This isn't a TSA story, since it takes place up in Canada, but it involves the Canadian equivalent, who apparently had a bit of trouble dealing with an 82-year-old woman who had a (gel-filled) prosthetic breast to replace the one she lost in a mastectomy due to breast cancer. By failing to alert them to this "gel" on her body, she was later accused of lying to officials. She was also put through one of the lovely new full body scanner machines, in which passengers are required to lift their hands above their head. The problem? This woman is no longer able to do so. Rather than understanding this, security officials told her she had to. She then tried to lift her left arm with her right arm, and again security told her she was not allowed to do that. At this point she broke down and started crying. Eventually, security did let her get on the plane, but you have to ask what exactly they accomplished here in embarrassing this woman and making her cry.

Calgary Sun: Cancer survivor demands investigation after Calgary airport screening

US military finds social media sites like Facebook help control its message. An army trying to tell its story, or control its message, in a time of war is nothing new. But with the arrival of social media, the military can now reach more people than ever before, reducing its dependence on mainstream media outlets that might not always agree with the army's version of events. The official U.S. Army Facebook page has more than 583,000 fans. The U.S. Marines are close to reaching a million. That’s not too far behind CNN, which has 1.6 million Facebook fans or the New York Times, which has just over a million. And that’s not even counting the hundreds of specific units and regiments that have their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. And it’s not mentioning all the Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo accounts, or all the blogs. The U.S. Army even has its own iPhone application.

The National Security Agency is building one of the largest and most expensive data centers as a place to gather and analyze intelligence data. At $1.2 billion, this is the largest Department of Defense construction project underway. Officals broke ground at the site 25 miles south of Salt Lake City Thursday, and it will give NSA diversity with a separate data center beyond the one it has in Ft. Meade, Md., says NSA Deputy Director J. Chris Inglis.

The Guantanamo Bay detention centre has entered the tenth year of its controversial existence. And there are no signs that U.S. President Obama will be shutting it down any time soon. The American presence there follows a deal struck over a century ago but calls are growing stronger from Havana that the U.S is violating Cuba's sovereignty.

At least six afghan civilians have been killed during an attack of US-led forces in northeastern Afghanistan, say local media. Another civilian was also injured during the NATO air strike in the town of Asmar at Kunar province on Monday, the media said. The alliance has yet to comment on the deadly attack. During the past two days, bombings killed at least 18 civilians and wounded several others across Afghanistan as the security situation continues to deteriorate in the war-ravaged country. Nine people, including six children, were killed in an explosion in the northern Baghlan Province on Sunday.

Taliban militants claim they have shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in northeastern Afghanistan. The Taliban said that they successfully targeted the aircraft in the Nejrab district of Kapisa province on Saturday, the Afghan Islamic Press reported. However, ISAF dismissed the Taliban's claim, saying the drone crashed due to a mechanical failure, but did not announce the exact location of the incident. A recovery force was immediately sent to the site of the crash and swiftly retrieved the wreckage of the drone. Taliban militants say they have shot down several NATO and ISAF drone aircraft and helicopters in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few years.

"We can't sit back while a few billionaires destroy the fragile fabric of democracy and the protections that are so necessary for the health of our society," Jodie Evans of CodePink told Alternet. "It is time for the progressive community to gather together and say no more, and what better place than where the Koch brothers are plotting their next moves."

Abbotsford police, which have been investigating the arrest, took the unusual step of announcing their recommendation before a report had been submitted to Crown counsel. [...] Tavares was arrested on Jan. 7 after a complaint about shots fired at a Kelowna-area golf course. Tavares has said his employer had asked him to use the gun to scare off geese. A bystander's video of the arrest shows Tavares, 51, getting out of his truck with his hands in the air as both officers have their guns drawn, and then one officer kicks Tavares in the face as he is getting on the ground. When Tavares was released from custody, he had a black eye and several scrapes on his face.

Al Jazeera reports from Cairo, Egypt, where some are hoping to follow Tunisia's example and have an uprising of their own. "Down with corruption, Down with autocracy, Down with dictators!" they chant.

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La famille du président déchu Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali s'est-elle enfuie de Tunisie avec 1,5 tonne d'or ? C'est la supposition de l'Elysée, qui se fonde sur des recoupements des services secrets français. Ces derniers essaient de comprendre comment s'est achevée la journée de vendredi 14 janvier, qui a vu le départ du président et de sa famille et la chute de son régime. Selon eux, Leïla Trabelsi, la femme du président, se serait rendue à la Banque centrale de Tunisie chercher des lingots d'or. Le gouverneur aurait refusé. Mme Ben Ali aurait appelé son mari, qui aurait d'abord lui aussi refusé, puis cédé. "Il semblerait que la femme de Ben Ali soit partie avec de l'or", explique un responsable politique français. "1,5 tonne d'or, cela fait 45 millions d'euros", poursuit-il.

France24: Ben Ali allegedly fled Tunisia… with 1.5 tons of gold

If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its "stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.

Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian population – seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult population – worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police. They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we loved until last week. But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths have used the internet to rally each other – in Algeria, too – and the demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no jobs to go to after university) is on the streets. But the "unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will have our interests – rather than his people's interests – at heart.

WSWS: Tunisian ruling elite promises national government, imposes military rule

The Telegraph: Swedish boar hunters beaten amid Tunisia chaos

responsibility toward Israel, with only 29 percent of those aged between 30 and 39 responding in the positive to the question. A massive 65 percent of respondents in that age group said Germany had no special responsibility to Israel. However, 48 percent of the over-60s said that Germany did have a special obligation.

The attitudes revealed in the survey contrast with German government doctrine that the country has a special responsibility to the state of Israel. That official stance was recently reaffirmed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who told Israel's parliament, the Knesset, that Germany would "never abandon Israel, but instead will remain a loyal partner and friend."

Friday’s Hannity on Fox News featured a discussion by the Great American Panel about high gas prices, which host Sean Hannity claimed are “now gonna go up to three, four, five dollars a gallon again.” The panel ruefully noted that Arab sheiks possess great amounts of oil, and pointed out a recent statement by Kuwait’s oil minister that he believes the market can withstand $100-per-barrel oil. After noting that Kuwait is a country that “would not exist [but] for us,” Hannity angrily offered his remedy:

HANNITY: There’s two things I said. I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister — how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation, as these sheiks, etcetera etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us and saying ‘oh of course we can withstand [these prices].’”

When a society allows for more than $45,000 a year to incarcerate its inmates, $1,000,000 dollars a year on each of its soldiers invading a foreign country, and only $11,287.50 per year on each of its students the resulting social dilemma is inevitable.

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