One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away coastal villages and devastating one of the main cities in the region. ● Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of structures in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria, before weakening and heading west for Vietnam. As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food or searched for lost loved ones. Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, levelling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation. The national government and disaster agency have not confirmed the latest estimate of deaths, a sharp increase from initial estimates on Saturday of at least 1,200 killed by a storm whose sustained winds reached 195 miles per hour (313 km per hour) with gusts of up to 235 mph (378 kph).

The New Yorker: Slide Show: Typhoon Haiyan’s Devastation - Photos
Associated Press: Amid gruesome typhoon scenes, aid trickles in - Photos
CNN: 'Worse than hell' in typhoon-ravaged Philippines - Photos
The Guardian: Enormous aid effort begins in regions devastated by typhoon Haiyan
The Times of India: Philippines struggles to help desperate victims
PressTV: Philippine typhoon death toll exceeds 10,000
BBC: Philippines destruction 'absolute bedlam'

During the run-up to every major UN global warming conference, warming-funded researchers, climate campaign organizations and the go-along media find news events and research reports to hype. COP 19 is no exception. Temperatures have been flat since the nineties and climate models embarrassingly project higher temperatures than observations show. This deprives the warming industry of the opportunity to make the claim it would most like to make — that the Earth has actually warmed as they said it would. Absent this, they find other things to hype. So far this year’s favorite has been the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, conveniently ignoring the fact that whatever the concentration of CO2 may be, temperatures have yet to behave as the models claimed they would. This week they found a new one and it’s a whopper. Climate campaigners are claiming (with no real-world basis) that typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, which just struck the Philippines and China is the result of global warming. In short, they blame this storm on you for living in an industrialized, free society.

Aviva Stahl: Children Locked Up For Life: 10 Shockers About America's Prison System Twice as many people rot in prison for crack use than for violent crimes. Children are being locked up for life. What's wrong with our criminal justice system? ■ Even if we already know the statistic, hearing it is pretty chilling: one out of every 100 Americans is behind bars, by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. Things get even more terrifying when we look at the impact of the criminal justice system on particular marginalized communities. One in three African-American males born today will likely spend some time on the inside. With terms like the prison-industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline now part of our daily political lexicon, we know that things are bad. But exactly how bad are they? Here are 10 reasons why our criminal justice system is even more obscene than you thought.

US Senator Lindsey Graham has warned about a possible easing of economic sanctions against Iran, saying Israel is “apoplectic” about the Obama administration’s approach. Graham, a hawkish Republican from South Carolina who has repeatedly called for military strikes on Iran, said Sunday that lifting sanctions would send the wrong message to Israel and other US allies in the region. “The Israelis are apoplectic about what we're doing,” he said on CNN's "State of the Union." “I've never been more worried about the Obama administration's approach to the Middle East than I am now.”

Russia Today: Israel boosts attack on Iran nuclear deal after ‘productive’ Geneva talks

As Iran appeared to be closer than ever to reaching agreement with Western powers over its nuclear program, a surprising party emerged to block a stopgap deal: the French. ● Analysts attributed France’s move, which exposed divisions between the United States and other Western powers in the negotiations, on “a tough stand against the spread of nuclear weapons, skepticism about Tehran’s trustworthiness,” and a tradition of speaking out on the world stage, Canada’s National Post reports. According to the Guardian, Iranian state press reported that some Iranian businessmen were considering reducing trade ties with France, citing “adventurist and immature behavior” at Geneva talks for their loss of faith in a once-esteemed business partner. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. was “grateful” to the French and shared some of their concerns. However speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he maintained the U.S. position was not uninformed. “I think we have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests in our country, and of the globe, and particularly of our allies, like Israel, and Gulf states, and others in the region.” Negotiations in Geneva will continue November 20.

Stephen Lendman: No Deal in Geneva
Justin Raimondo: ‘Peace Scare’ in Geneva
Times of Israel: US promises to consult with Israel on any Iran deal
Times of Israel: ‘Israel will attack Iran if you sign the deal, French MP told Fabius’
Richard Silverstein: France Torpedoes Iran Nuclear Deal, Hollande Rewarded with Knesset Address

An Icelandic MP says Britain spied on Iceland while wrestling to rescue its citizens' cash from collapsed Icelandic banks after the financial crisis. Birgitta Jónsdóttir claims she received a tip-off from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. ● Jónsdóttir, who represents Iceland's Pirate Party, maintains that the UK's intelligence agencies systematically intercepted messages sent by Icelandic negotiators when Britain tried to recover savers’ cash held in the country’s banks that went bankrupt. Jónsdóttir, a prominent WikiLeaks supporter, said that she was tipped off to the spying in 2010 by Assange, Iceland's Visir newspaper reported. Having received the tip-off, she warned members of Iceland’s negotiating team not to send emails to each other.

Russia Today: GCHQ spoofed LinkedIn site to target global mobile traffic exchange and OPEC
Ars Technica: UK spies continue “quantum insert” attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot pages

Makram Khoury-Machool: The Real Agenda: Syria - Terrorism Or Resource Wars? ■ In order for the global ruling class in the US, France, UK and their regional allies in the Middle East (in particular Saudi Arabia and Qatar) to maintain their economic dominance and generate additional profit from natural resources in the MENA region, they have been perpetrating the holocaust of the 21s Century in Syria against the People of Syria causing in addition a civilisational catastrophe.

Talks on curbing Iran's nuclear program ended with no deal early Sunday after France objected that proposed measures didn't go far enough. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said "significant progress" had been made on the remaining differences. ● Six world powers and Iran agreed to resume talks Nov. 20. Both sides badly wanted agreement. The U.S. and its five partners were looking for initial caps on Iran's ability to make an atomic bomb, while Tehran sought some easing of sanctions stifling its economy. But France would not soften its concerns over Iran's plutonium project and the level of its uranium enrichment program. Kerry, speaking to reporters after the talks broke up, acknowledged there were "certain issues that we needed to work through." "We're grateful to the French for the work we did together," Kerry said.

The Guardian: Geneva talks end without deal on Iran's nuclear programme

Stephen Lendman: At issue isn't Iran's legitimate nuclear program. It's the Islamic Republic's sovereign independence. ■ It's decades of US/Israeli hostility. It's unrelenting. Whatever emerges from Geneva, it won't materially change. America and Israel threaten world peace. They remain the main obstacles to peaceful conflict resolution. They deplore it. They perpetuate violence and instability. They want pro-Western puppet governance everywhere. Claiming an Iranian nuclear threat is red herring cover for longstanding regime change plans. If Iran had no nuclear program, another pretext would be found.

While five grown men stand by and watch. Our police do not have the function of knowing right from wrong anymore. We must realize the entire system is broken. It is like a pack of dogs who once their leader begins the chase and they get the taste of blood they go in for the kill. Police are less than dogs and cannot be called humans anymore.

If you're walking around downtown Seattle, look up: You'll see off-white boxes, each one about a foot tall with vertical antennae, attached to utility poles. If you're walking around downtown while looking at a smartphone, you will probably see at least one—and more likely two or three—Wi-Fi networks named after intersections: "4th&Seneca," "4th&Union," "4th&University," and so on. That is how you can see the Seattle Police Department's new wireless mesh network, bought from a California-based company called Aruba Networks, whose clients include the Department of Defense, school districts in Canada, oil-mining interests in China, and telecommunications companies in Saudi Arabia. - The question is: How well can this mesh network see you?

Zero Hedge: US Airspace To Crawl With 7,500 Drones In 5 Years

Iraq is still suffering from the US invasion because the apparatus of state oppression and terror is still in place, killing people every day. But few in the US seem to realize the scale of the war crimes committed in Iraq, an expert author told RT. In an exclusive interview with RT, Nicolas J.S. Davies, author of “Blood On Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq,” said that the world should learn the lessons from US invasions, such as respect for international law and the futility of military force.