Five years after the near-collapse of the nation’s financial system, the economy continues a slow recovery marred by high unemployment, hesitant consumers and sluggish business investment. ● Many of the top Wall Street bankers who were largely responsible for the disaster — and whose companies either collapsed or accepted billions in government bailouts — are also unemployed. But since they walked away from the disaster with millions, they’re juggling their ample free time between mansions and golf, skiing and tennis. Meantime, the major banks that survived the crisis, largely because they were saved with taxpayer money after being deemed “too big to fail,” are now bigger and more powerful than ever.

The United States is reportedly preparing a list of targets for possible military strikes in Kenya and some other African countries.
● Former US general Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said the strikes are aimed at targeting militants involved in Sunday's deadly attack on a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi.
● Somalia’s Al-Shabab fighters have reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it is in retaliation for Kenya’s military actions inside Somalia.
● This as Kenyan security sources in Nairobi revealed that Israel has sent its special forces to Kenya to fight with the militants at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, according to an AFP report. The report added that Israeli Commandoes were airlifted to the east African country just after the start of the attack.

So now we know who started this and why - Israel & its puppet state, the US. Their list of targets clearly was prepared a long time ago. Then a wee bit of proxy terror and the public's ready to accept it all without any resistance. All they have to do is soften up a target area with some terror first and then they're ready to go. (Much more efficient than using missionaries, like they did over a century ago, and simpler too. Terrorists instead of missionaries. Neat, isn't it?) East Africa's wide open to them now, the oil & gas, titanium & gold, all theirs for the taking. They can do whatever they like. There's nothing we can do about it. And they know it. - Editor

US-led soldiers have opened fire on a group of Afghan schoolchildren in the central-eastern province of Maidan Wardak, killing at least one pupil and injuring several others, security sources say. Local provincial officials said the teenager student was killed in Syedabad district of the volatile province on Thursday. An investigation has been launched into the fatal incident.

PressTV: Breaking: US assassination drone strike kills 4 in Afghanistan
Antiwar.com: US Drone Strike Kills Seven People in North Waziristan (Pakistan)

Leaked United Nations report reveals the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years. Politicians fear the findings will encourage deniers of man-made climate change.
● Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.
● A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft. Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain. The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.
● But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years. Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change. Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve. The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the Ocean...

US President Barack Obama will use his Tuesday's address to the United Nations in New York to demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, according to US officials. ● White House spokesman Ben Rhodes told reporters on Friday that Obama's speech will also focus on the need for a tough resolution demanding Syria turn over its chemical weapons or face a threat of force. Obama will urge “the international community to stand up to the use of chemical weapons,” Rhodes said. US Secretary of State John Kerry also said Thursday the UN Security Council must be prepared to act on Syria’s chemical weapons program next week. "Now the test comes. The Security Council must be prepared to act next week. It is vital for the international community to stand up and speak out," said Kerry who will join world leaders for the annual UN General Assembly in New York on Sunday. Washington has claimed that the Syrian government is responsible for a chemical attack near Damascus on August 21.

Russia Today: Western countries blinded by ‘Assad must go’ mentality - Lavrov

■ While the Assad regime in Damascus has denied responsibility for the sarin gas missiles that killed around 1,400 Syrians in the suburb of Ghouta on 21 August, information is now circulating in the city that Russia's new "evidence" about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold. They were apparently manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1967 and sold by Moscow to three Arab countries, Yemen, Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. These details cannot be verified in documents, and Vladimir Putin has not revealed the reasons why he told Barack Obama that he knows Assad's army did not fire the sarin missiles; but if the information is correct – and it is believed to have come from Moscow – Russia did not sell this particular batch of chemical munitions to Syria.
■ Since Gaddafi's fall in 2011, vast quantities of his abandoned Soviet-made arms have fallen into the hands of rebel groups and al-Qa'ida-affiliated insurgents. Many were later found in Mali, some in Algeria and a vast amount in Sinai. The Syrians have long claimed that a substantial amount of Soviet-made weaponry has made its way from Libya into the hands of rebels in the country's civil war with the help of Qatar – which supported the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi and now pays for arms shipments to Syrian insurgents.

The US is trying to blackmail Russia and the world by forcing its upside-down Syria peace scenario on the international community, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday in an interview to the country’s main TV channel, Channel One. ● The foreign chief accused Washington of excessively politicking the Syrian crisis. He said the US was using the civil war in the Middle East to “assert its supremacy” in order to make the region “dance to its tune.” Mr. Lavrov stressed this approach had nothing to do with the long-overdue peace process and the Russia-backed plan to take away chemical weapons from the Assad regime. The foreign minister called on the US to come to terms with the fact that the world had become “polycentric” and it was no good forcing America’s opinions onto it.

The British MP Sarah Wollaston criticized the US approach on the issue of chemical weapons in Syria, slamming its intentions to launch a military strike against it. ● "It would send an incredibly mixed message for the US to be dropping bombs on Syria because they say they're using a hideous weapon, when they're selling another hideous weapon to Saudi Arabia,'' Wollaston said. The British MP was one of the House of Commons members who voted against a motion for military action in Syria. "I look at the Middle East and see seething resentment about what they see as an imperialist approach to their region and double standards,'' Wollaston added. She accused the US and Israel of using chemical weapons themselves when it suits them. "Look at white phosphorus. There's been very clearly documented examples where it's been used as a weapon, fired directly at people, and there's no doubt it's a chemical weapon used in those circumstances. It's a chemical which oxidises on contact with air and just keeps burning. It inflicts hideous burns because it just keeps on burning until it runs out of oxygen, so right down to the bone."

WikiLeaks released 249 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors. These reveal how, US, EU and developing world intelligence agencies have rushed into spending millions on next-generation mass surveillance technology to target communities, groups and whole populations. ● WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange stated: "WikiLeaks' Spy Files #3 is part of our ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry. This publication doubles the WikiLeaks Spy Files database. The WikiLeaks Spy Files form a valuable resource for journalists and citizens alike, detailing and explaining how secretive state intelligence agencies are merging with the corporate world in their bid to harvest all human electronic communication."

95 year old veteran shot and killed by Chicago police in riot gear after refusing to go to hospital for urinary tract infection. ● A 95-year-old world War II veteran died after being Tasered and hit with bean bag rounds by police for threatening care home staff - but his family insist he was killed unnecessarily. Police say that John Wrana, who lived in a Chicago assisting living home, was brandishing his cane, a metal shoehorn and a knife before officers shocked him and hit him with bean bag rounds. The senior citizen had been reported to authorities because he was being 'involuntarily' committed for medical treatment by staff at the Victory Centre, the Chicago Tribune reported. He was behaving in 'combative' manner, by threatening staff with his cane and a shoehorn. Wrana was reportedly scheduled to undergo a risky surgery, and was apparently afraid to end up on life support.