US Drone Attacks Yemen Wedding Party, Killing 15 Civilians. Officials Initially Dubbed All Slain 'Al-Qaeda Suspects'. | When a US drone strike tears through some vehicle, building, or picnic in Yemen, the Yemeni government is quick to label all of the victims “suspected al-Qaeda fighters,” and today was no different. That claim was stretched beyond all credibility, however, when witnesses came forward saying today’s strike, on the outskirts of Qaifa, actually hit a wedding party. The procession of vehicles was traveling together when missiles slammed into one of the middle cars, causing chaos and killing 10 civilians instantly, while wounding 12 others. Five of the wounded have since died, bringing the toll to 15. The early indications are that this was yet another “signature” attack, where US drones target totally unidentified people doing something they thing seems terrorist-like. In this case, it was driving cars in a convoy, which is bad news for weddings and funeral processions.

Peter Symonds: US drone strike in Yemen kills 15
Shuaib Almosawa: US Drone strike kills three people Yemeni locals said to be ‘militants’
NDTV: US drone strike kills 13 civilians in Yemen: officials

The United States and Britain have suspended military aid to the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army—the proxy force through which they have been arming the imperialist-sponsored insurgency to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad. The suspension came after the Free Syrian Army (FSA) lost control of an enclave along the Turkish border to Saudi-backed Islamist insurgents with whom the FSA had hitherto been closely allied. On December 6, fighters from the Islamic Front—a newly formed alliance of Salafist and other Sunni fundamentalist militia—overran FSA installations in the border town of Atmeh, including its military headquarters for northern Syria and several warehouses of military equipment. The equipment is said to have included tanks and US- and British-supplied weapons, pick-up trucks and communications equipment. The Islamic Front also took control of the FSA checkpoint at the Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing into Turkey.

The Independent: Free Syrian Army consider joining forces with regime troops to fight "al-Qa’ida"
The Independent: Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis

In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business. But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts — with no authority to run spy operations — paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world's darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S. The CIA was slow to respond to Levinson's disappearance and spent the first several months denying any involvement. When Congress eventually discovered what happened, one of the biggest scandals in recent CIA history erupted.

Jason Ditz: Associated Press Withheld Levinson CIA Story for Three Years

Scientists believe life may exist within underground ocean - living off minerals and using tidal heat as a source of energy | One of the moons of Jupiter may be another habitable part of the Solar System according to new research showing that Europa is rich in vital minerals and has spectacular water fountains spraying from a subsurface ocean. The Hubble Space Telescope has identified two huge plumes of water as high as 200km (124 miles) which occasionally erupt on Europa, while a separate study has found clay-like minerals littered around the moon’s frozen surface. The water fountain appears at certain moments in the orbit of Europa around Jupiter, suggesting it is powered by immense tidal forces that periodically increase the pressure within a subsurface ocean, causing it to erupt through cracks in the surface ice, according an analysis of Hubble data published in the journal Science. Europa is one of the more significant of Jupiter’s 63 known moons and astronomers believe that below is ice-covered surface is an ocean kept liquid by the heat of tidal forces. Some scientists have suggested that life may exist within this ocean, living off minerals and using tidal heat as a source of energy. ● A separate study based on a new analysis of data from Nasa Galileo mission detected important clay-like minerals on the surface of Europa which could have come from past collisions with asteroids or comets. Jim Shirley of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “Organic materials, which are important building blocks for life, are often found in comets and primitive asteroids. Finding the rocky residues of this comet crash on Europa’s surface may open up a new chapter in the story of the search for life on Europa.” Many scientists believe that Europa may be the best place in the Solar System to find existing life as its ocean is in contact with rock and the icy surface is mixing with the ocean below, creating an energy gradient and a source of heat as the moon get progressively stretched and squeezed by gravity during its orbit around Jupiter.

Russia's Supreme Court has ordered a review of the case against two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band saying that a lower court did not fully prove their guilt. | Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were found guilty of hooliganism motived by religious hatred in August 2012 following an impromptu protest in Moscow's main cathedral, and sentenced to two years in prison each. Samutsevich was released several months later on suspended sentence. The Supreme Court said in a ruling published Thursday that the lower courts overlooked the women's circumstances that would have allowed for a more lenient sentences. Tolokonnikova and Alekhina are scheduled for release in March, but it is unclear if they will be set free earlier by a lower court reviewing their case.

Zionism is a threat to the whole world, not just Iran or Palestine, Dr. David Duke told a Press TV interview broadcast yesterday. | Asked about the demand made by the Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for Israel to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Dr. Duke said this “is a step in the right direction but the reason why it is not going to get traction is because of the Zionist control of the European and the American and the globalist media. “They control 80 percent of the globalist media in the world and therefore they can suppress stories they do not like and they can distort the truth.”

Press TV: The truth is of course that Israel is the true nuclear rogue… Israel is the true [regime] that has committed horrific war crimes against the Palestinian people, against the Lebanese people, against the Syrian people, against the Egyptian people and many other nations and they committed crimes even terrorism against the United States of America on the attack on Liberty … which the Israeli … [regime] admitted that they attacked the American installations.

DD: But the reason why there is no action on these things is because they control the American media, dominate it and they dominate the world media. So most of the world is ignorant of this. ● We have to realize that Zionism is a problem that goes way beyond Palestine and Israel, way beyond the relations with … Iran. Iran has followed all the rules. You signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, you allowed inspections, you did everything correct and you have massive sanctions. ● Israel kicks 600,000 people out of their homes, kills tens of thousands of men, women and children, tortures hundreds of thousands of people in their jails, commits terrorism around the world, assassinations, even terrorism against its biggest benefactor, my country, and nothing is going on. There is no sanctions against Israel. It is amazing.

DavidDuke.com: World’s Chemical Weapons Control Body Calls out Israeli Hypocrisy

A survey of 25 US cities has offered a picture of the state of hunger in the country as homelessness and requests for help are on the rise. A survey of mayors, conducted by the US Conference of Mayors, has shown that requests for emergency food aid in 25 big cities, located in 18 states and the District of Columbia, have increased by an average of 7 percent compared with the previous period one year earlier. Between September 2012 and August 2013, all the cities studied, except four cities, reported a rise in requests for help. Some 43 percent of those who asked for emergency food aid were employed, 9 percent were homeless, and 21 percent were elderly. The main reason for the increased hunger in US cities was unemployment, followed by low salaries, poverty, and a high cost of housing.