Pfizer, the world's biggest drug maker, has agreed to pay a record $2.3bn fine for unlawfully promoting prescription drugs in the United States. The US government said on Wednesday the sum included a payment of $1.2bn - the largest criminal fine in US history. Officials said the company had agreed to pay $2.3bn to settle claims it improperly marketed 13 medicines. Pfizer promoted drugs as treatments for medical conditions that were different than those that had been approved by federal regulators, officials said, and also invited doctors to consultant meetings at resorts, paying their expenses and providing perks. "Pfizer's corrupt practices went so far as sending physicians on exotic junkets as well as wining and dining health care professionals to persuade them to prescribe the company's drugs for patients in taxpayer-funded programmes," said Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general.....Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it was the fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade.

Divisions are growing among Group of 20 nations on how to recover from the global economic crisis, as finance ministers meet in London, Britain's capital.While several European countries want a global agreement to curb bankers' bonuses, which many have blamed for the crisis, the initiative has not received strong support from the US or the UK. The finance ministers of Sweden, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands called on Friday for bonuses guaranteed for more than a year to be banned......But both the UK and the US have rejected calls to impose a worldwide uniform cap on bonuses, a move pushed by France... Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, has played down the talks to be held on Friday and Saturday as a "stock-taking meeting, not a new-initiatives meeting" on the road to the leaders' summit in Pittsburgh in the US later this month. But Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, said that she and other members of the group would be pressing the US to join the European-led move on bonuses.....The meeting in London follows April's G20 summit in the same city, where leaders promised to pass "tough new principles on pay and compensation".

The administration of US President Barack Obama has stopped all non-humanitarian aid to Honduras, after the country's de facto government refused to accept the reinstatement of the ousted president. The US state department announced the move on Thursday, as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, held private talks in Washington with Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran leader....The state department is also set to revoke the US visas of an unspecified number of Honduran officials who are backing Micheletti, U.S. State Departments spokesman Ian Kelly's statement said.

Israeli warplanes have launched an attack on the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian and Israeli officials say. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the early Friday airstrike, saying that the Israeli fighter jets targeted a tunnel used by the Palestinians to import food and supply, AFP reported. Palestinian security officials said that no one was injured in the overnight attack. Israel charges that Palestinians use the Gaza Strip tunnels to 'smuggle' weapons for cross border attacks. However, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip say that they use the tunnels -- also known as Gaza feeding tubes -- to import food, medication and other vital supplies into the besieged enclave. The 1.5-million population of the Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli imposed strict siege for more than two years. In order to increase pressure on the blockaded residents of Gaza, Tel Aviv frequently targets means by which the Palestinians obtain their rudimentary necessities. On Thursday, Israeli tanks and bulldozers invaded the eastern border areas of the strip, destroying cultivated agricultural Palestinian land. On the same day, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats off the sliver.

On August 17, Sweden's most widely circulated newspaper, Aftonbaldet, carried an article by Swedish photojournalist Donald Boström entitled "Our sons plundered for their organs." The usual suspects immediately cried "anti-Semitism," claiming that the old blood libel accusation has been brought to life again. The Israelis have even threatened to sue him. .... Boström was witness to how 19-year-old Bilal was shot dead, his body abducted and five days later returned. The young man had been cut open - stitches were running from his abdomen up to his chin. ....Ostensibly, Israel is using the article to get a message across: Sweden is an anti-Semitic country....All of a sudden everyone is discussing good old anti-Semitism instead of Israel's state terrorism and its apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people. An online petition is now circulating in Israel, calling for a boycott of IKEA. 10,000 Israelis have signed it so far. Needless to say, IKEA has nothing to do with this. But what can possibly be more Swedish then IKEA? In the short term, Israel might be able to divert attention from the more serious issues. In the long term, Israel is only making enemies. There was a time when the entire Western World supported Israel. Those days are long gone.

A key aide to Bob Ainsworth, the United Kingdom defence secretary, has resigned and criticised the UK's mission in Afghanistan. Eric Joyce, the now former parliamentary private secretary to Ainsworth, vacated his post on Thursday and said that there were "problems" with the handling of the war that needed "fixing with the greatest urgency". "I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets," he said in a resignation letter. "I think we must be much more direct about the reality that we do punch a long way above our weight, that many of our allies do far too little, and that leaving the field to the United States would mean the end of Nato as a meaningful proposition," the former army major and legislator said. He added that it was believed that within Nato, "Britain fights; Germany pays, France calculates; Italy avoids".

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has said that UK forces will not leave Afghanistan until Kabul can take care of its own security. ....Chrispian Cuss, former British military spokesman in Iraq, told Al Jazeera that Brown......Anthony Howard, a political commentator, said: "I think that people just don't accept that a safer Afghanistan makes a safer Britain. That may have washed at the very beginning, but now the body bags are coming back ... people are saying that it just isn't working. "They see that maybe that we're engaged in an act of provocation in Afghanistan. Far from making terrorism less likely, it might make it more likely, because they are enraged by what is happening in Afghanistan." Brown's comments came a day after an aide to the defence minister resigned, citing problems with the handling of the war in Afghanistan. British troop numbers in Afghanistan are currently at their highest level - 9,150 - since the military entered the country in 2001 with the US to remove the Taliban from power.

The British government must investigate claims its agents were complicit in the torture of "terrorism" suspects overseas, a parliamentary committee has said. The MPs said that government had not sufficiently addressed its alleged involvement in the torture and called for an independent inquiry. Binyam Mohamed was tortured. In prison he was beaten, he was scalded and his penis was slashed with a scalpel. A British resident, he was arrested as he tried to fly back to the UK from Karachi in Pakistan in 2002. ....Ahmed Ghappour works for Reprieve, a UK-based charity that campaigns for prisoners it believes are held wrongfully or illegally around the world. He believes the British government is involved in a cover-up which will eventually be found out. "No-one wants to admit a wrongdoing especially when the wrongdoing is so big it is in breech of UK law and international law," Ghappour says. "Eventually everything will come out." The British government says there's simply no need for a full inquiry into the allegations of complicity in torture. Such a flat refusal is unlikely to be accepted by those who believe it has something to hide.