Rob Ford 'embarrassed' but gives no sign that he will step down after video published showing him staggering and shouting
Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto who this week admitted to having smoked crack cocaine, has become embroiled in a fresh controversy after the publication of a video which shows him shouting abuse and making threats.

Ford apologised to the people of Toronto on Tuesday after making his extraordinary crack cocaine admission, but has refused to bow to mounting pressure from federal and council officials to step down and get help for his problems.

A new video, published by the Toronto Star on Thursday, shows Ford staggering around a room, talking to someone out of sight.

"I'm gonna kill that fucking guy. I'm telling you, it's first-degree murder," Ford rants, in a tirade directed at an unknown person. "No hold barred, bro. He dies or I die, brother. ... I'll rip his fucking throat out. I'll poke his eyes out ... I'll make sure that motherfucker's dead," Ford says, gesticulating with his hands as if engaged in a violent fight.

Dave Muscato, director of media relations for American Atheists, Inc., said that Christians who complain about persecution in the public square don't actually want equality with other viewpoints, they want supremacy over them.

In an interview with Raw Story, Muscato responded to avowals by Louisiana public officials that prayer will continue in public forums by saying that Christian officials who foist their views on private citizens are in violation of the some of this country's most sacred founding beliefs and of the U.S. Constitution.

"These Christians," he continued, "they've had a monopoly for so long. They don't want equality, they want privilege. And when they don't get special rights, they cry that they're being persecuted."

Forensic experts have exhumed 430 bodies so far from a mass grave left over from the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, possibly the largest gravesite found in Bosnia-Herzogivina, officials said Thursday.

"Remains of 430 victims have been exhumed so far and among them 275 complete bodies," Lejla Cengic of the Bosnian Institute for Missing People told AFP.

The bodies are believed to be those of Muslims and Croats tortured and killed by Bosnian Serb forces in northwestern Bosnia at the beginning of the war.

Let's take a look at ObamaCare without the party politics.

When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, a large percentage of the public is completely misinformed about what the law actually entails.

Many of these misconceptions have been intentionally cultivated by political pundits from both the left and the right. An predictably, people have latched onto the distortions which most closely fit in with their world view.

Let's remove all the party politics and set the record straight.

Scholar and assassination researcher Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds In Dallas, said it best, in the 2007 documentary film, Oswald's Ghost:

"As long as a mystery resides at the center of this case, it can't be closed," Thompson said.

That case, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, remains, for many, an open and unsolved murder case.

It remains open because the Dallas Police Department never had a chance to conduct a standard criminal investigation of the assassination. At the direction of Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency officials present in Dallas, President Kennedy's body was quickly flown on Air Force One back to Washington, D.C., that Friday afternoon.

As western diplomats said they have offered Tehran an ease in sanctions in return for Tehran stopping any further advancement in its nuclear enrichment activities, the Israeli premier said Tel Aviv is against an agreement with Iran that stops short of getting it to halt its uranium enrichment.

"Israel understands that there are proposals on the table in Geneva today that would ease the pressure on Iran for concessions that are not concessions at all," he said, during a speech to the Jewish Agency.

While a nuclear military capability needs uranium enriched more than 90% and Iran has succeeded in enriching uranium to a maximum 20% to feed its nuclear research reactor in Tehran which produces radioisotopes for medical purposes, including cancer treatment, the Israeli prime minister said the 20-percent enrichment capability enables Iran to build an atomic bomb.

"This proposal will allow Iran to preserve its ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israel is completely opposed to these proposals. I believe that adopting them would be a mistake of historic proportions and they should be completely rejected," he said.

Netanyahu renewed his military threats against Iran, warning that if the present negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the six world powers end in an agreement undesirable to Israel, Tel Aviv might wage an attack on Iran.

A highly concerning new investigative report from the largest daily newspaper in Germany alleges that Monsanto, the US Military and the US government have colluded to track and disrupt both anti-GMO activists and independent scientists who study the adverse effects of genetically modified food.

As revealed yesterday by Sustainable Pulse, on July 13th the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung detailed information on how the US Government "advances the interests of their corporations," focusing on Monsanto as a prime example.

The report titled, "The Sinister Monsanto Group: 'Agent Orange' to Genetically Modified Corn," described a 'new fangled cyber war' being waged against both eco-activists and independent scientists by supporters and former employees of Monsanto, who are described as "operationally powerful assistants" and who have taken up sometimes high ranking posts in the US administration, regulatory authorities, and some of whom have connections deep within the military industrial establishment, including the CIA.

The forensic tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat's corpse by a team of Swiss scientists exhibit high levels of radioactive polonium-210. The exhumation of his body was implemented in November 2012. The samples revealed "levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than usual in Arafat's ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his bodily fluids."

These developments raise the broader issue which the media has failed to address: Who was behind the assassination of Yasser Arafat? The Answer to that question was provided by the Israeli government in 2003, a year prior to his death.

"We will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat."

In September 2003, Israel's government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel's cabinet for political security affairs declared it "a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace."

Denmark is among the elite of nations collaborating with the US National Security Agency, enjoying privileges that only Anglo-Saxon nations trump. This new piece of information is part of an analysis carried out by The Guardian based on thousand of Snowden documents. This raises the question: what exactly do we provide in exchange?

Denmark is part of the inner circle of nations collaborating with the NSA. This new piece of information stems from documents provided by former NSA employee Edward Snowden and analyzed by The Guardian.

The alliance referred to as 'The Nine Eyes' places Denmark above key European allies. In the past weeks focus returned to collaborations between US and European intelligence services - the nature of which both PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Minister of Justice Morten Bødskov refused to comment on.

A revealing page-one article in today's New York Times ("Tap on Merkel Provides Peek a Vast Spy Net") reports on how the NSA's global spying program, dating back at least to early in the Bush/Cheney administration, was vacuuming up the phone conversations (and no doubt later the internet communications) of not just leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but opposition leader Merkel before her party took power in Germany.

As the Times puts it, the phone monitoring, which actually dates back to the Cold War Era before 1990, "is hardly limited to the 35 leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties."

That's pretty far-reaching, and the paper says that it has learned, primarily courtesy of revelations from the documents released by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the spying went even beyond that, to target up-and-coming potential leaders of so-called "friendly states."

But the Times buys without question the explanation offered by professional liar James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence and ultimate head of the embattled National Security Agency, that the NSA's spying on leaders and potential was and is and has been, first of all, well known to presidents, and secondly that its purpose was simply to see "if what they're saying gels with what's actually going on, as well as how other countries' policies "impact us across a whole range of issues."

That's pretty broad. The first explanation is really a euphemistic way of saying the NSA wants to see if American's purported friends and allies are lying. The second is a euphemistic way of saying that the US is spying to gain inside information about its allies' political goals and strategies, and probably their negotiating positions on things like trade treaties, international regulations, etc.

What the Times does not ask in its entire report on this spying program on leaders and potential leaders is whether there could be another motive for this extraordinary spying campaign on leaders: blackmail.