U.S. Marines Urinating on Afghan Corpses

Top U.S. officials moved swiftly Thursday to try to prevent diplomatic damage and contain public disgust from the release of a video that appeared to show Marines urinating on three Afghan corpses — images that spread quickly around the globe.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had viewed the video and considered it “utterly deplorable.” He telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai and pledged a full investigation.

Prior to the call, Karzai described the video as “completely inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms.” His administration called on the U.S. military to “apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

The video, which runs for less than a minute, depicts four Marines in combat gear laughing and joking as they urinate on three male bodies. The caption refers to the corpses as “dead Talibans,” but it is unclear whether the men were civilians or fighters killed after a battle.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed “total dismay” at the behavior depicted in the recording, and said the “vast, vast” majority of American military personnel would not engage in such actions.

Swine Flu Is Back

12 Infected With New Swine Flu Strain

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/01/11/12-infected-with-new-swine-flu-strain

The days of medical masks at airports and widespread panic may be coming back—that's because at least 12 humans are believed to have been infected with a new strain of swine flu that's not covered by this season's vaccine.

The new swine flu strain, H3N2v, has shown at least some potential for human-to-human transmission in those 12 individuals, which makes it especially dangerous. Between 2009 and mid-2010, more than 17,000 people died worldwide from the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, leading the World Health Organization to call the strain a pandemic.

The 12 people with the new swine flu strain live in Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Officials for the Centers for Disease Control say the sample size of H3N2 infections is too small to know whether it will pose a threat to the population at large.

"It's a very small sample and it's geographically spread, which makes it more difficult to get a handle on it," says Jeffrey Dimond, a CDC spokesman. "Most of the cases have come through direct contact with the animals, through the 4H Club and that sort of thing."

In order to have a true threat of causing an epidemic or pandemic, Dimond says the virus needs to spread easily between humans.

"If you're in close contact with someone who's ill, that's one thing," he says. "To make it like the pandemic flu of a few years ago, it has to be highly contagious from human to human."

H3N2v or another new flu strain could disrupt what CDC officials expected to be a relatively quiet flu season. Each year's flu vaccine protects against specific strains of the virus that researchers expect to circulate. In October, Joe Bresee, chief of CDC's influenza epidemiology and prevention branch, said he was confident this year's vaccine would protect against the mostdangerous flu strains.

"The flu viruses this year's vaccine will protect against are very well-matched to those flu viruses that [were] circulating [in October]," he said. "We will have a vaccine that provides good protection this season to help keep influenza illness and serious complications down."

While it's too early to tell if the new H3N2 strain (or another unexpected strain) will develop into a larger threat, the CDC admits the current vaccine will do little to help stop the virus.

"These viruses are substantially different from human influenza A (H3N2) viruses, so the seasonal vaccine is expected to provide limited cross-protection among adults and no protection to children," the CDC wrote in a report released in late November.

What You Should Know About the FBI's Massive New Biometric Database

http://www.alternet.org/story/153664/5_things_you_should_know_about_the_fbi's_massive_new_biometric_database

Civil libertarians worry about the roll-out of Next Generation Identification, a massive expansion of the agency's current biometric database.The FBI claims that their fingerprint database (IAFIS) is the "largest biometric database in the world," containing records for over a hundred million people. But that's nothing compared to the agency's plans for Next Generation Identification (NGI), a massive, billion-dollar upgrade that will hold iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.
Ambitions for the final product are candidly spelled out in an agency report: "The FBI recognizes a need to collect as much biometric data as possible within information technology systems, and to make this information accessible to all levels of law enforcement, including International agencies." (A stack of documents related to NGI was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights and others after a FOIA lawsuit.)
It'll be "Bigger -- Better -- Faster," the FBI brags on their Web site. Unsurprisingly, civil libertarians have concerns about the privacy ramifications of a bigger, better, faster way to track Americans using their body parts.
"NGI will expand the type and breadth of information FBI keeps on all of us," says Sunita Patel of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "There should be a balance between gathering information for law enforcement, and gathering information for its own sake."

OBAMA: ID NET USERS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/fccs-genachowski-proposes-broadband-reform/2012/01/09/gIQA7CaflP_blog.html

In a Monday speech, Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined a draft proposal that would reform the commission’s Lifeline program to include provisions to encourage broadband adoption. The program, currently aimed at providing affordable telephone service to low-income Americans, is supported by the Universal Service Fund.
“The program is outdated, focused on phone service when high-speed Internet has become our vital communications platform,” he said.
In his remarks, Genachowski said the program has been successful, but has also been plagued with problems of accountability and efficiency. Multiple service providers are often supplying Lifeline subsidies to the same households, he said, because there is no centralized system. To address the issue, Genachowski said, the draft proposal creates a national database of Lifeline users to prevent duplicative billing. It also sets a budget for Lifeline aimed at connecting eligible consumers while staying within budget, and requires that participating companies be subject to independent audits every two years.
“The order would make Lifeline reimbursement more transparent and streamlined,” Genachowski said, calling the measure common sense. He said that FCC staff estimate the reforms will save the fund $2 billion over the next two years.
The chairman said the FCC would work with existing broadband adoption programs to establish its own pilot program using savings from its budget reforms. It will also look at how to use Lifeline to encourage adoption among those consumers.
Genachowski said the program will be “modernized to meet the needs of low-income Americans in a broadband world” and is in line with the agency’s other efforts on broadband adoption.

West Readies Oil Plan in Case of Iran Crisis

Here we go

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-iea-contingency-idUSTRE8051FV20120106

Western powers this week readied a contingency plan to tap a record volume from emergency stockpiles to replace nearly all the Gulf oil that would be lost if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, industry sources and diplomats told Reuters.

They said senior executives of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises 28 oil consuming countries, discussed on Thursday an existing plan to release up to 14 million barrels per day (bpd) of government-owned oil stored in the United States, Europe, Japan and other importers.

Action on this scale would be more than five times the size of the biggest release in the agency’s history — made in response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The maximum release, some 10 million bpd of crude and about 4 million bpd of refined products, could be sustained during the first month of any coordinated action, the plan says.

“This would form a necessary and sensible response to a closure of the strait,” a European diplomat told Reuters. “It wouldn’t take long to put in place if it was required … and would be unlikely to prove controversial amongst the (IEA) membership.”

A spokesman for the IEA confirmed that the Paris-based agency has an existing contingency plan that outlines a maximum stock release capability of 14 million bpd for a month. “We’re watching the situation carefully,” he said of Iran.

Tehran announced plans on Friday for new military exercises in the world’s most important oil shipping lane, through which some 16 million barrels of crude pass each day.

Iranian officials have threatened to block the strait if new sanctions, aimed to discourage Iran’s nuclear programme, harm Tehran’s oil exports.

Many oil experts believe the threats are rhetoric aimed at pushing up oil prices in a bid to avert sanctions.

Musharraf Will Be Arrested on Arrival in Pakistan, PTI Report

I never really liked that guy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-07/musharraf-will-be-arrested-on-arrival-in-pakistan-pti-reports.html

Pervez Musharraf, who resigned as Pakistan’s president in 2008, will be arrested on arrival in the country later this month, the Press Trust of India reported, citing a prosecutor.

Musharraf is a “proclaimed offender” and there’s no need for a warrant for this arrest, PTI reported today, citing Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, prosecutor at the Federal Investigation Agency. Musharraf lives in Dubai and London and plans to return to Pakistan on Jan. 25 or Jan. 27, according to the report.

A Pakistani court issued an arrest warrant for Musharraf in February over allegations he played a role in the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the AP reported at the time, citing prosecutors. He hadn’t been charged in the case, AP said.

Genetic scientists create freakish man-made monster ants with huge heads and jaws

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2082799/Supersoldier-ants-gigantic-jaws.html#ixzz1ijhYau8Q

Nightmarish 'supersoldier' Scientists showed that ordinary ants of the species Pheidole morrisi contain all the genetic 'tools' needed to turn them into supersoldiers - they just need a hormonal push.
The research is reported today in the journal Science.

Scientists believe the monster ants may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago.
Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone - the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.

Supersoldier ants can occur naturally in the wild, but only rarely. In the deserts of America and Mexico, their job is to protect the colony from raids by invading army ants.
The supersoldiers use their enormous heads to block the nest entrance and attack any enemy ants that get too close.

Authors Dr Rajendhran Rajakumar, from McGill University, Canada, and colleagues wrote: 'We uncovered an ancestral development potential to produce a novel supersoldier subcaste that has been retained throughout a hyperdiverse ant genus that evolved 35 to 60 million years ago.'
The results suggest that holding on to ancestral development toolkits may play an important role in evolving new physical traits, say the researchers.

UK Police Treating Remains Discovered at Queen’s Estate as Murder

I bet the Butler did it!

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/uk_police_treating_remains_discovered_Wku9R7mgESW2w27GnRdvKI

It’s a case that Sherlock Holmes would have loved to unravel: British police say a woman’s body has been found at the vast rural estate in Norfolk where Queen Elizabeth II and her family celebrated New Year’s.
Police are treating the case as a murder, and an autopsy was conducted Tuesday to learn more about the cause of death and the identity of the victim.
The body was found on New Year’s Day three miles from the elegant country home of Sandringham in eastern England where the royals held a New Year’s Day celebration in rural splendor.
Part of the nearly 20,000-acre royal estate is open to the public, and the body was found in a forest at Anmer, a hamlet of several dozen people on the estate 115 miles northeast of London.
…
So far, there are more questions than answers about the strange discovery, which has shaken the normally quiet region where the queen and her family typically enjoy riding horses and shooting parties.
Buckingham Palace officials are keeping mum about the murder case, referring callers to the police, and police have released few details. It is not yet clear how old the victim was, how long her body had been in the woods, if she was murdered on the grounds or if her remains were put there after the slaying.
“We are at the very early stages of the investigation and it could be a complex inquiry,” Detective Chief Inspector Jes Fry said Tuesday. “The body had been there for some time.”
Fry said authorities were examining missing person reports and unsolved cases around the country to see if there were any possible links.

The Pentagon to Send US Troops to Israel. Iran is the Unspoken Target

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28494

This is "hope" that can "change"

In one of the most blacked-out stories in America right now, the US military is preparing to send thousands of US troops, along with US Naval anti-missile ships and accompanying support personnel, to Israel.
It took forever to find a second source for confirmation of this story and both relatively mainstream media outlets are in Israel. With one source saying the military deployment and corresponding exercises are to occur in January, the source providing most of the details suggests it will occur later this spring. Calling it not just an “exercise”, but a “deployment”, the Jerusalem Post quotes US Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc, Commander of the US Third Air Force based in Germany. The US Commander visited Israel two weeks ago to confirm details for “the deployment of several thousand American soldiers to Israel.” In an effort to respond to recent Iranian threats and counter-threats, Israel announced the largest ever missile defense exercise in its history. Now, it’s reported that the US military, including the US Navy, will be stationed throughout Israel, also taking part.
While American troops will be stationed in Israel for an unspecified amount of time, Israeli military personnel will be added to EUCOM in Germany. EUCOM stands for United States European Command.
In preparation for anticipated Iranian missile attacks upon Israel, the US is reportedly bringing its THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, and ship-based Aegis ballistic missile systems to Israel. The US forces will join Israeli missile defense systems like the Patriot and Arrow. The deployment comes with “the ultimate goal of establishing joint task forces in the event of a large-scale conflict in the Middle East”.