According to residents of Quincy, Massachusetts a low flying plane has been hovering over their town non-stop for the last several weeks, leaving many puzzled as to why it’s there. - No one in the Federal government is talking, and the FAA says they are aware of the “authorized” flight pattern but are not releasing additional details, other than to say, “we have to be very careful this time.” Suggesting that the government is conducting surveillance is often disregarded as conspiracy theory, but in this case, it may be right on target.

Testimony, Documents Link US Citizen to Killings. - Two months after the initial Afghan government demands for the US to withdraw its forces from Wardak Province, the troops are still there, and the government is still unhappy about it. But new details may mean an additional push after their first effort failed to convince the US to go. Afghan officials now say that they have a specific suspect, an Afghan-born American citizen named Zakaria Kandahari, who they have implicated in at least 15 different killings or disappearances, and who they have on video torturing a detainee. Kandahari appears to have been affiliated with the Special Forces in Nerkh District, which were the source of a lot of complaints. Among the 15 he is accused of killing is Mohammad Qassim, whose body was found in a trash pit just outside the base after being detained.

A California father of four died Wednesday shortly after a group of police allegedly beat him with batons as he lay defenseless on the sidewalk. Cops, before confiscating witness' cameras, also reportedly unleashed a canine unit on him. - David Sal Silva, 33, allegedly resisted when police approached him to ask if he was who neighbors called about to complain of an intoxicated man in the area. The officers called for backup and, witnesses told the Bakersfield Californian, Silva was soon being beaten in the face and upper body by as many as nine policemen and their batons. At least one of the cops reportedly held a German Shepherd on a leash nearby. Witnesses who had recorded the events on their cell phone cameras had the devices confiscated by officers, who claimed the footage was part of a police investigation that could yield evidence. The Sherriff’s Department has released the names of seven officers who were on the scene, but the identities of the California Highway Patrol police who were also there have not yet been made public.

Israel established 11 new diplomatic missions worldwide between 2010 and 2012, the country’s Finance Ministry reported. Among them is a diplomatic mission in the Persian Gulf, but officials refuse to disclose its location. The Finance Ministry’s budget for the next year, to be submitted for Cabinet approval this week, has revealed that Israel has created almost a dozen new missions around the world since 2010. The Financial Ministry’s website mentioned Embassies in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan), Wellington (New Zealand), Accra (Ghana), Tirana (Albania) and the Caribbean, as well as consulates in Guangzhou (China), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Munich (Germany) and St. Petersburg (Russia), and a “diplomatic delegate to the Pacific.” The ministry, however, refused to divulge information on a diplomatic mission reportedly set up in the Persian Gulf. “We cannot comment on this matter,” the Foreign Ministry said, as quoted by Haaretz. To date, Israel has no formal diplomatic relations with the Arab Gulf States, comprised of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Syria has denied allegations that it was behind two car bombings which killed 46 people in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli. - Syria Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi told a news conference on Sunday that his country "did not commit and would never commit such an act because our values would not allow that." He blamed Ankara for the Saturday bombings in Reyhanli as well as the ongoing unrest in Syria by facilitating the flow of arms, explosives, vehicles, militants and money across the border into the Arab country.

Thomas Gaist: Bombings rock Turkish-Syrian border - Zoubi also denounced Turkey’s decision to give arms and safe passage to terrorist opposition forces backed by the US, Europe, and the Persian Gulf states. Turkey has been a crucial support of the US proxy war in Syria, providing bases for staging and logistical support to the opposition’s offensives and terror bombings in nearby northern Syria. “They [the Turkish regime] turned houses of civilian Turks, their farms, their property into a centre and passageway for terrorist groups from all over the world,” Zoubi said. “They facilitated and still are the passage of weapons and explosives and money and murderers to Syria.” Zoubi said that Erdogan should “step down as a killer and a butcher.”

SANA: Al-Zoubi: Turkish Government is to Blame for al-Rihaniyeh Bombings
PressTV: Turkish fighter jet crashes near Syria border

Pakistani voters decisively repudiated the country’s outgoing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government, which for five years served as a pliant instrument of US imperialism, extending the AfPak War across northwestern Pakistan and imposing IMF austerity measures. - Official results of Saturday’s national and four provincial assembly elections are not expected for several more days. But unofficial partial returns indicate that the PPP’s traditional electoral rival, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N), will obtain a strong plurality or possibly a majority of the seats in the National Assembly. The PML (N) also retained control over the government of the Punjab, home to 60 percent of Pakistan’s 180 million people.

Hussain Yasa: Pakistan: Elections with Fragmented mandate [Saturday 11 May 2013]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation. The organization is called Monsanto. - Monsanto is, of course, the world's largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange -- which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans. This chemical company -- responsible for environmental disasters that have destroyed entire towns, and a driving force behind the international waves of suicides among farmers whose lives it has helped ruin -- has monopolized our food system largely by taking over regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As reported by local media, billionaires are gathering on the island of Kiawah, located near South Carolina. The story broke on May 10, but the meeting was reported to have started on the 8th. “Suspicion was raised when nearly 20 very expensive jets were seen lined up at the Charleston International Airport on Johns Island,” reported WBTW. The meeting is reportedly being led by Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The public has been kept away from the hotel which is hosting the meeting. Other reported attendees include Michael Bloomberg of New York, Oprah Winfrey and Billionaire Warren Buffet. The potential Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush is also reported to be attending. A similar meeting took place in 2009 in New York at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Familiar names were in attendance including Bloomberg, Gates, and Winfrey. The London Times reported that the meeting discussed plans to “curb overpopulation.” As to the secrecy of this 2009 meeting, a guest said, “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.”

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned against Washington™s military intervention in the Syria, describing the move a “mistake.” - Gates said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” on Sunday that US military involvement in Syria™s crisis would be a “mistake” and that the outcome would be unpredictable and messy, AFP reported. “I thought it was a mistake in Libya, and I think it is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly in Syria a year ago or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes,” said Gates, who was US Defense Secretary in 2011 when the United States joined a NATO-led air operation in Libya to topple Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. His comments come as reports say American senators are pushing the Obama administration to intervene in Syria in favor of the militants fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad by stepping up military support for them.

A new study, yet to receive any media attention, reveals the "leukemogenic" properties of the Bt toxin biopesticides engineered into the vast majority of GMO food crops already within the US food supply. - Last September, the causal link between cancer and genetically modified food was confirmed in a French study, the first independent long-term animal feeding study of its kind. The disturbing details can be found here: New Study Finds GM Corn and Roundup Causes Cancer In Rats. Now, a new study published in the Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic Diseases indicates that the biopesticides engineered into GM crops known as Bacillus Thuringensis (Bt) or Cry-toxins, may also contribute to blood abnormalities from anemia to hematological malignancies (blood cancers) such as leukemia.