Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the US steals economic secrets "with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites", and that there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic intelligence.

He claimed that economic spying was justified because European companies had a "national culture" of bribery and were the "principle offenders from the point of view of paying bribes in major international contracts in the world".

Responding to the European Parliament report on interception capabilities and the Echelon satellite surveillance system, Woolsey said that the "Interception Capabilities 2000" report which had been presented to the parliament's Citizens' Rights Committee on 23 February, was "intellectually honest". In two cases cited in the report, "the fact [is] that the subject of American intelligence collection was bribery."

"That's correct", he told a packed audience of foreign press journalists:

"We have spied on that in the past. I hope ... that the United States government continues to spy on bribery."

Ruby Ridge.

Who would have thought 20 years ago this week that those two words would become an icon, a reference point in American culture?

More than a deadly siege in North Idaho that claimed the lives of a mother, her son and a federal marshal, the standoff at Ruby Ridge became a rallying point for the extremist movement and made Randy Weaver, the white supremacist at the center of the event, a hero to those groups. It also changed the way federal law enforcement handles standoffs with fugitives.

Historians and extremism experts offer varying assessments of the 11-day siege that was named Ruby Ridge after a mountain crest near Naples, Idaho, not far from the hand-built cabin of Weaver and his family.

It took years, including a congressional hearing in 1995, to sort out the sequence of events, and there are still points of disagreement.

But almost everyone - from anti-government activists and racists to academics and historians - agrees that Ruby Ridge was a big deal, with lasting impacts.

Industrial mechanic and engineer were caught in sting after tip-off from Ku Klux Klan, investigators say as duo are charged

The FBI has charged two men with making a portable X-ray weapon that they intended to use to secretly sicken opponents of Israel.

An indictment charges 49-year-old Glendon Scott Crawford and 54-year-old Eric J Feight with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists with the weapon.

Investigators have said Crawford approached Jewish organisations in 2012 looking for funding and people to help him with technology that could be used to surreptitiously deliver damaging and even lethal doses of radiation against those he considered enemies of Israel. He and Feight assembled the mobile device, which was to be controlled remotely, but it was inoperable and nobody was hurt, authorities said.

"Crawford has specifically identified Muslims and several other individuals/groups as targets," investigator Geoffrey Kent said in a court affidavit. According to the indictment Crawford also travelled to North Carolina in October to solicit money for the weapon from a ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, who informed the FBI. Crawford claimed to be a member.

The men appeared separately on Wednesday in federal court and were ordered detained until detention hearings Thursday. They could face up to 15 years in prison.

While many look to Vladimir Putin and a strong Russia as a counterweight to U.S. imperialism, people also tend to forget that Russia's eternal leader came to power on the back of false-flag bombings carried out in September 1999 by his colleagues at the FSB (KGB).

CBC's "The Passionate Eye" presents The Putin System - a point-of-view documentary that presents an ominous view of what Putin is willing to do to ensure Russia regains its position on the world stage.

The Putin System chronicles the remarkable life of Putin, a tough, young leader who is not afraid to make harsh decisions and holds a secret purpose-to restore the old Russia of his dreams.

The Putin System is directed by Jean-Michel Carré in association with Jill Emery for the French production company Les Films Grain De Sable.

American journalist Michael Hastings told colleagues he suspected he was being investigated by the FBI just hours before he was killed in a fiery car crash in Los Angeles.

Michael Hastings was working on a story about the CIA prior to his death, according to LA Weekly. "That Hastings had the Central Intelligence Agency in his sights is no surprise to those who knew his work," writes Dennis Romero, adding that "the shadowy world of intelligence and off-the-record American aggression was a favorite topic of the journalist."

The story gets even more suspicious. Hastings apparently contacted Wikileaks a few hours before his death. The whistleblower organization posted the following tweet:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest political ally has called for Israel to carry out a "thorough cleansing" of the Gaza Strip as a tenuous ceasefire between its Hamas rulers and the Jewish state frayed.

Speaking on Israel Radio, the far-right former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for Israel to reconquer the crowded coastal enclave to avoid "finding ourselves in two years with Hamas having aircraft and hundreds of missiles that will reach beyond Tel Aviv".

His comments came as the Israeli Air Force attacked targets in the Gaza Strip after six rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel into the early hours of Monday morning. No one was injured. It was the first ceasefire breach since April.

Mr Lieberman suggested that neither the eight-day aerial campaign Israel launched in November with the stated goal of halting rockets from Gaza, nor the devastating Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 in which more than 1,100 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, had proven effective at quelling the violence.

"Without willingness to take things to their conclusion we merely increase the threats," he said, adding that Hamas "has no intention of coming to terms with the Jewish presence in the land of Israel and therefore what is needed is to seriously consider conquering the Strip and carry out a thorough cleansing." Mr Lieberman was number two on Mr Netanyahu's electoral list during elections last January, and currently holds the post of chairman of parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee. Mr Netanyahu's office declined to comment on Mr Lieberman's statements. Yair Lapid, the centrist Finance minister, said the remarks were "irresponsible".

After the rocket fire, Israeli warplanes pounded what the military said were arms storage facilities and a rocket launch site in the Strip. There were no injuries from either the rockets or the air strikes. Israel ordered the closure of the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings between Gaza and Israel, a step condemned as a "collective punishment" by Jaber Wishah, a spokesman for the Gaza City-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Israeli army officials believe the rockets were fired by the Islamic Jihad group, a small militant faction currently at loggerheads with Hamas. But Israel said Hamas, which has controlled the Strip since seizing power there in 2007, bears overall responsibility.

Meanwhile, police said vandals slashed the tyres of 21 cars in the Arab Beit Hanina neighborhood of East Jerusalem in the latest of a wave of anti-Arab crimes by suspected Jewish extremists who have struck three times in and around Jerusalem in the past 10 days. Palestinian residents said the government was not doing enough to stop the vandalism. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police are treating the matter as a "high priority".

Russia said on Tuesday that Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee wanted by the US for leaking state secrets, had not crossed the Russian border.

Snowden, who leaked details of a US surveillance program to newspapers in the US and UK earlier this month, was widely reported to have flown from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday, from where he was expected to fly - via Cuba - to Ecuador, where he has requested asylum.

"I want to say right away that we have nothing to do with Snowden, or with his attitude to the American legal system, or with his movements around the world. He chose his own route, and we found out about it - like most people here - from the media," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.

"He did not cross the Russian border," the foreign minister said.

The National Security Agency has its ear to the world, but doesn't listen to everyone at once.

That was one conclusion of a new report, Interception Capabilities 2000, accepted late last week by the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA).

The panel commissioned Duncan Campbell, a British investigative reporter, to prepare a report on Echelon, the US-led satellite surveillance network.

"I have no objection to these systems monitoring serious criminals and terrorists," said Glyn Ford, a British Labour Party member of parliament and a committee member of STOA. "But what is missing here is accountability, clear guidelines as to who they can listen to, and in what circumstances these laws apply."

Campbell was asked to investigate the system in the wake of charges made last year in the European Parliament that Echelon was being used to funnel European government and industry secrets into US hands.

"What is new and important about this report is that it contains the first ever documentary evidence of the Echelon system," said Campbell. Campbell obtained the document from a source at Menwith Hill, the principal NSA communications monitoring station, located near Harrogate in northern England.