Puppet Masters
Bitcoin is the world's biggest cryptocurrency and its value remains well in front of the likes of Ripple, Litecoin, Peercoin - and most recently, Dogecoin. But 2014 has been a tough year for the online currency and people are beginning to question how much longer it can survive. We take a look at some of the recent revelations to rock the world of Bitcoin and ask you to consider whether it could be on the way out...
© IDrinkyourwine.com
The 6-3 ruling, triggered by a Los Angeles Police Department arrest in 2009, gives authorities more leeway to search homes without obtaining a warrant, even when there is no emergency.
The majority, led by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., said police need not take the time to get a magistrate's approval before entering a home in such cases. But dissenters, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, warned that the decision would erode protections against warrantless home searches. The court had previously held that such protections were at the "very core" of the 4th Amendment and its ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
The case began when LAPD officers responded to reports of a street robbery near Venice Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue. They pursued a suspect to an apartment building, heard shouting inside a unit and knocked on the door. Roxanne Rojas opened the door, but her boyfriend, Walter Fernandez, told officers they could not enter without a warrant.
© RIA Novosti/Vladislav Ushakov
Final US Tanker Aircraft Departs Manas Base in Kyrgyzstan.
Final US Tanker Aircraft Departs Manas Base in Kyrgyzstan.
An agreement with Kyrgyzstan that provides for the United States' transit center at the Manas airport, the country's largest, is slated to expire in July.
A picture of a line of troops saluting the final KC-135 aerial refueling tanker as it taxied to depart the base was posted online by the US Army's Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) website.
The air base opened at Manas, outside the capital Bishkek, three months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 to support US-led coalition forces in the invasion of Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev said in 2011 that the Central Asian republic would not renew an agreement to extend the lease of the facility.
© RIA Novosti
Agents of law enforcement and operative services work at the site of an explosion on a trolleybus near Kachinsky Market in Volgograd.
Agents of law enforcement and operative services work at the site of an explosion on a trolleybus near Kachinsky Market in Volgograd.
The Investigative Committee recorded 661 terrorist offences in 2013, Aleksandr Bastrykin reported at the session of the agency's executive council on Thursday. Of these, 31 qualified as fully fledged terrorist attacks, the head of the Investigative Committee added. Terrorist attacks in 2013 claimed about 40 lives and dozens more injured, Bastrykin said.
"The acts of terrorism are very well planned and thought through. A lot of people are involved in their preparation. We are witnessing a destructive anti-Russian activity, the core of which is based abroad," the chief investigator said. "Forces hostile to our nation consider the North Caucasus as a detonator for the stable socio-economic situation in the Russian Federation," he stated.
© FreedomHouse/Flickr
Dar Al Shifa hospital, bombed from the air.
Dar Al Shifa hospital, bombed from the air.
We begin with the premise that the humanitarian crisis in Syria over the past nearly three years is largely as a result of a Western covert proxy war inflicted on that country. The objective is to destabilize, terrorize and eventuate regime change in the Arab country...
The crisis afflicting Syria with over 130,000 dead and nearly nine million people displaced from their homes - nearly 40 per cent of the total population - would not be occurring if it were not for the infiltration of that country with massive flows of weapons, fighting funds and foreign mercenary brigades. US and NATO Special Forces, along with Western military intelligence, have worked with Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, Israeli and Turk allies to foment this externally driven insurgency. All under the cover of an Arab Spring revolt.
© EFE
"I am extremely concerned about the most recent developments in Crimea. This morning's action by an armed group is dangerous and irresponsible," Rasmussen told a NATO meeting also attended Ukraine's acting defense minister. "I urge Russia not to take any action that could escalate tension or create misunderstanding."
© Unknown
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered an urgent drill of his country's armed forces in western Russia, in what appeared to be a display of sabre-rattling aimed at the new government in Kiev.
The US reacted in a strongly worded message, with the secretary of state, John Kerry, saying that any military intervention in Ukraine would be a "grave mistake".
"For a country that has spoken out so frequently ... against foreign intervention in Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere, it would be important for them to heed those warnings as they think about options in the sovereign nation of Ukraine," Kerry said last night.
Putin had earlier instructed his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to place Russia's military in a state of high alert for drills in the western military district, bordering Ukraine. The defence ministry denied the drills had anything to do with the political situation in Kiev, where the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was in effect toppled at the weekend.
Trust us, we're from the government...
- Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
- 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
- Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
- Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images
GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery - including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications - from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".
Comment: When we consider this in light of the GCHQ's disgusting sexual practices and the fact that most Pentagon employees regularly watch child pornography...
Code breaker at GCHQ found in padlocked gym bag 'probably died by accident' (yeah right!)
Leading British opposition party politicians under investigation for channeling public funds to elite pedophile network
Sick elites: 5,200 Pentagon employees PURCHASED child pornography
© Unknown
Acting President and Baptist Pastor Oleksandr Turchynov
Acting President and Baptist Pastor Oleksandr Turchynov
Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov pushed back a parliamentary vote to Feb. 27 from today as he attempts to win agreement with protest leaders who orchestrated the revolt. He indicated yesterday that a new administration should be formed quickly to secure as much as $35 billion in financial aid.
"Ukraine's economy needs rescue and that adds pressure on the revolutionary political forces to create a truly national unity government," said Lilit Gevorgyan, senior economist at IHS Global Insight in London, said by e-mail. "The large bailout plan that Ukraine currently seeks won't be handed out by international donors to a weak and non-inclusive government."
With Yanukovych on the run after weeks of anti-government protests turned deadly, Ukraine's new leaders are grasping for a financial lifeline as Russia weighs the fate of a $15 billion bailout it granted in December. Russia's deputy finance minister said there's a high chance Ukraine will default. The U.S. and the European Union have pledged aid to the new administration.
© RIA Novosti / Taras Litvinenko
Participants in a rally in front of Crimea's Supreme Council building in Simferopol.
Participants in a rally in front of Crimea's Supreme Council building in Simferopol.
The European Parliament has approved a resolution on Ukraine, which among other things calls on the country's MPs and the new government to respect the rights of minorities, particularly when it comes to the use of languages.
Ukraine's new leaders should distance themselves from extremists and avoid any provocation that might fuel "separatist moves," MEPs said, the parliament's press service reported. MEPs said that the new government should respect the rights of minorities in Ukraine, including the right to use Russian and other minority languages.
The resolution, proposed by six political groups in the European Parliament, urges Ukraine to ensure that its new legislation complies with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) abolished the 2012 law "On State Language Policy" the day after it voted to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovich. The law allowed the country's regions to use more official languages in addition to Ukrainian if they were spoken by over 10 percent of the local population. Thirteen out of Ukraine's 27 regions, primarily in Eastern Ukraine, then adopted Russian as a second official language. Two Western regions introduced Romanian and Hungarian as official languages.
Comment: How hypocritical can one be? When violent groups attacked and took over public institutions in Ukraine and killed dozens of police men and injured hundreds of people, throwing molotov cocktails and firing live ammunition, neither the EU, the US or NATO condemned it but just placed the responsibility for all violence at the hands of the Ukrainian government.
Likewise both NATO and the US urge Russia to not take any action that could escalate tension or create misunderstanding, but over the last few months, we have seen European delegations and senior US officials meeting with the protest leaders and encouraging them to continue the protest despite their violent nature. It all stinks to high heaven.