Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

US: Katrina

• The second guilty plea in the Danziger Bridge case today revealed additional details about the conduct of New Orleans police after Hurricane Katrina and suggested more prosecutions of higher-ranking officers are yet to come.
  Former police detective Jeffrey Lehrmann pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony in connection to a Sept. 4, 2005 incident in which officers shot six civilians on or near the bridge. Two people were killed.
  According to a document filed by federal prosecutors, Lehrmann helped cover up police misconduct by concocting evidence portraying the citizens who were shot as gun-wielding criminals.
  Lehrmann also participated in a scheme to plant a gun at the scene, the document says, and even helped create a fictional witness whose “statements” were included in a 54-page police report on the shootings. (The New Orleans Times-Picayune first raised questions about the existence of bogus witnesses to the bridge incident in 2007.)

US: Texas

• For the next ten years, millions of students in Texas and across the country will read history textbooks suggesting that the actions of witch-hunt instigator Joseph McCarthy were justified. They will read about religious icon John Calvin instead of Thomas Jefferson. They will read a description of the US government that includes the words “constitutional republic” but the word “democratic.”
  These are just a few of the changes an ultra right-wing Texas Education Board has tentatively approved for the state’s history curriculum. There is one more stage for approval, but the board voted yes to the changes in a 10-5 vote. That’s 10 Republicans voting yes and 5 Democrats voting no, making the chances for reevaluation almost negligible.
  Once fully approved, it will be a decade before the board reviews the curriculum again.

Mexico

• CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen in the drug war-plagued Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local U.S. consulate, an attack U.S. President Barack Obama said “outraged” him.
  An American woman working at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, and her U.S. husband were fatally shot by suspected drug gang hitmen in broad daylight on Saturday as they left a consulate social event, U.S. and Mexican officials told Reuters.
  A Mexican man married to another consulate employee was killed around the same time in another part of the city after he and his wife left the same event, a U.S. official said.
  The U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said it was not clear if the victims had been specifically targeted, and the motive for the attacks was unknown.

Russia

• The Russian and U.S. presidents discussed on Saturday the negotiations on a new strategic arms reductions treaty and said it was possible to talk about a date for the deal to be signed, the Kremlin said.

Iran

• Iran said Saturday it has dismantled several U.S.-backed opposition networks that were gathering information on nuclear scientists and finding ways to circumvent controls on the Internet meant to deprive the opposition of its most crucial tool.
  A judiciary statement carried on the official IRNA news agency said the networks were set up by Iranian opposition groups, including the People’s Mujahedeen, and that 30 of their members were arrested.
  “A number of organized American cyber war networks were dismantled and 30 influential suspects were arrested … in a series of complicated security operations in the information technology and communications field,” IRNA quoted the statement as saying.

Israel

• Madrid has warned that, if continued at the current rate, the Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian lands would bring about the annexation of the entire occupied territories.
  Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos cautioned that the advancement would claim the entire Palestinian territories in the West Bank, should the current rate of acquisition survive for another two years, AFP reported on Saturday.
  “Until now, it’s not too late, but if we wait for more than two years it will be too late,” he said.
  The comments came after the Israel interior ministry approved the construction of 1,600 housing units for Jewish settlers in Jerusalem (al-Quds).

• Israel has extended a lockdown on the occupied West Bank and restricted access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem as tensions continue over its plans to build new homes for Jewish settlers in mainly Arab east Jerusalem.
  The lockdown, which was due to end on Saturday night, was extended until Tuesday at midnight, because of a continued risk of attacks, an army spokesman said.

Venezuela

• Venezuela on Saturday tested six training and light attack jets bought from China for defense and anti-drugs flights in a deal that dodges an embargo banning sales of U.S. weapons parts to oil exporter Venezuela.
  President Hugo Chavez ordered a total of 18 K-8 jets built by China after a plan to buy similar jets from Brazil’s Embraer fell through, apparently because they include U.S. electrical systems.