Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Hossein Salami reiterated Iran's support for the innocent and oppressed people of Gaza, and warned the Israeli leaders against any new incursion into the region.

Salami said the Islamic Iran is supporter of Gaza's innocent and oppressed people, and the victory of Palestinians against Israel in Gaza is a sign of Iran's support and power against the Israeli leaders' crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

He warned the Israeli leaders against aggression on Gaza and killing defenseless people living in the Palestinian territories.

He said that the Israeli leaders saw strength of the Islamic army which could create an incredible victory in Gaza in line with the Islamic Awakening movements in the region.

Likely empowered by a U.S. administration that favors the kind of nanny state politics a ruling global entity would no doubt embrace, the head of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board feels comfortable telling federal officials they should move to challenge measures in Colorado and Washington that decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for adults 21 and over.

Raymond Yans lectured the voter-approved measures - part of the United States' democratic process, something most UN member countries are not familiar with - send "a wrong message to the rest of the nation and it sends a wrong message abroad."

In an interview with The Associated Press, Yans said he would like to see Attorney General Eric Holder "take all necessary measures" to ensure that marijuana possession remains illegal throughout the United States.

Syria has reportedly cut off all access to the Internet according to Akami and web monitoring firm Renesys. In a short blog post, Renesys said that "all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. Monitoring firm Akamai has also confirmed that no traffic is getting in or out of Syria. The BBC is reporting the mobile service has also been cut off.

A Google Transparency Report page shows that Google traffic to Syria appears to have been cut off Thursday morning.

Deposed Egyptian president Hasni Mubarak famously cut off Internet and mobile phone service in Egypt at the height of the Arab Spring demonstrations that led to his ouster. Although he was successful in getting the Egyptian carriers to cooperate, some Egyptians still managed to get online by making international data calls from old-fashioned telephone modem lines.

Judge's signed protection order against peaceful protest called an 'escalation' and an 'absurd' threat to free speech

A local judge in upstate New York has signed an order of protection for a US Air Force colonel that could make it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, for anti-drone activists to continue their weekly peace vigil outside or near the gates of the Hancock Air National Guard base there.

How will they know if they've broken the rules of the order? Apparently, if one specific military officer at the base finds their protest or direct actions 'irritating' personally.

Specifically troubling to the activists is that Colonel Earl A Evans, a commander at the base who filed the request for the order, is someone the activists have not once targeted directly. Though the order 'bans them specifically from approaching the home, school or workplace' of Evans, none of the activists even seemed to know who he is.

The pre-trial hearing on Pvt. Bradley Manning's court martial for leaking classified documents about U.S. government wrongdoing has turned up evidence that even Manning's Marine jailers were worried about the controversy over his degrading treatment in their custody, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

It is a bitter irony that Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, whose conscience compelled him to leak evidence about the U.S. military brass ignoring evidence of torture in Iraq, was himself the victim of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment while other military officers privately took note but did nothing.

That was one of the revelations at Manning's pre-trial hearing at Ft. Meade, Maryland, on Tuesday, as Manning's defense counsel David Coombs used e-mail exchanges to show Marine officers grousing that the Marines had been left holding the bag on Manning's detention at their base in Quantico, Virginia, though he was an Army soldier.

At Quantico, Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of pages of classified material to WikiLeaks, was subjected to harsh treatment. He was locked in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell for 23 hours a day and was kept naked for long periods. His incarceration led the UN Rapporteur for Torture to complain that Manning was being subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Bioweapons expert fell from hotel room window nine days after being given LSD in a drink without his knowledge

The family of a US government scientist who fell to his death from a New York hotel window six decades ago have launched a lawsuit for damages against the CIA, alleging the agency was involved in his murder and a subsequent cover-up.

In one of the most notorious cases in the organisation's history, bioweapons expert Frank Olson died in 1953, nine days after he was given LSD by agency officials without his knowledge.

In the lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Olson's sons Eric and Nils claim their father was murdered after he witnessed extreme interrogations in which the CIA killed suspects using the biological agents he had developed.

The CIA has long denied any foul play, though it was forced to admit in 1975, more than 20 years after the death, that the scientist had been given LSD in a spiked glass of Cointreau. The agency, which originally told the family the death was a result of job-induced stress, has since maintained that it was a drug-induced suicide.

The shoulders on which the Keystone Pipeline XL decision may fall happens to have a half-million dollar stake in the game. Secretary of State hopeful and current U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan E. Rice reportedly owns between $300,000 and $600,000 of TransCanada stock.

The company is seeking a federal permit to transport Canadian tar sands 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing both fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.

According to full disclosure reports, Rice - the potential arbiter of this grant - reportedly has a third of her significant net worth tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries.

A primitive graph provided by 'a country critical of Iran's atomic program' indicts the news outlet more than Tehran

Uncritical, fear-mongering media propaganda is far too common to take note of each time it appears, but sometimes, what is produced is so ludicrous that its illustrative value should not be ignored. Such is the case with a highly trumpeted Associated Press "exclusive" from Tuesday which claims in its red headline to have discovered evidence of "Iran Working on Bomb".

What is this newly discovered, scary evidence? It is a "graph" which AP says was "leaked" to it by "officials from a country critical of Iran's atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran's nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon" (how mysterious: the globe is gripped with befuddlement as it tries to guess which country that might be). Here's how AP presents the graph in all its incriminating, frightening glory:

Iran equipped its Navy fleets with two new hovercrafts Wednesday morning, one of which enjoys missile launching capabilities.

In a ceremony attended by Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari in Iran's Southern port city of Bandar Abbas, hovercrafts BH7 which had been overhauled by local experts and SRNX whose Iranian name is Tondar (Thunderbolt) and has been manufactured through indigenized technology joined the Navy's fleets in Iran's Southern waters.

Iran unveiled the highly advanced home-made Tondar which can launch missiles and serve as a launch pad for drones in a ceremony earlier this month.

Addressing a ceremony to unveil the hovercraft at the time, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi said that the hovercraft has been designed and developed by Iranian experts in two models for combat and transportation missions, and that the combat model is called 'Tondar'.

Vahidi further announced that Tondar can be equipped with different types of weapons produced by the Iranian defense industries, including rockets, guns and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

The minister said that Tondar can be used for "coastal patrolling, as a command vessel, offensive reconnaissance operations, mid-range amphibious missions, asymmetric defense, as a personnel and equipment carrier for logistical support for islands and coastal areas or as a sea ambulance for relief and rescue missions".

He further added that the new hovercraft will increase the combat and reconnaissance capabilities as well as the mobility of the Iranian Armed Forces.

Report leaves burden of GMO contamination with 'victim;' 'fails to address the root cause of the problem - transgenic contamination,' say groups

Organic farmers and allies have slammed a USDA committee report for kowtowing to the interests of genetically modified crop growers and the biotechnology industry.

The goal of the USDA-appointed committee, the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21), was to address contamination by genetically modified (also known as genetically engineered, or GE) crops to organic and non-GE crops, and to look at compensation mechanisms for that contamination.

Reuters reports that "a majority of AC21 members did not agree on any type of compensation mechanism" for the non-GE growers in their report, leaving the responsibility with "the victim," not the perpetrator of the contamination.

The National Organic Coalition (NOC), an alliance of organizations involved in organic agriculture, condemned the report for "abdicat[ing] responsibility for preventing GE contamination, while making the victim of GE pollution pay for damages resulting from transgenic contamination."