An international backlash against U.S. agricultural practices is building in response to the discovery of genetically modified wheat on a farm in Oregon.

Commercial farming of genetically modified wheat is banned in the United States. The practice is primarily not allowed because about half of America's wheat is sold overseas and many foreign countries prohibit the import of genetically modified foods.

So when modified wheat was discovered recently on a small farm in Oregon, the response from U.S. trading partners was fierce. Japan, the number one buyer of U.S. wheat, suspended some imports, as did South Korea.

Korean scientists are testing their U.S. wheat for signs of genetic modification and the European Union is also urging its 27 member nations to test American wheat.

It's not known how the modified wheat got into the Oregon field. Genetically it's the same wheat that Monsanto tested for possible commercial use in 16 states including Oregon a decade ago.

In a statement the food giant says the presence now of any modified wheat from their experiment is "unexpected" and likely to be "very limited."

Monsanto today said it believes the outbreak of genetically modified wheat on a farm in Oregon was likely an "isolated incident" that can't be explained by either stray seed or pollen flowing into the field.

Monsanto's statements come a day after the company was hit with the first of what will probably be multiple lawsuits accusing the company of negligence that helped trigger turmoil in global wheat markets. The lawsuit on behalf of a Kansas wheat farmer says Monsanto tested the wheat varieties engineered to be resistant to Roundup weed-killer when it "knew there was a high risk that the genetically modified wheat could contaminate other varieties of wheat" on nearby farms.

The lawsuit led by Houston's Susman Godfrey is on its surface a simple negligence case, no different than a slip-and-fall lawsuit - other than the number of zeroes behind it. If Monsanto is found liable for allowing its genetically modified seed to stray, it theoretically could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages due to depressed wheat prices and even farmland values.

"We fully expect we will see future episodes in other parts of the country," said Warren Burns, a partner with Susman Godfrey in Dallas, since Monsanto tested the wheat in 16 states from 1998 to 2005 . "The potential here is this is the tip of the iceberg."

Monsanto Co. (MON), the world's largest seed company, said experimental wheat engineered to survive Roundup weedkiller may have gotten into an Oregon field through an "accidental or purposeful" act.

Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are investigating how genetically modified wheat that hasn't been approved for commercial planting was found growing on an Oregon farm eight years after nationwide field tests ended.

Monsanto's genetic analyses found the variety hasn't contaminated the types of seed planted on the Oregon farm or the wheat seed typically grown in Oregon and Washington state, Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley said today on a call with reporters. The unapproved wheat was found growing on less than 1 percent of the farmer's 125-acre (51-hectare) field, Fraley said.

"It seems likely to be a random, isolated occurrence more consistent with the accidental or purposeful mixing of a small amount of seed during the planting, harvesting or during the fallow cycle in an individual field," Fraley said on the call.

Asked whether the St. Louis-based company is suggesting the incident could be an act of sabotage, Fraley said, "That is certainly one of the options we are looking at."

Fraley said he doesn't mean to suggest the farmer who made the discovery is responsible.

Signed March 24, 1992, the Open Skies Treaty permits each state-party to conduct short-notice, unarmed, reconnaissance flights over the others' entire territories to collect data on military forces and activities. Observation aircraft used to fly the missions must be equipped with sensors that enable the observing party to identify significant military equipment, such as artillery, fighter aircraft, and armored combat vehicles. Though satellites can provide the same, and even more detailed, information, not all of the 34 treaty states-parties1 have such capabilities. The treaty is also aimed at building confidence and familiarity among states-parties through their participation in the overflights.

President Dwight Eisenhower first proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union allow aerial reconnaissance flights over each other's territory in July 1955. Claiming the initiative would be used for extensive spying, Moscow rejected Eisenhower's proposal. President George H.W. Bush revived the idea in May 1989 and negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact started in February 1990.

A group of Russian military observers will carry out two inspection missions over the United States under the Open Skies Treaty between May 19 and June 3, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The Russian inspectors, accompanied by U.S. officials, will be flying on board a Tupolev Tu-154 LK-1 plane from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and the Travis Air Force Base in California.

These will be the 14th and 15th observation missions carried out by Russian inspectors over territories of Open Skies Treaty member countries this year.

The Open Skies Treaty, which entered into force on January 1, 2002, establishes a regime of unarmed aerial observation flights over the territories of its 34 member states to promote openness and the transparency of military forces and activities. Russia ratified the deal in May 2001.

In what has been called the single largest wave of recorded suicides in human history, Indian farmers are now killing themselves in record numbers. It has been extensively reported, even in mainstream news, but nothing has been done about the issue. The cause? Monsanto's cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest - if not the largest - cause of the quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years.

According to the most recent figures (provided by the New York University School of Law), 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 - about one death every 30 minutes. In 2008, the Daily Mail labeled the continual and disturbing suicide spree as 'The GM (genetically modified) Genocide'. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt the poor farmers, struggling Indian farmers began to kill themselves. Oftentimes, they would commit the act by drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with - a gruesome testament to the extent in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and traditional farmers.

A former drone operator who helped kill 1,626 targets says he's haunted by the carnage he witnessed from behind his computer screen. Brandon Bryant, 27, served as a drone operator from 2006 to 2011 at bases in Nevada, New Mexico and Iraq. It was a desk job of sorts, but unlike any other, it involved ordering unmanned aircraft to kill faraway targets while he watched.

In an interview with NBC News' foreign correspondent Richard Engel, Bryant recalled one operation where his team fired two missiles from a drone at three men in Afghanistan. 'The guy that was running forward, he's missing his right leg,' he said, recalling what he saw of the scene through the thermal images on his screen. 'And I watch this guy bleed out and, I mean, the blood is hot.'

He recalled watching the mens' bodies grow cold, as slowly the red color detecting the heat of their bodies grew smaller. 'I can see every little pixel if I just close my eyes,' he said.

Well, the Bradley Manning trial has begun, and for the most part, the government couldn't have scripted the headlines any better.

In the now-defunct Starz series Boss, there's a reporter character named "Sam Miller" played by actor Troy Garity who complains about lazy reporters who just blindly eat whatever storylines are fed to them by people in power.

He called those sorts of stories Chumpbait. If the story is too easy, if you're doing a piece on a sensitive topic and factoids are not only reaching you freely, but publishing them is somehow not meeting much opposition from people up on high, then you're probably eating Chumpbait.

There's an obvious Chumpbait angle in the Bradley Manning story, and most of the mainstream press reports went with it. You can usually tell if you're running a Chumpbait piece if you find yourself writing the same article as 10,000 other hacks.

The CNN headline read as follows: "Hero or Traitor? Bradley Manning's Trial to Start Monday." NBC went with "Contrasting Portraits of Bradley Manning as Court-Martial Opens."

Time magazine's Denver Nicks took this original approach in their "think" piece on Manning, "Bradley Manning and our Real Secrecy Problem":

Is he a traitor or a hero? This is the question surrounding Bradley Manning, the army private currently being court-martialed at Fort Meade for aiding the enemy by wrongfully causing defense information to published on the Internet.

The Nicks thesis turned out to be one chosen by a lot of editorialists at the Manning trial, who have decided that the "real story" in the Manning case is what this incident showed about our lax security procedures, our lax of good due diligence vetting the folks we put in charge of our vital information.

Every single day, the U.S. government gathers and stores more than a billion phone calls, emails, text messages, photographs and Internet searches. Just about every form of electronic communication that you can possibly imagine is being harvested. In fact, it has been reported that NSA personnel gather 2.1 million gigabytes of data every hour.

This is being done even though it is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution. Sadly, most Americans do not even know what the Fourth Amendment actually says. For those that do not know, the Fourth Amendment says the following: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Unfortunately, our leaders have totally abandoned the Constitution.

They seem to believe that they have the right to look through our electronic communications any time they want and that we should not complain about it. As you will see below, workers at the NSA have even eavesdropped on very intimate conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their female loved ones back home. What kind of sick person would do such a thing?

Sadly, the truth is that we have allowed ourselves to become a "Big Brother society", and we are an utter disgrace to the millions of brave men and women who have died to defend our freedoms.

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows them to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation - classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies - which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.

Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.

In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a programme. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.