At least two people are dead and dozens injured – including up to 10 with amputated limbs – after at least two bombs tore through the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to the Boston Police Department.

The simultaneous explosions, and reports of two other unexploded devices found near the scene raised suspicions that the blasts, just before 3 p.m., could be part of a terrorist attack. Intelligence officials told The Associated Press two unexploded devices were being dismantled, and reports of a third "controlled" explosion near the JFK Library in the Columbia Point section of Dorchester, may have been an intentional detonation supervised by authorities. Competitors and race organizers were crying as they fled the bloody chaos, while some witnesses reported seeing victims with lost limbs.

USA Today: Explosions rock Boston Marathon finish
MercuryNews.com: Security beefed up worldwide after bombs at Boston Marathon
CTV News: Boston explosion: Two dead, 23 injured, other bombs discovered

At least four people have been killed in an attack carried out by a US assassination drone in northwestern Pakistan, Press TV reports. - On Sunday, the US killer drone fired two missiles at a house in Datta Khel area located some 35 kilometers (22 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan. Officials say the house was completely destroyed in the attack. Pakistan’s tribal regions are attacked by US assassination drones almost regularly with Washington claiming that militants are the targets. However, casualty figures clearly indicate that civilians are the main victims. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism said in a report released in February that the United States has carried out more than 360 assassination drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004, killing nearly 3,500 people.

Webster Tarpley/PressTV: US seeks to divide Pakistan through drones, Afghan war - Video

Jason Ditz: US Drone Strike Kills Five in North Waziristan (Pakistan) - Six drones were involved in the attack, according to locals, and they fired either two or three missiles in the attack, depending on the accounts. The missiles set the house on fire, and the bodies were burned beyond recognition within. It is the latest in a long line of US drone strikes against North Waziristan, and the latest in which the victims have been dubbed “suspected militants” without any apparent idea who any of them are.

The Greanville Post: Lower your blood pressure and stop sweating the IRS deadline

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said he will not accept Chavista candidate Nicolas Maduro’s victory until a full audit of the election results is carried out. Capriles has slammed the ruling party with allegations of election fraud. - With the vote split almost equally acting President Nicolas Maduro has won Venezuelan presidential election to replace Hugo Chavez. Venezuelan election authorities have announced that with 99.12% of votes counted Maduro is leading with 50.66 per cent of the votes cast. Capriles is dragging behind with 49.07 per cent. Around 77 per cent of the eligible voters cast their ballots, officials said.

Just Like the Financial Crisis, the Gulf Oil Spill, and All Other Crises, Government Covers Up Instead of Addressing the Real Problems. - 2 weeks after the Fukushima accident, we reported that the government responded to the nuclear accident by trying to raise acceptable radiation levels and pretending that radiation is good for us. Since then, massive radiation has been released on a daily basis from Fukushima… for years. And there are so many new leaks that even the mainstream press is starting to admit that Fukushima was never fixed. Radiation from Fukushima is slamming Tokyo, as well as the West Coast of North America.

Dead sea lions washing on shore in California appear to have died from radiation poisoning
Study: Fukushima radiation fallout has devastated health of US babies on West Coast and in other areas

Months of increased tension at the Guantanamo Bay prison boiled over into a clash between guards and detainees Saturday as the military closed a communal section of the facility and moved its inmates into single cells. - The violence erupted during an early morning raid that military officials said was necessary because prisoners had covered up security cameras and windows as part of a weekslong protest and hunger strike over their indefinite confinement and conditions at the U.S. base in Cuba. Prisoners fought guards with makeshift weapons that included broomsticks and mop handles when troops arrived to move them out of a communal wing of the section of the prison known as Camp 6, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a military spokesman. Guards responded by firing four "less-than-lethal rounds," he said. There were no serious injuries from the rounds, which included a modified shotgun shell that fires small rubber pellets as well as a type of bean-bag projectile, said Army Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba.

I was planning on talking about whisky, but Ken Loach was more interested in talking about the end of capitalism. Loach is a legendary filmmaker in British cinema, known for his gritty, brilliantly crafted dramas like "Kes," "Poor Cow," and "My Name is Joe." He is also an unapologetic leftist, something of a rarity these days. His films are in turns touching, troubling, and occasionally funny, but they are all rigorously from the point of view of the working class. This week, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, Loach issued a fiery full-throated indictment of Britain's first female prime minister, which garnered headlines and turned into an Internet meme. "Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times. Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed -- this is her legacy," he wrote in a statement. Thatcher famously steamrolled that country's labor unions, while privatizing its numerous state-owned companies. It's not surprising that they didn't exactly see eye to eye. After rattling off some of her failings -- like having tea with Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, calling Nelson Mandela a criminal, and generally making life miserable for Britain's working class -- Loach ends his statement with a blistering, meme-worthy punch line. "How should we honour her? Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she would have wanted."

What Privacy? CISPA Passes in Closed Door Vote.

CISPA just passed a closed door vote of the House Intelligence Committee 18 to 2. In 2012 the Internet community rose up in opposition to this bill, irritating many members of Congress. As we said last year, the powers that be were going to come back again to try to get it passed. And so they have. Washington wants to be able to put the lock down on the last free place in the world, the Internet, and eradicate any sense of Internet privacy if it can. It looks like we must fight them back again.

CISPA, the controversial bill that greatly threatens the privacy of anyone online, is making its way to Congress after passing in a closed-door vote by the House Intelligence Committee by a huge margin. There were no changes to the language to protect personal privacy. How is this happening after the internet so loudly cried foul, and why is it being ignored in the press? Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down.

The Jordanian government has reportedly agreed to be in charge of the huge Saudi Arabia-funded push to arm Syrian rebels, a move that inserts the nation into an even more direct role in the rebellion. - Jordan already hosts a major US military training effort for the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), and is hoping to parlay its existing ties with the rebel movement into more direct influence on where the weapons go. The Hashemite Kingdom seems to be resigned to having no ties with the Assad government, but is said to view the growing prospect of an al-Qaeda-backed Islamist regime in Syria as an even bigger threat, and is hoping to prop up more “moderate” portions of the rebellion. In the end though, those moderates are still fighting arm in arm with the Jabhat al-Nusra and others, and it remains to be seen if arming one group but not the other will really keep arms from getting spread around.

Pepe Escobar: The Islamic Emirate of Syriastan
Tony Cartalucci: World Must Unite Against US-Saudi-Israeli Proxy War in Syria

Three BBC journalists have been found to have used the London School of Economics for a cover story to enter North Korea to film a Panorama documentary. - The Commentator has learned that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the British publicly owned news organisation, has forged student credentials for its journalists in order that they could gain access to the secretive North Korea. An e-mail from the director of the London School of Economics (LSE) on Saturday stated that the BBC used the visit to plant three journalists inside North Korea at a risk to the university and its students on the trip. The letter states that a trip organised by the LSE's 'Grimshaw Club' was used as cover by BBC journalists without the knowledge or consent of the London university. "The School authorities had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning," it said.

The victory is a long time coming. - The decree banning GMO foods was drafted in 2008. It not only bans GMO crops like Monsanto’s BT-Corn, but also expands on a prior law that required all foods on supermarket shelves that contain GMOs to be labeled. Those GMO containing foods will now be completely banned. After being subjected to public discussion, being amended, and finally passed in the Peruvian congress in April of 2011, the ban is finally going into effect this week. A study done in April of 2011 by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC) tested 13 products purchased in major supermarkets and shops in Lima, Peru. Unsurprisingly, 10 out of 13 tested positive for containing GMOs.

Hundreds of poor people waiting outside of a closed grocery store for the possibility of getting the remaining food is not the picture of the “American Dream.” Yet on March 23, outside the Laney Walker Supermarket in Augusta, Ga., that is exactly what happened. - Residents filled the parking lot with bags and baskets hoping to get some of the baby food, canned goods, noodles and other non-perishables. But a local church never came to pick up the food, as the storeowner prior to the eviction said they had arranged. By the time the people showed up for the food, what was left inside the premises—as with any eviction—came into the ownership of the property holder, SunTrust Bank. The bank ordered the food to be loaded into dumpsters and hauled to a landfill instead of distributed. The people that gathered had to be restrained by police as they saw perfectly good food destroyed. Local Sheriff Richard Roundtree told the news “a potential for a riot was extremely high.” “People got children out here that are hungry, thirsty,” local resident Robertstine Lambert told Fox54 in Augusta. “Why throw it away when you could be issuing it out?”

Israel’s leaders, in private exchanges with senior US officials in 1975, flatly denied that Israel possessed nuclear weapons, and foreign minister Yigal Allon also claimed Israel had no intention to build such weapons, according to diplomatic cables published this week by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. This despite the fact that, according to foreign reports, Israel is now believed to have begun full-scale production of nuclear weapons soon after the 1967 war, and to have stockpiled a number of nuclear weapons by the early 1970s.

Israel Hayom: Peres: ‘No doubt Obama will attack Iran if nuclear talks fail’

[truthdig] ■ In the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, stones have played a central role. The stone was the symbol of the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993), as children as young as eight years old rained their projectiles down on the occupying Israeli army. Soldiers often responded with live ammunition, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians, about 200 of them children. Youths with stones confronting soldiers with Galils and M-16s: suddenly Palestinian children took center stage as David against the Israeli Goliath. ■ The image pricked the conscence of many Israelis, and citizens and governments around the world, and ultimately helped force Israeli leaders, including the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to the negotiating table. (The Oslo agreement they forged with Palestinian negotiators proved to be disastrous; nevertheless, there was a palpable sense during the first intifada that the stone would lead to Palestinian liberation.). ■ Today the stone remains a part of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation, which is more entrenched than ever. And while growing numbers of Palestinians advocate nonviolent resistance as the most promising path to a just peace, others strongly defend the right of Palestinians to throw stones as a legitimate act of political resistance against an illegal 47-year military occupation. One of them is an Israeli journalist.