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.
Puppet Masters
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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'".
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...
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It was France and the UK who initially led the effort to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Britain, together with France, sent their navy and fighter jets to establish a sea blockade and assault military targets on Libyan territory.
Now the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya says its friends will be rewarded - and these are not just words.
In an unexpected move, the New York City Police Department descended on Zuccotti Park around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, proceeding to evict protesters, clear the park and arrest those that stood in their way.
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AP photo from video of blast
AP photo from video of blast
Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad - the Israeli agency charged with covert operations - did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.
The powerful blast or series of blasts - reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one - devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site."
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British Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
British Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
The order came after Member of Parliament from the central city of Mahallat, Alireza Salimi called for the motion to be revived in response to latest British anti-Iran hostilities as far as the issue of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities is concerned.
It was recently reported that British military authorities are considering contingency plans for potential military invasion of Iran.
According to the reports, Britain had said it would endorse any U.S. action plan aimed at launching an invasion on Iran amid decisions made in Washington to fast-forward missile strikes at the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities, The Guardian had reported.
MP Salimi urged the parliament to put the motion on its agenda urgently and make a final decision on how to reduce the level of Tehran-London relations.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011.
On Monday, Israeli Cabinet ministers decided not to release about $100 million in taxes owed to the Palestinians, the Associated Press reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers decided to accelerate illegal construction work in the occupied territories and to freeze the transfer of funds to the PA on November 1, a day after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to admit Palestine into the organization as its newest member at its Paris headquarters.
The transfers were suspended on November 3.
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Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) addresses a rally at a GOP Picnic August 9, 2011 in Humboldt, Iowa.
Republican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) addresses a rally at a GOP Picnic August 9, 2011 in Humboldt, Iowa.
"There's always a suspicion of maybe a bias and I guess this just confirmed it," she said of a CBS memo before Saturday's debate, which suggested that the Minnesota Republican congresswoman would be ignored during the foreign policy chatfest.
The memo, she said, "demonstrates that the media wants to choose who our nominee will be and who the next president of the United States will be."
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Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that Europe could be living through its toughest hour since World War Two as new leaders in Italy and Greece rushed to form governments and limit the damage from the euro zone debt crisis.
A rally on financial markets sparked by the appointment of respected European technocrats in Rome and Athens soon stalled. Analysts warned that daunting obstacles could hinder the decisive action needed to revive their ailing economies.
Italy had to pay a euro-lifetime record yield of 6.3 percent to sell five-year bonds with investors wary of buying its debt until prime minister-designate Mario Monti can undertake profound economic reforms.
In a first sign of trouble for new Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, the leader of the main conservative party rejected any toughening of austerity and refused to sign a letter sought by European authorities pledging support for a new 130 billion euro bailout.
