Israel on Monday gave the green light for developers to go ahead with controversial plans to build 1,500 settler homes in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the interior ministry told AFP.

Spokeswoman Efrat Orbach said that the ministry’s planning committee had told the applicants to trim their request to build 1,600 new housing units at Ramat Shlomo to 1,500 and resubmit it “for final approval.” The plan caused a diplomatic rift with Washington when it was first announced in 2010 as US Vice President Joe Biden met top Israeli officials in Jerusalem to boost Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It has lain dormant since August 2011 but two weeks ago the ministry announced that it had been revived. Orbach said that at a Monday’s meeting, the committee heard public objections and told to make changes. “It reduced the plan from 1,600 to 1,500 and now the plan has to be resubmitted and meet the conditions in order to get final approval,” she said. “It could take months more or years.” Ramat Shlomo is a Jewish settlement in the mainly Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem which Israel seized in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by the international community.

Jason Ditz: Israel Announces 1,500 More Settlement Units in East Jerusalem

Gun-free zones are invitations to mass murder, gun-rights advocates argued after a lone gunman's shooting rampage at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, Friday left 20 children and six adults dead. John Lott, author of the controversial 1999 bestseller More Guns, Less Crime, said in an interview with Newsmax.com Saturday it is no coincidence that mass shootings with multiple victims occur repeatedly in designated gun-free zones such as schools, shopping malls, and movie theaters. "The problem is, whether it is the Portland [Oregon] shooting earlier this week, or the Connecticut shooting Friday, or the Sikh temple attack in Wisconsin, time after time these attacks take place in the few areas within a state where permit-concealed handguns are banned," Lott said. "It's not just this year, it's all these years in the past. And at some point people have to recognize that despite the obvious desire to make places safe by banning guns, it unintentionally has the opposite effect."

Jon Rappoport's Blog: Three armed women teachers shot Adam Lanza in a classroom
The Examiner: Media Blackout: Oregon mall shooter was stopped by an armed citizen
Jon Rappoport: WHO WAS ADAM LANZA’S DOCTOR?
Eric Peters: Disarming the American People

At Least 92 Killed on Eve of US Pullout Anniversary - This time last year, the US finally completed its withdrawal of military forces from Iraq, bringing an end to the war’s regular appearances on television news in America. Terror was virtually non-existent when the US invaded in 2003, and many hoped it would be again after they left. But the mess made in Iraq has lingered, with terror attacks actually on the rise late this year, as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and other factions get a shot in the arm from the US-backed civil war in neighboring Syria. The ability of those factions to hit virtually everywhere within Iraq was on display again today, as bombings nationwide killed at least 92, wounded hundreds of others, and marked the deadliest single day in months. Strikes targeted army patrols, checkpoints and police stations, and in some cases apparently random civilians, another day of ugly violence in a nation which has seen a solid decade of them now.

The United States is often considered a world leader when it comes to deploying the latest biometric security and surveillance technologies. But it could have an unlikely new competitor: Ecuador. - According to Russian company the Speech Technology Center, the small Latin American country has successfully completed installation of “the world’s first biometric identification platform, at a nation-wide level, that combines voice and face identification capabilities.” Ecuador's new ID tech is a sign of the increasing affordability of countrywide systems that identify people by their biological characteristics, called biometrics, Slate reported. Ecuador has a gross domestic product of about $127 billion, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Countries with similar GDPs include Iraq and New Zealand.

Batchwiper follows the discovery of Flame and other malware targeting the region.

Iranian computers are being targeted by malware that wipes entire disk partitions clean, according to an advisory issued by that country's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center.

Dubbed Batchwiper, the malware systematically wipes any drive partitions starting with the letters D through I, along with any files stored on the Windows desktop of the user who is logged in when it's executed, according to security researchers who independently confirmed the findings. The reports come seven months after an investigation into another wiper program targeting the region led to the discovery of Flame, the highly sophisticated espionage malware reportedly designed by the US and Israel to spy on Iran. Wiper, as the earlier wiping program is known, shared a file-naming convention almost identical to those used by the state-sponsored Stuxnet and Duqu operations, an indication it may have been related, security researchers said.

German Development Minister Dirk Niebel expressed concern on Monday that Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi was leading the country toward dictatorship. - “There’s the danger that the dictatorial system of the deposed President Mubarak is simply resurrected with other people,” Niebel told the daily Berliner Zeitung. He said in light of the precarious political situations in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, instability in Egypt presented an enormous threat to the region’s security. Niebel said the German government had limited contact with Egyptian officials following Mursi’s recent attempt to extend his presidential powers by decree. Planned debt relief had also been postponed indefinitely. But if Cairo returned to the path of democracy, he said Berlin was prepared to help. “It’s up to the Egyptian government,” Niebel told the paper. Morsi, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, is currently trying to push through an Islamic constitution despite widespread opposition in the population. In a first round of voting marred by low turnout and irregularities, a narrow majority supported the new constitution this weekend.

Syria has rejected the Western claims that Damascus has plans to use chemical weapons against militants, adding that the government is concerned that certain countries may deliver such weapons to the terrorists. - On Monday, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja’afari said in letters to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the foreign-backed militants could use chemical weapons against Syrians and shift the blame to the government, the Associated Press reported. Damascus is "genuinely worried" that Syria’s enemies could provide chemical weapons to armed groups "and then claim they had been used by the Syrian government," he said. The Syrian envoy dismissed the allegations that Damascus intends to use chemical weapons to end the crisis, saying that, “Syria will not under any circumstances use any chemical weapons..." He added that the government is defending its people "from terrorists backed by well-known states, at the forefront of which is the United States of America."

Stephen Lendman: Islamofascist Killers Threaten Syria

Syria's deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad tells Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson the regime is not killing civilians - and warns of "chaos everywhere" if there is western intervention.

Former Prime Minister's role as representative of Middle East Quartet comes in for fiercest criticism yet. - Palestinian officials say Tony Blair shouldn't take it personally, but he should pack up his desk at the Office of the Quartet Representative in Jerusalem and go home. They say his job, and the body he represents, are "useless, useless, useless". Mr Blair became the representative of the Middle East Quartet – the UN, EU, US and Russia – a few weeks after leaving Downing Street. Last week, he visited the region for what he said was the 90th time since being appointed in June 2007. He spends one week a month based in Jerusalem or globetrotting on behalf of the Quartet.

Gilad Atzmon: Tony Blair Is Not Useless At All - Tony actually prefers to dwell in Jerusalem. Being a war criminal, it is much safer for him to stay in the "Jewish capital". Also Tony isn't really useless, he is actually very useful for some - Tony is not a Sabbath Goy, he actually serves his minders 24/7...

Danes are the happiest people in the world. "Once again, the US failed to make the top 10 list of happiest nations in the world, while all the Scandinavian nations did. They all have small stable populations. The US has the highest population growth rate of any industrialized nation." - Denmark tops the OECD ranking with the most satisfied citizens. If one only glances at the numbers, the reason is not obvious. Denmark ranks no higher than fourth in any of the categories that appear to correlate strongly with overall satisfaction. Yet, in addition to the OECD, organizations such as the World Map of Happiness and the World Database of Happiness have consistently put Denmark at the top of their list of the world’s happiest countries. When asked why they are happy, Danes usually give two reasons.

First, they point out that most of their society is not created for the upper class. Just the opposite, nearly all things are catered to the middle class. Hence, there is a sense of contentment, which is key. There is little of the mentality of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ or a 1% vs 99% debate.
Second, they mention the great services that the state provides. This comes at a price—extremely high taxes. But it turns out high taxes have another benefit. People tend to decide on an occupation based on what they like and not based on earning potential. Incomes are somewhat comparable across the country so that a garbage collector lives in the same kind of neighborhood as a doctor. As a general rule, prestige is not so important: the garbage collector gets the same kind of respect as the doctor for a job well done. This creates happiness as well.