Puppet MastersS


Ambulance

Egypt's army declares state of emergency in Suez and South Sinai

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© Yahya Arhab/EPAEgyptian army helicopters, with the national flag hanging from them, fly over Cairo on Friday.
Move is prompted by armed attack on al-Arish airport, despite relative calm in rest of country

Egypt's army has declared a state of emergency in the Suez and South Sinai regions after an armed attack on al-Arish airport, despite relative calm elsewhere in the country on the first weekend since the ousting of Mohammed Morsi as president.

In Cairo, where Morsi's main support base had announced a "day of rejection" to coincide with Friday prayers, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have continued to urge peaceful demonstrations to demand that the vanquished leader be returned to office.

Only two of the 20 members of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Council attended the largest of twin pro-Morsi rallies in the capital. Most other senior leaders of the group have been detained by the military, or have been in hiding since the momentous events of Wednesday night.

The attack in al-Arish, around 40 miles (60km) south of the Gaza border, was sustained and intense, security officials said. One person was killed and several others wounded. The attackers are not yet known, and the Sinai has in recent months become an increasingly important theatre for jihadist groups.

Pills

Supreme Court rules drug companies exempt from lawsuits

Drug companies failed to warn patients that toxic epidermal necrolysis
© Unknown
Drug companies failed to warn patients that toxic epidermal necrolysis was a side effect. But the Supreme Court ruled they're still not liable for damages.
Washington. In case readers missed it with all the coverage of the Trayvon Martin murder trial and the Supreme Court's rulings on gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act, the US Supreme Court also made a ruling on lawsuits against drug companies for fraud, mislabeling, side effects and accidental death. From now on, 80 percent of all drugs are exempt from legal liability.

In a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court struck down a lower court's ruling and award for the victim of a pharmaceutical drug's adverse reaction. According to the victim and the state courts, the drug caused a flesh-eating side effect that left the patient permanently disfigured over most of her body. The adverse reaction was hidden by the drug maker and later forced to be included on all warning labels. But the highest court in the land ruled that the victim had no legal grounds to sue the corporation because its drugs are exempt from lawsuits.

Bad Guys

Prelude to civil war? Muslim Brotherhood calls for 'uprising' after supporters shot dead by snipers

Muslim Brotherhood Cairo
© UnknownSupporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Morsi clash with Egypt police outside the elite Republican Guards base in Cairo, on July 8, 2013
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has called for 'uprising' after dozens of its supporters were killed by the security forces in the capital, Cairo.

In a statement on Monday, the group's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, appealed for "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks."

It also urged the "international community and international groups and all the free people of the world to intervene to stop further massacres... and prevent a new Syria in the Arab world."

The party was reacting to killing of over 40 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a sit-in in Cairo on Monday.

Star of David

Israeli doctors to advise US on Guantanamo hunger strikers

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America's official torture camp - Gitmo
Israeli doctors have been invited to the US to share their experiences of handling hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners as Washington comes under fire for its force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees who refuse to eat.

Officials from the Israeli Medical Association have been invited to the U.S. to present policy makers there with their methods of handling hunger strikers, as the U.S. administration comes under fire for its own practice of force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detention camp prisoners who refuse to eat.

Cardboard Box

Merkel's public indignation a scam: Snowden says Germans and other Western states in bed with NSA

Interview carried out before NSA whistleblower fled to Hong Kong appears to contradict Merkel's public surprise at snooping
Angela Merkel
© Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty ImagesGerman opposition parties insist that somebody in Merkel's office must have known what was going on.
America's National Security Agency works closely with Germany and other Western states on a "no questions asked"-basis, former NSA employee Edward Snowden said in comments that undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel's indignant talk of "Cold War" tactics.

"They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states," German magazine Der Spiegel quotes him as saying in an interview published on Sunday that was said to be carried out before he fled to Hong Kong in May and divulged details of extensive secret US surveillance.

"Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide," he said.

Coffee

Flashback NSA whistleblowers Adrienne Kinne and Brian Faulk: Our job was to spy on US citizens and soldiers

ABC's Good Morning America/ Brian Ross interview about NSA agents listening in to private calls. Spies on the line? It was reported that NSA agents, charged with intercepting telephone calls are sharing these calls with each other. In some cases these calls include "phone sex" or "intimate" calls between American citizens. Agents David Murfee Faulk and Adrienne Kinne both admitted that they listened and in some cases saved the calls to share with others.


Coffee

Flashback NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice: US government is spying on ordinary Americans all the time, targeted journalists

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.


"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications -- faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications," Tice claimed. "It didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications."

Chess

Maduro: Venezuela Will Offer NSA wistleblower Edward Snowden Political Asylum

Maduro
© Reuters / Miraflores PalaceVenezuela's President Nicolas Maduro
"As head of state and of government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the US youth Edward Snowden," President Nicolás Maduro announced today at Caracas' military academy at the start of a parade for Venezuela's Day of Independence.

"To be independent, we must feel it," he said. "We must exercise our independence and sovereignty. Our discourses are meaningless if they aren't exercised with force at the national level. I announce to the friendly governments of the world that we have decided to offer this statute of international humanitarian law to protect the young Snowden from the persecution that has been unleashed from the most powerful empire in the world,the United States," he said.

"Let's ask ourselves: who violated international law?" he continued. "A young man who decided, in an act of rebellion, to tell the truth of the espionage of the United States against the world? Or the government of the United States, the power of the imperialist elites, who spied on it?"

Stormtrooper

Turkish police fire teargas, water cannons to disperse protesters re-Occupying Istanbul

Taksim, Istanbul, protest
© Reuters/Murad Sezer Taksim square in central Istanbul July 6, 2013.
Turkish police fired teargas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters in an Istanbul square on Saturday as they gathered to enter a park that was the center of protests against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last month.

Taksim Solidarity, combining an array of political groups, had called a march to enter the sealed off Gezi park, but the governor of Istanbul warned that any such gathering would be confronted by the police.

"We are going to our park to open its doors to its real owners ... We are here and we will stay here ... We have not given up our demands," the umbrella group said in a statement.

Arrow Down

Jon Corzine will not face criminal charges over MF Global: report

Corzine
© MarketWatch
There will be no criminal charges for former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine over the use of customer funds leading up to collapse of MF Global.

The criminal probe into whether there was wrongdoing on the part of Corzine by the Department of Justice will now be dropped due to lack of evidence, said a report in The New York Post, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

But the former CEO of Goldman Sachs is not out of the woods.

Corzine is facing civil charges by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission for illegally using customer funds in the last few days of MF Global to help keep the company afloat. The firm's former assistant treasurer Edith O'Brien is also caught up in the scandal and charged by the CFTC for making the transfers.

Ultimately Corzine was charged by the regulator for failure to segregate and misuse of customer funds and failure to supervise diligently. O'Brien was charged with one count failure to segregate and misuse of customer funds.

To support the allegations, the CFTC used a recorded telephone conversations to support their charges that Corzine was fully aware of the transfers.

Both Corzine and O'Brien have denied any wrongdoing.