At least 130 people, most of them students as young as 12, have been killed and at least 122 others injured in a Taliban seizure of a military-run school in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, according to provincial authorities. ● The numbers of dead and injured may still rise as the casualties of the assault are counted. Some 500 students and teachers were in the Army Public School on Warsak Road at the time of the attack. Pakistan’s military said most of the civilians escaped, but some had been taken hostage by the assailants. According to media reports, as many as 10 militants dressed in Pakistani military uniforms entered the school compound on Tuesday at around noon. They torched a car at the site and proceeded with a raid on the facility. “Seven to eight people attacked us, then an army soldier came to us and he asked [the] principal and teachers to take the children out of compound from the back gate. There were thousands [of] students in college. They were moved to auditorium, they can’t come out until the fight is ended,” Arshad Khan, a student at the school, told RT's Ruptly.

Sputnik News: Pakistani Tragedy Result of Permissive Attitude Towards Religious Violence

At least eight people have been killed in a US assassination drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nuristan along the Pakistani border. ● Security officials said on Tuesday that the attack was launched by pilotless aircraft firing missiles at a target in the Wanat Waygel district in Nuristan Province. According to local officials, the victims were Taliban militants. The US-led forces have increased their air raids against civilian areas in Afghanistan in recent months. The United States regularly uses drones for assassination strikes and spying missions in Afghanistan, as well as in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border. The Taliban militant group has vowed to escalate the attacks on Afghan forces and US-led troops, their bases, diplomatic missions, and vehicle convoys before the foreign forces exit the country at the end of 2014.

Tom Carter ■ This is the first of three articles summarizing the contents of the unclassified executive summary of the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,700-page report on the CIA torture program, released last week. The US Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s “enhanced interrogation program” exposes the CIA as a globe-spanning enterprise of criminality, deceit, and violence—as well as rank incompetence, petty intriguing, and porno-sadistic depravity.

Rick Noack ■ In a country that is still haunted by World War II, the protests have come as a shock to many politicians and left-leaning activists. In an interview on Monday, Germany's justice minister Heiko Maas called the movement "a shame for Germany" and warned of a new "level of escalation of agitation against immigrants and refugees." About 6,500 human rights campaigners joined two separate counter-demonstrations on Monday that were organized in opposition to the anti-foreigner movement. The protests have revealed a deep divide between many citizens and their political elite. Half of Germany sympathizes with the anti-Islam protesters, according to a ZEIT ONLINE-YouGov poll that was released on Monday. Supporters can be found all over the country, but protests in western Germany have so far failed to attract large numbers of supporters. In eastern Germany, however, the rallies against immigrants have quickly gained steam – despite the fact that only few foreigners currently live there.

RT.com: Groundswell: 15,000 join anti-Islamization rally in Dresden

Mike Head ■ A 16-hour police siege of an inner Sydney café culminated in a full-scale assault by para-military commandos just after 2 a.m., leaving two hostages dead, as well as the lone hostage-taker. The bloody outcome also left many unanswered questions about the entire incident, including the fatal decision to storm the building. Police and security officials kept reporters far away from the scene throughout the siege, making it impossible to view what happened, but long-distance footage showed heavily-armed units storming the building, firing stun grenades and semi-automatic weapons. Just minutes earlier, at least 5 of the 17 hostages fled the building, as did 5 last night. Soon after the siege was ended, Prime Minister Tony Abbott issued a statement commending the “courage and professionalism” of the police and other emergency services involved. Yet the official justifications offered for sending in commandos, resulting in three deaths, were full of contradictions.

Peter Symonds ■ Without providing any justification, the Australian government yesterday seized on an isolated incident involving a deeply disturbed individual in the Sydney CBD to activate the entire “counter-terrorism” apparatus and impose a state of siege in the centre of the country’s largest city—with tragic consequences. What would ordinarily have been dealt with as a serious, but relatively straightforward, police matter—an armed gunman taking hostages in a city café—was escalated into a major national crisis by the intervention of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with the full support of the opposition Labor Party and the Greens, state governments and the entire media. [...] No rational reason has been offered for this massive police operation. Police determined relatively quickly that the hostage-taker was Man Haron Monis, an Iranian refugee well-known to police. He had no connection to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Al Qaeda or any other Islamic extremist organisation. He was a troubled individual, with a history of erratic actions, on bail for alleged involvement in the murder of his ex-wife. Likewise, no coherent explanation has been given for the decision to storm the café in the early hours of this morning. The NSW police commissioner initially declared that officers charged into the building in response to shots heard inside, then declined to repeat his statement. The outcome is that the hostage-taker is dead, along with two innocent people—the café manager and a mother of three—and four others are injured.

xymphora ■ There is almost nothing new in the Torture Report, except perhaps for demonstrating how obsessed the CIA is with the male butt. I wonder if they have some kind of 'fruit machine' to determine whether someone is qualified to join the CIA interrogation squad. Don't you know your queen? [...] We could even go further back to the Executive Intelligence Review News Service, 2005: "DIA Proof Of Cheney's Lies Released" (based on the CIA's President's Daily Briefing of September 21, 2001, before Ibn Shaykh al-Libi had been captured and interrogated by the Americans, and before his rendition to Egypt, where torture created his testimony of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection). This means that the intelligence community knew the stories they were creating using torture were lies. The newest revelation, separate from the Torture Report, is that Levin has details from the classified March 2003 - just before the American attack on Iraq started - CIA cable warning that the allegation that Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague was false. Ironically, it appears that Brennan has released this in order to attempt to protect the CIA's reputation by emphasizing that Bush/Cheney/Powell had been given due warning from the CIA that the propaganda basis for the American attack on Iraq was a lie.

The Central Bank of Russia raised interest rates following a record fall in the ruble during trading on Monday. ● The Russian Central Bank announced an immediate hike rise in interest rates to 17% on Monday night in order to protect the currency after the ruble made rapid losses during trading on Monday. The rise comes after a previous announcement made by the Bank on Friday which raised rates from 10.5% to 11.5%. It is the largest single increase since 1998. "This decision is aimed at limiting substantially increased ruble depreciation risks and inflation risks," the Central Bank said in a statement posted on its website. The announcement led to a jump in the value of the ruble on Tuesday morning on the Moscow Exchange. At 10.26 the dollar was trading at 61.47 rubles, down 2.97 cents, while the Euro was 76.50 rubles, down 2.23 cents. The figures represent a strengthening of the currency after Monday's fall, when the dollar rose above the 60 ruble mark for the first time. At close on Monday on the Moscow Exchange the US dollar was 64.45 rubles, up 6.27 rubles, while the euro was valued at 78.87, up 6.59 rubles.

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(Translation: Alice, S, Gideon, Marina. Editing: D.M. Pennington, Michael, Peter, Heather, Bernie, Patricia, Tom, Kristin.) Why did the Central Bank raise the interest rate and let the ruble flow? ● Another increase in key interest rates on loans issued by the Bank of Russia, for the purpose of refinancing commercial banks, made loans completely inaccessible for the majority of enterprises of the real sector of the economy. When the average profitability of the manufacturing industry is 7.5-8%, credit issued at rates of 10% or higher cannot be used by most businesses, either for investment or for replenishing working capital. Such decisions cut off the real economy, with the exception of some sectors of the oil, gas, and chemical-metallurgical sector, from credit issued by the State. ● Prior to that, the consumer lending boom drove millions of citizens into a 10-trillion ruble debt and the real economy lost the savings of the population, becoming a net debtor. Also, the Government withdrew pension savings from the economy. Sanctions imposed by NATO countries deprive the economy of the bulk of external credit. Most businesses have only their own funds to finance working capital and investments, which is clearly not enough to provide even simple reproduction, never mind an expanded one. The amount of profit of enterprises this year (taking into account the fall in the prices of export goods) will be no more than 10% of the required rate of investment of 25-30% of GDP. It’s no surprise that as a result of such decisions amidst the economic recovery in almost all countries of the world this year, Russia is experiencing an unexpected decline in investment and production. ● According to the Central Bank’s report, On the key rate of the Bank of Russia, October 31, 2014, its decision to raise interest rates was made because of external circumstances: “In September-October the external environment has changed significantly: oil prices dropped significantly while there has been a tightening of sanctions imposed by individual countries to a number of large Russian companies. The ruble has been weakening in this environment, which, against the backdrop of August’s restrictions on import of certain food products, led to a further acceleration of growth of consumer prices”. To support its previous decision to raise interest rates, the Central Bank argued that “inflationary risks had increased, including rising geopolitical tensions and their possible impact on the dynamics of the course of the national currency, as well as changes in the tax and tariff policy.” In the same policy statement, the Central Bank explained its decision to raise interest rates by “a stronger than expected effect of exchange rate dynamics on consumer prices, rising inflation expectations, as well as the unfavorable trends in the market for certain goods.” ● This reasoning does not stand up to criticism.