Washington is not ruling out a military operation against Tehran if it gets wind of an Iranian nuke program, declared US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The US believes Iran could develop a nuclear bomb "in under a year". - Just two weeks ago, Panetta discouraged Israel from attacking Iran in the wake of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which raised concerns that the Iranian nuclear program was veering off the civilian path. But on Monday, Panetta told CBS that the military option “was not off the table” if the US learns of nuclear weapons being built in Iran. “The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israelis,” the US Defense Secretary told CBS in a preview of “60 Minutes.”

PtessTV: Pentagon plays down Panetta's remarks

People are vanishing in broad daylight in Libya, as the country’s new rulers continue to settle accounts with their opponents. Widespread insecurity means the families of the kidnapped can do no more than hope that their loved ones are still alive.

Libya’s conflict is over, and the man who stood in the way of Western-style democracy is dead. Yet atrocities against Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists continue. The images emerging from Libya are disturbing.

Against this distressing background, Russia is demanding a probe into civilian casualties in Libya caused by NATO bombings. That's Moscow’s reaction to a report by human rights groups which claims dozens were killed in air strikes – despite the alliance saying its operation was "almost flawless".

After the NATO-backed rebels overran Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte, staring death in the face became an everyday experience for residents of the loyalist stronghold. Local men, young and old, were captured by the winners, who delivered a summary verdict – the Colonel’s countrymen were labeled “Gaddafi dogs” – with the associated deadly consequences.

The official death toll from last week's massive flash flooding in two southern Philippine cities topped 1,000 on Wednesday, while authorities said they lost count of how many more were missing in one of the worst calamities to hit the coastal region. - The latest tally showed a total of 1,002 people have been confirmed dead, including 650 in Cagayan de Oro and an additional 283 in nearby Iligan city, said Benito Ramos, head of the Civil Defense Office. The rest came from several other southern and central provinces. A tropical storm swept through the area Friday night and unleashed flash floods in the middle of the night that caught most of the victims in their sleep.

AWIP: Philippines mulls mass graves after typhoon kills hundreds

With demonstrators suspecting governmental assistance in the crackdowns clobbering Occupy Wall Street encampments, the CIA is trying to distance itself from divulging any incriminating evidence regarding their role in the raids. - The Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJF), a Washington DC-based civil rights group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request last month to see what role, if any, the CIA has had in the brutal raids of OWS encampments that have left thousands jailed and droves of demonstrators beaten, in some instances ending up in intensive care. Now after reviewing the request to publically release any information, the Agency is scoffing at the PCJF, who in turn is calling this “a classic case of CIA-double speak” used to hide its involvement.

Around 10,000 women marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt's ruling military step down Tuesday in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.

The dramatic protest, which grew as the women marched from Tahrir Square through downtown, was fueled by the widely circulated images of abuses of women. Many of the marchers touted the photo of the young woman whose clothes were partially pulled off by troops, baring her down to her blue bra, as she struggled on the ground.

"Tantawi stripped your women naked, come join us," the crowd chanted to passers-by, referring to Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council that has ruled Egypt since the Feb. 11 fall of Hosni Mubarak. "The daughters of Egypt are a red line," they chanted.

Even before the protest was over, the military council issued an unusually strong statement of regret for what it called "violations" against women — a quick turnaround after days of dismissing the significance of the abuse.

New York Times: Thousands of Women Mass in Major March in Cairo
Danmarks Radio: Pigen i den blå bh har det svært - Video

For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics. - In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands, scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person. It was an ominous step, because easy transmission can lead the virus to spread all over the world. The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model for predicting what flu viruses will do in people. The virus, A(H5N1), causes bird flu, which rarely infects people but has an extraordinarily high death rate when it does. Since the virus was first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it, and more than half have died. Nearly all have caught it from birds, and most cases have been in Asia. Scientists have watched the virus, worrying that if it developed the ability to spread easily from person to person, it could create one of the deadliest pandemics ever.

The Independent: Alarm as Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu
Russia Today: Man-made super-flu killer-flu formula to be published?

Jason Ditz: US Asks Scientific Journals to Censor Articles Over ‘Terrorism’ - The latest chilling impact on the freedom of information under the guise of terrorism came today, when, the National Institutes of Health announced that it is asking two major scientific journals to heavily censor certain articles over “terror” threats. The articles were related to studies on the spread of H5N1 bird flu, and the research involved the possibility of the virus morphing to infect ferrets. Officials say ferrets have a similar response to the flu as humans do, and that the research could be used to create a “terrorist weapon.”

Jewish colonists have attacked 96 Holy Muslim and Christian sacred sites in the West Bank and 46 sacred sites in Occupied East Jerusalem since the beginning of the year. - Ramallah: Jewish colonists have attacked 96 Holy Muslim and Christian sacred sites in the West Bank and 46 sacred sites in Occupied East Jerusalem since the beginning of the year. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Islamic Affairs, the colonists have left behind racist and threatening messages after vandalising Palestinian property. "Price tag" is most commonly spray painted on property in reference to the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations in September. Also derrogatory and insulting words are written against Islam and their Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Khalid Amayreh: Israel gangs up on Palestinians
Khalid Amayreh: The Jewish war on Islam in Palestine
PIC: Settlers attack mosque in al-Khalil, leave racist graffiti
PIC: Israeli scheme to displace thousands of Palestinians in Al-Khalil
IMEMC: Israel Bulldozes Industrial Structures In Silwan
IMEMC: Nine Security Council Member States Condemn Israeli Settlement Expansion
Jason Ditz: US Blocks UN From Condemning Israeli Settlement Expansion

London/Madrid, 19 December 2011 - Just days after new details emerged of a secret CIA prison in Romania used to torture terrorism suspects, a report by two international human rights organisations shows that many European countries are suppressing evidence of their role in the USA’s notorious rendition programme.

The report, Rendition on Record, produced by open government specialists Access Info Europe and legal action charity Reprieve reveals how 28 countries have responded to a total of 67 requests for information about specific rendition flights carried out between 2002 and 2006. While six European countries and the USA responded by releasing data, 16 others have either refused or failed to respond to questions about their complicity in the CIA’s illegal detention operations. The European air traffic management body Eurocontrol also refused on the grounds that it has no transparency obligations to the public.

CIA Special Review
Read the Rendition on Record report
Access Info Europe - Information Request from September [Norway]
Finnish report on suspected CIA extraordinary rendition flight leaves many open questions [Finland, html]

At some point a sideshow to a story becomes so painfully obvious that it becomes the story, and this now should be: Why is the media taking such pains to knowingly and falsely claim that the new power of the military to detain and imprison people without charge or trial, for life, does not include US citizens? We know what happened. The Bill of Rights has been overturned. And enough has been written on the deceptive language first warned of by Congressman Justin Amash, when he told The Grand Rapids Press that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was "carefully crafted to mislead the public," for newspaper editors to know better.

Hungary's constitutional court has overruled sections of a new media law, claiming it interferes with press freedom. It is the latest challenge to what many see as an undemocratic consolidation of government power. - The law, introduced more than a year ago, has been condemned as a major attack on press freedom by rights groups and governments abroad. Last week four Hungarian journalists went on hunger strike to protest against it. Under the terms of the legislation, media are obliged to provide "balanced coverage," subject to scrutiny by a media authority. Journalists are also obliged to submit names of sources to the authority "if necessary" on grounds of national security. In its decision on Monday, the court removed the authority's right to scrutinize print and online content. It also deleted a passage in the law that limits the confidentiality of journalists' sources for stories serving the public interest. New rules were mandated specifying that journalists may only be forced to divulge their sources under a procedure controlled by courts.

Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit, one of the Internet’s most popular community-driven media websites, said in a recent post that independent experts have told the site that if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) passes Congress, the laws as written would be Reddit’s death sentence. - Reddit, owned by publishing company Condé Nast, functions by allowing users to submit links to articles, videos and pictures, then promotes or demotes various content depending upon community reaction. Users are allowed to up- or down-vote submitted items, and the top links appear on the site’s front page.

LuluP's Photo stream (flickr)

Experts say they have confirmed for the first time the precise origin of some of the rocks at Stonehenge.

It has long been suspected that rhyolites from the northern Preseli Hills helped build the monument. But research by National Museum Wales and Leicester University has identified their source to within 70m (230ft) of Craig Rhos-y-felin, near Pont Saeson. The museum's Dr Richard Bevins said the find would help experts work out how the stones were moved to Wiltshire.

For nine months Dr Bevins, keeper of geology at National Museum Wales, and Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University collected and identified samples from rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire to try to find the origins of rhyolite debitage rocks that can be found at Stonehenge.

By detailing the mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock, a process known as petrography, they found that 99% of the samples could be matched to rocks found in this particular set of outcrops.

Rhyolitic rocks at Rhos-y-felin, between Ffynnon-groes (Crosswell) and Brynberian, differ from all others in south Wales, they said, which helps locate almost all of Stonehenge's rhyolites to within hundreds of square metres. Within that area, the rocks differ on a scale of metres or tens of metres, allowing Dr Bevins and Dr Ixer to match some Stonehenge rock samples even more precisely to a point at the extreme north-eastern end of Rhos-y-felin.

Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University called the discovery of the source of the rocks "quite unexpected and exciting".

UNESCO: Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites

The depiction of the rich and cold-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” is backed up with scientific evidence, according to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. - The researchers found that people in lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to the suffering of others than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. The current study builds upon a similar one published in Psychological Science in 2010. That study found that people of upper-class status have trouble recognizing the emotions other people are feeling. People of lower-class status do a much better job.