Local law-enforcement agencies are buying cellphone-tracking equipment that is cheaper and smaller than earlier systems, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, but it isn't always clear whether court orders are needed to use the devices.

The systems, which go by trade names such as "Jugular" and "Wolfhound," are handheld and sometimes come with antennas so small they can be attached to clothing, according to public documents. The gadgets cost only a few thousand dollars each—far less than more sophisticated systems, and well within the reach of many local agencies.

Cellphone tracking technology is getting cheaper, smaller and more accessible for police departments. And that has civil liberties advocates worried.

"It's extremely affordable and literally fits in your hand," said Scott Schober, the president of Berkeley Varitronics Systems Inc., which makes the Wolfhound and several other cellphone and Wi-Fi detection systems.

The 'Asset Development Plan' for Greece is out and it's all go for the privatization of the country. Hellenic sea ports, air ports, motorways, petroleum companies, water and gas supply, real estate, holiday resorts - it's all for sale.

Debt laden Greece has been forced to sell the family silver in an all too familiar tale with ancient history repeating itself.

The Hellenic Public Asset Development Fund has been published by German Green MEP Sven Giegold who said the Greek people "hardly know" what will be sold off and that they have "the right" to know.

Macedonia has declared a state of emergency on its southern and northern borders over a surge in migrants and refugees, the Interior Ministry announced. The country said it would involve the army in confronting the crisis.

"We expect the involvement of the army will bring two desired effects - it will increase security among our citizens in the two regions and will allow for a more comprehensive approach toward people expressing their interest in applying for asylum," Interior Ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski said.

He told Reuters that the "official border crossings are not shut," but that authorities may have moved to seal off illegal routes used by the migrants and refugees.

"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person." — Anonymous

In 2010 the pro-corporate Roberts' 5/4 Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored right-wing multimillionaire businessmen and amoral multinational corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary contributions to political campaigns, political action groups and politicians.

This ruling, called by many fair-minded observers to be the worst Supreme Court decision of the past century, has emboldened the already powerful and corruptible corporations (that already have dominion over the economy) to now also be able to thoroughly bribe any number of favored pro-corporate politicians to do their will but also to more effectively brain-wash voters through multi-million dollar ad campaigns (that can't be effectively countered by small contributions from average voters).

The US Supreme Court has thus made legal the absurd notion that inanimate paper corporations like PolyMet and Glencore should have the same privileges (but not the same responsibilities) as living humans. Both of those out-or-state companies are potential despoilers of northern Minnesota's irreplaceable wetlands, rivers, aquifers and aboriginal land and water rights.

The release of records pilfered by hackers from the infidelity website Ashley Madison may present a headache for thousands of US government and military personnel, who used their official emails to register.

According to preliminary analysis of the data, which appeared on the 'dark web' on Tuesday, almost 60,000 members have addresses in Washington, DC, and over 15,000 accounts were affiliated with a .gov or a .mil address.

After holding the data hostage for a month, the hacker group calling itself Impact Team released almost 10 gigabytes of Ashley Madison records, containing sensitive customer information such as payment transaction and credit card details, emails, names, addresses, phone numbers and member profiles.

Owned by Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison boasts over 38 million users drawn to the company's slogan "Life is short. Have an affair." Membership is free for women, while men pay $49 for 100 credits on the site, used to chat, send messages and virtual gifts.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has hit out at American and European policy in Ukraine, saying it ignores Russia's relationship with its neighbor, and has called for cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin in Ukraine.

"Breaking Russia has become an objective [for US officials] the long-range purpose should be to integrate it," the 92-year-old told The National Interest in a lengthy interview for the policy magazine's anniversary that touched on most of the world's most pertinent international issues. "If we treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities."

The diplomat, who is most famous for serving in the Nixon administration, and controversially being awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating the Vietnam ceasefire, accused the West of failing to recognize the historical context in which the fallout occurred between Moscow and Kiev.

"The relationship between Ukraine and Russia will always have a special character in the Russian mind. It can never be limited to a relationship of two traditional sovereign states, not from the Russian point of view, maybe not even from Ukraine's. So, what happens in Ukraine cannot be put into a simple formula of applying principles that worked in Western Europe."

Syrian state television has confirmed Israeli strikes on Golan Heights, Reuters reports. Israel previously said that the bombardment was a response to rockets fired at its territory from Syria.

Israel fired "several missiles," which targeted a transportation center and a public building in a Syrian area of the Golan Heights, Quneitra, a military source told Syrian state TV.

According to the IDF, earlier rockets came to Israel from the central part of the Golan Heights controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

"The [Israeli] army sees Syria as responsible for the fire, and it will pay the price for it," the IDF statement said.

The Israeli army also said that the rockets were fired by the Islamic Jihad movement "with Iranian funding and direction."

Earlier in the day the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that there had been casualties on the ground in Syria due to Israeli strikes, but there has been no official confirmation of this.

What is clearly visible so far are the great mutual economic costs - including to the West itself, but no sign of the west accomplishing its goals of weakening Putin or changing Moscow's course whatsoever

Some Day, We'll Look Back at This, and Laugh. And there's no time like the present.

It was nice of Al Gore to invent the Internet, because it offers unparalleled comedic opportunities to recapture moments in time when puffed-up and self-important toads made confident predictions which later made them look like the arrogant blowhards they are.

And if you write "I am an arrogant blowhard" on your résumé, you will have just doubled your chances of being hired as whatever they are calling a journalist these days, at The Guardian.

Exemplary of The Guardian's forecasting where Russia is concerned - and The Guardian never met a Russian it didn't hate, unless they were an oligarch expat, a political dissident or a member of Pussy Riot - is this gem by The Guardian's "Economics Editor", Larry Elliott; "Russia Has Just Lost the Economic War With the West".

For those who don't remember when the west's economic war against Russia started, it actually kicked off with a skirmish, in which the USA stopped service in Russia to holders of Visa and Mastercard at certain sanctioned banks in Russia, back in the spring of 2014.

Customers found that their cards did not work and their accounts were frozen. Russian media promptly pointed out that American credit-card companies "had a record of bowing to political decisions from Washington"; the government imposed a security deposit fee equal to two days worth of transactions in Russia, which would cost the companies $1.9 Billion (Visa) and $1 Billion (Mastercard), and Morgan-Stanley issued a report which suggested the two credit-card giants would be better off terminating their operations in Russia, where they together had 90% of market share.

For his part, the Russian president announced that Russia would develop its own national payment system and greatly reduce its dependence on western credit-card companies.

It's hard for me to see that as a western victory. Visa and Mastercard squealed like pigs, Russia introduced a prototype domestic card (Mir) which Mastercard signed on to co-brand, and Mastercard and Visa both humbly signed on to Russia's national payment system, which moves processing to Russia.

President Putin's late-July decree to destroy all sanctioned EU foodstuffs caught at the Russian border has incited a flurry of backlash, even among some typically Russian-friendly foreign journalists. Russia Insider's Danielle Ryan, for example, documents not only instances of domestic criticism over the initiative, but also personally laments that it's "wrong" and "not right". It's completely understandable why the publicized destruction of food is appalling to many people worldwide, but the fact is that they're largely missing the deeper reasons why this is happening, and that's partly due to the Russian authorities not properly communicating them.

It's not simply about saving the administrative resources and time that have to be directed to resending the products back to their original destination, nor in depriving a sanctions violator of the opportunity to profitably resell their said contraband back in the EU or elsewhere. There's also more at play than just supporting Russian domestic producers and ending the country's foreign food reliance. What's really happening is that Russia is publicly defending itself from a clever form of psychological-economic warfare being waged against it by the EU, and it's doing so at this specific time in order to limit the ability of this offensive to interfere with the upcoming general elections in September.

Greece has agreed to sell to a German company the rights to operate 14 regional airports. The deal is the first in a wave of privatisations the government had until recently opposed but must make to qualify for bailout loans.

The decision, published in the government gazette on Monday night would hand over the airports including several on popular tourist island destinations to Fraport AG, which runs Frankfurt Airport, among others across the world.

The deal, worth €1.23bn euros (£0.9bn/$1.37bn), is the first privatisation decision taken by the government of Alexis Tsipras, who was elected prime minister in January on promises to repeal the conditions of Greece's previous two bailouts.

The government initially vowed to cancel the country's privatisation programme but Tsipras caved in to win a deal on a third international bailout for Greece, worth €86bn. Without the rescue loans Greece would default on its debts and risk being forced out of the euro.