Do you own flashlights? Or pay with cash instead of a credit card? And do grocery shopping for the week? I do. You probably do – and guess what, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, that could make both of us terrorists. - Recently, a Department of Homeland Security video has been making its way around the Internet; it tells people in no mixed terms that “paying cash is suspicious and weird.” In an assertive, yet calm voice, the narrator tells viewers that, “if a patron appears nervous or anxious, or insists on paying cash, contact security personnel. This IS suspicious behavior.” So basically, if you’ve had a stressful day and don’t have a credit card, you're done for.

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country. - Reporting from Charlotte, N.C. - Rick Vetter was rushing to board the Amtrak train in Charlotte, N.C., on a recent Sunday afternoon when a canine officer suddenly blocked the way. Three federal air marshals in bulletproof vests and two officers trained to spot suspicious behavior watched closely as Seiko, a German shepherd, nosed Vetter's trousers for chemical traces of a bomb. Radiation detectors carried by the marshals scanned the 57-year-old lawyer for concealed nuclear materials. When Seiko indicated a scent, his handler, Julian Swaringen, asked Vetter whether he had pets at home in Garner, N.C. Two mutts, Vetter replied. "You can go ahead," Swaringen said.

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Palestinians Only Obstacle to Peace, Insists Lieberman. - In a Christmas press conference attended by a number of top ambassadors, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman lashed those critical of Israel’s position on the peace process, while insisting no peace could be achieved within the next decade. “In the next decade, this will be the situation and we need to know how to deal with it,” insisted Lieberman, saying that ambassadors should focus on “managing” the conflict instead of trying to solve it. Lieberman also reiterated his condemnation of the European Union for criticizing settlement expansion, saying that the only obstacle to peace with the Palestinians is the Palestinians themselves and that construction would continue. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to support the notion that the Israeli government has abandoned the idea of peace, insisting that his government will no longer negotiate with the Palestinians under any circumstances once they form a unity government, something expected within the next few months.

A Pentagon public relations program that sought to transform high-profile military analysts into “surrogates” and “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration complied with Defense Department regulations and directives, the Pentagon’s inspector general has concluded after a two-year investigation. - The inquiry was prompted by articles published in The New York Times in 2008 that described how the Pentagon, in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, cultivated close ties with retired officers who worked as military analysts for television and radio networks. The articles also showed how military analysts affiliated with defense contractors sometimes used their special access to seek advantage in the competition for contracts. In response to the articles, the Pentagon suspended the program and members of Congress asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate. In January 2009, the inspector general’s office issued a report that said it had found no wrongdoing in the program. But soon after, the inspector general’s office retracted the entire report, saying it was so riddled with inaccuracies and flaws that none of its conclusions could be relied upon. In late 2009, the inspector general’s office began a new inquiry.

India's homeless are waiting out the biting cold winter, which has already killed over 100 people, mostly in Uttar Pradesh. - Kalyani, 15, refuses to come out her comforter as she snuggles even deeper when her mother, Saraswati Bai, crouching over a cooking fire, calls out loudly that it is time to eat. It is early morning; the diminutive girl has a flyover over head but no protection against the chilly wind. She is asleep on one of the many cold and hard walkways of the capital.

The activist hacker group Anonymous says it has stolen thousands of emails, passwords and credit card details from a US-based security think-tank. - The hackers claim they were able to obtain the information because the company, Stratfor, did not encrypt it. They say Stratfor's clients include the US defence department, law enforcement agencies and media organisations. The Austin-based company says it has now suspended the operation on its servers and email. An alleged member of Anonymous posted an online message, claiming that the group had used Stratfor clients' credit card details to make "over a million dollars" in donations to different charities. Stratfor later announced that it would keep its email and servers suspended for some time. It also said the disclosure was "merely a list of some of the members that have purchased our publications and does not comprise a list of individuals or entities that have a relationship with Stratfor". Anonymous has previously claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on financial institutions seen as enemies of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks.

Russia's leadership was forced to defend its legitimacy yesterday after about 100,000 demonstrators rallied in central Moscow to demand democratic reform and fair elections in the largest wave of popular dissent since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The rally on Moscow's Sakharov Avenue on Saturday was the fourth and by far the biggest of the mass demonstrations provoked by the parliamentary vote held on 4 December. The ruling United Russia party, led by the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, held on to a slim majority in parliament in those elections, but the results have been tainted by claims of wholesale fraud. The demonstrators stood for hours in sub-zero weather on Saturday listening to a line-up of speakers as diverse as the crowd itself, including TV celebrities, writers, musicians, politicians, scientists and a jailed dissident whose video message was broadcast on a giant screen beside the stage.

"The people are waking up," said Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front opposition group who was arrested on the day of the elections as he heading to a rally. "The people have stopped putting up with this humiliating regime."

US airlines have suffered a defeat in the EU's highest court, which upheld a law on Wednesday that will require airlines to pay for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. The new rule goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2012. US officials have warned that the move will have repercussions. - Unlike the European Union, the United States has so far refused to sign up to a binding agreement to cut carbon emissions. But now US airlines flying to Europe will be forced to pay for their emissions in future. The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that including foreign airlines in the EU emissions trading scheme is permissible. The decision was expected after a senior adviser to the court issued a preliminary opinion in October that found the EU legislation did not infringe upon the sovereignty of other states and was compatible with international accords. The emissions trading scheme forces businesses to buy rights to emit CO2. From Jan. 1, 2012, all airlines will have to purchase certificates for the emissions they release through takeoffs and landings at European airports. Initially, 85 percent of emission rights will be allocated free of charge, and the airlines will have to pay for the remaining 15 percent.

7 year old Israeli girl is afraid to walk the 300 meters between home and school because of the violence she has faced from ultra-Orthodox men who say her clothes are too revealing. - More than 4,000 people say they will attend a march in Beit Shemesh this week to protest the exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere and the increasing Haredization of the city. The day, time and venue of the event have yet to be announced. A number of times in recent weeks girls and women in Beit Shemesh have been been cursed and spit at, and even had rocks thrown at them, by members of the city's ultra-Orthodox community who claimed their dress was immodest.

Potential bioterrorists [governments] may be able to unleash the worst pandemic humanity has ever faced once a recipe for creating man-made flu is published, despite a decision by scientists to omit crucial pieces of their original research. - Academia, which relies on the free flow of information to thrive, agreed to the self-censorship only grudgingly. The scientists say all the data needs to be published in order to better monitor new strains of influenza and create a vaccine, if such a dangerous virus ever occurred naturally. The scientists are unlikely to be able to stop people with dedication and knowledge from recreating their work, some experts warn. Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam who headed one of the two teams that created the killer flu, said the scientific data has already been shared with hundreds of researchers and governments in open scientific meetings. “The exact mutations that made this transformation possible were not particularly novel or unexpected, so anyone with a reasonable knowledge of influenza virology could probably guess at them if they so wished,” said Wendy Barclay, professor of influenza virology at Imperial College London, as cited by The Independent newspaper.

As the confidential correspondence of popes, princes and potentates, the Vatican Secret Archives have been jealously guarded for centuries.

But now 100 of the most historically significant documents held by the Vatican's Secret Archives are to go on public display in Rome – the first and probably last time that they will leave the buttressed stone walls of the tiny city state. The priceless documents span more than a millennium, from the 8th century to modern times, and feature a cast of historical characters ranging from the Knights Templar to Galileo, Martin Luther and Henry VIII.

They are normally kept in air-conditioned, climate-controlled rooms in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, which boasts more than 50 miles of shelves, as well as in a high-security underground bunker.

Archivists have gathered them together for an unprecedented exhibition, to be held in Rome's Capitoline Museums, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Secret Archives in their present form. "It's an exceptional event," Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, told The Daily Telegraph. "It's the first time that an exhibition of such significance has been organised. Never have so many documents from the Secret Archive been allowed to leave the Vatican."

An Islamist sect known as Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Catholic church during Christmas Mass in Nigeria that has killed up to 35 people. The group has claimed other weekend attacks as well. - A bomb explosion during Christmas Mass at the St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, Nigeria left as many as 35 people dead on Sunday. Madalla is near the Nigerian capital Abuja. Angry youths gathered around the blast site after the attack as police tried to cordon off the area. The youths lit fires and threatened to burn down a police station before they were dispersed by officers firing rounds into the air. The attack was claimed by an Islamist sect known as Boko Haram, which also took responsibility for another bombing near a church on Sunday in the city of Jos.

UK relegated to seventh place in world league of leading economies in 2011, according to team of economists. - Brazil has overtaken the UK to become the world's sixth-largest economy, according to a team of economists. The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America's largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east. Russia and India are expected to benefit from a surge in growth over the next 10 years and push the UK into eighth place. Like most economies, India is struggling with high inflation and slowing growth, but its highly educated workforce and skills in growth areas from IT and services to engineering will push the economy into fifth place. After a decade of selling oil and gas to Europe and other parts of Asia, Russia will be at number four. The only compensation for ministers concerned by Britain's relative fall is that France will fall at a faster pace. Nicolas Sarkozy can still boast that France is the fifth-largest economy behind the US at number one, China, Japan and Germany, but by 2020, the Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR) forecasts it will fall past the UK into ninth spot. Germany will also slip to seventh place in 2020.

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948. (34 photos total)