As a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained hundreds of pages of documents from the Department of Homeland Security about the plan to deploy full body scanners in US airports. A letter to EPIC reveals that the government agency possesses about 2,000 body scanner photos from devices that the DHS said earlier "could not store or record images." EPIC has also obtained the most recent device procurement specifications, and several hundred new pages of traveler complaints. For more information, see EPIC: Whole Body Imaging and EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security.

Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see. Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks. For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

Germany may take legal action against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was suing the company on fraud charges, government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said. The German financial regulator, Bafin, “will ask the SEC for information,” Wilhelm, main spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said today by phone. “Then we will look at the records and consider possible legal steps.” AWIP: Bishop Williamson on trial in Germany for Holocaust denial.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Michigan) has called for the FBI to fire agency officials who violated privacy laws and wrongfully obtained the telephone records of individuals by citing terrorism threats that didn't exist. "Today's hearing showed that the FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the General Counsel's Office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences," said Conyers.

A US watchdog has charged top Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs with financial fraud and raised the prospect of a wider crackdown. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in a civil suit, accused Goldman of "defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts" about a product based on sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. The securities were a key contributor to the financial crisis that peaked in 2008 because many contained risky mortgages.

Hundreds of victims of an earthquake that struck western China were cremated yesterday as necessity forced Tibetans to break with burial traditions. About 1000 monks chanted prayers as the bodies were set on fire on a mountain beside Jiegu, the hardest-hit area by Wednesday's earthquake. While the cremation took place, rescue workers searched through rubble for any remaining survivors. Officials said the death toll had climbed to 1144. The quakes struck an ethnic area where Tibetans traditionally perform sky burials, which involve chopping a body into pieces and leaving it on a platform to be devoured by vultures. But Genqiu, who like many Tibetans goes by one name, said the numbers made that impossible. "The vultures can't eat them all," he said at Jiegu monastery, where the bodies were prepared for the cremation by being carefully wrapped in colourful blankets and piled three or four deep on a platform. Monks were not able to give an exact number of bodies burned.

The American media says little or nothing about the genocide in South Africa because it's black against white, so it's politically incorrect to notice. The genocide of white South Africans is heating up. Last week, South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) finally told its members to stop singing the song "Kill the Boer" -- that is, murder white South Africans. ("Boer" is Afrikaans for "farmer," but colloquially, it is a disparaging term for any white South African.) This came after ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema defied a court ruling and kept singing the song (he still refuses to stop), and after Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the noxious and hateful neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), was found savagely bludgeoned to death at his farm in South Africa's North West province.

A Russian commercial airplane attempted to travel from Moscow to Rome by flying under the ash cloud from Iceland's volcano, the Aviation Herald reported. The flight, operated by the Russia's Ural Airlines, had to descend more than 9,000 feet while it flew over Krakow, Poland. Later, the crew reported that the plane was low on fuel and was forced to land in Vienna. The Vienna Schwechat Airport, which remained open despite the closure of the airspace, was investigating the plane's engines for ash contamination. The Aviation Herald report did not say how many passengers were on the flight. At least 26 countries in Europe closed parts of their airspace, leaving would-be travelers stranded across the globe as scientists warned that volcanic ash from Iceland could continue drifting across northern Europe for days to come.

Thick of volcanic ash blanketed parts of rural Iceland as a vast, invisible plume of grit drifted over Europe, emptying the skies of planes and sending hundreds of thousands in search of hotel rooms, train tickets or rental cars. Polish officials worried the ash cloud could threaten the arrival of world leaders for today's state funeral in Krakow for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria. New Zealand Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand abandoned attempts to attend the funeral after trying to get there via Los Angeles and New York.

Tens of thousands of mourners massed in a historic Warsaw square on Saturday for a public memorial service for president Lech Kaczynski and the 95 others killed in an air crash a week ago. The sombre ceremony came as a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland further disrupted air travel and threatened to keep world leaders, including US president Barack Obama, from Kaczynski's state funeral in Krakow on Sunday.