SPB News for Tuesday.

Sources: Most uncommitted senators to endorse Obama — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Most of the seventeen Democratic senators who have remained uncommitted throughout the primaries will endorse Barack Obama for president this week, CNN has learned. — Sources familiar with discussions between Obama supporters

Ahmadinejad says Israel will soon disappear … Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported. — “I must announce that the Zionist regime

Syria to let in UN investigators

UN atomic watchdog to examine allegations of secret nuclear reactor.


Gay marriage ban qualifies for CA ballot

Would overturn recent CA high court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

Putin Calls U.S. 'Frightening Monster,' Creating 'New Berlin Walls' Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the U.S. to a "frightening monster" and urged France to distance itself from its American ally. "How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home [?] and a frightening monster abroad?" Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde transmitted live to journalists in Paris yesterday. Putin, speaking the day after meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the U.S. was creating "new Berlin Walls" in Europe by pushing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to expand into ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships --Report says 17 boats used --MPs seek details of UK role The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of prisoners. The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President [sic] George Bush declared that the practice had stopped. According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Prisoners are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Blackwater buys Brazilian-made fighter plane: Report A subsidiary of U.S. military security contractor [Bush's Waffen-SS] Blackwater Worldwide has purchased a fighter plane from the Brazilian aviation company Embraer, a Brazilian newspaper reported Sunday. The 314-B1 Super Tucano propeller-driven fighter -- the same used by the Brazilian military -- was bought for $4.5 million and delivered to EP Aviation at the end of February, according to the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. The report included the plane's registration number with the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency, and the FAA website confirmed it is registered by EP Aviation.

Iran invasion critic Gen. Odom dies of 'apparent heart attack' William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general who was a senior military and intelligence official in the Carter and Reagan administrations and who, in recent years, became a forceful critic of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died May 30 at his vacation home in Lincoln, Vt. An autopsy will be performed, but his wife said he had an apparent heart attack. Gen. Odom became a fixture on news programs and never altered his critical stance toward the Bush regime's policies in Iraq and Iran.

McCain's Top Strategist Lobbied For Iran-Linked Firm In the summer of 2005, John McCain's chief strategist Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry's ties to Iran, a country in which it had already invested tens of millions of dollars... Flash-forward nearly three years and Black's old client -- which later scored a $16 billion deal with the Iranian government -- could now create major headaches for his current boss. On Monday, McCain, in a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, called for a broad and aggressive international campaign to divest from Iran.

War criminals must fear punishment. That's why I went for John Bolton --As long as the greatest crime of the 21st century remains unprosecuted, we all have a duty to keep the truth alive If the police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg tribunal described as "the supreme international crime", I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process. The Nuremberg principles, which arose from the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances". [John] Bolton appears to have "participated in a common plan" to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime) by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger into a state department factsheet...

Australian PM attacks decision to join war in Iraq Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accused his predecessor of abusing intelligence information to justify entering the Iraq war, saying Monday that the Australian people were misled. In remarks to parliament on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which began Sunday, Rudd said the nation must learn from the errors of former Prime Minister John Howard, who sent 2,000 troops to support U.S. and British forces in the 2003 invasion

Watchdog: NASA misled on global warming studies --NASA's inspector general office alleges "inappropriate political interference" NASA's press office "marginalized or mischaracterized" studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, the agency's own internal watchdog concluded. In a report released Monday, NASA's inspector general office called it "inappropriate political interference" by political appointees in the press office. It said the agency's top management wasn't part of the censorship, nor were career officials. NASA downplayed the report as old news on a problem that has since been fixed.