The French utility company EDF has been fined €1.5 million (more than $2 million) for hacking into the computer networks of Greenpeace.

The world's biggest nuclear energy supplier, the mostly-state-owned EDF (Électricité de France S.A) was charged with concealing stolen documents and illegal computer intrusion after hiring a Paris-based detective agency in 2006 to snoop on Greenpeace's computers in an effort to investigate, and ultimately thwart, the environmental group's plan to block EDF from building new nuclear plants in the United Kingdom.

A senior figure in the Iranian government has revealed that the Duqu malware has infected machines in the region, although he claimed that the attack is under control, according to reports.

Civil defence minister Brigadier General General Gholamreza Jalali reportedly told the state-run Islamic Republican News Agency that IT experts are "in the initial phase of fighting the virus", although he did not reveal whether the Trojan had managed to infect systems at the country's nuclear facilities.

"The final report that says which organisations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been completed yet," he is reported as saying.

"All the organisations and centres that could be susceptible to being contaminated are being controlled."

Online services like Twitter and Facebook spend a lot of time on their privacy policies, and Facebook in particular has spent the past couple of years tweaking its settings, trying to find a balance between convincing users to share information and allowing them to keep some private. But a recent U.S. court decision involving the Twitter accounts of several WikiLeaks supporters shows when push comes to shove, users of social networks and most online services have virtually no expectation of privacy whatsoever - at least, not if the entity trying to get access to their personal information happens to be the U.S. Justice Department.

The case in question involves the Justice Department's repeated attempts to get personal account data from three WikiLeaks supporters, in order to bolster its espionage case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the release of diplomatic cables last year that were stolen (allegedly) by Army intelligence agent and whistleblower Bradley Manning. The three who were targeted are Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir - an early supporter of WikiLeaks who helped produce the Collateral Murder video that showed a U.S. military attack on civilians in Iraq - as well as computer-security expert Jacob Appelbaum and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp.

Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC (excerpted on The Takeaway radio program - audio of Quan starts at the 5:30 mark), casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country. "I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation. . . ."

Mayor Quan then rambles about how she "spoke with protestors in my city" who professed an interest in "separating from anarchists," implying that her police action was helping this somehow.

"As a result of this unrelenting propaganda against Iran, the talk now is not; 'has Iran really got a nuclear weapons program', or even; 'if it has, how can this be a threat to any one of the nuclear armed nations of the world, including Israel, which could obliterate Iran in an instant' but, rather, the talk is; 'how best can an attack be launched', 'who should launch the attack', and 'how far can the West go in attacking Iran in order to prevent retaliation'.

Even those against an attack aren't against it because there is absolutely no moral, practical or legal justification for it; they're against because of the consequences such an attack might bring. They worry not so much about the massive loss of life such a conflict will bring to the region but they worry that it'll send the cost of oil sky-rocketing and doing untold damage to an already very wobbly global economy." - Damian Lataan; Why War Against Iran? (September 3, 2010).

"In short, for Israel an attack against Iran and Israel's other enemies on the pretext of pre-empting an immediate threat to its own existence will be the do or die action it will take in order to realise Zionism's ultimate endgame; the creation of a Greater Israel.

The coming confrontation is not about Iran being a threat; it is about Israel ridding itself of all of its enemies in the places that it would like to annex as part of its realisation of creating a permanent Greater Israel nation abundant with fertile lands, its own water resources, and living space. War is its pretext." - Damian Lataan; The U.S. And Israel's 'Obsession' With Iran - The Real Reasons (November 6, 2011).

"The law is whatever people determine it to be." - David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister.

"Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . . Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense." - David Ben-Gurion.

In public Sunday, President Obama was at a summit unsuccessfully leaning on Russia and China to back diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's nuke program.

In private Sunday, there was more evidence of an efficient and brutal covert operation that continues to degrade Iran's military capabilities.

Iranian officials revealed that one of the 17 men killed in a huge explosion at a munitions depot was a key Revolutionary Guard commander who headed Iran's missile program. And the IRNA state news agency reported that scientists had discovered a new computer virus in their systems, a more sophisticated version of the Stuxnet worm deployed last year to foul up Iran's centrifuges.

Israeli media report claims the Mossad was behind 'huge blast' at Bid Ganeh base that killed leading Iranian missile researcher

A series of news reports linking Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad to a blast at a military facility in Iran, in which 17 people were killed and a further 15 wounded, has gained widespread coverage in the Israeli media on Monday.

While Iranian officials insist the explosion at the Bid Ganeh base was accidental, caused by the movement of ammunition, claims from anonymous western and Israeli officials that Saturday's blast was a covert Israeli operation have gained momentum.

Leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot picked up a post by US blogger Richard Silverstein claiming the Mossad had teamed up with Iranian militant group Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to execute the alleged attack. MEK denies involvement in the attack.

Police have begun clearing out 'Occupy' protester camps in New York. There are also claims that pepper spray is being used. The raid comes after activists vowed heightened action this coming Thursday, to mark two months since the movement began. RT's Marina Portnaya reports from New York.

Monti made his name as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on U.S. corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft, blocking GE's planned merger with rival Honeywell and imposing a record 497 million euro ($683 million) antitrust fine on the software giant.

His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills added to his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures made him one of the most highly regarded officials the Commission has seen.

"He didn't have a very Italian way of going about things," recalls one former ambassador, who worked with Monti in Brussels and remembers him as a hard but reliable negotiating partner. "His nickname in those days was 'The Italian Prussian'".

You've heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Los Angeles, London, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv and elsewhere around the world. But did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn't until a SOTT forum member sent us the details. The general lack of awareness of the protests in Japan is probably due to the fact that there has been zero coverage of 'Occupy Tokyo' - which has grown out of the country's large (and growing) grassroots anti-nuclear movement - in Japan's mainstream media.

Several large demonstrations have taken place all over Japan in recent months, especially in Tokyo. The general mood is the same as elsewhere: ordinary people in Japan are fed up with their leaders' lies, particularly the lies told by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how the government has handled the Fukushima disaster. Or rather, how it has avoided handling it. This should all be eerily familiar to Americans of course; BP's lies and the US government's enabling role from the moment the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 has continued to this day, with the tragedy continuing to unfold in deathly silence. What is happening in Japan is almost a carbon copy; denial, smear campaigns, heavy-handed tactics and, of course, total media blackout. Up to one million people may have died as a result of Chernobyl, although we'll never really know the true death toll. Fukushima is many orders of magnitude worse...