A new hunger strike is underway at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with more than a dozen detainees subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment, The Boston Globe reported Monday.

According to the online edition of the newspaper, lawyers for the hunger-strikers were quoted as saying that their clients' actions are driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum-security complex at Guantanamo to which about 160 prisoners have been moved since December 2006.

The 13 detainees now on hunger strike is the highest number to endure the force-feeding regime on an extended basis since early 2006, when the U.S. military broke a long-running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners into "restraint chairs" while they are fed by plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils.

Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle between detainees and guards at Guantanamo has continued even as the military has tightened its control.

"We don't have any rights here, even after your Supreme Court said we had rights," one hunger-striker, Majid al-Joudi, told a military physician, according to medical records released recently under a federal court order.

"If the policy does not change, you will see a big increase in fasting," he said.

Guantanamo spokesman Robert Durand played down the significance of the current hunger strike, describing the prisoners' complaints as "propaganda."

The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo in January 2002 to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

More than 390 detainees have been transferred abroad from Guantanamo, and currently about 385 prisoners are still being held there.

Some of the key reasons that E-Commerce raises tax issues are as follows:

1. Location. Existing tax systems tend to determine tax consequences based on where the taxpayer is physically located. Hence, existing laws relating to Direct and Indirect taxes have developed definitions of what constitutes the location of suppliers and consumers of goods and services. There are small differences between the definitions for the two types of taxes. Generally the location is determined by reference to whether there exists a "permanent" or "fixed" place of business or, where there is no business, the usual residence. The presence of a network server might constitute a place of business, but probably only where it is part of a range of human and technical resources used to deliver a complete business transaction i.e. it is used to advertise, take orders, process payments and make deliveries.

2. Types of Products. E-commerce allows for some types of products, such as newspapers and music CDs, to be delivered in digitized form, rather than in tangible form. The digitized products raise issues at the state level as to whether sales tax applies and in which state income is generated for state income tax purposes. It also raise federal issues regarding the type of revenue generated and how it is to be reported. See Overview to Federal Domestic Tax Considerations for an Internet Company, by Professor Annette Nellen, San Jose State University.

3. Latest Marketing Techniques. The Internet has introduced new ways of selling and buying goods and services. For instance, anyone no matter where they located can offer their unwanted items to a worldwide group of potential buyers via auction sites, such as E-Bay. Also, the Internet can be used to link business buyers and sellers through exchange web sites where sellers post what they have to sell and buyers post what they need to buy. Almost, all of these sites can operate without human intervention . Additionally, the Internet has increased the use of bartering, with respect to exchange of web banners that serve as advertisements. These new marketing techniques raise various tax issues at all levels. At the federal domestic level, issues include whether an exchange intermediary or broker should be accounting for inventory, and what amount of information reporting should be required for low-value bartering transactions? See Overview to Federal Domestic Tax Considerations for an Internet Company, by Professor Annette Nellen, San José State University.

4. Types of Transactions. Because, the Internet allows paperless transactions and use of electronic cash, thus it raises administrative concerns for the Internal Revenue Service as to whether transactions were properly reported, whether an audit trail exists, and whether new reporting rules are needed. The U.S. Treasury is aware of the looming tax compliance problems. In its 1996 report, the U.S. Treasury expressed its fears of this as follows:

"The major compliance issue posed by electronic commerce is the extent to which electronic money is analogous to cash and thus creates the potential for anonymous and untraceable transactions."

These anonymous transactions, and the use of anonymous money, create a huge problem for tax compliance. The U.S. Treasury rightly sees this as one of the most important issues in the taxation of e-commerce. Another significant category of issues involves identifying parties to communications and transactions utilizing thesenew technologies and verifying records when transactions are conducted electronically. In a speech entitled, "Tax Administration in a Global Era," Treasury Secretary Summers stated:

"The Internet provides new ways for tax administrations, such as the IRS, to improve the ease and transparency of tax collection. But new technology also raises certain problems. In a world where cyber-transactions are growing at a rapid pace, tax administrations face the challenge of adapting existing tax systems to an economy that increasingly ignores physical borders. In such a world, it will be easier for companies to avoid tax collectors by operating worldwide through web-sites based in jurisdictions that are unwilling to share taxpayer information."

He will also make calls to "resolve without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now," according to White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

On the immigration issue Bush is facing a new congressional leadership that is friendlier to his views but is also facing the same dynamics that scuttled his last attempt: a cooperative Senate but bipartisan opposition in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has told the White House she cannot pass a bill with Democratic votes alone, nor will she seek to enforce party discipline on the issue.

Bush will have to produce at least 70 Republican votes before Pelosi considers a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation, a task that might be difficult for a president with low approval ratings.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's conservatives, particularly freshmen who seized their seats from Republicans, had to weather a barrage of attacks on the issue before their victories in November last year, and are not eager to relive the experience.

A recently leaked White House presentation devised after weeks of closed meetings with Republican senators suggests some hardening of Bush's positions.

The new proposals will suggest that illegal alien workers apply for three-year work visas, renewable indefinitely at a cost of 3,500 U.S. dollars each time.

In order to obtain a green card that would make them legal permanent residents, they would have to return to their home countries, apply for re-entry at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and pay a fine of 10,000 dollars.

More green cards would be made available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens.

Temporary workers would not be able to bring their families into the country.

Key Democrats have said the plan would unacceptably split families while creating a permanent underclass of temporary workers with no prospects of fully participating in U.S. society.

El Salvadorian President Elias Antonio Saca on Sunday hailed the U.S.- Brazil plan to set up an ethanol plant in El Salvador, despite criticism of the scheme in the region.

The plan was a piece of "excellent news" for El Salvador's national development and economy, the president said on his Sundayradio program in San Salvador.

The plan would consolidate El Salvador's regional status as "the best prepared one to develop biofuels and renewable energy," he said.

U.S. President George W. Bush and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last week announced the joint biofuel plan which will bring Haiti, the Dominican Republic, St. Kitts and Nevis and El Salvador into the biofuel cooperation program.

Under the plan, a plant will be established in El Salvador to produce biofuels from sugarcane.

On Wednesday, Saca said the government was working on a law to regulate the sugarcane harvesting for ethanol production and use.

Although the U.S.-Brazil plan will drastically increase the production of clean fuel, it has drawn harsh criticism from some South American countries as well as environmentalists.

Some critics said that Washington aims to use the plan against the influence of oil-rich Venezuela in the region, while others fear that enlarging plantations of sugarcane, a main ingredient for ethanol, would aggravate the shortage of food staples in the Caribbean countries.

Iran on Monday celebrated the one-year anniversary of the country‘s first success in enriching uranium, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepared to announce new progress in the key process that the United Nations has demanded Iran halt.

The U.N. has imposed limited sanctions on Iran until it suspends enrichment a key process that can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the basis of a warhead. The United States and its allies accuse Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons, a claim the country denies.

Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, who is also deputy interior minister for security affairs, was quoted on the state TV Web site as saying that his six-day journey to Moscow, which ended Monday, showed "the ineffectiveness of the resolution."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov confirmed that Zolqadr visited Russia. He told The Associated Press that the resolution does not prohibit visits by the listed individuals, instead calling for heightened vigilance and attention, and that "this vigilance is directed first of all at people who are directly related to nuclear programs," suggesting that Zolqadr was not.

Tensions are also high between Iran and the West following the 13-day detention of 15 British sailors by Iran. The sailors, who were seized by Revolutionary Guards off the Iraqi coast, were released on Wednesday, but since then have said they were put under psychological pressure by their captors to force them to "confess" to being in Iranian waters when captured, angering many in Britain.

Diplomats from developing nations were attending Monday‘s celebrations at Natanz, but diplomats from European Union boycotted to protest Iran‘s refusal of the U.N. demands, said the Foreign Ministry in Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency.

Cline tried to sue Ashland Inc., Chevron Phillips Chemical, and ExxonMobil Corp., which produced the benzene he believed caused his disease. The judge presiding over the case ruled in favor of the defendants, stating that Cline waited too long to sue.

The judge’s ruling was based on a 1979 precedent that held that the two-year statute of limitations begins on the date of the last incidence of chemical exposure.

In Alabama, another precedent allows lawsuits only by persons who can show “manifest harm” or demonstrable injury. But because Cline’s illness was not diagnosed until 1999—four years after his last exposure—there was no allowable time period during which he could have sued, according to both precedents.

Cline’s lawyer, Leslie Brueckner, is arguing that the state ruling violated the 14th amendment, denying Cline due process of law.

If the U.S. Supreme Court accepts the case, oral arguments should begin sometime in the fall or winter.