World News

RAW Story | A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks.

Swedish Wire | President President Barack Obama should resign if it can be shown that he approved spying by US diplomatic figures on UN officials, the founder of WikiLeaks said in an interview published Sunday.

Washington Post | The Foreign Ministry says the recognition is in response to a request made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last month to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

RAW Story | "Last week, Nigeria arrested at least 23 officials from companies including Halliburton, Saipem, Technip and a former subsidiary of Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG in connection with alleged illegal payments to Nigerian officials. Those detained were all freed on bail on Nov. 29," Bloomberg News' Elisha Bala-Gbogbo wrote.

Global Research | If the past week of frenzied diplomacy is any reflection of the region’s anxiety over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon ’s (STL) upcoming indictment in the February 2005 assassination of the late premier Rafiq al-Hariri, imagine the mood in Beirut .

RAW Story | The cable, released by WikiLeaks this week, shows that senior US diplomats teamed with Republican lawmakers -- including a former Republican Party chairman -- to put pressure on Spanish officials to drop a criminal investigation into the Bush administration's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Skymania | NASA, who have called a full scale press conference for tomorrow, have tried to keep their findings under wraps, though an accompanying scientific paper has been released to some journalists under embargo.

Al Jazeera | New revelations by whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks, has shown that the Irish government moved to limit transfers of US weapons to Israel through its airports in the wake of the country's war with Lebanon in 2006.

CNN | One of a small number of women who have filled a void by becoming police chiefs in violence-torn Mexico was gunned down Monday, authorities said.  Hermila Garcia, 38, became the top cop in the town of Meoqui just two months ago.

Index on Censorship | Index on Censorship has obtained copies of correspondence between whistleblowing website Wikileaks and the US embassy in the United Kingdom, which took place between Friday and Sunday.

Press TV | Erdogan described Israel as full of "uncertainties" and said, "It is not definite what it will do." He further warned of the prospects of such hostilities, Turkey's state Anatolia news agency (AA) reported on Thursday.

New Statesman | It's the coldest day of the year, and I've just spent seven hours being kettled in Westminster. That sounds jolly, doesn't it? It sounds a bit like I went and had a lovely cup of tea with the Queen, rather than being trapped into a freezing pen of frightened teenagers and watching armed police kidney-punching children, six months into a government that ran an election campaign on a platform of fairness. So before we go any further, let's remind ourselves precisely what kettling is, and what it's for.

New York Times | India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor.

Monster and Critics | A Swedish court Thursday approved a prosecutor's request to detain the founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, as part of a probe into alleged rape.   The decision was announced after a closed door hearing at the Stockholm district court.

Press TV | Many Palestinian farms have been burnt by Israeli settlers in the northern part of the West Bank.  Israeli settlers have torched hundreds of Palestinian olive trees in the occupied West Bank, in another sign that extremists are targeting a key product of the Palestinian economy.

Relief Web | A two-year-old girl suffering from leukemia died while waiting for an urgent referral to an Israeli hospital. Since January 2009 a total of 33 patients have died while waiting to access hospitals outside Gaza.

Pacbi.org | In the opening lines of an open letter to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, leader of the South Africa's Orthodox Jews, makes a plea that: "Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace

China Post | Although it is now more than a month since the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese government is continuing to tighten surveillance of the imprisoned writer's supporters in the country and to exert pressure on governments in Europe to distance themselves from the Nobel committee.

Telegraph | Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother-of-five, denies blasphemy and told investigators that she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination.

Khaleej Times | Israel is pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem, the Interior Ministry said on Monday, despite fierce opposition from Palestinians.  The timing of the announcement could prove an embarrassment for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in the United States looking for ways to revive Middle East peace talks that have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlement building.

Vimeo | Jewish protestors at a Netanyahu speech were grabbed and pulled out of a crowd of other Jews.  Protestors were yelled at and dissent was treated as treason from nationalist and probably Zionist proud Jews.

Global Research | Documents whose existence were denied by the Israeli government for over a year have been released after a legal battle led by Israeli human rights group Gisha. The documents reveal a deliberate policy by the Israeli government in which the dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level.

Palestine News and Information Agency | Israeli police said that the assault had a “nationalist character” and that the Jewish  attackers took him for an Arab or Palestinian. Five of the suspects were settlers from ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem.

Ma'an News | British Foreign Office spokesman Martin Day on Thursday called on Israel to allow Gaza borders to open for exports to ease an unbearable situation in the Strip.  In July, British Prime Minister David Cameron sparked outrage in Israel when he said Israel's blockade of Gaza had turned the coastal enclave into a "prison camp."

Uncensored | ”Most Americans believe that their government is the best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good, that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes……The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and interference with, virtually every country on earth.” [1]

CNN | Canadian authorities are investigating an "unbelievable" incident in which a passenger boarded an Air Canada flight disguised as an elderly man, according to a confidential alert obtained by CNN.  The incident occurred on October 29 on Air Canada flight AC018 to Vancouver originating in Hong Kong. An intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency describes the incident as an "unbelievable case of concealment."

Charlie's Diary | So when an eminent member of the House of Lords stands up six hours into a debate and blows the gaff on a shadowy foreign Foundation making a bid to buy the British state, and this is recorded in Hansard, one tends to sit up and take notice.

The Right Perspective | In an apparent effort to deflect international criticism of Israel, a right-wing member of the Knesset has called for an international investigation of US troop activities in Iraq and the arrest of American “war criminals.”

Examiner | A CIA expert in electronic voting machines officially declared last month that they are not secure. Just this month, Germany has joined 11 U.S. states, the Netherlands, and other countries which have banned electronic voting of one form or another.

New York Times | The comment, which was reported in the media, exploded on the Internet, becoming the country's newest catch phrase. An online contest challenged people to work "My father is Li Gang" into classical poetry. One artist used the phrase as the centerpiece of a towering art installation.

Quixote | The Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras, COFADEH, emphasizes that the month of August continues to be a period in which those who violate human rights choose to carry out particularly repressive actions –this August, 2010 is no exception.

BBC | Some three million Indians died in the famine of 1943. The majority of the deaths were in Bengal. In a shocking new book, Churchill's Secret War, journalist Madhusree Mukherjee blames Mr Churchill's policies for being largely responsible for one of the worst famines in India's history.

Vancouver Sun | In our coverage of today’s guilty plea we have left out some of the most graphic details out of respect for Proctor and her family. However, we believe it is important that the true nature of this crime is revealed to understand how and why the youths involved have been tried and will be sentenced.

CNN | The United Nations said the women reported they were held for nearly two weeks in early October and raped. The U.N. said three people in the group were killed, including two men and a woman, who died after being repeatedly raped.

Haaretz | A military judge has criticized the military prosecutor's office for relying on the testimony of a mentally challenged young man who referred to events that never took place. In doing so, the witness put a resident of the Palestinian West Bank village of Na'alin behind bars for nine months for a crime he did not commit.

BBC | The UN refugee agency is to start an emergency airlift of tents to the West African nation of Benin this week, amid the worst flooding there in decades.

SBS World News Australia | In a communique at the end of their two-week meeting, the bishops demanded that Israel accept UN resolutions calling for an end to its occupation of Arab lands, and told Israel it shouldn't use the Bible to justify "injustices" against the Palestinians.

Independent | Randy Quaid, the American actor famous for playing characters as diverse as the trailer-trash scrounger in the National Lampoon series to his nation's saviour in Independence Day, is at the centre of a real-life drama more bizarre than anything the movies ever cooked up for him

New York Times | President Hamid Karzai acknowledged Monday that he regularly received bags of cash from the Iranian government containing millions of dollars, saying he used the off-the-books fund to pay expenses incurred in the course of doing his job.

The Times of India | Nearly three years after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a senior police officer, who was incharge of the security of the former premier, has said he was asked to leave the venue of Bhutto's election rally before the attack.

KSDK | With rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, an untold story is raising greater awareness about the Muslim faith and the teachings of the Quran. That awareness comes from an unlikely source: a small Jewish congregation in Creve Coeur.

Al Jazeera | Rachel Corrie's family filed the private lawsuit against the state of Israel five years ago after an Israeli military investigation into the incident concluded that the soldier operating the bulldozers could not see Rachel and closed the case.

Washington Post | The front-page newspaper story featured a list of Uganda's 100 "top" homosexuals, with a bright yellow banner across it that read: "Hang Them." Alongside their photos were the men's names and addresses.

Herald Sun | Mr Bracken sparked outrage yesterday when he told Jon Faine's ABC talk-back program the attacks were not the result of terrorist activity.  He said the story was a conspiracy that "didn't stand up" to scientific scrutiny.

News.com | The police officer, who was driving his personal car, ran into the three girls on Tuesday as they walked at night on the side of the road near Kargosok, a town in the Tomsk region, the local interior ministry said.

News.com | Marisol Valles became director of municipal public security of Guadalupe "since she was the only person to accept the position", the mayor's office of the town of some 10,000 people near the US border told local media yesterday.

Herald Scotland | Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.

BBC | The Old Bailey was told the assault by Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud had a "sexual element" and he had attacked Mr Abdulaziz many times before.  Al Saud, 34, had admitted manslaughter but denied murdering Mr Abdulaziz. He will be sentenced on Wednesday.

Bloomberg | Since then, the 86-year-old monarch has crimped the power of conservative Muslim clerics more than any of his five predecessors since the foundation of the kingdom in 1932. He prohibited unauthorized religious edicts, or fatwas, and shut some of the websites where they’re issued. In the past month, he backed supermarkets employing females for the first time.

AFP | FARATA'A, Palestinian Territories — Thick black smoke billows from the olive grove under the gaze of Israeli soldiers as Palestinian farmers use branches to try to beat out the fires lit by Jewish settlers.