A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs. People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups. The backers of such techniques, which include "water-boarding," sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al Qaeda leaders.

The federal government's unmanned drones patrolling the U.S.-Canadian border are venturing into Washington state's airspace. In testimony before a U.S. Senate panel this week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said northern border surveillance using unmanned aerial aircraft now expands from North Dakota to eastern Washington. The two 10,000-pound Predator-B unmanned aircrafts based in Grand Forks, N.D., have a 950-mile coverage range and "they do enter Washington airspace, in the vicinity of Spokane," said Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Gina Gray on Thursday.

Reuters has recently reported in their article, "U.S. eyes testy China talks, Chen backer expects Chinese decision," that "religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid is the chief source of information about Chen," referring to Chen Guangcheng, the "blind activist" who has allegedly escaped from house arrest recently and who "activists" claim is being harbored by the United States in their embassy in Beijing.

Hamas Political Bureau Chief Khaled Meshaal says the case of the ongoing mass hunger strike by Palestinians in Israeli jails will be referred to the UN. - Meshaal said in Cairo on Sunday that he had agreed on the issue with the acting Palestinian Authority chief, Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Nabil al-Arabi, reported English-language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star. Earlier in the day, the AL chief and Hamas leader held talks in the Egyptian capital to discuss the Israeli-jailed Palestinians’ mass hunger strike. Al-Arabi has denounced Israeli detention policies as being inhumane and in violation of human rights. Around 2000 Palestinian prisoners have gone on hunger strike in Israeli prisons, with more detainees pledging to join the protest movement next week, according to Palestinian organizations in Ramallah, West Bank.

The head of the new UN observer team is starting his work in Syria amid sporadic violence. On Monday, twin suicide bomb attack killed at least eight people, fuelling doubts over how long the shaky ceasefire can hold.

The blasts killed eight security personnel near state intelligence buildings in the north-western city of Idlib, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported. The Britain-based human rights organization Syrian Observatory puts the number of casualties higher, saying more than 20 people have been killed. The new act of violence comes as Norwegian Major General Robert Mood is paving the way for a full 300-strong monitoring team, which is to be deployed in the coming months. The 52-year-old veteran peacemaker, who takes over the UN Mission in Syria, is no stranger to Damascus. Between 2009 and 2011 he headed the UN Truce Supervision Organization, which monitors Middle East cease-fires, and visited Syria. On arrival he called on both the government and opposition groups to co-operate with the UN, saying the effort of the monitors alone is not enough to defuse the situation.

Romila Aparacida Ferreira showed CNN photos of injuries she claimed she received in the incident. Ferreira claimed she suffered a broken collarbone, three broken ribs and a punctured lung. The story broke this week, eliciting a comment from visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The Marines involved were disciplined and are no longer in Brazil, he said. The incident is the third to come to light this month involving alleged transgressions by U.S. government employees or military personnel.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay lists Israel along with countries such as Belarus, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Ethiopia and Venezuela. - Israel was named due to the bill approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation six months ago to restrict funding by foreign governments to nonprofit organizations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the bill throughout most of its formulation. However, he ordered it frozen after Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said such a law would be struck down by the High Court of Justice.

One of the largest food retailers in the UK has announced that it will boycott four Israeli produce companies which are operating in illegal settlement colonies in the West Bank in violation of international law. - The Co-operative Group is the 5th largest food retailer in the UK, and supplies thousands of stores with fruits and vegetables from around the world. On Sunday, the company announced that it will “no longer engage with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements". According to the Co-operative Group, this is not a boycott of all Israeli products, only of those products coming from Israeli settlements. The £350,000 in contracts will be transferred to companies operating inside the 'Green Line' (an unofficial border between Israel and the West Bank established after the 1967 war). The new policy by the Co-operative Group will include Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin. It expands a previously stated policy of boycotting Israeli settlement products to include a boycott of any company that is known to source products from the settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

New claims may shed light on why Bo – previously accused of unspecified disciplinary violations – was ejected from post - The spotlight on the Bo Xilai affair has turned back on to political tensions in China following reports that officials in Chongqing wiretapped a call to the country's president, Hu Jintao – helping to trigger the scandal that unseated Bo. Official accounts of the case have portrayed it as being unrelated to the political struggle for power in the country. Bo is instead accused of unspecified disciplinary violations while his wife, Gu Kailai, is accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood. But the New York Times, which cited almost a dozen sources with ties to the Communist party, said the wiretapping was seen as evidence of Bo's overreaching ambition and compounded leaders' mistrust of him. It said anti-surveillance devices detected that the call to Hu, made by a senior anti-corruption official in Chongqing last August, was being monitored. Bo was party secretary of the south-western city at the time.

Justin Raimondo: China’s ‘Reformist’ Crooks
John Chan: The downfall of Bo Xilai in China - The case of Bo is so politically sensitive because it exposes the staggering levels of corruption at the top levels of the party and state apparatus.

Queensland billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer has unveiled his plans to build the Titanic II to add to his tourism portfolio.

Mr Palmer said his new company Blue Star Line Pty Ltd had commissioned the state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build a near replica of the ill-fated Titanic. The cost is unknown.

He made the announcement on the same day he revealed his hopes to contest the next federal election in the Queensland seat of Lilley, held by Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan.

Mr Palmer said the companies had signed a memorandum of understanding to build the cruise liner in China, with the ship's maiden voyage from England to North America scheduled for late 2016.

"It will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic but of course it will have state-of-the-art 21st-century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems," Mr Palmer said.

Mr Palmer said the rebuild was a tribute to the spirit of the men and women who constructed the original Titanic.

P&O Cruises to withhold passengers' tips unless crew hit performance targets - Crew on British cruise holidays who are paid a basic salary of as little as 75p an hour face having extra tips from passengers withheld unless they hit performance targets. The boss of P&O Cruises said the move was part of a package to "make crew more responsive" and offer protection as tips dry up in the economic downturn. At the bottom end of the scale, a junior waiter on a ship sailing out of Southampton now earns a basic salary of £250 a month, for shifts lasting a minimum of 11 hours, seven days a week, with a possible £150 extra in bonuses. According to documents seen by the Guardian, this is "a significantly increased basic salary".

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has always vehemently denied bringing cheap foreign labour into Canada. Employers had to pay foreign temporary workers “the prevailing wage,” he pointed out. That indeed is what the rules said – until Wednesday, when Human Resources Minister Diane Finley quietly changed them. Employers will now be allowed to pay foreign temp workers 15 per cent less than the average wage. Business leaders, eager to recruit low-cost workers abroad, were delighted.

Former CIA director George Tenet has acknowledged that elements of the counterintelligence investigation against a former Jewish attorney at the agency in the 1990s could be construed as anti-Semitic. - Tenet acknowledged this in a previously undisclosed sworn deposition, part of a privacy act lawsuit filed by the former attorney, Adam Ciralsky. In 1999, Ciralsky’s security clearance was revoked because of his alleged lack of candor about contact with Israelis and Israeli-Americans, effectively ending his brief career with the CIA. For the last dozen years Ciralsky has sued the CIA to bring to light how he believes a few agency officials—motivated by anti-Semitism—targeted him unfairly. On Friday he dropped his case.

The US says it has deployed a number of its most modern jet fighters to an air base in Southwest Asia. The announcement alarmed many, who suspect the base is actually in the United Arab Emirates just 200 hundred miles from Iran. The Air Force did not specify the exact number or location of the recently-deployed F-22 Raptors, but confirmed that they had been sent to a base in Southwest Asia, a region that includes the UAE.

Political tension is simmering inside Israel’s political circles over latest remarks made by a former spymaster, who said the entity’s leaders are guided by “messianic” impulses and are exaggerating the effectiveness of a possible military attack on Iran. - The Israeli cabinet met on Sunday to express anger over the scathing attack launched by former Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, director Yuval Diskin on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Speaking in a meeting with the residents of Kfar Sava city on Friday, Yuval Diskin said the pair is not worthy of leading the entity as they are making decisions 'based on messianic feelings,' Ha’aretz reported.

"My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war," he said. "I don't believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don't believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings," Diskin added.

The Guardian: "Most Israeli citizens don't want a war with Iran"
Russia Today: Israeli intel ex-chief: Netanyahu’s policy on Iran ‘misleading,’ ‘messianic’