summer.

Then, he was hanged in effigy by protesters. This time, a round of applause was followed by a glass of chilled wine, a plate of crackers and crudités as he mingled with an invitation-only audience at the Point Breeze Credit Union, a vastly different scene than last year’s wide-open televised free-for-alls.

An Egyptian security official declared the blockade of Gaza a failure Monday and said his country will keep its border with the Palestinian territory open indefinitely.

Keeping that crossing point open long term would ease the blockade imposed by Israel three years ago to isolate and punish Gaza's Hamas rulers. It also restores a link to the outside the world for some of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians.

A US cruise missile carrying cluster bombs was behind a December attack in Yemen that killed 55 people, most of them civilians, Amnesty International (AI) said on Monday.

The London-based rights group released photographs that it said showed the remains of a US-made Tomahawk missile and unexploded cluster bombs that were apparently used in the December 17, 2009 attack on the rural community of Al-Maajala in Yemen's southern Abyan province.

Activist Idris Simsek, who was on board one of the six ships of the Freedom Flotilla during the Israeli attack, claims that four wounded activists were thrown into the sea.

The Israeli troops also put immense psychological pressure on the activists of the Freedom Flotilla, the Turkish daily Today's Zaman quoted Simsek as saying in an article published on Saturday.

Simsek said they expected some harassment from the Israeli forces but did not expect an armed attack.

He went on to say that he witnessed that the person who waived the white flag to surrender was shot by the Israeli troops.

" …then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

"…do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 20:16)

I am here to announce as loud as I can, there is no need for any ‘International’, ‘impartial’ or ‘independent’ inquiry into the latest Israeli massacre on the high sea. Though the Israeli opposition to such an inquiry is there to suggest that the Israelis have much to hide, the truth of the matter is actually deeper. If you want to grasp what underlies the Israeli deadly barbarism all you have to do is open the Old Testament.

Final List of Participants

The lawlessness and brutality that we saw in the attack on the flotilla is inherent in the nature of Zionism, which, after all, came to birth at a time when the world was rife with nationalism of the most virulent sort. Liberal friends of Israel look on in horror as the Jewish state evolves into a combination of South Africa under apartheid and the new North Korea. Yet ideology has its own inexorable logic: it’s hardly an anomaly that the early followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leading figure in what is today the ruling party in Israel, were attracted to and full of praise for the “blood and iron” doctrine of Mussolini – and the feeling was mutual.

The foreign ministers of France and Britain have urged an international investigation into a recent Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid convoy, which left nine people dead.

Speaking at a joint press conference with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner late on Sunday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague stressed the need for “a credible and transparent investigation.”

“There should be an international presence at minimum,” AFP quoted Hague as saying.

Several announcements were made on the load speakers in Hebrew, Arabic and English - "This is a message to the Israeli army, we have surrendered. We are unarmed. We have critically injured people. Please come and take them. We will not attack."

There was no response.