An unprecedented number of Americans have voiced disapproval with the performance of the United States Congress, a recent poll reveals. - The poll conducted by the ABC News/Washington Post showed on Monday that a record 84 percent of Americans gave their lawmakers a thumb-down. The biggest concerns the voters had, according to the poll, were the country's unemployment rate and its current economic crisis. This marks the lowest recorded approval rating of the Congress in nearly 40 years. The poll also showed that 48 percent of Americans disapproved of the way US President Barack Obama handles his job. In addition, 75 percent and 62 percent of the voters disapproved of the Republicans and the Democrats respectively in Congress. The latest figures come as the country is due to hold presidential and congressional elections in less than ten months.

US President Barack Obama is the target of a suit filed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Hedges, and the reasoning seems more than obvious to him. The decision to take the commander-in-chief to court comes as a response to President Obama’s December 31 signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a legislation that allows the US military to detain American citizens indefinitely at off-site torture prisons like Guantanamo Bay. Obama amended the NDAA with a signing statement on New Year's Eve, insisting that while the Act does indeed give him the power to detain his own citizens indefinitely without charge, that doesn’t mean he will do so. Specifically, Obama wrote that his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.” Under another piece of legislation, however, the government is being granted the right to suspend citizenship of any American if the Enemy Expatriation Act joins the ranks of the NDAA as an atrocious act approved by the president. In his explanation, Hedges says the signing signals “a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.”

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” writes Hedges. “I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.”

AWIP: Obama’s change: From kidnapping and torture to assassination
AWIP: Obama to approve indefinite detention and torture of Americans
Paul Craig Roberts: The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples

MELBOURNE, Fla. — WFTV obtained dash camera video of a violent police beating in Melbourne. - The video shows an officer attacking a 66–year-old man who WFTV learned is suffering from dementia. In the video, Melbourne police Officer Derek Middendorf is shown giving Albert Flowers a front kick to his stomach. Middendorf then punched Flowers repeatedly while he was on the ground. In a report, Middendorf [lied and] said Flowers walked towards him in an aggressive manner at a fast pace and he couldn't tell whether he had a knife in his hands. Flowers' nephew, Garrick Flowers, said he yelled at the officer to stop and told him his uncle has dementia. "He's 66 years old, he had triple bypass, I think he's killing him," said Garrick Flowers. The family said Middendorf was choking Flowers, and the video shows another officer running over and tasing Flowers in the face. The family said Flowers was hospitalized for close to a month.

A group of computer hackers known as ‘Nightmare’ managed to shut down the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, as well as the Israeli government’s airline El Al on Sunday night. - According to a spokesperson for the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, trading was not affected by the hacker attack that shut down the website that provides information about regarding Stock Exchange. The anonymous hacker group sent an email to the Israeli news website Yedioth Ahranoth, from the same email address that claimed credit for releasing thousands of Israeli credit card numbers. The news agency identified the sender as a Saudi Arabian hacker, but were unable to identify other than the country of origin. The hack comes one day after representatives of the Hamas party in Gaza issued a statement calling for an increase in cyber-attacks on Israeli targets.

Gilad Atzmon: Israel is under Cyber Attack
PressTV: Cyberwar on Israel, new resistance

It's not just Occupy protesters against Rahm Emanuel's proposed ordinance that imposes harsher fines and rules for protests and demonstrations. - This week's edition of Crain's Chicago Business editorializes against the ordinance as it, "reinforces the very stereotypes that Chicago is trying to shed." Crain's argues that increased fines for resisting arrest are "driven by fear of reliving" the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention. Crain's critical focus is actually on a less reported part of Emanuel's plan: The mayor has the power to hand out no-bid contracts for summit-related matters ... like the $16 million no-bid deal already provided to Motorola,allowing the company can provide emergency radios for the May summits. Emanuel said last week that the city will rely on private companies to provide both security and services - and for private donors to raise up to $60 million to supplement security costs. Henry Bayer, head of AFSCME-Local 31, is upset by this request: Bayer wonders why these same private donors couldn't also give to other causes, such as money to keep Chicago's libraries open on Mondays. [H/T: Wayne Madsen Report]

The Indian foreign secretary says New Delhi will continue to import oil from Tehran and does not seek a US waiver as protection against Washington's sanctions on the Iranian oil sector. - "We have accepted sanctions which are made by the United Nations. Other sanctions do not apply to individual countries," Ranjan Mathai was quoted by Reuters as saying on Tuesday. Implying that India did not see the new US sanctions against Iran's oil as binding, he added, "We continue to buy oil from Iran." US President Barack Obama signed a new law on December 31, 2011, which seeks to impose fresh economic sanctions against Iran's Central Bank and oil sector.

The simmering conflict between religious and secular Israelis threatened to overspill after Tanya Rosenblit stayed in her seat on a bus when Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men demanded that she move to the back. - Tanya Rosenblit is a 28 year old TV producer, the daughter of Russian immigrants who lives in the coastal town of Ashdod. Last month, she caught a bus to Jerusalem where she had a medical appointment. She made an effort to dress modestly, as her doctor was in an ultra-Orthodox area of the city. The ultra-Orthodox are a small group of extremely religious and theologically rigid Jews. They wear black, the men have long side curls, and every aspect of their lives is governed by the Old Testament. Rosenblit was the first passenger to board. She sat in the front of the bus so the driver could tell her when she reached her stop. Ultra-Orthodox men who boarded after her were uncomfortable when they saw her. Then one insisted he would not travel unless she moved to the back of the bus. "He started shouting, 'This is our bus they're not welcome here, if they want to come on, they have to respect us,'" said Tanya Rosenblit. "He said, 'Jewish men don't sit behind women!' And that was the statement that made me stay put."

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan with his son, Alireza.

Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use.

On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.

Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee. "On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly."

Deutsche Welle: Iran makes arrests in scientist's death
Fars News Agency: Students Urge UN to Study Israel's Role in Assassination of Iranian Scientists

Top NATO official Sir Simon Gass indicated today the alliance plans a more or less open-ended commitment to funding the Karzai government, saying he believed the nation will require “decades” of support beyond 2014. - Sir Simon insisted that NATO would have to learn the mistake from the failed Soviet occupation — apparently not the “don’t occupy Afghanistan” mistake. Instead, he sees the mistake coming three years after the Soviet troops left, when they withdrew funding from the Najibullah regime. And there appears to be no chance of that happening here, with the Karzai government expected to be on the dole more or less forever, needing $7 billion annually in foreign funding just to prop up their military.

A lawyer for an intelligence analyst charged with leaking classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks wants to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before his client is tried. - David Coombs, a lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, included a request to question Clinton as part of a redacted document posted Monday on his website and also sent to Army officials. Clinton's name is obscured in the document, but it is clear from context that she is the person he wants to question. Coombs failed in his attempt to call Clinton as a witness at Manning's preliminary hearing last month. The Army is still deciding whether the 24-year-old Manning, who is accused of causing the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, should stand trial.

Officials Lobby Against Attack on Iran as Military Leaders Bolster Defenses - U.S. defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over U.S. objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region in case of a conflict. President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons. Stepping up the pressure, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week.

UK Owner of TVShack, a linking only website, is to be extradited to the US and faces up to 10 years in prison for supposed copyright infringement. - The website did not itself host unlawful downloads or video streams, but acted as a directory of links to others that did, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard. American authorities allege that Mr O’Dwyer made more than $230,000 by selling advertising on TVShack in three years until December 2010. District Judge Quentin Purdy rejected all three of the defence’s arguments against extradition, including claims Mr O’Dwyer would not get a fair trial in the United States and that if a crime was committed he should be prosecuted in Britain. O'Dwyer's mother Julia said she was: "Very disappointed, in fact disgusted," with the verdict. She also expressed disappointment towards the government: "for signing us up to this treaty which has opened the flood gates to America to come and seize British citizens without even having set foot outside of this country."

CAIRO — Swiss archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a female singer dating back almost 3,000 years in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said on Sunday. The rare find was made accidentally by a team from Switzerland's Basel University headed by Elena Pauline-Grothe and Susanne Bickel in Karnak, near Luxor in Upper Egypt, the minister told the media in Cairo.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a singer for the supreme deity Amon Ra during the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945-712 BC), according to an inscription on a wooden plaque found in the tomb. She was the daughter of the High Priest of Amon, Ibrahim said. The discovery is important because "it shows that the Valley of the Kings was also used for the burial of ordinary individuals and priests of the Twenty-Second Dynasty," he added. Until now the only tombs found in the historic valley were those linked to ancient Egyptian royal families.

A BRITISH scientist has stumbled upon a treasure trove of Charles Darwin's work in a gloomy corner a building where it lay undiscovered for more than 150 years. - Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said today that glass slides containing important Darwin fossils were in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey. Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labelled "C. Darwin Esq". "It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realised it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen. He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he was wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered". Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker - a botanist and dear friend of Darwin - and the Rev John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.