Israeli President Resigns, Avoids Rape Charges and Jail Time

AP - Israeli president resigns but avoids jail time

President Moshe Katsav signed a plea bargain Thursday that will force him to resign but included no rape charges and entailed no jail time, Attorney General Meni Mazuz said.

Under the deal, Katsav — who had insisted he was innocent of wrongdoing and the victim of a slur campaign — will plead guilty to sexual harassment, indecent acts and harassing a witness, Mazuz said.

Katsav will pay damages to complainants, but receive a suspended sentence, he added. He did not say when Katsav would step aside, and the president’s office had no details.

Here is an old post from January: Israeli President Urged To Resign

CIA Crimes Revealed

My first post about this can be seen here.

The documents have now been released.

The National Security Archive - The CIA's Family Jewels

June 26, 2007, 1 p.m. - The full "family jewels" report, released today by the Central Intelligence Agency and detailing 25 years of Agency misdeeds, is now available on the Archive's Web site. The 702-page collection was delivered by CIA officers to the Archive at approximately 11:30 this morning -- 15 years after the Archive filed a Freedom of Information request for the documents.

Top Ten Most Interesting "Family Jewels"
Released by the CIA to the National Security Archive, June 26, 2007

1) Journalist surveillance - operation CELOTEX I-II (pp. 26-30)

2) Covert mail opening, codenamed SRPOINTER / HTLINGUAL at JFK airport (pp. 28, 644-45)

3) Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt requests a lock picker (p. 107)

4) CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett "thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program" (Sidney Gottlieb's drug experiments) (p. 213)

5) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) reflecting Agency employee resentment against participation (p. 326)

6) Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba (p. 464)

7) Report of detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko (p. 522)

8) Document describing John Lennon funding anti-war activists (p. 552)

9) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) (pp. 591-93)

10) CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. (pp. 599-603)

Plus a bonus "Jewel":
Warrantless wiretapping by CIA's Division D (pp. 533-539)

The full document can be downloaded on that website or by clicking here. (A program that opens .pdf files is required to view the document. I recommend using Foxit Reader.)

Brown is New Prime Minister

BBC - Brown is UK's new prime minister

Gordon Brown has become the UK's prime minister, succeeding Tony Blair.

Posing outside 10 Downing Street with his wife Sarah, the man who has been Mr Blair's chancellor since 1997 said: "Let the work of change begin."

He said his priorities were education, health and restoring trust in politics and promised to "try my utmost".

Conservative leader David Cameron congratulated Mr Brown on becoming prime minister, but demanded he hold an immediate general election.

He said: "Gordon Brown doesn't have the mandate, he wasn't elected as prime minister, and he should go to the country."

Here are my previous posts about Gordon Brown.

CIA Crimes to be Revealed

The Washington Post - CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

Blair as EU President?

Financial Times - Push for Blair as new EU president

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, could end up swapping Downing Street for a job as the first full-time European Union president, under a plan being actively touted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

Mr Sarkozy is understood to have discussed the idea with other EU leaders ahead of next week’s European summit, Mr Blair’s last major international event as prime minister.

Mr Blair’s aides admit that Mr Sarkozy and other EU leaders have suggested the idea, but Downing Street insisted that Mr Blair was standing down from frontline politics on June 27. He has denied interest in the job.

An FT/Harris opinion poll, out on Monday, suggests Mr Blair remains a divisive figure, with 64 per cent of Germans, 60 per cent of Britons and 53 per cent of French respondents saying he would not be good for the job.

U.S. Arming Sunni Militia

The Guardian - US arms Sunni dissidents in risky bid to contain al-Qaida fighters in Iraq

The US military has embarked on a new and risky strategy in Iraq by arming Sunni insurgents in the hope that they will tackle the extremist al-Qaida in Iraq.

The US high command this month gave permission to its officers on the ground to negotiate arms deals with local leaders. Arms, ammunition, body armour and other equipment, as well as cash, pick-up trucks and fuel, have already been handed over in return for promises to turn on al-Qaida and not attack US troops.

The US military in Baghdad is trying to portray the move as arming disenchanted Sunnis who are rising up in their neighbourhoods against their former allies, al-Qaida and its foreign fighters. But the reality on the ground is more complex, with little sign that the US will be able to control the weapons once they are handed over. The danger is that the insurgents could use these weapons against American troops or in the civil conflict against Shia Muslims. Similar efforts by the US in other wars have backfired, the most spectacular being the arming of guerrillas against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

The Washington Post - For U.S. Unit in Baghdad, An Alliance of Last Resort

The week that followed revolutionized Kuehl's approach to fighting the insurgency and serves as a vivid example of a risky, and expanding, new American strategy of looking beyond the Iraqi police and army for help in controlling violent neighborhoods. The American soldiers in Amiriyah have allied themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen who call themselves the Baghdad Patriots -- a group that American soldiers believe includes insurgents who have attacked them in the past -- in an attempt to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Americans have granted these gunmen the power of arrest, allowed the Iraqi army to supply them with ammunition, and fought alongside them in chaotic street battles.

BAE Faces U.S. Criminal Inquiry

My previous posts on BAE:

Probe says Saudi Prince Received Secret Payments

Blair Dismisses New Investigation of Bribery Claims

New article: The Guardian - BAE faces criminal inquiry in US over £1bn payments

The US department of justice is preparing to open a corruption investigation into the arms company BAE, the Guardian has learned. It would cover the alleged £1bn arms deal payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.

Washington sources familiar with the thinking of senior officials at the justice department said yesterday it was "99% certain" that a criminal inquiry would be opened under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for BAE, which is trying to take over US arms companies and make the Pentagon its biggest customer.

Sudan Accepts UN/AU Force for Darfur

Reuters - Sudan accepts hybrid force for Darfur

Sudan on Tuesday agreed to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police to be deployed in its troubled Darfur region after months of intense diplomacy.

AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said Khartoum agreed to a hybrid, compromise force of between 17,000 and 19,000 troops and an additional 3,700 police.

Blair Dismisses New Investigation of Bribery Claims

Telegraph - Blair: No new BAE probe despite bribe claims

Tony Blair has dismissed calls to reopen an investigation into a 1980s arms deal as new allegations surfaced that £1 billion in secret "sweetener" payments were made to a Saudi Prince.

Here is a post from yesterday about what’s happening.

Secret CIA Prisons in Europe

The Guardian - CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude today.

Despite denials by their governments, senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America's most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture. Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council's report, seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons' operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.

Probe says Saudi Prince Received Secret Payments

BBC - Saudi prince 'received arms cash'

A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.

The UK's biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar "categorically" denied receiving any improper payments and BAE said it acted lawfully at all times.

According to Panorama's sources, the payments were written into the arms deal contract in secret annexes, described as "support services".

They were authorised on a quarterly basis by the MoD.

It remains unclear whether the payments were actually illegal - a point which depends in part on whether they continued after 2001, when the UK made bribery of foreign officials an offence.

The payments were discovered during a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation.

The SFO inquiry into the Al Yamamah deal was stopped in December 2006 by attorney general Lord Goldsmith.

Here is a post which has an article about the stopped SFO investigation.

Fluoride Rejected in Rotherham

Yorkshire Post - Tapwater fluoride call rejected

ROTHERHAM Council has decided against putting fluoride in the borough's water supply to improve the condition of children's teeth, claiming there is insufficient evidence that it works.

The idea was strongly recommended by Rotherham Primary Care Trust, which said adding fluoride to tap- water can improve dental health and reduce decay.

But a review by the borough council concluded there was not enough evidence to back up the suggestion and said too much fluoride could have serious health implications.

Here is my previous post on fluoride. It also contains links to posts about fluoride from my older blog.

Did 1.5 Million Get Evicted Over Olympic Games in China?

AP - Group: China Olympics Evict 1.5 Million

Some 1.5 million Chinese have been forced from their homes during preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a rights group said Tuesday.

China rejected the figures from the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions as "groundless'' and said some 6,000 families had been compensated and properly resettled.

Failed Censorship

Reuters - Young clerk let Tiananmen ad slip past censors: paper

A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday.

The tiny ad in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News on Monday night, read: "Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims".

An investigation was launched by Chinese authorities to find out how the advertisement slipped its way past censors.

Public discussion of the massacre is still taboo in Beijing and the government has rejected calls to overturn the verdict that the student-led demonstrations were "counter-revolutionary", or subversive. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when the army crushed the pro-democracy protests on June 4, 1989.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said a young woman on the Chengdu Evening News classified section had allowed the ad to be published because she'd never heard of the June 4 crackdown.

A man gave the advertisement to the clerk, who had recently graduated and worked for an advertising company responsible for receiving content for the ads section, the Post reported.

"She called the man back two days later to check what June 4 meant and the man said it was (a date on which) a mining disaster took place," the Post quoted a source at the paper as saying.

"This highlights (the fact) that the government needs to face up to history," the paper quoted the source as saying.

References to the massacre are barred in state media, the Internet and printed works, meaning many of China's younger generation are ignorant of the events.

Censorship on the Internet

BBC - Censorship 'changes face of net'

Amnesty International has warned that the internet "could change beyond all recognition" unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms.

The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights.

The "virus of internet repression" has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group.

Amnesty accused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of being complicit in the problem.

Lewis Libby Sentenced

Reuters - Ex-Cheney aide sentenced to 30 months in leak case

A former top aide to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was sentenced on Tuesday to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying and obstructing an investigation related to the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton imposed the stiff sentence on Lewis "Scooter" Libby for lying to investigators trying to determine who leaked the identity of CIA analyst Valerie Plame in 2003.

Walton also imposed a fine of $250,000 and two years probation.

A spokeswoman for President George W. Bush, who could pardon Libby, said Bush had no plans to intervene in the case while the appeals process continues.

A hearing was set for next week on whether Libby can remain out of prison as he appeals.

That process could last until nearly the end of Bush's second and final term in office, when he would presumably be more free to pardon his vice president's one-time top assistant.

"I find it very plausible that we're going to see a pardon right in that window after the election and before the president leaves office" in January 2009, said Scott Fredricksen, a former government lawyer.

Reuters - White House: Bush won't intervene now in Libby case

President George W. Bush does not plan to intervene in the case of a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney while the appeals process is still under way, his spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

My previous post on Lewis Libby can be seen here.

Russian Missiles May Target Europe

AP - Putin: Missiles may target Europe (Internet Archive link)

Moscow could aim nuclear weapons at targets in Europe as part of "retaliatory steps" if Washington proceeds with building a missile defense system on the continent, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

Speaking to foreign reporters days before he travels to Germany for the annual summit with President Bush and the other Group of Eight leaders, Putin assailed the White House plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland. Washington says the system is needed to counter a potential threat from Iran.

In an interview released Monday, Putin suggested that Russia may respond to the threat by aiming its nuclear weapons at Europe.

My previous posts on this missile shield situation can be seen here:

What's Going On With Russia?

Russian Missiles Can Be Fired At Europe

Russia Capable Of Hitting U.S. Missile Shield

Stocks in China Drop

Reuters - China shares tumble as panic spreads

China stocks tumbled 8.3 percent on Monday in their second biggest drop this decade, erasing $340 billion in market value and extending big losses from last week after the government hiked the share trading tax to cool a feverish bull run.

Personal Data Hidden in iTunes Tracks

Times Online - Personal data found hidden in iTunes tracks

Fresh privacy fears have been sparked after it emerged that Apple has embedded personal information into music files bought from its iTunes online music store.

Technology websites examining iTunes products discovered that personal data, including the name and e-mail addresses of purchasers, are embedded into the AAC files that Apple uses to distribute music tracks.

The information is also included in tracks sold under Apple’s iTunes Plus system, launched this week, where users pay a premium for music that is free from the controversial digital rights (DRM) software that is designed to safeguard against piracy.

U.S. Attacks Somali Village

BBC - US attacks Somali 'militant base'

A US Navy warship has carried out a missile attack on a Somali village where Islamist militants are reported to have set up a base.

U.S. Presence in Iraq like in South Korea

Reuters - Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S.Korea

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

Magnetic Fields and Cancer

Reuters - Magnetic fields tied to railway workers' cancer

Railway workers exposed to low-frequency magnetic fields may have an elevated risk of certain blood cancers, new study findings suggest.

In a study of more than 20,000 Swiss railway workers who were followed for 30 years, researchers found that certain workers' risk of myeloid leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma climbed in tandem with their exposure to very low-frequency magnetic fields.

Talking Cameras

BBC - 'Talking' CCTV cameras for city

CCTV cameras that tell people off for committing anti-social behaviour have gone live in Greater Manchester.

The "talking" cameras in Salford come complete with speakers to bark orders at litter louts or vandals.

The speakers have been rigged to 11 CCTV cameras along Liverpool Road, and officers in the control room can flick a switch and speak to offenders.

My previous post on talking cameras can be seen here: Camera Capabilities

My other posts on cameras can be seen here:

NY Security Cameras

Cameras In Toronto

X-ray Cameras

Cameras Going Up In Toronto