The Washington Post revealed Wednesday in a front-page story that a woman currently running the clandestine service had signed off on a controversial 2005 decision to "destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture." - The woman, the first to hold the position in the agency's history, replaced John Bennett last month on an acting basis. Bennett's name wasn't kept secret when he was promoted to chief in July 2010. But the Washington Post didn't identify the woman, noting that the high-ranking official "remains undercover and cannot be named." While the acting clandestine service chief has not been named, her chances of being appointed on a permanent basis under new CIA director John Brennan could be in jeopardy, given the Washington Post report of her role in the tapes' destruction.

WikiLeaks has announced a press conference scheduled for April 8, generating speculation about a possible release of a new stash of classified material or a project somehow connected to Assange’s political party in Australia. The group announced the new “Special Project K” on Twitter and installed a countdown to the event planned to be held in the National Press Club in Washington on 8 April. No other details have been given about the upcoming media occasion. The Press Club’s website doesn’t give any information about the event. It is also unclear who will give the press conference, as Assange is still sitting firmly in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. [...] It is speculated that “Project K” may be linked to Assange’s Australian party which he launched last month, as it needs to gather 500 members before it can officially register with the Australian Electoral Commission ahead of September’s election. Or that the press conference could announce a new release of classified materials exposing government secrets worldwide.

A company belonging to the relatives of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has reportedly moved millions of euros out of the country a few days before a controversial levy proposal by the Eurogroup was declared. - According to a recent report by the Cypriot newspaper Haravgi, the company A.Loutsios & Sons Ltd. co-owned by the president’s son-in-law, withdrew 21 million euros worth of promissory notes from Laiki Bank on March 12 and 13. The withdrawal was completed three days before eurozone finance ministers agreed to grant a 10-billion-euro bailout (USD 13-billion) to Cyprus during a Eurogroup meeting in an attempt to save the country from bankruptcy. In order to secure the loan, Bank of Cyprus is set to confiscate up to 60 percent of the deposits of over 100,000 euros (USD 128,000). The measure is part of the conditions that have to be met in order to secure the assistance package from the "troika" of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union.

Russia Today: Cyprus’ President-related company transfers €21mn to London prior to bailout agreement

Rob Kall: [...] I thought that collapse of the Soviet Union was a pretty good thing. Why are you saying it's so bad for the US?

Paul Craig Roberts: Well, you know, Rob, it led to that Neoconservative nonsense about the end of History, which of course unleashed the notion of American hegemony over the world, and the ideology behind all of the wars and the aggression that the United States has been conducting since the George W. Bush administration. But I'm speaking in the book economically; and what happened economically because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the high speed internet is that it made it possible for Western corporations (corporations in the United States, Europe) to arbitrage labor across national borders.

In other words, when the Soviets collapsed, it had a big impact on thinking in Communist China and Socialist India. Their response to the failure of the Soviet Union was to open their vast, underutilized labor to Western capital. So the corporations found out that they could produce for their home market offshore in India or China, dramatically drop the labor cost, and thereby dramatically increase the profits flowing in capital gains to shareholders and in performance bonuses to executives.

So the collapse of the Soviet Union began the arbitrage of of labor, and it ended up separating Americans from the production of the goods and services that they consume. The economy has been dead in the water ever since, and the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan tried to substitute - for the missing growth in consumer income in employment - consumer indebtedness. So we had the rise in consumer indebtedness, the real estate bubble, the various financial frauds, and the ongoing financial crisis.

The US has announced the redeployment of several F-22 stealth fighter jets to the Korean peninsula. The region has been in a state of high tension since last week’s flyover of B-2 bombers that prompted Pyongyang to declare “state of war” with the South. - While the Korean Peninsula remains in a “state of war” announced by Pyongyang and the country’s ballistic rockets are allegedly targeting American bases in the region and even the US mainland, the US has decided to continue its military drills with South Korea as planned. The advanced radar-evading F-22 Raptors were redeployed from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa to the Osan Air Base, the main US base in South Korea.

Jason Ditz: US Ups Ante With Stealth Fighters Near N. Korea
Alex Lantier: US sends fighter-bombers to Korea amid rising risk of war
AWIP: Russia warns against military activity near North Korea

An outspoken investigative journalist and former CNN correspondent has once again stressed that the US-based network is engaged in spreading Western propaganda against Iran and Syria. - Syria’s SANA news agency quoted Amber Lyon as saying that when she was working for the CNN, she received orders to send false news or exclude certain information which the US administration did not approve of with the aim of inciting public opinion in favor of launching an offensive on Iran and Syria. Lyon added that the mainstream US media outlets intentionally work to create propaganda against Iran to garner public support for a military invasion against it.

A British peer has, in explosive revelations, said that London’s spy agency MI6 murdered the first democratically-elected Prime Minister of Congo, once described as “the most important assassination of the 20th century”. - Lord David Edward Lea made the disclosure in a letter to the editor in the March 21 edition of the London Review of Books (LRB) in response to a question made in a new book published in January. The question is made by Calder Walton in his book Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire. Walton writes: “The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba … ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know”. Sir Lea wrote in his letter that

“actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do” know that Britain plotted to kill Lumumba. “It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park… She had been consul and first secretary in Leopoldville, now [capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo] Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there,” Sir Lea said. “I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it’.”

Details have emerged in recent weeks of the full scale of the debt crisis confronting households in Ireland. The large quantity of mortgage debt, which totals €17 billion for owner-occupied properties alone in a country of just 4.5 million people, equating to €3,777 per person, is creating concerns about the potential for a renewed financial collapse. A report from the Central Bank of Ireland stated that over 140,000 households were in some form of mortgage arrears. Including the buy-to-let market, the total outstanding debt stood at €25 billion. The report showed that more than 23,000 households had been in debt for at least two years and that the total overdue payments were at least €3 billion. Some 11.5 percent of households were in arrears by more than 90 days.

Two bills are currently moving through state legislatures in Texas and Kansas which would tie welfare benefits to mandatory drug testing. A recently-passed Kansas bill goes a step further, requiring drug tests for unemployment recipients as well. Previous attempts by state legislatures to welfare benefits to drug screening in both Florida and Georgia failed, because they called for testing regardless of whether an individual recipient appeared to be a drug user.