~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
U.S. OKs business with terror-supporting nations Loopholes let companies get lucrative deals with Iran, Cuba, North Korea By JO BECKER NEW YORK - Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has granted special licenses allowing American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.
At the behest of a host of companies - from Kraft Food and Pepsi to some of the nation's largest banks - a little-known office of the Treasury Department has made nearly 10,000 exceptions to American sanctions rules, approving deals involving countries that have been cast into economic purgatory, beyond the reach of American business.
Swiss close to charging three in nuclear smuggling plot U.S. tried to derail case against associates of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan By Michael Isikoff
National investigative correspondent A Swiss judge is recommending that smuggling charges be brought against three alleged members of the world's most notorious nuclear trafficking ring, reviving a politically sensitive case that U.S. officials have repeatedly tried to squelch because it might expose sensitive CIA secrets, NBC News has learned.
After more than two years of investigation, Swiss magistrate Andreas Mueller said he plans to announce Thursday that he is recommending that his country's attorney general criminally charge Swiss engineer Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Marco and Urs, as middlemen in the nuclear smuggling network of rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.
S. Korea conducts live-fire exercise despite warnings from North In possible breakthrough, U.S. troubleshooter says he wins nuclear concessions from Pyongyang msnbc.com news services YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea - South Korea fired artillery in a 90-minute drill from a front-line island Monday and launched fighter jets to deter attacks after North Korea warned of catastrophic retaliation for the maneuvers.
But amid the tension there was also a report of a potential diplomatic breakthrough, with U.S. troubleshooter Bill Richardson winning concessions from the North on the return of nuclear inspectors, according to CNN.
There was no sign of any North Korean military response during the drill, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.
Gains outweigh setbacks in a landmark year for gay rights Repeal of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy may be the movement's biggest victory yet, activists say. By Robin Abcarian and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times
December 19, 2010 Today the military, tomorrow the marriage altar?
In an era when gay Americans have seen stunning progress and many setbacks in the quest for equality under the law, many believe 2010 will go down in history as a watershed that will lead inexorably to more legal rights.
Saturday's vote in the Senate to allow the repeal of the federal law banning gays from openly serving in the military is "one of the greatest, if not the greatest, victory in the history of the movement for gay and lesbian equality," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a UC Santa Barbara think tank that studies the issue of gays in the military.
Top CIA spy in Pakistan pulled amid threats after public accusation over attack By Greg Miller and Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 18, 2010; 1:20 AM U.S. officials said Friday they are increasingly convinced that Pakistan's intelligence service deliberately exposed the identity of the CIA's top spy in Pakistan, triggering death threats and forcing the agency to pull him from his post.
The allegation marks a new low in the relationship between the CIA and its Pakistani counterpart at a time when both intelligence services are under pressure to root out militant groups and the CIA is waging a vastly accelerated campaign of drone strikes.
The CIA officer was rushed out of the agency's massive station in Islamabad on the same day that President Obama issued a new warning to Pakistan's leaders that "terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with."
Japan defence review warns of China's military might Japan has unveiled sweeping changes to its national defence polices, boosting its southern forces in response to neighbouring China's military rise. The BBC 17 December 2010 Japan, which shares a maritime border with China, said Beijing's military build-up was of global concern.
Japan will also strengthen its missile defences against the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea.
The policy document has been approved by the cabinet and will shape Japan's defence policy for the next 10 years.
Japan is changing its defence policy in response to the shifting balance of power in Asia, analysts say.
U.S. rethinks strategy for an unthinkable attack Administration's problem: How to spread advice without causing alarm? By WILLIAM J. BROAD Suppose the unthinkable happened, and terrorists struck New York or another big city with an atom bomb. What should people there do? The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don't come out till officials say it's safe.
The advice is based on recent scientific analyses indicating that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.
Obama says he remains committed to engagement based on 'trust and candour' The comments are the closest the US president has come to making a public statement on the release of US embassy cables by Wikileaks Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 December 2010 President Obama came the closest he has yet to making public comments on the WikiLeaks release of US embassy cables, when he told a gathering of diplomats from around the world yesterday that he remained committed to engagement based on trust and candour.
Obama has so far given no official response to WikiLeaks, leaving that to his secretary of state Hillary Clinton who has condemned the publication of thousands of classified state department documents as "an attack on the international community".
$52bn of American aid and still Afghans are dying of starvation Patrick Cockburn reports from Kabul on the rampant corruption that has left the country on its knees Monday, 13 December 2010 The most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. As President Barack Obama prepares this week to present a review of America's strategy in Afghanistan which is likely to focus on military progress, US officials, Afghan administrators, businessmen and aid workers insist that corruption is the greatest threat to the country's future.
In a series of interviews, they paint a picture of a country where $52bn (£33bn) in US aid since 2001 has made almost no impression on devastating poverty made worse by spreading violence and an economy dislocated by war.
WikiLeaks' advocates are wreaking 'hacktivism' By Ian Shapira and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers In England, a 26-year-old advertising agency employee caters to multinational clients but on the side has been communicating with a secretive band of strangers devoted to supporting WikiLeaks.
Halfway around the world, a 24-year-old in Montana has used a publicly available - and, according to security experts, suddenly popular software program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon with the goal of shutting down Web sites of WikiLeaks' perceived enemies.
How I met Julian Assange and secured the American embassy cables Philip Dorling
December 11, 2010 GETTING to WikiLeaks's secret headquarters took quite some time and was not without complications.
This year a careful reading of statements by the WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, led me to conclude his small organisation had landed what could be the biggest leak of classified information - a vast trove of US documents that, among other things, would provide deep insight into the realities of Australia's relationship with our most important ally, the US.
Goldman has an unexpected ally in court: federal prosecutors The banking giant, which has been under relentless scrutiny for its role in the financial crisis, relies on the U.S. government to protect its trade secrets in a trial of a former worker accused of stealing valuable computer code. By Nathaniel Popper, Los Angeles Times Reporting from New York - Goldman Sachs, the most powerful firm on Wall Street, makes an unlikely victim.
That, however, is the role that the bank has played over the last two weeks in a Manhattan courtroom, where prosecutors have argued that Sergei Aleynikov, a skinny, bespectacled former computer programmer at Goldman, stole valuable computer code from the bank before moving to a start-up firm that was trying to build its own trading operations.
Although the code in question was a mere 32 megabytes - less than a 10th of what fits on a data CD - Goldman executives have said it was a central cog in their high-frequency trading operations, a lucrative division at one of the most profitable companies in the world.
As jurors go online, U.S. trials go off track Facebook, Twitter and smart phones cause mistrials, appeals and overturned verdicts Reuters ATLANTA - The explosion of blogging, tweeting and other online diversions has reached into U.S. jury boxes, raising serious questions about juror impartiality and the ability of judges to control courtrooms.
A Reuters Legal analysis found that jurors' forays on the Internet have resulted in dozens of mistrials, appeals and overturned verdicts in the last two years.
For decades, courts have instructed jurors not to seek information about cases outside of evidence introduced at trial, and jurors are routinely warned not to communicate about a case with anyone before a verdict is reached. But jurors these days can, with a few clicks, look up definitions of legal terms on Wikipedia, view crime scenes via Google Earth, or update their blogs and Facebook pages with snide remarks about the proceedings.
9th Circuit judges explore narrow routes to reinstate gay marriage U.S. appeals court appears to be seeking a way to restore same-sex marriage in California while avoiding a decision that would send Prop. 8 to the U.S Supreme Court. By Maura Dolan and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times
December 7, 2010, 12:18 a.m. Federal appeals court judges Monday seemed headed toward a decision that could reinstate same-sex marriages in California while avoiding a ruling of national sweep that would invite U.S. Supreme Court action.
The judges explored at least two routes that could achieve that goal. One would be a ruling that California, having granted marriage rights to same-sex couples, could not take them away by popular vote.
E-mails from the front lines of the Iraq war E-mails from sources in Iraq describe the daily carnage; these terse missives are an almost poetic chronicle of the war. No commas. No names. Is punctuation necessary when meaning is so clear? By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times
December 6, 2010 Reporting from Cairo - They arrive nearly every day, these sad, strange e-mails from Iraq.
They are unsentimental and hard, gathered by stringers scattered across a country at war. They're often tough to follow, terse poems with broken rhythms and words landing in wrong places. But there's an unadorned power that speaks to things beyond style and grammar.
"An IP source said that some gunmen assassinated yesterday evening staff brigadier general in the Iraqi army and his wife in Tobchi (west Baghdad) while he was driving his car... both were killed instantly."
