The following article was published on March 28, 2008:

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced sweeping changes in the nation's finance rules, specifically targeting the derivative financial products that led to the credit crisis, mortgage crisis, banking crisis, and the crisis in the American automobile industry.. Predictably, some conservatives have responded that such policies would lead to "socialism," or a similar compromise of the free-enterprise American dream. In fact, such regulations are as old as the Ten Commandments, and as American as apple pie: they are nothing more than an update of the ancient prohibitions on usury, or the unfair charging of interest. And while today, "usury" has a whiff of the antiquarian about it (or worse, one of antisemitism), if we look closely at what usury laws were meant to do, I think we'll discover that they are much more relevant, and worthy, than we might suppose. .... Wealthy institutions have lured poor people into unsustainable and unstable credit arrangements, and indeed, the basic cords of our society have begun to fray. ....Today's derivatives market, for example, is precisely about "making money from money" -- but taken to new and ludicrous extremes. The credit default swaps which were largely responsible for sinking insurance giant A.I.G. were essentially bets about whether certain debts would be paid or defaulted-upon. Now, as it happened, debtors defaulted in such numbers that they brought down the house. But this derivative security should never have been legal in the first place.....To ban or heavily regulate usurious derivative securities is not socialism. It's the Bible.

US forces in Afghanistan acknowledged in a Thursday statement that they used a public relations group Rendon for "several analytic reports, to include characterization of specific topical stories/events as positive, negative or neutral, as well as whether media reporting is an accurate portrayal of the facts as we know them." "These reports do not 'rate' reporters or news outlets themselves, nor do we keep any reports on individual reporters other than personal information used in the accreditation process, i.e. name, passport or ID number, media outlet, etc...," the military statement said. We have used background information, which typically includes basic biographical information about the reporter and a snapshot of what they have been covering recently, to prepare leaders for interviews as any public affairs office might prepare for any media engagement," the army said. However, it also said that the army "has never denied access to any reporter based upon their past stories." The news comes against the backdrop of an increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. A recent survey found that 51 percent of the Americans surveyed did not believe the war was worth fighting.

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials. Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme.....Israel is offering a nine- to 12-month moratorium on settlement building that would exclude East Jerusalem and most of the 2,400 homes that Israel says work has already begun on.....Israel, in return for a deal on settlements, is seeking not only a tougher line over Iran but normalisation of relations with Arab states, such as overflight rights for its airline El Al, establishment of trade offices and embassies, and an end to the ban on travellers with Israeli stamps in their passports. Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco have so far tentatively agreed. Saudi Arabia has refused, saying Israel has had enough concessions.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen has promised the regime in Tel Aviv more of Washington's unconditional support. Mullen said that the US would always stand by Israel while attending a farewell party for Tel Aviv's military attaché Major-General Benny Gantz, Ynet news reported. A number of other senior American officials, including the head of the Middle East desk at the US National Security Council Dan Shapiro, and Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy accompanied Mullen at the ceremony. Mullen said the attendance of top US military officials showed that Tel Aviv and Washington shared strong ties.

US envoys and lawmakers have bluntly warned Afghan President Hamid Karzai that American patience is running out, citing concerns about allegations of fraud and corruption and attempts to prejudge the outcome of last week's election, participants said on Thursday. Karzai met twice with US President Barack Obama's envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, after the Aug. 20 presidential election, including a private lunch in Kabul that turned "tense" when the US envoy raised the possibility of a run-off.....Endemic government corruption and his close ties with former militia leaders have eroded Karzai's support, both with the Afghan people and with Washington policymakers.....Holbrooke has said Washington would make the fight against corruption a central focus after the election, a move that could further stoke tensions with a Karzai administration. US officials fear allegations of fraud will undermine Afghan public support for whatever government emerges after the election. "There's been wholesale fraud to the benefit of Karzai in the past but there is no evidence that he was personally involved in fraud," a US State Department official said after the vote. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed most Americans believe the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting and only a quarter say more troops should be sent there.

Drug trafficking in the United States generates an annual income of 63 billion dollars, Mexico's Secretary of Public Safety says. Genaro Garcia Luna told a security forum in the border city of Ciudad Juarez -- the epicenter of Mexico's drug violence -- on Wednesday that a kilo of cocaine in Europe or the United States can sell for almost 50 times as much as it sells for in some Latin American countries. Mexico has deployed more than 36,000 troops countrywide to take on the country's powerful cartels as drug violence has spiraled, with almost 10,000 killed in suspected drug attacks since the start of last year. "Without a market, there would be no drug trafficking or violence," Garcia Luna said, admitting that there had been a rise in drug use in Mexico in recent years. Mexico last week quietly legalized possession of small quantities of drugs such as heroin, marijuana and cocaine, arguing that limited resources are better used in the fight against organized drug crime.

Italian antitrust investigators descended on Google's Milan offices on Thursday, bringing the latest flare-up in Europe over the US internet giant's increasing influence over traditional print-based media.

Italy's antitrust agency said it was concerned that Google News, which draws headlines and brief summaries of stories from online news sites unless their owners opt out, represented an abuse of the company's dominant position on the web. The case was prompted by a complaint from the Italian Federation of Newspaper Editors.

Fidel Castro is criticizing President Barack Obama's stepped-up U.S. war in Afghanistan while backing Obama's effort to provide health care coverage for all Americans. The former Cuban president said in an essay published Tuesday that he hasn't the slightest doubt that "the racist right" will do anything to stop Obama from succeeding domestically. Castro's remarks appeared on the Cubadebate Web site, which publishes his frequent essays on global affairs....."The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the war in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban is a mistake. The Soviet Union sank there," wrote Castro, who was a close ally of the Soviets at the time. "The United States' European allies are more and more unwilling to spilling the blood of their soldiers in that country."

Architectural plans for the Auschwitz death camp that were discovered in Berlin last year were given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for display at his country's official Holocaust memorial. The 29 sketches of the death camp that was built in Nazi-occupied Poland date back as far as 1941, and include detailed blueprints for living barracks, delousing facilities and crematoria, including gas chambers. The sketches are considered important to helping understand the genesis of the Nazi genocide. They are initialed by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess. They turned up in an apartment in Berlin in 2008; how they got there is not clear, but their authenticity has been verified by Germany's federal archive. ....The blueprints were purchased from the unidentified finder by Germany's Axel Springer Verlag, the publisher of top-selling Bild newspaper among others, and put on display in the company's Berlin headquarters. The publisher is now giving them to Yad Vashem for its permanent collection.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Israeli settlement building in Palestinian territories must stop before peace can be established in the Middle East. "Stopping the settlements, the building of further settlements, is I think of crucial importance. There needs to be progress there," said Merkel at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin Thursday. "This is why I welcome the talks with Mr. [George] Mitchell that took place yesterday. These talks will be continued, and I said that on behalf of the German government, we feel that time is running out now. It's getting urgent," she added. Israel has continuously violated the UN Security Council Resolution 446, which prohibits the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.

Tel Aviv is seeking USD 7.5 million from the Swedish Aftonbladet daily over an article that claims that Israeli troops kill Palestinians to steal their organs and sell them on the black market. According to a report published by International Middle East Media Center, the Israeli lawsuit against the paper was filed by a lawyer named Guy Ohpir, who filed the lawsuit in a Manhattan Court asking for $7.5 million as compensation. The lawyer says the paper's article is anti-Semitic, racist and blood-libel and that the article should be considered incitement against the Jews and Israeli soldiers. Ohpir allegedly filed the lawsuit in New York because the paper is distributed there and because Donald Bostrom who wrote Our sons plundered for their organs made a connection to the recent scandal of organ trade in which New York Rabbis, Jewish figures and officials were involved.

Southern Afghanistan's largest city, Kandahar, is slipping back under Taliban control as overstretched U.S. troops focus on clearing insurgents from the countryside -- a potentially alarming setback for President Barack Obama's war strategy. Afghan authorities promise a counteroffensive against the militants in Kandahar -- a pledge that appears aimed primarily at boosting public morale after a devastating bombing killed 43 people on Tuesday. Losing Kandahar, a city of nearly 1 million and the Taliban's former headquarters, would be a huge symbolic blow because it is effectively the capital of the ethnic Pashtun-dominated south, the main battlefield of the Afghan war. ....The U.S. is sending additional 21,000 U.S. troops this year to turn the tide against the Taliban, part of Obama's effort to shift the focus of the fight against terrorism away from Iraq and toward the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The American military effort so far, however, has focused primarily on the countryside. U.S. military officials have not explained their strategy publicly but it was believed they wanted to cut Taliban supply lines, interrupt poppy production and attack insurgent units in areas unlikely to produce significant civilian casualties. The Taliban have also set up Islamic courts in some rural communities.