A suspected Syrian spy who was arrested in Germany earlier this year once tried to infiltrate the country's intelligence services, officials said Tuesday.

The German federal prosecutors' office said 35-year-old Akram O. was employed by Syria's embassy in Berlin but not officially registered with German authorities when he applied in late 2010 for a post with the Interior Ministry.

The application was made "at the behest of his intelligence agency handlers," prosecutors said in a statement.

O., whose full name wasn't disclosed by prosecutors because of privacy rules, said at the time that he wanted to work for Germany's domestic intelligence agency or electronic surveillance office - both overseen by the ministry - but his application was turned down.

The Syrian national applied for German citizenship in 2009, making false claims about his personal and economic circumstances, but never obtained it, prosecutors said.

German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This was revealed by the German government in a response to a parliamentary question.

In response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these reports was to remain classified "by reason of national interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence.

Translation by Sott.net

Germany's federal government is being criticized by its left faction over its stance regarding the violence in Syria. The cause was a parliamentary enquiry to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Houla massacre. Furthermore, German intelligence agents are involved in Syria.

The left faction has strongly criticized the federal government's position regarding what it knows about the Syrian Hula massacre on May 25th. Representative Sevim Dagdelen criticised how on the one hand the federal government repeated the view of an international investigative commission that "powers close to regime", i.e. militia close to president Assad, were "responsible" for the majority of victims' deaths, but on the other hand the government stated it doesn't have "incriminating information" when asked about the details of the massacre's circumstances.

The representative referred to replies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a parliamentary enquiry. The federal government's reply stated: "From the point of view of the federal government, the primary threat to the civilian population comes through the continued military violence of the Syrian regime." Over the period July 5th until 15th July the government has been repeatedly briefed about the massacre in Houla by the Federal Intelligence Service.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) claimed Tuesday in an interview that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney refuses to release additional tax returns because he didn't pay taxes for 10 years.

The interview, published Tuesday by The Huffington Post, includes several swipes by the Senate leader at the GOP candidate.

"His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son," Reid said in reference to George Romney's decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in 1968.

Reid suggested that Romney's decision to withhold tax information would bar him from ever earning Senate confirmation to a Cabinet post. Then, Reid recalled a phone call his office received about a month ago from "a person who had invested with Bain Capital," according to The Huffington Post.

Reid said the person told him: "Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years."

Are you ready to have a microchip implanted into your brain? That might not sound very appealing to you at this point, but this is exactly what the big pharmaceutical companies and the big technology companies have planned for our future. They are pumping millions of dollars into researching "cutting edge" technologies that will enable implantable microchips to greatly "enhance" our health and our lives.

Of course nobody is going to force you to have a microchip implanted into your brain when they are first introduced. Initially, brain implants will be marketed as "revolutionary breakthroughs" that can cure chronic diseases and that can enable the disabled to live normal lives. When the "benefits" of such technology are demonstrated to the general public, soon most people will want to become "super-abled".

Just imagine the hype that will surround these implants when people discover that you can get rid of your extra weight in a matter of days or that you can download an entire college course into your memory in just a matter of hours. The possibilities for this kind of technology are endless, and it is just a matter of time before having microchips implanted into your brain is considered to be quite common. What was once science fiction is rapidly becoming reality, and it is going to change the world forever.

But aren't there some very serious potential downsides to having microchips implanted into our brains?

Of course there are.

Unfortunately, this technology is not as far off as you might think, and most people are not even talking about what the negative consequences might be.

According to a recent article in the Financial Times, the pharmaceutical company of the future will include a "bioelectronics" business that "treats disease through electrical signalling in the brain and elsewhere."

Diseases such as diabetes and epilepsy and conditions such as obesity and depression will be will be treated "through electronic implants into the brain rather than pills or injections."

These implants will send electrical signals to cells and organs that are "malfunctioning". People will be totally "cured" without ever having to pop a pill or go under the knife.

It sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, the Financial Times says that British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is working very hard to develop these kinds of technologies. Moncef Slaoui, the head of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, says that the "challenge is to integrate the work - in brain-computer interfaces, materials science, nanotechnology, micro-power generation - to provide therapeutic benefit."

If a brain implant could cure a disease that you have been suffering from your whole life would you take it?

A lot of people are going to be faced with that kind of a decision in future years.

THE GIST

• The history of police in the United States has been intentionally decentralized from the outset.
• The prospect that the U.S. will ever become a police state is remote.
• Americans and our law enforcement agencies have a skewed sense of true risks.

Ever since a midnight shooting at a movie theater in Colorado left 12 people dead and 58 wounded a little over a week ago, conversations have focused on gun laws and violence. Often overlooked in those discussions, though, are questions about the role of police protection in the United States: How much is enough and how much would be too much?

After the Dark Knight shooting, the New York Police Department mobilized to cover screenings of the film to thwart copycat crimes. And while that kind of reaction offered a sense of security to many moviegoers, a permanent police or military presence at all theaters and other public places would likely seem a little too Big Brother for most Americans.

Even if there were a public outcry for constant police surveillance, experts say, the American system of policing is far too decentralized to make that possible, making it highly unlikely that the United States will ever become a police state.

At the same time, debates continue about whether the American police system actually defends U.S. citizens from real threats or if we're blinded by a skewed sense of risk-assessment.

Ecuadorean diplomats seek UK assurances that WikiLeaks founder will not be extradited to US after proceedings in Sweden.

The Ecuadorean government is seeking to avert the "evil" of the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, according to a senior legal adviser to the country's embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has sought sanctuary with a view to claiming asylum.

Diplomats for the small Latin American country said they had been seeking assurances from the UK that Assange would not be extradited to the US after the completion of legal proceedings in Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault.

Lawyers for Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy for five weeks, believe there are secret plans to extradite him to the US to face trial, possibly for conspiracy to commit espionage. If found guilty, the 40-year-old could face life imprisonment.

The US pumps tons money abroad for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it ignores the country's very own infrastructure problems. Five years after a bridge collapse in Minneapolis left 13 people dead and 150 injures, Rachel McCleery of the Urban Land Institute Initiative asks RT's Kristine Frazao of America has bother to invest in its own infrastructure.

Hundreds of millions of dollars has been wasted on Iraq reconstruction with relatively little progress to show. Apparently infrastructure failures abroad are not isolated to just Iraq either, though. A new report shows a large amount of the US government's 400 million dollar investment in infrastructure in Afghanistan in last year was wasted as well. RT's Kristine Frazao brings an analysis.

A US criminal inquiry against WikiLeaks frontman has reached an "unprecedented" size and scale, Julian Assange's lawyer told RT. Sweden, on the other hand, seems to have turned a deaf ear to all offers to interview Assange anywhere in the UK.

Sweden has turned down Ecuador's invitation to question Assange at its London embassy, WikiLeaks' Twitter reports. The news is yet to be confirmed by officials from either country.

The frontman of the whistle-blowing site has been holed up in Ecuador's diplomatic mission for over six weeks now, seeking political asylum. Assange lost an extradition appeal in the UK Supreme Court in May and will be sent to Sweden once British law enforcement manages to get hold of him.

In Sweden, prosecutors are investigating a sex crimes case against Assange. The scandal-stirring whistleblower is wanted for an interview, as no official charges have been put forward yet.