Former US West CEO Joseph Nacchio was released from prison last week after completing a four year insider trading sentence. He still claims the NSA framed him on the insider trading charges - after he refused to participate in their illegal phone surveillance program in 2001. US West was the only major telecommunication program that refused to spy on its customers. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nacchio feels vindicated by Edward Snowden's recent revelations about NSA spying on Americans' phone and email communications.

Nacchio was convicted of selling US West stock based on inside information about the company's deteriorating financial health. He denies this, claiming he believed US West's lucrative contracts with the federal government would continue. Instead his refusal to cooperate with the NSA resulted in the wholesale cancellation of government contracts.

Nacchio had evidence supporting this claim. However the judge ruled it was classified and prevented his defense team from presenting it. The redacted NSA files were only made public after the former CEO was convicted and sentenced. However Harper's and others have always supported Nacchio's contention that he was prosecuted in retaliation for saying "no" to the NSA.

Whether or not Vlaccio is guilty of insider trading (all the legal arguments are summarized at Race to the Bottom), the most illuminating information in the redacted files is that the NSA was pressuring US West to spy on customers in February 2001. This was a good seven months before the 9-11 attacks, the supposed justification for curtailing Americans' civil liberties.

Kuwait: Gulf states plan to study a project which will identify homosexuals and transgender individuals through a 'clinical test' which will be added to the list of medical tests one has to undergo to obtain a visa. If individuals are revealed to be homosexual or transgender, they will be denied entry into the country, a local daily reported yesterday, quoting a senior official in Kuwait's Ministry of Health.

"Homosexuals and 'third-sex' individuals can be detected through clinical tests during the routine medical examination for visa", Public Health Department Director Dr Yousuf Mendakar said. 'Third-sex' is a common term used in Gulf states to refer to transsexuals or people with gender identity disorder. The senior official added that an individual who is identified as homosexual will have 'unfit' stamped on his medical report; a term often used for people who fail medical tests which will automatically disqualify their visa application.

Dr Mendakar's statements did not specify the test or the people targeted in the new project. It was also unclear whether this excluded cross-dressers or included all homosexuals in general. He also did not explain how medical examiners intend to determine a visitor's sexual orientation. "Expatriates undergo medical tests at local clinics, but the new procedure includes stricter measures to find out homosexuals and transgenders so that they are banned from entering Kuwait or any GCC state", he added.

Police in Washington could have avoided shooting dead a woman pursued by officers in a car chase that led to the lockdown of the Capitol this week, the driver's sister, former New York police sergeant Valarie Carey, said late on Friday.

The family of Miriam Carey, whose one-year-old daughter Erica was in the car with her during the encounter with police on Thursday, has said she suffered from post-partum depression.

Carey, 34, a resident of Stamford, Connecticut, tried to drive her black Infiniti coupe through a barrier near the White House, then sped toward Capitol Hill, leading police on a high-speed chase that ended when her car got stuck on a median and police shot her.

"My sister could have been any person traveling in our capital," Valarie Carey told reporters outside her Brooklyn home. "Deadly physical force was not the ultimate recourse and it didn't have to be."

The chase and shooting came at a time of high political tension in the U.S. capital with Congress debating how to resolve the shutdown of the federal government. The Capitol was locked down after the shots were fired.

Police in Washington could have avoided shooting dead a woman pursued by officers in a car chase that led to the lockdown of the Capitol this week, the driver's sister, former New York police sergeant Valarie Carey, said late on Friday.
The family of Miriam Carey, whose one-year-old daughter Erica was in the car with her during the encounter with police on Thursday, has said she suffered from post-partum depression.

Carey, 34, a resident of Stamford, Connecticut, tried to drive her black Infiniti coupe through a barrier near the White House, then sped toward Capitol Hill, leading police on a high-speed chase that ended when her car got stuck on a median and police shot her.

"My sister could have been any person traveling in our capital," Valarie Carey told reporters outside her Brooklyn home. "Deadly physical force was not the ultimate recourse and it didn't have to be."

The chase and shooting came at a time of high political tension in the U.S. capital with Congress debating how to resolve the shutdown of the federal government. The Capitol was locked down after the shots were fired.

Police in Washington could have avoided shooting dead a woman pursued by officers in a car chase that led to the lockdown of the Capitol this week, the driver's sister, former New York police sergeant Valarie Carey, said late on Friday.

The family of Miriam Carey, whose one-year-old daughter Erica was in the car with her during the encounter with police on Thursday, has said she suffered from post-natal depression.

Carey, 34, a resident of Stamford, Connecticut, tried to drive her black Infiniti coupe through a barrier near the White House, then sped toward Capitol Hill, leading police on a high-speed chase that ended when her car got stuck on a median and police shot her.

"My sister could have been any person traveling in our capital," Valarie Carey told reporters outside her Brooklyn home.

"Deadly physical force was not the ultimate recourse and it didn't have to be."

The chase and shooting came at a time of high political tension in the U.S. capital with Congress debating how to resolve the shutdown of the federal government. The Capitol was locked down after the shots were fired.

In another incident that caused alarm in Washington, a man appeared to have set himself on fire at the National Mall on Friday. He was listed in critical condition at a hospital.

Mbabane - An extensive black market in human body parts has been uncovered in Swaziland's second-largest hospital.

Demand is strong in the country for human ingredients for use in traditional potions. Even the water used to wash corpses in the hospital mortuary is being sold to traditional healers.

"If they are selling parts from the hospital, they can steal from someone who has just died or is about to die," said Reverend Grace Masilela, a Nazarene Church preacher who said she was once a traditional healer.

Masilela revealed this at the weekend to a Swazi newspaper, but the practice of selling human organs from the mortuary at Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital in the central commercial hub of Manzini is an open secret.

Traditional healers come to town to purchase herbs at the Manzini market and end their trip with a visit to the mortuary.

A human brain costs R1 000. Other parts, from internal organs to body fat, fetch from R400 to R1 000.

Body parts are roasted and pulverised into an ash, and mixed with herbs for a potion that is either drunk, ingested or in some cases rubbed into the blood through a razor cut to the skin. The user is then endowed with supernatural power, according to belief.

"Children's parts are favoured because they are considered pure. An elderly person's parts are liked because the consumer takes on the person's wisdom," said Charles Mngomezulu, a traditional healer, who added that he does not dabble in muti.

In ancient Rome, when times were tough and the plebs were restless the rulers would often resort to two time-proven techniques to hold on to power: bribery and distraction. By meeting the basic needs of the people by bribing them with money or food, and distracting them with the entertainment of various sorts of spectacles, the rulers of Rome ensured the loyalty, or at least the passivity, of the people.

Of course, providing bread (panem) and spectacle games (circenses) did nothing to address the underlying issues inherent in Roman society, and in fact exacerbated them by diverting time, money, and effort that might have been better spent actually fixing problems instead of ignoring them. For a number of reasons, including the politics of bread and circuses, the Roman Empire, one of the greatest of its or any time, eventually fell apart under its own weight.

Many people like to draw parallels between the Roman Empire and modern-day America. While these comparisons are often trite and over-simplified, modern comparisons to the "bread and circuses" tactics of ancient Rome warrant closer examination. This is because there are direct parallels between the "then" of ancient Rome and the "now" of American society.

Social "entitlement" programs in modern America are a direct parallel to the bread and money handouts of ancient Rome. Originally envisioned as a means to protect those not capable of working and to provide a temporary "safety net" for able-bodied, welfare and related programs in modern America instead have become a snare that is useful only in ensuring a steady stream of generations of voters utterly dependent upon government handouts for their survival.

With so many people on the public dole, and with many of the trappings of the middle class given to them for nothing, there is no real financial or social incentive for the poor to put in the work required to actually move into the middle class. Over time, politicians compete to see who can provide the greatest excesses from the public coffers to the most people possible, in order to ensure those politicians remain in power. And we all know what happens to a democracy soon after it reaches this point.

District judge denies appeal of Sister Megan Rice, 83, and two other activists, citing their intent to 'disarm' Oak Ridge. An octogenarian Roman Catholic nun, jailed for breaking into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee, is facing up to 30 years in prison after losing her plea for the most serious charge to be dropped.

Sister Megan Rice, 83, and two fellow peace activists staged a non-violent protest to symbolically disarm the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons facility, home to the nation's main supply of highly enriched uranium, in July. They were initially charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, but felony charges quickly followed. They were eventually convicted of interfering with national security and damage to federal property.

Well, better late than never.

In the wake of the outrage that stemmed from the placement of a poster promoting Naomi Watts' movie Diana near the entrance to the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died, the 4-foot by 6-foot ad has been taken down.

"It was requested that the poster be removed Monday afternoon, and we received confirmation that it had been removed Monday evening," a spokesperson for French distributor Le Pacte told The Hollywood Reporter.

The sign, featuring Watts dressed as Diana, had been prominently displayed by the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, just feet away from the gold Flame of Liberty statue, which has become known as an unofficial memorial for the Princess of Wales.

A tourist captured the moment a man saluted the Capitol before deciding to set himself alight on Washington's National Mall on Friday,

Javier Soto was visiting the tourist hotspots with his camera snapping shots of the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Then he went to see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the White House.

Finally, returning to the National Mall and, just before 4:30 p.m., he aimed his camera east, toward the Capitol and saw a man pouring gasoline over his body from a canister.

Mr Soto says the man gave the Capitol building a crisp military salute, before igniting the fuel with a lighter