Florida GOP presidential primary winner Mitt Romney displayed his apathy towards America's impoverished on CNN Wednesday morning.

"I'm in this race because I care about America," he said. "I'm not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if we need to repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I'll continue to take that message across the country."

Host Soledad O'Brien was surprised by Romney's comments.

"You just said said, 'I'm not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net,'" O'Brien said. "But I think there are a lot of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, 'That sounds odd.' Can you explain that?"

"Finish the sentence Soledad," Romney replied. "I said I'm not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them."

"The challenge right now - we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there's no question it's not good being poor. And we have a safety net to help those that are very poor, but my campaign is focused is on middle-income Americans."

Rare move to offer diplomatic refuge comes after travel ban imposed on US citizens working with NGOs in Egypt.

A number of Americans have taken refuge in the embassy in Cairo after a crackdown on US-funded non-governmental organisations, the state department said on Monday.

"We can confirm that a handful of US citizens have opted to stay in the embassy compound in Cairo while waiting for permission to depart Egypt," Kate Starr, a state department spokesperson, said.

The rare move by the embassy to offer its citizens diplomatic refuge follows a crackdown by Egypt's military-led government on NGOs, including several funded by the US government, which saw travel bans imposed on six American staffers including a son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Egyptian police first raided the groups in late December as part of an investigation into foreign funding of 17 NGOs, part of what civil society groups say has been a broader crackdown on critics of the army's heavy-handed tactics in dealing with continued protests against military rule.

Austerity in Europe, the increase in taxes and slashing of social services several national governments there have been forced to undertake as a result of the ongoing sovereign debt crisis, has been protested in many forms.

The United Kingdom saw a massive general strike in November. Unruly crowds have unleashed mayhem on the streets of Rome and Athens. Spanish youth gather in public plazas there on a near-daily basis to give speeches, sing protest songs and make their presence as the self-proclaimed "indignant" heard.

Perhaps no recent protest, however, has been as personal as that of Mateus and Leonor Silva, of Lisbon, Portugal. The unemployed couple had been living in a parking lot trailer for 21 months, they told Reuters, because they had no money to pay rent and could not receive other assistance. With their two school-age daughters, they lived an unpretentious existence, covering the roof of their home with a tarp and drying their laundry on its side. Then on Jan. 25, they were evicted by city police and left.

Until last week. In an act of protest and defiance, the couple came back to the spot where the shell of their former home was still standing. In full view of police, Mateus started throwing rocks at the trailer. Friends help the couple overturn the small structure. Then Leonor set it on fire.

The pictures speak for themselves.

"A Nazi & a Drug Lord in Charge of Police in Osh?"

Today Turkish Weekly ran an investigative piece on the newly appointed chief of police in Osh-Kyrgyzstan. The new police chief Suyun Omurzakov, who used to be a deputy minister of interior, has been known as a highly influential drug lord, a leader of organized criminal groups, and he was the subject of a criminal investigation in the past:

In October 2009, the Kyrgyznews.com published an article pointing to a direct link between the then Osh city deputy chief of police S. Omurzakov and organized criminal groups engaged into drug trafficking, referring to this person as one of the most influential drug lords in the south of Kyrgyzstan.

Another report that investigates the June 2010 events developed by a coalition of Kyrgyz and Uzbek human right defenders "Oshskaya Initsiativa" (Osh Initiative) speaks of Omurzakov as a leader of an organized Kyrgyz criminal group, along with the mayor of Osh Melis Myrzakmatov, and crime bosses Almanbet Manapiyaev and Kadyr Dusanov ("Jengo"), etc., who were directly involved into plotting, leading, financing and participating in anti-Uzbek pogroms and distributing arms and ammunition among Kyrgyz militia. ...

Colorado state Rep. Laura Bradford (R) was pulled over last week in Denver on the suspicion that she was driving under the influence. During the stop, she admitted to drinking and failed a field sobriety test, but cops claim they were unable to arrest her. Under an obscure state law, elected officials making their way between "legislative events" have immunity from prosecution and Bradford was given a cab home..

Bradford told police when she was pulled over at 10:00 pm that she was leaving a legislative event and had to be back at the state capital in the morning, which was reportedly enough to trigger the law - a law of which Bradford now claims to have been unaware. Denver police, however, say that Bradford refused to waive her immunity under the law when asked, since it would have resulted in her being taken into custody for a breath or blood test.

She's been suspended from her committee chair position and the House Speaker is looking into other punishments. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are calling for the law to be amended.

Desperate for war, US prepares to blame Iran for false flag attack.

"...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) "

-US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report, pages 84-85.

Considering that the Gulf of Token incident was a deliberate fabrication to escalate the Vietnam War, one many members in Congress are shown to have acknowledged and debated even at the time, or the more recent Iraqi WMD hoax, there is certainly a historical precedence to create such provocations when targeted nations refuse to provide them.

The US National Archives has released long-lost recordings of the Air Force One flight back to Washington on the day of John F Kennedy's assassination.

The tapes contain 42 minutes of audio that was not included in the original public version.

It includes discussion about what to do with the slain president's body and a phone call to Rose Kennedy, his mother.

The material was donated by a rare documents dealer, who acquired it from the estate sale of a Kennedy aide.

The tapes provide new insight into the grief and confusion in the highest levels of the US government in the hours after Kennedy's shooting in Dallas, Texas, on Friday 22 November 1963.

An assessment by U.S. spy agencies concludes that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States, highlighting new risks as the Obama administration escalates pressure on Tehran to halt its alleged pursuit of an atomic bomb.

In congressional testimony Tuesday, U.S. intelligence officials indicated that Iran has crossed a threshold in its adversarial relationship with the United States. While Iran has long been linked to attacks on American targets overseas, U.S. officials said they see troubling significance in Tehran's alleged role in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington last year.

Intelligence shows that Iran received foreign assistance to overcome key hurdles in acquiring technology that could lead to a nuclear weapon, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

" ... the enduring power of our moral example, America is back."

- President Obama, State of the Union address, 24 January 2012

First the world was sold imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with General Colin Powell, at the United Nations in February 2003, asserting:

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Now it seems the world is sold a withdrawal from Iraq which was not quite what it seemed as presented by the Panetta-Obama-fest in the Baghdad, Fort Bragg speeches of just six weeks ago. At Fort Bragg: "The war in Iraq will soon belong to history ..." said the President.

Well, not quite.

US-owned mortgage giant Freddie Mac is holding billions of dollars in investments that only pay off if homeowners remain locked into high interest rates, a media investigation has found.

The report by the ProPublica website and National Public Radio on Monday said the mortgage giant began dramatically increasing such bets in 2010 at the same time it was making it more difficult for homeowners to refinance.

It said the trading arm of the firm is in theory "walled off" from its housing finance activities, which by government charter are to be directed at making home loans more accessible.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which supervises Freddie, said in a statement to ProPublica that it had ordered a halt to such investments - known as "inverse floaters" - in December, following an internal assessment.

The assessment "had "identified concerns regarding the controls, including risk management," it said in a statement published in full by ProPublica.