Various newspapers and online articles in Italy are suggesting that a good portion of the Bilderberg group, at least 80 of them, have been called to Rome this week for a secret meeting regarding the engineered Euro financial crisis and the unrest that has come as a result.

This meeting is particularly unusual because it is so small and informal, but it is possible that they may have switched up their tactics after the massive turnout for this year's Bilderberg protest. It is also possible that these smaller meetings happen all the time, but were always able to slide under the radar.

This meeting is also unusual because they aren't renting out an entire hotel, in fact, they are using a hotel that is hosting a massive event at the same time. The hotel they have chosen is "the De Russi", which is the site of this year's International Film Festival, so that was either a major scheduling error or an attempt to hide in plain sight.

Despite all of the commotion surrounding the hotel this week, local publications were able to publish detailed lists of those who are attending the event. Most of the publications to cover the meeting are suggesting that the topic of discussion will be the new commissioner for Spain, Greece, Italy and other areas of the European Union that are in dire economic crisis.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades condemned the Wednesday assassination of a Hamas top military commander by the Israeli regime, and warned that it sees no redline to respond to Israel's heinous act.

The Quds Brigades announced that Israel should take full responsibility for its crime, and added that it will not restrict itself to any redline in reacting to this assassination.

The announcement came after the Zionist regime assassinated deputy chief commander of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of the Palestinian movement Hamas, Ahmad al-Jabari by striking his car today.

After weeks of incursions and strikes on Gaza, the Zionist regime launched a new wave of offensives on the Palestinian enclave and announced today that it is in full state of alert.

The Israeli army assassinated the deputy chief commander of the Palestinian Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade, Ahmad al-Jabari, in an air strike on his car near Al-Amal Hotel in Gaza on Wednesday.

The Israeli terror attack killed two Palestinians and injured three others, including senior members of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas.

According to FNA dispatches, a companion of al-Jabari was also among those killed in the attack by Israeli jet fighters.

Some news sources reported that Hamas has confirmed al-Jabari's martyrdom.

The assassination comes after the Zionist regime officials had made open calls for the assassination of Hamas leaders, including the Palestinian Prime Minister Islmail Haniyeh.

David Petraeus has faced criticism and condemnation from across the political spectrum for his affair with his biographer, but he found one surprising defender on Tuesday: conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson. Robertson, who is host of the Christian current events TV show 'The 700 Club,' seemed to justify the disgraced CIA Director's relationship with Paula Broadwell.

'The man is in a foreign land and he's lonely and here's a good looking lady throwing herself at him and... he's a man,' Robertson said. He seemed sympathetic to Petraeus' 'affairs of the heart,' and implied that he seemed to be a tragic victim.

'I don't think he's a devious human being. I think he's been one of the greatest general America has ever produced. He's a brilliant man, he's got a Ph.D. from Princeton,' Robertson said. He added: 'We'll sadly miss a man like that.'

Petreaus, one of the country's most decorated war heroes, resigned from his post as the nation's top spy on Friday after the FBI stumbled across email evidence of a months-long affair between him and Broadwell.

They don't want to take their country back. They just want to leave it behind.

As the dust settles in the wake of President Obama's decisive reelection last Tuesday, the White House petition website has been flooded by a series of secession requests, with malcontents from New Jersey to North Dakota submitting petitions to allow their states to withdraw from the union.

Most of the petitions submitted thus far have come from solidly conservative states, including most of the Deep South and reliably separatist Texas. But a handful come from the heart of blue America - relatively progressive enclaves like Oregon and New York.

All told, petitions have been filed on behalf of 20 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Many of the petitions invoke the Declaration of Independence's dramatic assertion that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government."

The mistress of General Petraeus - one Paula Broadwell, was no ordinary fling, and is said to be pivotal in his resignation.

As a result, the CIA head won't be testifying in the upcoming Congressional hearings on Obama's cock-up in Benghazi. The FBI raided Broadwell's residence immediately following the disclosure.

Paula Broadwell, maiden name 'Krantz', is a top-line US intelligence operative, and has links to arms dealer Jan Henrik Jebsen, who set up her position at Tufts University where she ran the Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies at Tufts Fletcher School. Jebsen also has ties to arch-neocons Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, and Michael Ledeen through his board position with the pro-Israeli Hudson Institute. The Hudson is directly tied to Likud in Israel, and works to cultivate the idea of radical Islam as the chief threat to the west. Paula Broadwell is in the middle of this matrix, and she herself has also worked extensively in Israel and Jordan, as one could image.

Broadwell's father Paul Krantz seems to know something, telling the New York Daily News, 'it's about more than the affair'.

Some observers call Washington a city of scandals. Lots of intrigue reflects daily life in the nation's capital. Elected and appointed officials come and go.

Most often it's uneventful. Other times once powerful figures fell from grace or scandals affecting them rose to the level of affixing a "gate" suffix on what happened.

Watergate, Whitewatergate, Iran/Contragate, Koreagate, Travelgate, and Troopergate among others come to mind.

Perhaps Petraeusgate will enter the lexicon of political scandals. You read it here first.

Forget resignation over extramarital sex nonsense unless state secrets were compromised. Lots of elected and appointed Washington officials had affairs. Many likely have current ones.

Resignations don't generally follow. Newt Gingrich survived sex and ethics scandals. He resigned as House Speaker after the Republicans faired poorly in 1998 off-year elections.

In 1999, extramarital sex defrocked Speaker-elect Bob Livingstone. He could have stayed, but opted to become a high-paid DC lobbyist.

Extramarital affairs didn't defrock past notable officials. They included Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (during WW II), Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton. Unconfirmed rumors also surfaced about GHW and GW Bush.

Who knew what and when? Why did Jill Kelley ask for diplomatic protection? And shirtless photos from an anti-Obama FBI agent? (UPDATED)

The start of this crazy scandal:

Last Friday, David Petraeus - a retired Army general revered for his roles in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency after revealing that he'd had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. It soon emerged that the FBI had been investigating Petraeus' paramour for months, eventually stumbling across their relationship.

Wait - who did what, now?

Petraeus, who at different points in the past decade oversaw the Iraq War, Afghanistan, and the CIA's drone program, engaged in an affair with Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and commentator on military affairs. The two met in 2006, when Petraeus addressed Broadwell and her graduate school colleagues at Harvard. Two years later, she began a Ph.D. in war studies and started to compose a book-length analysis of Petraeus' wartime leadership. He eventually granted her unfettered access, including lodgings on his Kabul base when he took control of the war in Afghanistan in 2010.

Broadwell's access continued after Petraeus retired from the Army and took over at the CIA in late summer of 2011. Her research culminated in an glowing biography titled All In: The Education of David Petraeus, which was released earlier this year. According to news reports, sources close to Petraeus insist that the affair began after he left the Army; if it began before then, he (and Broadwell) could potentially be prosecuted for adultery under the military's legal codes.

How did all this come to light?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the affair was discovered several months ago by FBI agents investigating harassment allegations against Broadwell. She reportedly used an anonymous email account last May to send threatening emails to a Florida woman, Jill Kelley. Kelley is a family friend of Petraeus who volunteers as an event planner at MacDill Air Force base, the Tampa installation where Petraeus was based when he ran the US Central Command from 2008-10. The emails reportedly accused Kelley, 37, of an inappropriate relationship with Petraeus. Kelley voiced her concerns to a personal friend who was an FBI agent, according to the New York Times, and the FBI began an investigation of the emails.

That inquiry quickly led agents to suspect Broadwell of sending the messages, and they secured a warrant to search her personal email, discovering intimate details of her affair with Petraeus. By late summer, they had learned that the CIA director had been using a Gmail account under a pseudonym to communicate with Broadwell, and they informed Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller of the probe. Law enforcement officers began to investigate whether any sensitive or classified information had passed between the two lovers. (According to the Journal, federal agents are obligated by Justice Department policy not to share information with Congress and the White House on criminal investigations until they are completed.)

In late October, FBI officials interviewed Broadwell and Petraeus, and both separately admitted to the affair, though they stressed that they hadn't shared any classified data. Satisfied, the agents briefed James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and a friend of Petraeus, on the probe at 5 p.m. on November 6, Election Day. Clapper reportedly advised Petraeus to resign the next day. President Obama was informed of the matter Thursday, and Petraeus offered his resignation in the Oval Office. Obama accepted it the following day.

Travelers leaving or entering the United States have long had to declare aggregated cash and other monetary instruments exceeding $10,000. Now, under a proposed amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act, FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) will also require travelers to declare the value of prepaid cards that they are carrying, known now as "tangible prepaid access devices."

Expected to be finalized by the end of this year, the cross-border reporting modifications stem from a broader October 2011 definition of payment methods and form factors that replaced the term "stored value" with the term "prepaid access" in an effort to more accurately describe the process of accessing funds held by a payment provider.

Enforceability falls to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection both within the Department of Homeland Security, which is already developing advanced handheld card readers that can ascertain whether a traveler is carrying a credit card, debit card, or prepaid card. This differentiation is important because only prepaid card balances will need to be added to declaration report forms.

Acknowledging that many questions still remain and that enforcement may not be straightforward, Cynthia Merritt, assistant director of the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, had this to say about the handheld readers:

Furthermore, according to the comments, the enforcement challenge is not new, nor is the concept of a device or document that can be used to access value. The current challenges are similar to those presented in the past with other monetary instruments such as checks, money orders, and traveler checks.

Merritt also stated that, "When law enforcement takes possession of a cash or monetary instrument at the border, they are effectively holding the funds, but not so with a prepaid card or other device. Holding the card does not provide access to the underlying funds."

Gen. David Petraeus is the latest in a long line of powerful men in Washington whose career has been marred by an affair; Clinton and Lewinsky, Schwarzenegger and his love child - or for that matter, Edwards and his love child, Spitzer and the call girl.

The FBI alleged Gen. John Allen had "inappropriate communications" with Jill Kelley, the woman who reportedly received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, according to the Associated Press.

Allen is a four-star general and the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Broadwell, Petraeus' biographer, was identified as the woman who Petraeus had an affair with and the cause of his resignation.

An official told the AP that 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other communications between Allen and Kelley since 2010 are under review.

The official added the emails are not believed to be sexual in nature, and Allen has denied any wrongdoing.