Obama says his first visit to Israel as US president is chance to 'reaffirm the unbreakable bond between our nations'

The alliance between Israel and the United States is eternal, Barack Obama has said after landing in the Jewish state for his first visit since becoming US president more than four years ago.

"I see this visit as an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between our nations, to restate America's unwavering commitment to Israel's security and to speak directly to the people of Israel and to your neighbours," Obama said at a welcoming ceremony at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. "I am confident in declaring that our alliance is eternal, is forever," he added.

In a short speech before Israeli parliamentarians, religious leaders, military figures and other dignitaries, Obama said: "We will never lose sight of the vision of an Israel at peace with its neighbours." The Palestinians were not mentioned by name.

Air Force One touched down at about 12.30pm local time in glorious spring sunshine that prompted the president to discard his jacket shortly after the end of the ceremonials. His visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories is scheduled to last 50 hours before the 600-strong entourage departs for Jordan on Friday.

People in NSW will no longer have the "right to silence" when being questioned by police after the Shooters and Fishers Party voted with the government on its bid to combat gang violence.

Critics of the laws - which the government will now push through the lower house - say it's a fundamental attack on people's rights.

Greens MP David Shoebridge wants the government to come clean on the deal it struck with MPs from the minor party to get the laws through the upper house, where they have the balance of power.

"The question is, what have they been offered in return?" he told AAP.

The legislative changes allow judges and juries to take a negative view of people who exercise their right to remain silent.

The government flagged the move last August following a spate of drive-by shootings in Sydney's west.

The journalist and Anonymous activist is targeted as part of a broad effort to deter and punish internet freedom activism

Aaron's Swartz's suicide in January triggered waves of indignation, and rightly so. He faced multiple felony counts and years in prison for what were, at worst, trivial transgressions of law. But his prosecution revealed the excess of both anti-hacking criminal statutes, particularly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and the fixation of federal prosecutors on severely punishing all forms of activism that challenge the power of the government and related entities to control the flow of information on the internet. Part of what drove the intense reaction to Swartz's death was how sympathetic of a figure he was, but as noted by Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor in the DOJ's computer crimes unit and now a law professor at GWU, what was done to Swartz is anything but unusual, and the reaction to his death will be meaningful only if channeled to protest other similar cases of prosecutorial abuse:

"I think it's important to realize that what happened in the Swartz case happens in lots and lots of federal criminal cases. . . . What's unusual about the Swartz case is that it involved a highly charismatic defendant with very powerful friends in a position to object to these common practices. That's not to excuse what happened, but rather to direct the energy that is angry about what happened. If you want to end these tactics, don't just complain about the Swartz case. Don't just complain when the defendant happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country - mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring."

Prosecutorial abuse is a drastically under-discussed problem in general, but it poses unique political dangers when used to punish and deter online activism. But it's becoming the preeminent weapon used by the US government to destroy such activism.

Just this week alone, a US federal judge sentenced hactivist Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer to 3 1/2 years in prison for exploiting a flaw in AT&T's security system that allowed him entrance without any hacking, an act about which Slate's Justin Peters wrote: "it's not clear that Auernheimer committed any actual crime", while Jeff Blagdon at the Verge added: "he cracked no codes, stole no passwords, or in any way 'broke into' AT&T's customer database - something company representatives confirmed during testimony." But he had a long record of disruptive and sometimes even quite ugly (though legal) online antagonism, so he had to be severely punished with years in prison.

Also this week, the DOJ indicted the deputy social media editor at Reuters, Matthew Keys, on three felony counts which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for allegedly providing some user names and passwords that allowed Anonymous unauthorized access into the computer system of the Los Angeles Times, where they altered a few stories and caused very minimal damage. As Peters wrote about that case, "the charges under the CFAA seem outrageously severe" and, about Keys' federal prosecutors, observed: "apparently, they didn't take away any lessons from the Aaron Swartz case."

Ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation on Thursday for "abuse of weakness" in a 2007 party funding case involving elderly L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the public prosecutor said.

The risk for Sarkozy, unseated May last year but considered a potential conservative candidate in the 2017 presidential race, is that he may end up plagued by suspicion for months or years, even if his lawyer says there is no case against him.

Under French law, a formal investigation is the final step before a suspect is accused of a crime. Sarkozy, who only this month hinted he could make a political comeback, repeatedly has denied taking campaign funds from Bettencourt.

"Nicolas Sarkozy, who benefits from the presumption of innocence, had been notified that he has been placed under formal investigation for taking advantage of a vulnerable person in February 2007 and during 2007 to the detriment of Liliane Bettencourt," the prosecutor in the southwestern city of Bordeaux said in a statement after a hearing.

Two Marines were shot and killed Thursday at the Officer Candidate School at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, and the suspected shooter, also a Marine, fatally shot himself at the base, Marine Corps officials said.

The shooter gunned down a male Marine before seizing a female Marine and killing her, then himself, officials said.

Marine Corps officials said the shooting was not a terrorist attack nor an attempt to cause mass casualties, adding that the gunman and two victims were members of the same unit and knew each other.

"This was an isolated incident," said Capt. Eric D. Flanagan, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. "At no point was this suspected to be a mass shooting."

At his press conference Thursday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, President Barack Obama chose an unusual example to drive home his belief that peace between Israelis and Palestinians is possible.

In his effort to convince the local populations, who have been in a decades-old (and some might even say millennia-old) conflict, Obama invoked perhaps the most peaceful neighbors on the planet, that is the U.S. and Canada.

"We can't afford to have our kids in bed sleeping and suddenly a rocket comes through the roof, but my argument is even though both sides may have areas of strong disagreement, may be engaging in activities the other side considers to be a breach of good faith, we have to push through those things to try to get to an agreement," Obama said.

President Barack Obama was briefly interrupted by a heckler during a speech to students in Jerusalem on Thursday.

The heckler was booed loudly by the surrounding audience. As the protester continued to shout, Obama said, "This is part of the lively debate that we talked about, this is good!"

At that, the audience burst into applause and gave him a standing ovation.

How do Connecticut residents feel about the crackdown on the Second Amendment? Well, there are people from both sides making passionate arguments on the issue, however, one gentleman last week was able to make a particularly persuasive case against more gun control and in favor of the U.S. Constitution.

Meet Robert Steed, a resident of Vernon, Conn. who took three days straight off work to attend several gun control hearings in Connecticut. On March 14, Steed was more "aggravated" than usual with lawmakers and he let them know it in his fiery testimony, telling them that they were "coloring outside the lines of constitutional parameters."

"This is the third day I've taken off of work to come here to, like so many of the rest of us, to plead with you for us to keep our guns because of some wing-nut in Newtown, Connecticut," he said. "If that isn't inherently wrong, I don't know what is. That these bills are even in proposed form is scary enough. That any of you could possibly be undecided is scary enough. What are you looking at?"

He went on: "I can't for the life of me understand how this state can have as many gun laws on the books as it does and have members of its Legislature need to take firearms 101. And as far as what I felt were potshots taken at the NRA, they've done more for gun safety - they'll do more for gun safety this weekend than this committee will do in your careers."

"After putting $803,436 in Obama's re-election campaign, a media giant attempted to keep Americans from seeing the video by banning it from their sites," stated Aaron DeHoog, the financial publisher who is unapologetic for the release of controversial footage that has gained international attention.

The video DeHoog is referring to is a stunning interview with famed economist Robert Wiedemer, author of the New York Times best-selling book Aftershock.

Wiedemer, best known for correctly predicting the collapse of the U.S. housing market, equity markets, and consumer spending that almost sank the United States during the "Great Recession", provides disturbing evidence in the video interview for 50 percent unemployment, a 90 percent stock market crash, and 100 percent annual inflation . . . starting as soon as 2013.

When the host of the interview expressed disbelief in Wiedemer's claims, he calmly displayed five indisputable charts to back up his predictions (click here to see those exact charts).

The parliament of Cyprus was right this week to reject a proposal to confiscate money from modest-sized bank deposits. The idea was a reductio ad absurdum of the euro zone's policy on the sovereign debt of some of its member-countries.

It would be better for the government of Cyprus to default outright on some of its obligations rather than to seize part of the savings of the proverbial widows and orphans, as well as retirees or those approaching retirement - while purporting to levy a tax. This is especially true in a country that has deposit insurance for up to €100,000, in order to protect small savers.

Until a few years ago, Cyprus - which is really the ethnically Greek section of Cyprus, the Turkish section being a de facto protectorate of Turkey - had a fiscal surplus, but its close relationship to Greece resulted in a downturn when Greece fell into a severe recession. The government's debt in itself is still manageable, but Cypriot banks have become shaky because of their loans to Greece.