CIA Director David Petraeus has announced he will resign from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Petraeus, age 60, released a statement on Friday obtained by CNN confirming that his resignation has already been accepted by US President Barack Obama, who nominated him to replace General Stanley A. McChrystal as the commander of US Forces in Afghanistan in June 2010.

A four-star general, Petraeus retired from the Army in August 2011 and was sworn in as new CIA chief one month later. According to the statement, Petraeus’ stepping down is due to personal reasons, namely an affair he now "admits to having outside of his relationship with his wife".

NBC news: CIA Director David Petraeus resigns, cites extramarital affair
NBC news: Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email

Jason Ditz: CIA Chief Petraeus Resigns, Leaked Classified Info to Girlfriend - 'Nothing to Do With Benghazi,' Military Officials Insist - In a bizarre turn of events, CIA Director David Petraeus has tendered his resignation today after the FBI discovered he was having an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, who is under investigation for improperly accessing classified information. In his resignation letter, Petraeus couched the decision as a function of his moral failing. The real question, however, is not so much about the “extensive access” to his person that Broadwell was given while penning the biography All In, but rather access she may have been given to his personal email account, which was being monitored by the FBI as part of the investigation. So far no charges have been filed and the FBI insists that Petraeus himself wasn’t under investigation.

US officials maintain that the drone was just slightly outside of Iranian airspace. In the end, few nations are liable to blame Iran for acting against a US drone after years of administration bellicosity toward them either way, especially since the drone wasn’t even damaged in the chase. And while the media may be hysterical for a few days about “Iranian aggression” or the fact that the incident happened before the US election but was hushed up, only to emerge immediately thereafter, it is unlikely to lead to any real policy changes; just another example of the ‘background noise’ in the tense US-Iran relationship.

Look out people of planet earth, genetically engineered bugs are here. Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, our technocracy is working ever diligently on genetically engineering every last living cell on the planet – WITHOUT EXCEPTION. What does this mean for life here on earth? Ever hear the expression “soup sandwich?” Well, after these “scientific” geniuses are through with us, that is exactly what all life will be – a genetic soup sandwich, made in a lab, and stamped with a corporate logo embedded in our DNA. If the following report from Testbiotech doesn’t send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will. Get ready world, because nothing will ever be the same. Ever. There is no remediation technique available to clean up genetically engineered mutations released into the wild and spread through horizontal gene transfer.

Why does the Western world feed Africa with one hand while taking from it with the other?

The world's wealthy countries often criticise African nations for corruption - especially that perpetrated by those among the continent's government and business leaders who abuse their positions by looting tens of billions of dollars in national assets or the profits from state-owned enterprises that could otherwise be used to relieve the plight of some of the world's poorest peoples. Yet the West is culpable too in that it often looks the other way when that same dirty money is channelled into bank accounts in Europe and the US. International money laundering regulations are supposed to stop the proceeds of corruption being moved around the world in this way, but it seems the developed world's financial system is far more tempted by the prospect of large cash injections than it should be. Indeed the West even provides the getaway vehicles for this theft, in the shape of anonymous off-shore companies and investment entities, whose disguised ownership makes it too easy for the corrupt and dishonest to squirrel away stolen funds in bank accounts overseas. This makes them nigh on impossible for investigators to trace, let alone recover.

Jason Ditz: European Union Plans Escalation Into Africa

The Mexican government on Friday charged 14 federal police officers with trying to kill two CIA agents and a Mexican marine during an August ambush of an armored U.S. Embassy vehicle. - The off-duty officers, in private vehicles, attacked the agents' marked SUV with AK-47 assault rifles as they drove with a Mexican navy captain to a military training camp south of the capital, the Associated Press says. The Toyota Land Cruiser, bearing diplomatic license plates, was riddled with 152 bullets, wounding the two Americans. The Attorney General's announcement did not state a motive for the attack. Although the two Americans were identified only as Embassy "functionaries," U.S. and Mexican sources have said the pair were CIA operatives. Here's an account from the Mexican daily La Jornada.

Myanmar’s government forces walk past the homes of
Rohingya Muslims set on fire by Buddhist extremists in a
village in Rakhine State.

The UN human rights chief has urged Myanmar to allow Muslim Rohingya to become citizens after deadly state-sponsored ethnic and sectarian violence in recent months in the western state of Rakhine.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said at the Bali Democracy Forum in Indonesia that the government of Myanmar should take necessary steps towards granting Rohingyas citizens rights and equal treatment. She also called on Myanmar to change its existing laws to allow the Rohingyas to become citizens. "This should include a review of the citizenship law to ensure that Rohingya have equal access to citizenship," Pillay said on Friday. She emphasized that the UN was concerned over the exclusion of the Rohingya from Myanmar’s reform process. The remarks come a day after several international activists called for the deployment of UN peacekeepers in western Myanmar to end the ongoing deadly violence against minority Muslims. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued separate statements, calling for Myanmar to take action to protect the Rohingya Muslim population against extremist Buddhists. The United States and the European Union have come under fire for their silence on the ongoing bloodshed.

America’s cyberwar is already seeing collateral damage, and it’s hitting the country’s own billion-dollar companies. Oil giants Chevron say the Stuxnet computer virus made by the US to target Iran infected their systems as well. - California-based Chevron, a Fortune 500 company that’s among the biggest corporations in the world, admits this week that they discovered the Stuxnet worm on their systems back in 2010. Up until now, Chevron managed to make their finding a well-kept secret, and their disclosure published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday marks the first time a US company has come clean about being infected by the virus intended for Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Mark Koelmel of the company’s earth sciences department says that they are likely to not be the last, though.