Law enforcement officials are investigating reports of suspicious packages on cargo planes in Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., as well as an overnight stop of a plane in London with suspicious cargo onboard, bound for Chicago. According to a CNN broadcast report, the action was taken after an IED disguised as a toner cartridge was found on a cargo plane from Yemen to Chicago. Law enforcement sources, though, were offering differing reports on whether the package had explosive materials. That flight was stopped in London at the time. Law enforcement sources told CNN they were acting on a tip in the last 24 hours from an unnamed "ally" that cargo coming from Yemen headed for "synagogues" in Chicago.

Take all your money out of Bank of America.

Chinese PM Wen Jiabao has told his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, that there is "enough space" in the world for both countries to develop. His comments came during a meeting on the sidelines of a regional meeting in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. Mr Wen said he would visit India this year.

China is India's largest trading partner; two-way trade volumes surpassed $50bn (£31bn) in 2008. The two nations fought a brief border war in 1962, but ties have improved. Tensions remain, however, between the rising regional powers over their shared 3,500-km (2,170-mile) border, decades on from the conflict, which China won.

The toll climbed to 408 dead and 303 missing four days after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck off Indonesia's coast, triggering a tsunami, officials said Friday. The National Disaster Coordinating Agency said 270 people were seriously injured and 142 had minor injuries. More than 22,000 people have been displaced or affected by the tsunami, which swept up villagers and their homes without warning, the agency said. The government is considering relocating some residents in the earthquake-prone islands near Sumatra, the state-run Antara news agency said.

The quake struck at 9:42 p.m. Monday, triggering a tsunami warning. Its epicenter was 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Padang, at a depth of 20.6 kilometers (12.8 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The magnitude was revised from a preliminary 7.5. The remoteness of many Indonesian islands left residents without warning, and continued to limit communications and stymie rescue and recovery efforts.

More than 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip lack access to basic humanitarian supplies such as shortage of water resources.

Many Palestinians are forced to purchase bottled water for their daily needs, as water coming from their taps has run dry, a Press TV correspondent reported on Thursday.

The Gaza aquifer is the only source of water for residents of Gaza. Reports show that 90 percent of its water is not suitable for human consumption due to high levels of nitrate and salinity.

In an interview with Press TV, public health coordinator Tracey Wise said, "Because of such limited amounts of water in Gaza that's acceptable for human consumption, mostly this is the shallow, coastal aquifer, and this aquifer is being over-pumped, so much water is being taken out to supply the needs of Gazans, that you have much more intrusion of sea water." "And then also you have upwelling of this very, very old water that has high salinity and high concentrations of other pollutants," she added.

Meanwhile, Israel has installed huge pumping stations all along the shared border, diverting water before it reaches the aquifer of Gaza. During the Gaza war, bombs completely destroyed three water wells and much of the water system infrastructure in Gaza.

Jason Godesky: Israel’s Water Wars
Stephen Lendman: Israel Threatens War with Lebanon.
Mitchell Prothero & Peter Beaumont: Israel Will Go to War over Water
Christian Science Monitor A Lebanese-Israeli water conflict threatens to boil over [October 21, 2002]

Ehab Zahriyeh, Press TV, New York

Just 504 people out of 101,248 searches under counter-terror powers last year were held for any offence, Home Office reveals. More than 100,000 people were stopped and searched by police under counter-terrorism powers last year but none of them were arrested for terrorism-related offences, according to Home Office figures published today. The statistics show that 504 people out of the 101,248 searches were arrested for any offence – an arrest rate of 0.5%, compared with an average 10% arrest rate for street searches under normal police powers. The figures prompted the former Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis to call for the controversial policy to be scrapped.

I passed up the obvious title: "Heckuva Job Larry!" That was the moment of President Obama's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that set all Americans cringing. Yes, he really said that Summers "did a heckuva job." The candidate that was gifted the opportunity to run against the legacy of one of the worst presidents in U.S. history has, as president, used Bush as his role model to continue many disastrous policies. It was strangely fitting that he would channel Bush's infamous praise ("Heckuva job Brownie") for the FEMA chief who failed New Orleans so badly in the hurricane.

President Obama understandably wishes to focus attention on the economic disaster he inherited from President Bush. But Jon Stewart's question to him, which led to the president's gaffe, correctly asked about the message that Summers' appointment sent about the administration's commitment to fundamental change.

Omar Salem Shehab tells of torture at hands of notorious Iraqi police unit and says US forces were involved in his capture. During the foreboding months of 2005, one police unit struck more fear into Iraqis than the entire occupying US army. They were known as the Wolf Brigade.

Brutal even by Iraqi standards, their soldiers and officers seemingly answered to no one. They were seen as indiscriminate and predatory. The unit's reputation had been known Iraq-wide and results of their numerous raids are still bogged down in Iraq's legal system. But the full range of their abuses and close co-operation with the US army remained in the shadows until the WikiLeaks disclosures showcased them in stark detail.

Israeli Rabbi: Don't Sell Housing Or Land To Non-Jews - Selling a house or land in Israel to anyone who is not Jewish is forbidden, Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said during a Thursday morning halacha lesson. The rabbi cited the halacha as saying that the property should be sold to a Jewish buyer, even if he offers a lesser amount for it.

Dozens of students, Shas leaders among them, attended the lesson in the rabbi's Jerusalem home. "The words were perceived by those who were present as normal discussion of the halacha, and not within a context of current events," said one student who did not want to be identified. He added that the rabbi spoke of a known and accepted law of the halacha, one that no one disputes. It should not be perceived as a reinforcement of a recent ban on selling property to Arabs declared by Safed rabbis, he said.

AWIP: Palestinians should perish from this world: Ovadia Yosef
Khalid Amayreh: Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews

Imagine this: You want to move to a new town but before you can do so, you’ll have to submit an application to a committee that has to approve admission of new residents. And not just that — you can be excluded for the simple reason that in the committee’s opinion, you wouldn’t fit in. “Sorry, you’re not the kind of person suitable to live in our town.” That will be the effect of a new law now moving through Israel’s parliament, and once enacted it will be used to keep Israeli Palestinians out of Jewish towns.

American unmanned planes fired two missiles at a house in a Pakistani tribal region close to the Afghan border on Thursday, killing seven alleged militants, the latest in a barrage of such attacks, intelligence officials said. The strike in North Waziristan was the third attack assassination there in the past 24 hours.

The region is home to hundreds of Pakistan and foreign Islamist "militants", many belonging to or allied with "al-Qaida" and the Taliban. It is also the base of a powerful insurgent group that U.S. officials say is behind many of the attacks just across the border in Afghanistan.

Thursday's strike in the Datta Khel area killed five unidentified "foreign" and two local militants, three intelligence officials said. They did not give their names in line with the policy of the agency they work for. It is all but impossible to independently verify the accounts of intelligence officials. The region is too dangerous for outsiders to visit the scene of the attacks and U.S. officials do not acknowledge firing the missiles, much less discuss who they are targeting. Two other attacks Wednesday killed seven "suspected militants" [= innocent civilians].

Protest/Counter-Protest Demonstrators rally outside Ricky’s NYC in Brooklyn Heights on October 26. At left activists hold signs supporting a boycott of Ahava. At right, an opponent of the boycott. (Photo Shulamit Seidler-Felder).

The Middle East conflict has inflamed college campuses, bedeviled political campaigns and sparked street demonstrations. But cosmetics stores are the latest, and perhaps least likely, sites so far to bear witness to the sprawling nature of this ever deepening dispute.

At Ricky’s NYC in Brooklyn Heights — part of a self-described “edgy, ultra-hip” chain of New York costume and beauty supply stores — protesters banged drums, blew trumpets and marched around with fright masks in front of display windows stocked with bright colored packages of lotions and potions on October 26. The protesters were dramatizing their contention that the store’s Ahava beauty products add an ugly dimension to its offerings. Led by the groups CodePink and Brooklyn for Peace, some 40 demonstrators condemned the Israeli company and the store because Ahava’s products are manufactured at a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The anti-Ahava campaign has been going on for more than a year. But at Ricky’s and elsewhere, counter-protesters have now emerged. About 15 of them made a point of buying Ahava products from the store. Then, clustered right next to the anti-Israel group, they chanted slogans such as “Not one inch!” Some carried signs claiming that there was “no such thing as Palestinian people.” As the anti-Israel protesters chanted “Ahava’s a beauty cream killing Palestine’s hopes and dreams,” a gaggle of girls shrieked the words of the Shema prayer in an effort to drown them out.

It’s boycott versus “buycott” in the latest twist to the Israel-Palestinian dispute. But here, shampoo, conditioner and moisturizer have replaced territories, terrorism and occupation as the focus of contention.

An unknown group handed out misleading fliers to voters in a primarily African American polling place in Houston, Texas, reports KTRK. The fliers, which were handed out near an early voting location Tuesday night, claimed that "Republicans are trying to trick us" and said that voting Democrat was actually voting for Republicans.

"When you vote straight ticket Democrat, it is actually voting for Republicans and your vote doesn't count," says the flier. "We are urging everyone to VOTE for BILL WHITE. A VOTE for BILL WHITE is a VOTE for the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC ticket. We have fought too hard to let Republicans use voting machines to deny us our basic rights. We must guard the change and NOT VOTE STRAIGHT TICKET DEMOCRAT! YES WE CAN!" Democrat Bill White, the former Mayor of Houston, is currently running against Republican Governor Rick Perry.

"I expect this to be illegal because it's so inaccurate, no political group would want to associate itself with a lie, this is the under the table stuff that we see in elections," said Dr. Richard Murray, political consultant for KTRK.

The New York Times' John Burns yesterday responded to (and complained about) criticisms -- voiced by me, Julian Assange and others -- over his gossipy, People Magazine-style "profile" of Assange, which his newspaper centrally featured as part of its coverage of the WikiLeaks document release. In a self-justifying interview with Yahoo! News' Michael Calderone, Burns makes several comments worth examining.

Barry Grey: New York Times tries character assassination against WikiLeaks founder Assange

[QQ] October 14, 2009, the 30th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.”

Lu Guang (卢广), freelancer photographer, started as an amateur photographer in 1980. He was a factory worker, later started his own photo studio and advertising agency. August of 1993 he returned to post-graduate studies at the Central Arts and Design Academy in Beijing (now is the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University). During graduate school, he studied, traveled all over the country and carved out a career, became the “dark horse” of the photographer circle in Beijing. Skilled at social documentary photography, his insightful, creative and artistic work often focused on “social phenomena and people living at the bottom of society”, attracted the attentions of the national photography circle and the media. Many of his award winning works focused on social issues like, “gold rush in the west”, “drug girl”, “small coal pit”, “HIV village”, “the Grand Canal”, “development of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway” and so on.