The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.

The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.

For years, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the use of commercial tracking tools to identify and target consumers with advertisements. The online ad industry has said its practices are innocuous and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them.

The revelation that the NSA is piggybacking on these commercial technologies could shift that debate, handing privacy advocates a new argument for reining in commercial surveillance.

David Cameron is a well brought up son of the English shires. He knows, I suspect, not to talk too loudly in church, not to help himself to the claret when invited to a dinner party and not to be rude to waiters or waitresses. He can be a bit presumptuous and thoughtless with his own MPs, which may one day have consequences. But that aside, he knows how to behave.

So why did a grinning Prime Minister today lean in to be in a "selfie" with President Obama and the leader of Denmark? She's Neil Kinnock's daughter-in-law, by the way. A dignified Michelle Obama looked straight ahead and refused to indulge in such ridiculous teenage antics at what, after all, was a memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

For those unaware of the concept of a "selfie", it is a picture taken of yourself on a mobile telephonic device. A picture of the Cameron/Obama selfie being taken has emerged on the internet.

It is only yesterday that Cameron was caught during the tributes to Mandela in the Commons tweeting a picture of "little Ant'n'Dec" (small television characters who resemble the real Ant and Dec, the well-established Geordie entertainers). It seems one of his staff tweeted it, thus undermining his efforts at creating the impression of authenticity.

What on earth is going on? Why do world leaders now behave like this? And at a memorial service?

- 500 signatories include five Nobel prize winners
- Writers demand 'digital bill of rights' to curb abuses

More than 500 of the world's leading authors, including five Nobel prize winners, have condemned the scale of state surveillance revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden and warned that spy agencies are undermining democracy and must be curbed by a new international charter.

The signatories, who come from 81 different countries and include Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass and Arundhati Roy, say the capacity of intelligence agencies to spy on millions of people's digital communications is turning everyone into potential suspects, with worrying implications for the way societies work.

They have urged the United Nations to create an international bill of digital rights that would enshrine the protection of civil rights in the internet age.

Their call comes a day after the heads of the world's leading technology companies demanded sweeping changes to surveillance laws to help preserve the public's trust in the internet - reflecting the growing global momentum for a proper review of mass snooping capabilities in countries such as the US and UK, which have been the pioneers in the field.

TSA agents in St. Louis, Missouri, disarmed Rooster Monkburn, a cowboy sock monkey, of his two-inch toy gun after a woman brought the stuffed monkey through security. Agents said that it posed a threat because it could be confused for a real gun, according to local reports.

"[The agent] said 'this is a gun,'" said Phyllis May, recounting the experience to fly back to her home in Washington state. "I said no, it's not a gun it's a prop for my monkey."

May, who has a small business selling sock monkeys, was also questioned for bringing the sewing supplies she uses to make the stuffed animals in her carry-on bag. TSA agents told her they would have to confiscate the miniature firearm and call the police, although Washington's KING-TV reports that the TSA never did call the authorities. May's sewing supplies were ultimately returned to her.

Call it the selfie seen 'round the world.

Among the enduring images from Nelson Mandela's massive memorial service in Johannesburg Tuesday will be one of a jovial President Obama taking a cell phone pic with his seat-mates, Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Britain's David Cameron.

As the three of them smile for the camera, a stern-looking Michelle Obama can be seen staring straight ahead, hands clasped. As if to remind anyone who sees this photo years from now that it was, after all, a memorial service for one of the great human rights leaders.

The tsk-tsk-ing could be heard across continents.

"What on earth is going on? Why do world leaders now behave like this?" The Daily Telegraph's Iain Martin wrote. "Perhaps it is just that the current generation -- my generation -- is so appallingly spoiled that basic notions of decorum have been shot to pieces."

The American media has blacked out an account by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh demonstrating that President Barack Obama and the US government lied when they claimed to have proof that the Syrian government carried out a sarin gas attack last August on areas near Damascus held by US-backed "rebels."

Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and other top officials declared categorically that the August 21 attack on Eastern Ghouta, which reportedly killed hundreds of people, had been carried out by the Syrian military. They, along with the leaders of Britain and France, sought to use the gas attack to stampede public opinion behind their plans to attack Syria, cripple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and install a puppet government.

In the end, internal differences over the launching of direct military action combined with broad popular opposition to another unprovoked war in the Middle East led the administration to pull back and accept a Russian plan for the dismantling of Syrian chemical weapons. This was followed by the opening of talks with Iran, Syria's main ally in the region.

Hersh's article, entitled "Whose sarin?," was published Sunday by the London Review of Books. Based on information provided by current and former US intelligence and military officials, Hersh showed in great detail that Washington manipulated intelligence to create the impression that it had tracked the Syrian military preparing to launch a poison gas attack in the days leading up to the sarin strike on Eastern Ghouta. In fact, US intelligence had no advance warning of the attack.

Buried on the fourth page of Lori Montgomery's recent piece in the Washington Post on Paul Ryan's alleged anti-poverty crusade is an incredibly disparaging quote from Bishop Shirley Holloway, a minor religious celebrity in D.C., who, after assuring us that "Paul wants people to dream again," omnisciently asserts that "you don't dream when you've got food stamps."

It's a bizarre sentiment that understandably provoked a snarky backlash from liberal bloggers. But it's also an unusually honest expression of how religious conservatives and allies of Paul Ryan view the lower classes. For many on the broadly defined Christian Right, what ails the poor is that they are not "dreaming" as they should be. This may be due to circumstance, or personal failing, or some combination of both. But the message is clear: for the millions of luckless souls who find themselves in abject poverty, there is a simple, straightforward path to tangible and dramatic socioeconomic improvement. Luckily, it doesn't require increased social spending by government, or taxes on the rich, or anything like that (in fact, it might require reduced social spending and lower taxes on the rich). As it turns out, "dreaming" is all that's needed.

Shirley Holloway is far from the only religious leader who proposes intensified dreaming as the key mechanism by which one can escape poverty. But, without question, the leading exponent of this school of thought is one Joel Osteen, celebrity pastor at Lakewood Church, the largest church in the United States. Osteen has built an extremely lucrative personal empire on the foundational message that, if his extended flock will simply agree to dream bigger and think more positively, God will grace them with previously unimaginable levels of wealth and success. Each week, when millions of people around the world tune in to see the perpetually smiling Osteen deliver his sermon to a reliably packed arena, they hear some variation of the promise that everyone is this close to "realizing their full potential" and experiencing a vague but boundless bliss.

Pro-EU protests in Kiev have been marked by western politicians' regular visits to the protesters' camp, and their emotional condemnations of Ukraine's authorities. This is seen by some analysts as unprecedented meddling in a country's internal affairs.

US Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, handed out snacks on Wednesday to protesters on Kiev's Independence Square (or 'Maidan' as it's nicknamed), making those who witnessed the scene wonder if a reciprocal gesture would be imaginable during something like an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York.

Nuland's act of philanthropy and meeting with President Viktor Yanukovich, where she reprimanded him for "absolutely impermissible" treatment of the protesters, came hours after John Kerry made a very strong statement on Ukraine.

"The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protests in Kiev's Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers and batons," The US Secretary of State's statement read. The word "disgust" rarely if ever appears in diplomatic messages.

Tensions ran truly high in Kiev early on Wednesday, when police started to dismantle some of the barricades in the city center and scuffles broke out. However, as RT's correspondent on the ground saw it, the distribution of force was somewhat equal.

Barack Obama's selfie with Danish prime minister leaves Twitter a-tweet about Michelle Obama 'soap opera'

While world leaders gathered in celebration of the life of South Africa's Nelson Mandela, social media seemed more interested in a selfie and a soap opera in the stands.

U.S. President Barack Obama managed to upstage his own universally praised speech about Mandela Tuesday not once, but twice, with pictures taken in the stands at FNB stadium.

Regarding the 7/7/2005 terrorist attacks in London, let us look at the facts, and what we were told, and compare them. Then, using Ockham's Razor and common-sense, let us see what conclusions are to be drawn, so we can all understand what most likely really did happen that day.