Are living wills good or bad? "The living will makes you a clear and easy target to be euthanized. A 'living will' has nothing to do with living. It is your death warrant," warns Mary Therese Helmueller, R.N., who explains that "the killing in hospitals today is commonly referred to as 'the exit treatment' and disguised by the word 'compassion.'"

Laura Bush's surprise appearance in Kabul this week signaled growing US confidence in Afghanistan's once-precarious security. The Taliban insurgency is waning, military commanders claim, boosting reconstruction efforts. But ordinary Afghans, alarmed by a swelling crime wave, see it differently. Armed robbery, kidnapping and intimidation have displaced the Taliban as the principal security problem. The line between cops and robbers is becoming increasingly blurred.

If American forces aren't pulling out of Iraq in a year, a draft will be needed to meet manpower requirements, military analysts warned Wednesday. With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the "breaking point" for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain.

Persistent rumors continue to circulate the Internet that effective June 1, 2005, Americans will no longer be allowed to purchase vitamin supplements, herbs, minerals, homeopathic remedies, aminoacids and nutritional supplements.The outcome of the Alliance for Natural Health's case will have far reaching repercussions -NewsWithViews

Syria is working covertly through a network of Lebanese operatives to ensure Damascus can still dominate its smaller neighbor even after it withdraws the last of 15,000 troops, in defiance of a U.N. resolution demanding an end to Syria's 29-year control over Lebanon, according to U.S., European and U.N. officials, and Lebanon's opposition -Washington Post

Pakistan will not grant U.S. requests for direct access to pardoned nuclear supplier Abdul Qadeer Khan, but instead offered alternatives for getting information about his covert network, Pakistan's ambassador told the United States yesterday -Bill Gertz/Washington Times

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) have agreed to allow KMT Chairman Lien Chan to visit China, a Hong Kong daily said yesterday.Both the KMT and the communists see his five-day trip as sealing a reconciliation.They have found common cause in uniting Taiwan with China and their dislike for President Chen Shui-bian -Taipei Times TW

Venezuela and Spain have signed a number of trade agreements, including the controversial sale of Spanish military equipment. Opposition parties in both countries have criticised the deal reached in Venezuela's capital, Caracas.Several of the deals involve Spain's and Venezuela's respective oil companies, PDVSA and Repsol.But the most controversial is the sale of Spanish coastal patrol vessels and C-295 transport planes to the Venezuelan military -BBC

The ousted Kyrgyzstan president, Askar Akayev, last night accused the US of being behind the "anti-constitutional coup" which forced him to flee the country last week, and said he would only resign if given sufficient a guarantee of his personal safety -Guardian UK

In its reaction, the White House balanced professed support for the work of the secretary general with a statement that the whole story about the oil-for-food saga had yet to be told.Much could still emerge when the final report comes out in the summer to discredit Mr Annan's stewardship of the programme, which came to symbolise all this Bush administration hated about the soft, dovish approach to Iraq's brutal dictator -Guardian UK

After roughly 10 months of hearings, military officials announced March 29 that 38 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been found to not be enemy combatants and will be returned to their homecountries.Five have already been released.Through a process called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, military officers have been reviewing the cases of all detainees held in the military detention facility at Guantanamo to determine if they were all properly classified as enemy combatants -Dept.of Defense

Cod depletion and dust clouds seem like pretty different problems. But they each play a role in the overall environmental degradation of the planet - a condition that a new global study says has escalated so quickly over the past 50 years that it outpaces anything experienced by ecosystems in human history -Christian Science Monitor

The Coast Guard will begin electronically tracking ship traffic through the heavily traveled Aleutian Islands this summer.Some 1,000 to 2,000 large commercial ships travel take the great circle route between North America and Asia every year.The shortcut passes through the Aleutians twice -- entering and leaving the Bering Sea.New federal security laws require all ships to transmit information about themselves when passing through U.S. waters

Presented to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights For the period of Jan. 1 - March 25, 2005

Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable. Now federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.

The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran with all of the incompetence and lack of integrity that it displayed during a similar path trodden during the buildup to our current war with Iraq, warns Scott Ritter.