Glenn Greenwald’s Partner Detained at Heathrow Airport for Nine Hours

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Photo Credit: Janine Gibson

Photo Credit: Janine Gibson

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London’s Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

Since 5 June, Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing the NSA’s electronic surveillance programmes, detailed in thousands of files passed to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian has also published a number of stories about blanket electronic surveillance by Britain’s GCHQ, also based on documents from Snowden.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cairo at War – Under Siege Inside the Al-Fath Mosque

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Yasmine Ahmed’s two brothers had been trapped in the siege for over 12 hours. Packed into a sweltering back room barricaded with chairs and wooden tables, they had been cooped up alongside hundreds of panicking Islamists and the decomposing corpses from another weekend of violence.

In the main prayer hall of the Al-Fath mosque, its grubby carpet littered with discarded shreds of cotton wool and surgical pads, an army commander huddled in a circle with his troops who, it was claimed, had only entered the building to clear it of supporters of toppled President, Mohamed Morsi as well as to protect innocent worshippers from angry mobs gathering outside.

Hundreds of locals were crammed against the pointed steel gates of the mosque courtyard. Many were in no mood to forgive those trapped inside; in the minds of some Egyptians, the Morsi supporters have become little more than “terrorist” outlaws.

“Their fate is not in my hands now,” said Yasmine, 20, a college student. “The army and the police think the people trapped inside are terrorists. But they are not. What we have now is chaos. There is chaos between all the Egyptian people.”

The fear and anxiety were palpable. Weeping relatives tramped around the prayer hall, while jumpy police officers toted their Kalashnikovs in one hand, wide-eyed and frantically chewing gum.

Read more from this story HERE.

Google Outage Reportedly Caused Big Drop in Global Traffic

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Photo Credit: CNET

Photo Credit: CNET

For a very brief few minutes on Friday you may have noticed some Google services, most notably search, appeared to be down. If not, maybe you noticed the ensuing freak-out across Twitter and the rest of the Internet.

At first glance the flash outage was little more than an opportunity for a few good one-liners and a chance to actually stand up from the keyboard and walk around for a few minutes. If we had connected nanobots floating around in our bloodstreams, certainly they would have registered a worldwide uptick in caffeine intake during those few moments.

As it turns out though, Google’s downtime did appear to have global, measurable repercussions, according to analytics firm GoSquared, which estimates that it caused a 40 percent drop in global traffic during a five-minute window.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hiring in China By JPMorgan Under Scrutiny

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Federal authorities have opened a bribery investigation into whether JPMorgan Chase hired the children of powerful Chinese officials to help the bank win lucrative business in the booming nation, according to a confidential United States government document.

In one instance, the bank hired the son of a former Chinese banking regulator who is now the chairman of the China Everbright Group, a state-controlled financial conglomerate, according to the document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, as well as public records. After the chairman’s son came on board, JPMorgan secured multiple coveted assignments from the Chinese conglomerate, including advising a subsidiary of the company on a stock offering, records show.

The Hong Kong office of JPMorgan also hired the daughter of a Chinese railway official. That official was later detained on accusations of doling out government contracts in exchange for cash bribes, the government document and public records show.

The former official’s daughter came to JPMorgan at an opportune time for the New York-based bank: The China Railway Group, a state-controlled construction company that builds railways for the Chinese government, was in the process of selecting JPMorgan to advise on its plans to become a public company, a common move in China for businesses affiliated with the government. With JPMorgan’s help, China Railway raised more than $5 billion when it went public in 2007.

The focus of the civil investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s anti-bribery unit has not been previously reported. JPMorgan — which has had a number of run-ins lately with regulators, including one over a multibillion-dollar trading loss last year — made an oblique reference to the inquiry in its quarterly filing this month. The filing stated that the S.E.C. had sought information about JPMorgan’s “employment of certain former employees in Hong Kong and its business relationships with certain clients.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Egypt Residents Provide First-Hand Accounts of Bloody Mayhem: ‘Everybody’s Scared Sh**tless’

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EGYPT-POLITICS-UNRESTWhile meeting with producers with The Blaze TV’s For The Record, a documentary news magazine, residents living in Cairo provided real time updates by phone and via twitter as the deadly clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the Egyptian military deteriorated into bloodshed.

More than 60 people were killed Friday and thousands have been injured throughout Cairo as rioters, many of whom are armed with weapons, spent another day protesting the actions of the Egyptian military this week against Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Those supporters accuse the Egyptian military of ransacking their camps and killing innocent protesters, according to news reports and eye witness accounts.

Many Egyptian residents, however, told The Blaze its members of the Muslim Brotherhood that have escalated the violence in Egypt and not just the Egyptian army. They said supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood are brandishing automatic weapons, putting women and children in harms way at camp sites and garnering support from outside extremist groups, including Al Qaeda factions in North Africa.

The first report came to For The Record at 10:40 a.m. eastern time, from Mohammed, a leader of an opposition group that worked to remove now ousted Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi from power. He described members of the Muslim Brotherhood walking through Ramsis Square, only several miles northeast from Tahrir Square, carrying AK-47s and shooting them into the crowds. Mohammed described the situation as dire and said members of the Muslim Brotherhood were instigating much of the violence.

Barbara Lethem Ibrahim, the wife of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a prominent Egyptian human rights activist and scholar who was imprisoned in 2000 after speaking out against now deceased and deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubark, told The Blaze by phone from her home Cairo that members of the Muslim Brotherhood “are purposefully putting women and children into the camps they are setting up on the streets of Cairo.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Egypt Sending Diplomatic Mission to Russia

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putin_As the situation in Egypt escalates, a source with very close ties to the Egyptian government tells Breitbart News that the country is preparing to send a diplomatic mission to Russia. While the Obama Administration sends conflicting messages about the conflict, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have issued strong statements in support of the government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. America’s influence in the region is waning.

“They’re terrorists,” the source told Breitbart News in reference to people protesting in support of the Muslim Brotherhood. “They have machine guns, they have weapons…Hamas and other outside groups are pushing guns to them. Where is America?”

Breitbart News has also learned that Russia is offering the Egyptian government fighter jets and other military equipment. This week, President Obama announced that the US is suspending its planned joint military exercise with the Egyptian army. It seems the Russians are jumping in to fill the void left by the Americans.

“Sadat threw Russia out of Egypt,” the source told Breitbart News. “Peace came from that. If Russia reenters Egypt, they reenter the world.”

Read more from this story HERE.

U2’s Bono Says Only Capitalism Can Pull World Out of Poverty (+video)

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BONOIreland’s Bono, the international superstar of music and philanthropy, has always used his status to bring attention to world poverty and illness.

He played a key role in bringing international relief to Africa as it struggled with the AIDS epidemic; it is said he is responsible for saving millions of lives through his efforts.

Known for his philanthropy as much as his creativity in the music field, Bono has drawn together quite a far flung army of volunteers in his war on poverty and disease. Under his tent, he has brought world leaders, rock stars, soccer moms and evangelicals, all united in goals to make the world a better place.

But through his experience in bringing aid to those in need, it seems Bono has had an awakening, perhaps Biblical in proportion best summed up by:

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Bono, during a speech to students at Georgetown University, declared his altered view on political and economic issues, by saying: ONLY capitalism can end poverty:

“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce/ entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”

Bono encouraged the students to think of what they can do to support those in Africa and other 3rdworld countries in need of justice and comfort….

As if writing a lyric to one of his songs, he said:

“Because when you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed, you see something that you can’t un-see.”

Bono wields tremendous world influence and his awakening on capitalism can signal a ground shift on how world aid organizations actually find long term cures for poverty and disease, rather than putting a band aid on it.

Bono signaled appreciation for another world famous capitalist during an interview last year with Mike Huckabee: “America needs Reagan-like statesmanship that is so missing.”…See story here.

President Reagan valued the magic and power that entrepreneurial capitalism brought to the standard of living for mankind throughout the world.

Sounds like Bono has seen the light.

Here’s the video of the Georgetown University speech:

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

UN Funds Ridiculous Biometric Voting ID … in Yemen

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Photo Credit: Suprema, Inc.Biometric fingerprint scanners are scheduled to be used in the 2014 presidential election in Yemen.

The South Korean company Suprema, Inc. announced this week that it had won a contract from the Yemeni government to provide about 4,800 of its RealScan-D live scanners for the election, which is expected to take place in February of next year. Money provided through the United Nations Development Program is paying for the scanners.

“Yemen has come one step closer to adopting democracy and is now preparing for the new presidential elections by strategically investing the funds from the UNDP,” said Suprema in a press release. The company’s president, James Lee, said: “The Arab Spring was the advent of free election and the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East. I believe there will be many more voter registration projects to follow.”

The RealScan-D devices work by capturing a person’s fingerprint or palm-print (or both) and storing that image and biometric data. Similar scanners can also capture signatures and photos and identification cards of the persons registering to vote and store that information in their data file.

Read more from this story HERE.

Insider: Muslim Brotherhood Blackmailing President with “Evidence that will Land [him] in Prison” (+video)

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The Obama administration’s call for the release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt is inexplicable. The trip to Egypt by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), during which they called for the same thing is even more inexplicable, especially since both men are demanding answers in Benghazi. Yes, we know Obama’s leanings but why the rush to release these prisoners and not shine a spotlight on them? If the details of an interview with the son of one of those imprisoned leaders is any indication, we may be getting closer to answering that question.

We caution that the following be taken with a grain of salt but considering who said it, we thought it newsworthy too. Here is a direct translation of the key points, followed by some analysis:

In an interview with the Anatolia News Agency, Saad Al-Shater, the son of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, the detained Khairat Al-Shater, said that his father had in his hand evidence that will land the head of United States of America, president Obama, in prison. He stressed that the senior U.S. delegation currently visiting Egypt, knows full well that the fate, future, interests and reputation of their country is in the hands of his father, and they know that he owns the information, documents and recordings that incriminate and would condemn their country. Such documents, he says, were placed in the hands of people who were entrusted inside and outside Egypt, and that the release of his father is the only way for them to prevent a great catastrophe. He stated that a warning was sent threatening to show how the U.S. administration was directly connected. The evidence was sent through intermediaries which caused them to change their attitude and corrected their position and that they have taken serious steps to prove good faith. Saad also said that his father’s safety is more important to the Americans than is the safety of Mohammed Mursi. [emphasis ours]

That this interview happened and the younger Al-Shater made these claims is backed up by at least six Arabic sources.

When Saad’s comments are viewed in the context of the bizarre behavior of U.S. officials, it provides the best explanation to date for extremely irrational and inexplicable behavior of those officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sinai Missiles Fall on Israeli City as Desert Jihadists Wage War on Two Fronts

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Photo Credit: APA missile attack on Israel’s popular Red Sea resort of Eilat Tuesday morning prompted deployment of the military’s vaunted Iron Dome defense – and has raised new fears Egypt’s army can’t contain the violence in the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula.

Although no one was killed and one of the three missiles was intercepted, the attack is viewed as a significant escalation in the activity of Islamist terror groups in Sinai, many of whom are affiliated with Al Qaeda. Under the recently deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, security in Sinai deteriorated, allowing groups such as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis – which claimed responsibility for the Eilat attack – to flourish. They have been targeting the provisional Egyptian government, but now could be taking on Israel, too.

“This was a response to the latest crimes by the Jews, who used a drone to attack and kill four of our fighters in Sinai,” read a statement in Arabic from Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. “The attack sowed fear among the criminal Jews, who were forced into underground bomb shelters.”

The jihadist group’s claim that an Israeli drone strike was responsible for the death of four of their fighters drew no comment from Israel. Ahmed Mohammad Ali, a spokesman for Egypt’s military, which has been trying to root out terror groups in the vast peninsula, denied that Israeli drones had been used for attacks in the area, which lies at Israel’s southern border and across the Suez Canal from the rest of Egypt. But he noted Egypt’s army has been active in the area.

“Since Saturday night, 25 terrorists have been killed or injured by the Egyptian Army, and ammunition supply depots had been destroyed,” Ali said.

Read more from this story HERE.