Key digital rights activists - including Edward Snowden and hacker Jacob Appelbaum - have been blacklisted from the Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF) on internet openness and freedom. The move has caused a stir at the gathering and outraged Twitter users.

The third annual European meeting of internet activists kicked off in Sweden on May 26, with its main theme being "Internet - privacy, transparency, surveillance and control."

But strangely enough, those whose names immediately spring to mind when it comes to the issue of surveillance are not allowed to attend the event.

Former CIA employee Edward Snowden, who revealed the NSA's mass spying program, was not invited. Neither was journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story.

Hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who found German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone number in Snowden's database, didn't receive an invitation either.

Bodies are piling up in Donetsk morgues after Kiev unleashed fighter jets and artillery on the country's southeast just hours after the presidential election. New leader-elect Petro Poroshenko is pushing for the crackdown to become even "more effective."

Ukraine's southeast saw only a brief suspension of Kiev's military operations on Sunday while the nation took to the polls. Just before the presidential election, Ukrainian MPs called for immediate troop withdrawal from the country's southeast.

Following the vote, the leading candidate - billionaire chocolate tycoon Petro Poroshenko - said he sees no reason why the military should stop the operation.

"I support its continuation, but demand a change in its format - it must be shorter and it must be more effective, military units must be better equipped," he said, despite earlier statements that he is ready for dialogue with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

Soon after the last vote was cast, the Kiev military descended on the southeast with new energy, shelling Slavyansk and attacking the airport in Donetsk with mortars.

Uncle Sam has been nickel-and-diming Americans to pay for a nuclear waste disposal facility that doesn't exist.

But on Friday, after a protracted legal battle between the Department of Energy and power companies, the feds are backing down.

For 30 years, customers who got their energy from nuclear power plants had an extra fee tacked on to their monthly bills, ostensibly to pay for the cost of disposing nuclear waste.

"The fee is tiny - one mill, or a tenth of a cent, for every kilowatt hour generated by nuclear power," CNN reported. "That amounts to about 15 to 20 cents on the average monthly electric bill, industry officials estimate."

The catch: the feds weren't actually using the money to deal with nuclear waste.

Last week, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) released a trove of some 4,000 documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing that the movements of the mostly peaceful participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests were subjected to an "enormous spying and monitoring apparatus" that included coordination between the Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local police, private security contractors and corporate interests.

Increasingly, Americans' time-honored First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and dissent are playing out as open-season on protesters and mass arrests, followed by years of evidence destruction or tampering in court cases.

As Wall Street On Parade perused the new documents from PCJF, one in particular raised red flags. Its subject line referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement as "Friggin Occupy" and it came from a veteran police officer.

The PCJF is currently representing plaintiffs in a class action on behalf of some 700 peaceful marchers who were herded like cattle on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011 during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests and subjected to mass arrest by the New York City Police Department.

First, a "SITREP from the front lines" by "Juan"

• Donetsk Airport freight terminal is burned and partly destroyed. Kiev is believed to be in control of the airport at this time. Damage to the terminal building is unknown.
• The attempt to seize Donetsk Airport was reinforced by Vostok Brigade. Casualties were heavy in the brigade but numbers unknown.
• The Vostok Brigade wounded being transported to hospital in a truck were fired upon. The driver was killed, then an RPG round was fired at the truck. All the wounded in the truck were killed, either by the RPG or head shots after the assault. Confirmed by vid and photos of the dead, all that could be seen had head wounds. A second video not being published absolutely confirms that all the dead from the trucks carrying wounded had head wounds.
• Russian news report: Тела погибших при обстреле КамАЗа с ранеными в Донецке привезли в морг
• Numerous bombardments last evening and this morning of civilian areas of Slavyansk, Donetsk, Mariupol and Lugansk City and suburbs, civilian casualties are heavy with more than 70 reported dead and wounded.
• Major movements of Kiev forces as of 05 local time this morning have not commenced. More information on this later.
• As of 11:30 local time scattered probing attacks are reported around Slavyansk.
• As of 10:05 local time the situation in Mariupol is unknown.
• No major attacks by the Nats today, just numerous small probes.
• Evacuation is being attempted in Slavyansk for civilians but it is not possible, the city is cut off and surrounded to an extent. Don't know if this is true or if it is a charade to mask the evacuation of at least the children. Reality is Slavyansk has to large a population to evacuate, 120,000.
• Scattered artillery and mortar attacks continue in the vicinity of Slavyansk and the outskirts of Donetsk, almost all at random civilian residential areas. Some casualties but number is unknown.
• No information on the situation in either Lugansk Oblast or Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast.

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The Saker comments:

This is clearly a major escalation of the war. For the first time for example Su-25 ground attack aircraft have been filmed using unguided rockets to attack the positions of what I will call from now on the Novorossia Armed Forces (NAF). I have also seen some very bad footage of what appears to be a MiG-29. The attack on the Donetsk airport involved a long column of transport and attack helicopters. NAF sources also claim that their checkpoints have been attacked by Ukie helicopters. All in all, this the first (comparatively) large scale military operation of this war, at least to my knowledge. Though there are some contradictions in the figures presented by various sources, there seems to be a general agreement that "many tens" of people were killed, possibly up to one hundred, including about 50% civilians.

China has labeled the US take on cyber-spying a "complete disregard for moral integrity" and has accused the country of taking advantage of its geopolitical hegemony to spy on others, a Chinese report by an internet information body stated on Tuesday.

Beijing said that US methods involved broad-scale attacks against the Chinese government.

"America's spying operations have gone far beyond the legal rationale of 'anti-terrorism' and have exposed the ugly face of its pursuit of self-interest in complete disregard for moral integrity," concluded the research published by the China Academy of Cyber Space.

"As a superpower, the United States takes advantage of its political, economic, military and technological hegemony to unscrupulously monitor other countries, including its allies," the report added.

'America's Global Surveillance Record' was released one week after the US accused five Chinese military officers of hacking US computer systems.

The US Justice Department took the unprecedented move of publishing, together with a 48-page indictment, the photographs of the five.

Donetsk self-defense forces claim on Twitter to have regained control over the international airport in the eastern city after Ukrainian troops launched a military operation there, deploying fighter jets and helicopters.

"The people's army has the airport in Donetsk back under control. We are rooting out the remaining Kiev's remaining troops. Airstrikes have stopped for now," said the tweet from the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk.

However, other reports on Twitter suggest shooting in Donetsk still goes on, now moving to the downtown.

More loud explosions - several different types - audible in city centre #Donetsk & what sounds like a fighter jet #Ukraine

- Harriet Salem (@HarrietSalem) May 26, 2014

State-owned Chinese companies will cease to work with US consulting companies like McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group over fears they are spying on behalf of the US government.

US consulting companies McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Company, and Strategy&, formerly Booz & Co., will all be snubbed by state-owned Chinese companies, the Financial Times reported, citing sources close to senior Chinese leaders.

"The top leadership has proposed setting up a team of Chinese domestic consultants who are particularly focused on information systems in order to seize back this power from the foreign companies," a senior policy adviser to the Chinese leadership was quoted by the FT as saying.

"Right now the foreigners use their consulting companies to find out everything they want about our state companies," the adviser said.

McKinsey is the largest global consulting group operating in China, and about one-third of clients are state-owned enterprises. McKinsey has 650 employees in China.

Ukrainian aircraft and paratroopers killed more than 50 pro-Russian rebels in an assault that raged into a second day on Tuesday after a newly elected president vowed to crush the revolt in the east once and for all.

The unprecedented offensive throws a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said he reserves the right to defend Russian speakers under threat, but whose past assertions that Kiev is led by an illegitimate "junta" were undermined by the landslide election victory of billionaire Petro Poroshenko.


Reuters journalists counted 20 bodies in combat fatigues in one room of a city morgue in Donetsk. Some of the bodies were missing limbs, a sign that the government had brought to bear heavy firepower against the rebels for the first time.

"From our side, there are more than 50 (dead)," the prime minister of the rebels' self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Borodai, told Reuters at the hospital.

The government said it suffered no losses in the assault, which began with air strikes hours after Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to elect 48-year-old confectionery magnate Poroshenko as their new president.

Putin demanded an immediate halt to the offensive. Moscow said a visit by Poroshenko was not under consideration, though it has said it is prepared to work with him.

The Obama Administration's press service unwittingly put the real name of the CIA's top spy in Afghanistan on the 'pool report' distributed among journalists accompanying the American president on a surprise trip to Kabul's Bagram Airfield base.

The identity of the man dubbed 'Chief of Station', the usual address to a CIA local chief, was inadvertently added to a list of 15 US officials supposed to take part in a military briefing with Obama at the base, and emailed it to the White House press pool on Saturday, the Washington Post reported.

The unusual address was observed by Scott Wilson, the Washington Post's White House bureau chief, who informed the White House press officials.

"Wilson said that after the report was distributed, he noticed the unusual reference to the station chief and asked White House press officials in Afghanistan whether they had intended to include that name,"reported the Washington Post. "Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer's name."