As diplomats prepared for a weekend meeting to revive stalled Syria peace efforts, regional tensions swirling around the 16-month-old crisis ticked higher on Thursday as Turkey said it was stationing antiaircraft batteries on the common border following the downing of one of its warplanes. - Word of the border fortification coincided with further suggestions within Syria that insurgents seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad were operating with increasing audacity in an and around the capital, Damascus. The state news agency, SANA, said an explosion rocked the parking lot of the Palace of Justice, a government court building, on Thursday, sending a plume of black smoke into the sky and injuring three people, just a day after a disputed attack on a pro-government satellite television station 14 miles south of the city.

Eric Draitser: War At Any Cost: Another Manufactured Pretext for War with Syria

The world's first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night. - The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics. So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three 'parents'. Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey. The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive. Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults --two women and one man. The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their 'germline' means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring. Altering the human germline - in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species - is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world's scientists.

Does this look like an embassy? Why, we've seen fortresses less
impressive than this one. Using the "duck test", it probably is one
too. - Question is, why would the US want to have a fortress here?

The State Department is planning to spend up to $115 million to upgrade the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, already its biggest and most expensive in the world, according to pre-solicitation notices published this month.

Remember, it has been 3 1 / 2 years since American diplomats moved into the 104-acre, $700 million facility and only four months after State officials in February talked about trying to cut back the U.S. presence there. State’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) put out a statement Wednesday saying new planning began after it was determined there needed to be “a larger population on the Baghdad Embassy compound, due to the consolidation of satellite diplomatic facilities and property around Baghdad.” The statement added, “The consolidation takes the overall diplomatic property in Baghdad down by one-third, but increases the personnel working and living on the Embassy compound.” The compound sits in the heart of Baghdad’s International Zone and houses 1,350 U.S. government employees who work under the ambassador’s authority.

New Zealand's High Court has ruled that the police raid on Kim Dotcom’s house was unlawful along with seizure of the hard drives that were later cloned and illegally taken from New Zealand to the US by the FBI. - The warrants issued to search Dotcom’s mansion were general and did not clearly describe the offences they stipulated, ruled Justice Helen Winkelmann. “They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid,” she explained. The New Zealand police force is currently holding talks with the Crown Law on the next course of action and has refrained from commenting on the judgment. The ruling released on Thursday by Justice Helen Winkelmann insists the warrants were too vague concerning the scope of the search and the items authorized to be seized by police. In addition, the information copied from the internet tycoon’s hard drives by the FBI was taken unlawfully as Kim Dotcom never gave his consent said Judge Winkelmann.

3 News: Judge: Search and seizure at Dotcom mansion illegal
New Zealand Herald: Dotcom lawyer: 'The search warrants were unlawful and the FBI sending the clones to the USA was also unlawful.'

About half of young Germans are unsure whether the Nazi state was a dictatorship – and even more are not sure whether the socialist East German regime was one, a new study shows. - The widespread ignorance is described in a study called, “Late Victory of the Dictatorships?” conducted by researchers at Berlin’s Free University. “This is shocking,” said study author Klaus Schroeder. More than 7,500 school pupils aged around 15 were asked how they viewed the various governments that have ruled Germany. Only around half were definite that the Nazi government was a dictatorship. Just over a third were certain that the former East German government was also a dictatorship. And about half said the former West German government was a democracy, while around 60 percent were sure that the current united German government was democratic. “The low estimation of historical knowledge is clearly having an effect.” The students most able to tell the difference between dictatorship and democracy were in the former eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony Anhalt, while those with the least idea were from the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Here is the truth behind the middle east conflict. Ask yourself: Why aren't Americans shown these honest facts on any of the over 1,700 major media outlets? And WHAT OTHER INFO IS BEING WITHELD?

Three-in-four Pakistanis consider the United States an enemy country, a new survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Global Attitudes Project indicates. - The Pew survey, which was published on its website on Wednesday, said that last year 69 percent used to hate the US but in 2012 the figure jumped to 74 percent. The survey also showed an exceptionally low regard for US President Barack Obama among Pakistanis. They believe Obama is as bad a leader as former US President George W. Bush had been during his final year in office. US-Pakistan relations have been strained over the civilian casualties caused by the non-UN-sanctioned US drone attacks, and over a number of other issues.