One of the suspects in Russian politician Boris Nemtsov's murder, Zaur Dadaev, claims he had perjured himself when admitting his guilt, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said on its website late on Tuesday, citing its correspondents who, as a member of a public monitoring commission, met with Dadaev at the Lefortovo detention centre.

Earlier on Tuesday, judge of Moscow's Basmanny court Natalia Mushnikova, while reading out the court's arrest warrant, said Dadaev had admitted his involvement in Nemtsov's murder. Dadaev provided no comment at court but asked for a fair trial.

"They were crying all the time: 'Did you kill Nemtsov?' I answered no. At the moment of detention I was with my friend, my former subordinate Ruslan Yusupov. They told me they would let him free if I confess. I agreed. I thought I will save him and will be taken to Moscow alive... I thought as soon as I am in Moscow I will tell court the truth. That I am not guilty. But the judge did even let me speak," the Moskovsky Komsomolets quotes Dadaev as saying.

The city manager of Ferguson, Mo., has resigned in the wake of a critical Justice Department report on the behavior of local police. The city's municipal court has also been canceled for a week, with all cases being transferred to a state judge.

Ferguson City Manager John Shaw said he believes his resignation "is in the community's best interest," USA Today reported.

Shaw was blamed for behavior by law enforcement and the court system which the federal government found to be racially motivated and which primarily targeted African-Americans, according to The New York Times.

Transhumanists believe that the time has come for humans to take control of their own evolution. Many of them are fully convinced that we can use emerging technologies to "fix" the flaws in the human race and ultimately eradicate sickness, disease, poverty and war. So would you like to have the eyesight of an eagle? Would you like to download an entire library of information directly into your brain in just minutes? Would you like to rid your family line of all genetic diseases? Would you like to extend your lifespan to 500 years or even longer? Transhumanists promise that all of these things will soon be possible, if we are willing to embrace a new way of doing things.

They foresee a future in which we will all have lots of little nanobots running around inside of us, in which we are all connected directly to the Internet, and in which we have all been genetically modified to at least some degree. In fact, one prominent transhumanist recently stated that he believes that "eventually every human will be designed on a computer". In the end, the goal is to produce a vastly improved version of the human race which will usher in a golden new age for the planet. But as we merge ourselves with animals, machines and weird new technologies that scientists cook up, at what point do we cease to be human?

And when I say "weird new technologies", I am not overstating things in the least. Just consider what one transhumanist says that they have planned for us...

As with all radical social movements, there is bound to be resistance. After all, transhumanists are interested in some pretty bizarre things: mind uploading, living indefinitely through life extension science, biohacking themselves to install cyborg body parts, and creating artificial general intelligence. Each of these areas of research will radically change the lives of people—and some, such as cyborg body parts, are already doing so.

Once upon a time, the only people that talked about "cyborgs" were science fiction geeks.

But today, many transhumanists speak of us becoming "cyborgs" as if it was some sort of foregone conclusion. It is almost as if they are the Borg, and they are telling us that there is no choice but to assimilate.

The revelations that US ally Abdelhakim Belhadj is now leading ISIS in Libya should come as no surprise to those who have followed US policy in that country, and throughout the region. It illustrates for the umpteenth time that Washington has provided aid and comfort to precisely those forces it claims to be fighting around the world.

According to recent reports, Abdelhakim Belhadj has now firmly ensconced himself as the organizational commander of the ISIS presence inside Libya. The information comes from an unnamed US intelligence official who has confirmed that Belhadj is supporting and coordinating the efforts of the ISIS training centers in eastern Libya around the city of Derna, an area long known as a hotbed of jihadi militancy.

While it may not seem to be a major story - Al Qaeda terrorist turns ISIS commander - the reality is that since 2011 the US and its NATO allies have held up Belhadj as a "freedom fighter." They portrayed him as a man who courageously led his fellow freedom-lovers against the "tyrannical despot" Gaddafi whose security forces at one time captured and imprisoned many members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), including Belhadj.

The maker of Children's Tylenol agreed to plead guilty to a federal criminal charge of knowingly selling adulterated bottles of its painkillers for children and infants. The drugs were recalled in 2010 because they contained metal particles.

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary McNeil Consumer Healthcare ‒ which makes Infants' and Children's Tylenol and Children's Motrin ‒ agreed to pay $25 million to resolve the case, the Associated Press reported, citing court documents. The deal came at a plea hearing Tuesday afternoon.

"The proposed criminal resolution is sufficient to punish McNeil for its past failures and to deter McNeil from violating" federal law in the future, prosecutors wrote in a memo to the judge overseeing the case.

The citizens of the United Kingdom are possibly the most surveilled group of people in the history of the world. Forget the NSA's ever-expanding reach over every form of communication imaginable. We're talking cameras... everywhere. The City of London is equipped with thousands of them, so is Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and well, like I said before, pretty much everywhere. In a nation of 64 million residents, there is one CCTV camera for every 11 people in the UK.

The British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) estimates there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit television cameras scattered throughout the UK, including 750,000 in "sensitive locations" such as schools, hospitals and care homes. This statistic was released in 2013 as well. Do you think they decided to halt the expansion of their Orwellian state at any point over the past two years? The safe bet is that these numbers have grown exponentially.

The truly remarkable and almost unfathomable piece of information regarding CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom is that no one really knows how many there are.

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a 'double game' with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences.

A central myth is that Washington now arms 'moderate Syrian rebels', to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the 'extremist rebels'. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from 'humanitarian intervention' to a renewal of Bush's 'war on terror'.

A distinct controversy is whether the al Qaeda styled groups (especially Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS) have been generated as a sort of organic reaction to the repeated US interventions, or whether they are actually paid agents of Washington.

Certainly, prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq. In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a 'New Middle East', a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of 'creative destruction' in the region.

According to Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, 'The Redirection', the US would make use of 'moderate Sunni states', not least the Saudis, to 'contain' the Shia gains in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These 'moderate Sunni' forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel. This brought the Saudis and Israel closer, as both fear Iran.

WikiLeaks published secret telegrams of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle. The American ambassador reported to Washington about his meeting with the Russian "dissidents", about the requests from non-systemic opposition and that an emergency situation is required in order to "overthrow Putin".

Secret telegrams to Washington

It is not a secret that Russian "dissidents" meet regularly with American politicians. Those particularly close, such as Boris Nemtsov, are called directly to Washington, others, less significant, are invited to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle reports on each such meetings in secret cables. However, in the era of WikiLeaks it is difficult to maintain secrecy. The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published excerpts from these cables.

Cable "MOSCOW 000304" talks about the meeting of the Director of the Department for Russia at the National Security Council (NSC) of USA Michael McFaul with Russian human rights activists, which took place on January 14, 2010.

Researchers working with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple's iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept.

The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the "Jamboree," where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security flaws in household and commercial electronics. The conferences have spanned nearly a decade, with the first CIA-sponsored meeting taking place a year before the first iPhone was released.

By targeting essential security keys used to encrypt data stored on Apple's devices, the researchers have sought to thwart the company's attempts to provide mobile security to hundreds of millions of Apple customers across the globe. Studying both "physical" and "non-invasive" techniques, U.S. government-sponsored research has been aimed at discovering ways to decrypt and ultimately penetrate Apple's encrypted firmware. This could enable spies to plant malicious code on Apple devices and seek out potential vulnerabilities in other parts of the iPhone and iPad currently masked by encryption.

There have been times when history has played tricks with man and...has magnified the features of essentially small persons into a parody of greatness. -- Rabindranath Tagore(on Benito Mussolini)

Introduction

How is it that the ruler (Benjamin Netanyahu) of a puny country (Israel) of 8.2 million (6.2 million Jews) with the 37^th biggest economy (GDP in current prices) in the world dictates war policy and secures the willing submission of the legislature of the largest economy and most powerful military empire in the world?

What significance does Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress have, beyond the fact that he uses it as a platform to attack the elected President of the US, to denounce US peace negotiations and to demand that Congress adopt policies designed to precipitate a war with Iran?