In April, the EU's anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove told the British media that some 500 Europeans were in Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has said that a number of German nationals have teamed up with the foreign-backed militants in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with Germany's Der Spiegel weekly magazine, Friedrich officially confirmed for the first time that there were German-born gunmen inside Syria fighting against the government.Friedrich particularly expressed concern about calls for those Europeans who have been trained in battle inside Syria.German officials say that 20 German nationals are currently fighting in Syria. Some have reportedly even taken their wives there and live directly on the frontlines of battle.

A letter from US attorney-general confirms Barack Obama administration deliberately killed US nationals abroad.

The US has killed four of its own citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, the Barack Obama administration has formally acknowledged.

Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, said in a letter addressed to congressional leaders on Wednesday that three of those killed were not targets of the strikes involving drones in Yemen and elsewhere.

Holder named the four dead US citizens in a letter to members of Congress one day before President Obama is scheduled to deliver an address on the use of drones.

Nothing will be left to chance - even the hint of a green protest wave.

In 2009, 475 candidates registered to run for Iran's presidency. Only four were approved by the Guardian Council - the all-powerful, vetting clerical committee. This year, no fewer than 686 registered for the upcoming June 14 elections. Eight were approved.

Among them, one won't find the two who are really controversial; former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, aka "The Shark" - essentially a pragmatic conservative - and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, adviser and right-hand man to outgoing President Mahmud Ahmadinejad are both out.

Those who will run are not exactly a stellar bunch; former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref; former national security chief Hassan Rowhani; former telecommunications minister Mohammad Gharazi; the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili; Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf; the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati; secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei; and Parliament Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.

But they do read like a who's who of ultimate Islamic Republic insiders - the so-called "principle-ists".

The head of a federal safety board says federal agents and the state fire marshal are blocking the board from investigating a deadly Central Texas fertilizer plant blast.

In a letter to a U.S. senator planning hearings into the West Fertilizer plant blast, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board says the board's investigation of the blast has been blocked by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the State Fire Marshal's Office. The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that the chairman asks U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to help the board obtain evidence controlled by the ATF.

The ATF special agent in charge of the investigation tells the Austin American-Statesman that a criminal investigation comes with "certain sensitivities," while the State Fire Marshal's Office tells the paper evidence needs to be protected for now so that law enforcement produces one "clear cut" report.

The April 17 blast killed 15 people and injured about 200 others.

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the U.S. government had properly classified top secret more than 50 images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden taken after his death and that the government did not need to release them.

The unanimous ruling by three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a request for the images by a conservative nonprofit watchdog group.

Judicial Watch sued for photographs and video from the May 2011 raid in which U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after more than a decade of searching.

The organization's lawsuit relied on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that guarantees public access to some government documents.

In an unsigned opinion, the appeals court accepted an assertion from President Barack Obama's administration that the images are so potent that releasing them could cause riots that would put Americans abroad at risk.

'It is undisputed that the government is withholding the images not to shield wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment, but rather to prevent the killing of Americans and violence against American interests,' the opinion said.

The court ruled that the risk of violence justifies the decision to classify the images top secret, and that the CIA may withhold the images under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act for documents that are classified.

The organization's lawsuit relied on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that guarantees public access to some government documents.

Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ's attack on AP's news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record on civil liberties, transparency, press freedoms, and a whole variety of other issues on which he based his first campaign. The first two paragraphs of this Washington Post article from yesterday, expressed in tones of recent epiphany, made me laugh audibly:

"President Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer who came to office pledging renewed respect for civil liberties, is today running an administration at odds with his résumé and preelection promises.

"The Justice Department's collection of journalists' phone records and the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups have challenged Obama's credibility as a champion of civil liberties - and as a president who would heal the country from damage done by his predecessor."

You don't say! The Washington Post's breaking news here is only about four years late. Back in mid-2010, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, speaking about Obama's civil liberties record at a progressive conference, put it this way: "I'm disgusted with this president." In the spirit of optimism, one can adopt a "better-late-than-never" outlook regarding this newfound media awakening.

America's ticking debt bomb has been reset. Washington has suspended the debt ceiling, setting a date, and not a concrete dollar sum as a deadline, an unprecedented first in US history.

Citing 'extraordinary measures', the US Treasury has further delayed tackling America's debt, and will wait until Labor Day, September 2nd, to revisit the burgeoning crisis. The ceiling has been lifted, and the Treasury has promised it will keep cash pumping into government spending programs beyond the debt limit through a series of emergency cash tools.

"It will not be until at least after Labor Day" when Washington will have reached their full borrowing capacity, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, told CNBC television on May 10th.

So Bashar al-Assad has spoken - exclusively, to Argentine daily El Clarin (there's a huge Syrian diaspora in Argentina, as well as in neighboring Brazil).

Cutting through the fog of Western hysteria, he made some valuable points. The record shows that, yes, the regime has agreed several times to talk to the opposition; but myriad "rebel" groups with no credible, unified leadership have always refuted. So there's no way a ceasefire, eventually agreed on a summit - such as the upcoming US/Russia Geneva conference - can be implemented. Assad makes some sense when he says, "We can't discuss a timetable with a party if we don't know who they are."

Well, by now everyone following the Syrian tragedy knows who most of them are. One knows that the Un-Free Syrian Cannibals, sorry, Army (FSA) is a ragged collection of warlords, gangsters and opportunists of every possible brand, intersecting with hardcore jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind (but also other al-Qaeda-linked or inspired outfits).

It took Reuters months to finally admit that jihadis are running the show on the ground.[1] A "rebel" commander even complained to Reuters, "Nusra is now two Nusras. One that is pursuing al Qaeda's agenda of a greater Islamic nation, and another that is Syrian with a national agenda to help us fight Assad." What he didn't say is that the real effective outfit is al-Qaeda-linked.

Syria is now Militia Hell; much like Iraq in the mid-2000s, much like the Western-imposed, "liberated" Libyan failed state. This Afghanization/Somalization is a direct consequence of NATO-GCC-Israel axis interference. [2] So Assad is also right when he says the West is adding fuel to the fire, and is only interested in regime change, whatever the cost.

The odds are you are not just a face in the crowd any longer. Even if your picture isn't plastered all over social networking and photo-sharing sites, facial recognition technology in public places is making it harder if not impossible to remain anonymous. Lesley Stahl reports on the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive. Her 60 Minutes report will be broadcast Sunday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Professor Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon, who researches how technology impacts privacy, stunned Stahl with an experiment. He photographed random students on the campus and in short order, not only identified several of them, but in a number of cases found their personal information, including social security numbers, just using a facial recognition program he downloaded for free. Acquisti says smart-phones will make "facial searches" as common as Google searches in the future. And nearly everybody can be subject to such prying, even those who are careful about their Internet use.

Senior Obama officials tell the US Senate: the 'war', in limitless form, will continue for 'at least' another decade - or two

Last October, senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post their newly minted "disposition matrix", a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be "disposed of": indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc. Their rationale for why this was needed now, a full 12 years after the 9/11 attack:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism."

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this "war" - the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) - should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired's Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US's national security editor) described the most significant exchange:

"Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America's Thirty Years War."

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war". Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.