Days after the personal information of over 4,000 banking executives was leaked to the Web by a group affiliated with the hacktivist movement Anonymous, the Federal Reserve admits to having suffered an online security breach. - Spokespeople for the Fed alerted customers on Tuesday that private information stored online was compromised during a weekend hack, all but confirming the source for a trove of data published two days earlier by the loose-knit Anonymous collective. "The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product," a spokeswoman for the bank tells Reuters. Currently, the Fed maintains that the incident was mild in nature, “did not affect critical operations” of the bank and has been resolved. An admission from the Fed does suggest, however, that hackers are capable of compromising data that is presumably well protected.

A Native American man criticized protesters at an Arizona rally against illegal immigration, calling them the real “illegals” for invading his country and killing Native Americans when Europeans first settled on US soil.

“You’re all f*cking illegal. You’re all illegal,” the Native American man yelled at the protesters, who had gathered in Tucson, Arizona to demonstrate their opposition to illegal immigration by Central and South Americans. “We didn’t invite none of you here. We’re the only native Americans here.” Some applauded the man for pointing out the protesters’ hypocrisy, who at one point immigrated to the US themselves or are descendants of immigrants. The Native American man, who was pushing his baby through town in a stroller, staged his own protest when he came across the rally. “Get on with your bogus arguments. We’re the only legal ones here,” he yelled. One protester was caught standing near the angry Native American and became the target of his criticism. The man was carrying a small American flag and [an anti-immigration sign][and the Native American said:] “We should have put that sign up when you sons-of-bitches came.” Pointing towards the American flag held by the protester, the Native American said that it “represents blood spilled by Native Americans, protecting this land from the invaders.” “You don’t want to hear the God damn truth!” he yelled. “Get on, bitch! All the Native Americans you killed, you plant your houses here. That’s the truth.” [- Amen to that!]

At least five persons were killed when US drone targeted a house located at Spinwam of North Waziristan on Wednesday, Geo News reported. Sources said that the house was set at fire, as six missiles were fired from the drone.

PressTV: Secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia exposed - The existence of a previously secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia has come to light amid President Barack Obama’s bid to install his counterterrorism adviser and architect of his covert targeted-killing policy, John Brennan, as the next CIA director. CIA terror drones flown out of a secret American base in Saudi Arabia were used to carry out the “only strike intentionally targeting a US citizen” to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son in a 2011 attack in Yemen, The Washington Post reports on Wednesday.

Gwadar Port is a warm-water, deep-sea port situated on
the Arabian Sea at Gwadar in Balochistan province of
Pakistan. (Wikipedia)

Besides giving approval to Strategic Trade Policy Framework 2012-15, the federal cabinet gave formal go-ahead to Pak-Iran Gas Pipeline Project and handing over of Gwadar Port management from Port of Singapore to a Chinese company.

Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said the cabinet had accorded approval to handing over of Gwadar Port management from Port of Singapore to China Overseas Holding to make the port operational for the collective betterment of the people of Balochistan.To a question, he said it was the decision of Port of Singapore which was earlier tasked to make the port functional and the federal cabinet had just accorded approval to the deal.“Both the companies have settled their deal,” Kaira said, without giving a timetable for the transfer. Kaira said that Singapore’s PSA International could not develop or operate Gwadar ‘as desired’ and said he hoped that under new management the port would soon contribute to country’s flagging economy.“The Chinese will make more investment to make the project operational,” Kaira said.Kaira said the cabinet had also given formal approval to the Pak-Iran Gas Pipeline Project and also allocated funds for the project while a four-member committee, headed by the federal finance minister, had been constituted to monitor progress on the project.

W. G. Tarpley: The Battle for Balochistan: Iran Nabs Top NATO Terrorist with Help from Pakistan

A political analyst says the United States is “murdering Iranians” in cold blood by imposing tough sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Press TV reports.

“We are treating Iran very terribly. We need to end the military terrorism threats. We need to end all sanctions immediately,” Paul Sheldon Foote, a professor at California State University, told Press TV in an interview on Monday. “We’re murdering Iranians who fly in Boeing jets because they can’t get spare parts. We are murdering Iranians who can’t get medicine or can’t afford it because we’ve destroyed the foreign exchange rate,” Foote stated. “We certainly didn’t behave that way with the Soviet Union when [Soviet leader] Nikita Khrushchev threatened to bury us. We kept diplomatic relations and trade with the Soviet Union,” Foote recalled.

The American professor denounced the US call for talks with Iran amid its threats of war and further sanctions as “childish and outrageous," noting that "actions speak louder than words."

The results of a new study indicate that suicide rates among veterans in the United States are increasing. - An estimated 22 military veterans take their lives every day in America, according to the study helmed by Robert Bossarte, an epidemiologist and researcher who works with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “While the percentage of all suicides reported as Veterans has decreased, the number of suicides has increased,” the conclusion of the study stated. Specific trends were observed during the course of the study regarding the age and gender of veterans who most frequently committed suicide. [...] The study was conducted over the course of two years, and is, according to Bossarte, indicative mainly of veteran suicides playing a part in what is a national problem.

This is a documentary about the struggle for justice for victims of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The film follows the work of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) as it attempts to achieve justice for those victims it represents. Some of those victims of Israel’s military offensive of 2008-2009 (‘Operation Cast Lead’) tell their stories. It illustrates the perpetuated impunity that exists within the Israeli legal system. Of the 490 criminal complaints PCHR filed to the Israeli Military Prosecutor, on behalf of 626 victims, the vast majority remained unanswered or without any form of investigation or prosecution.

As the Israeli legal system fails Palestinian victims, PCHR also resorts to the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, filing cases in foreign jurisdictions to seek the investigation and prosecution of suspected Israeli war criminals. One of such suspects is General Doran Almog, the commanding General of the Israeli forces in Gaza from 2000 to 2003. On September 10, 2005, Almog became well known internationally for escaping arrest for suspected war crimes in Heathrow airport. This short film follows the case of Almog and the use of the law universal jurisidiction to achieve justice for Gaza. The failed arrest sparked a international debate on the politics that are prioritized over international justice. Almog’s near arrest changed the course of history for future generations of Israelis and for a few human rights lawyers it challenged one of the biggest militaries in the world simply by using the rule of law. This documentary was funded by PCHR and Trocaire, and produced by Irish film maker Dearbhla Glynn.

His story reads like a political thriller. Once a confidant of Moammar Gadhafi and then his sworn enemy, he led a band of Libyan exiles trying to overthrow the Libyan regime before being spirited in secrecy to the United States when things went bad. His name is Khalifa Haftar. He has lived in Virginia for 20 years but now he’s back in Libya, trying to knock the rebel force into some kind of shape.

The US Department of Justice on Monday filed a civil suit in Los Angeles charging Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, the world’s biggest credit rating agency, with defrauding investors and the public by inflating the credit ratings it gave to subprime mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. - The suit was announced Tuesday at a Washington press conference presided over by Attorney General Eric Holder. He indicated that the government would seek damages of at least $5 billion from S&P, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have joined the federal suit. [...] Whatever the outcome of the suit filed on Monday, the Obama administration has systematically worked, and will continue to work, to shield the banks and their accomplices from any accountability for their crimes, and create conditions for Wall Street to make more money than ever.

Britain’s intelligence agencies are planning to install black box-style surveillance devices in the country's telecommunications network in order to monitor the UK public’s online activity, a new report says. - According to a report published on Tuesday by the Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the devices referred to as "probes", are meant to underpin a nationwide surveillance regime to log nearly everything Britons do online. The report, which was carried out into the use of communications data by the intelligence and security agencies, said snooping devices will utilize Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology, as part of the coalition government's efforts to increasingly monitor web traffic, including Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. The committee noted that existing laws "do not cover the problems of emerging technology," and that there should be a "new approach."

Russia Today: UK planning broad online domestic spying regime

A confidential Justice Department white paper on the legality of “lethal operations” against US citizens made public Monday night argues that virtually unlimited power is placed in the hands of the American president to order the assassination of perceived enemies of the state anywhere around the globe. While spelling out certain conditions that would purportedly make the targeted killing of an American citizen legal—such as the target being an “operational leader of Al Qaeda or an associated force” who poses an imminent threat of violent attack and whose capture is not feasible—the paper goes on to provide arguments that essentially render these conditions meaningless and non-restrictive. “This is a chilling document,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said of the 16-page memo Tuesday. “Basically, it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen … It recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”

Stephen Lendman: Obama Declares Global Cyberwar
Bill Van Auken: Justice Department memo sanctions state assassinations of US citizens
AWIP: Hacker in chief: Obama given "right" to launch 'preemptive' cyberattacks
Bush and Obama Have Set Us Back 800 Years: The White House is “Judge, Jury and Executioner” of Both Drone and Cyber-Attacks (Washington's Blog)