BBC | The Red List, drawn up by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has declared the subspecies extinct.  A subspecies of white rhino in central Africa is also listed as possibly extinct, the organisation says.

SC Tech | A blind man who thought he would never be able to read again has had his vision partially restored after being fitted with a 'bionic' eye.  Peter Lane, 51, is one of the first people in the world to have electronic receivers implanted into his eye which send signals mounted in a pair of glasses to
the brain.

The correlation between the protests going on all around the world and the global banking system will continue to have a great effect. The EU is requesting $177 trillion dollars from Greece, which is the 36th biggest economic power in the world via the latest G-20 meeting. One of the biggest markets in the world needs a bailout from the 36th biggest? The reason this relates to the protesters and the average citizen of the world is quite simple : The more people are aware of how the market works or go out protesting against it, the less trading will happen.

The Guardian | Mark Lewis, who has represented victims of phone hacking including the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, was one of the lawyers targeted.  The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

Veterans Today - The Occupy Oakland General Strike had that many people in the plaza for most of the day, while two huge crowds were outside of it: one marching down Broadway, the other a set of people walking around various parts of downtown Oakland with protest signs.

Mother Jones | The Jets just won their game and I'm in a good mood. So I guess it's time to head over to the ol' computer and see what's up in the world today. I wonder what the Washington Post has for us? Just one short click and — oh crap...

The Atlantic | Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot--or even switching his rifle off of "safety"--he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the S.W.A.T. team barrage came from a S.W.A.T. team gun, not Guerena's. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home.

Al Jazeera | Some Chinese seeking help from the central government against local injustices are instead ending up in secret detention centres controlled by local politicians.  The politicians are believed to arrange for petitioners to be abducted before they reach Beijing to complain, fearing central government investigations that could hurt their reputations.

Secrecy News | For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose.  Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

LA TImes | On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled.

Capital FM News | The measure bars GMOs — including seeds, livestock, and fish — from being imported for cultivation or to be raised locally.  Exceptions include the use of GMO products for research purposes in a closed environment, but those will be closely monitored, the legislature’s official news service said.

Haaretz | Several Israeli government websites crashed on Sunday in what appeared to be a cyber-attack by hackers. The websites of the IDF, Mossad and the Shin Bet security services were among the sites that went down, as well as several government portals and ministries.

MSNBC | The bakery was about to shutter in September when Ali, a former staffer, learned of its demise and decided to save it — keeping it in the same spirit of its original owner, Morris Rosenzweig, a Jewish immigrant from Bialystok, Poland, who founded the shop in 1920.

ARS Technica | Anonymous members launched an effort called OpCartel last week after claiming a member had been kidnapped during a "Operation Paperstorm" protest in Veracruz. The group threatened to "dox" members of the cartel, releasing names and addresses of taxi drivers, journalists, and members of law enforcement associated with the group. To collect information to aid in their effort, the group posted a "plug-in" Web application to allow would-be informants to protect their identities while providing names and other information.

New York Times | The suspect, a 48-year-old man, is the sixth person to be arrested in Scotland Yard’s investigation into illegal payoffs by newspapers to police officers in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World. He was arrested outside London “in connection with allegations of corruption,” the police said, and taken to a police station in southwest London for questioning.

Press TV | Three members of the ring, which specialized in selling body organs from trafficked victims, worked at a clinic in Azerbaijan's capital city of Baku, IRIB reported on Friday.  Run by an Israeli national with no medical training, the clinic was used as a front for trafficking body organs harvested from Azeri children.

Reuters | The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.  The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.

MSNBC | An Israeli official said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to persuade his Cabinet to authorize a military strike against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program — a discussion that comes as Israel successfully tests a missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Iran.

Bad Science | This week Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor of pharmacology at Oxford, apparently announced that computer games are causing dementia in children. This would be very concerning scientific information: but it comes to us from the opening of a new wing at an expensive boarding school, not an academic conference.

Silenced No More | Boulder, Colorado passed by a 3-to-1 margin an amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not speech and 6 Senators introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Have corporations overplayed their hand – is the backlash now underway?

CNN | "It did happen regularly, for a period of time, and I could tell, because of the pattern, that things were escalating again," Hillary Adams, now 23, said on NBC's "Today." She said she left her video camera on her dresser recording and covered its light with a scarf in order to capture the video.

Courthouse News Service | A widow says a regional SWAT team killed her husband, a Marine veteran, in a botched raid not even aimed at him, riddling their house with 72 bullets while she and their 4-year-old son were in it.  Vanessa Guerena says police refused to allow paramedics to help her husband, 26-year-old Jose Guerena, after the SWAT team shot him repeatedly while serving a search warrant on May 5.

The Guardian | Netanyahu is said to believe that the two, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, wanted to torpedo plans being drawn up by him and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to hit Iranian nuclear sites. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, is also said to have been persuaded to attack Netanyahu for "adventurism" and "gambling with Israel's national interest".

American Association for the Advancement of Science | Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in his work. Soon after being confronted with the accusations, Stapel reportedly told university officials that some of his papers contained falsified data.

The Independent | North Korea has reportedly banned 200 of its nationals in Libya from returning home amid fears that they may import the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Hundreds more North Korean citizens, including construction workers and nurses throughout the Middle East, have also been told to stay put, according to reports in the South Korean media.

Salon.com | The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC demoted and then firedits then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the “one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S. media of America’s civilian victims).

The Wash | I hate these fucking full body scanners. Luckily, I have not had to be faced with going through one as of yet and I’d hate to be the TSA officer that would try and make me go through one. Most likely, depending on my day, that encounter will not be pretty.

American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations | Go to any gathering, and you’ll find nearly every person carrying an iPhone or an iPad, despite the Apple Computer’s dismal record on labor practices. Apple executives must be laughing all the way to the bank — their Swiss bank, that is.

The Salt Lake Tribune | While at a hearing before a District Court judge, the man said he was from Mexico and he was in the country illegally. He pleaded guilty. The court then allowed him to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and he was deported to Mexico, court document say.

WSWS | Thousands of protesters participated in a day of marches and demonstrations in Oakland, California Wednesday. The actions were held eight days after a violent attack by police on the Occupy Oakland movement resulted in more than 100 arrests and the near-fatal wounding of a young Iraq War veteran, Scott Olsen.

Global Post | Written proof of US terror plots will be released on Friday, November 4th, reported Iran's state-owned news channel Press TV.  The head of the Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, will detail the allegations during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Mystery Conspiracy | Gadaffi wanted Africa to have its first own communications satellite and in 1992, 42 African countries decided they wanted to have their own satellite instead of using others. This satellite would cover all of Africas communications and it would only cost them 400 million, a one time payment.

Anti-war | With Defense Ministry officials saying that they believe the US may soon “fast-forward” plans to attack Iran, Britain’s military is stepping up its own preparations for such an attack under the assumption that they will join in on the war.

Torrent Freak | A Spanish judge came to an interesting conclusion in a case dealing with a seller of pirated copies. According to the judge the defendant doesn’t have to pay compensation to the rightsholders because it is not possible to determine to what extent piracy actually decreases sales. On the contrary, the judge suggests that piracy may even boost sales.

Doctor Tipster | French researchers were able to restore the youth of cells taken from people aged over 100 years, reprograming them to stem cells stage, demonstrating that aging is in fact reversible. The researchon the possibility to remove traces left by aging cells, published in the Genes & Development journal , marks a new stage in the regenerative medicine field, said Jean-Marc Lemaitre from Fonctionnelle Génomique Institute(INSERM / CNRS / Université de Montpellier), who led the study, informs AFP.

Mother Jones | Goldline International, the California precious metals retailer promoted by Glenn Beck and other radio hosts, was formally charged with 19 criminal counts—including grand theft by false pretenses, false advertising, and conspiracy—on Tuesday by the Santa Monica City Attorney's Office. The criminal complaint also implicates Goldline CEO Mark Albarian, along with two other company executives and two salespeople.

CNN | "Political expression deserves the highest level of protection and it was unacceptable for the state to suddenly shut down protesters' speech and forcibly oust them from Legislative Plaza that has long been used as a place for peaceful expression," said Hedy Weinberg, executive director at the ACLU of Tennessee.

The Intel Hub | Two dozen men and women from Occupy Vancouver and the Occupy the Vatican movement, most of them aboriginal, faced assaults and a human blockade from members of the Catholic Knights of Columbus yesterday outside Holy Rosary Cathedral, while trying to peacefully occupy it and enforce a legal eviction order against the Roman Catholic church for its murder of thousands of residential school children.

Extra Torrent | A few days ago, Ofcom, an independent regulator and competition authority for the communications industries of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, made an announcement, saying that starting with summer 2013 online file-sharers alleged of unauthorized file-sharing of copyrighted content will start receiving notification letters.
 

Russia Today | Finding a scandal within the ranks of the NYPD these days is like shooting fish in a barrel — or, to update the idiom, like pepper-spraying protesters in a pen.  Every hour it seems a new story emerges, and today we have a Brooklyn crack fiend to thank for our daily fodder.

Wall Street Journal |The move is a dramatic retreat following decisions by several rivals in recent days to drop customer tests of the new fees. SunTrust Banks Inc. and Regions Financial Corp. also said Monday that they will stop charging customers for debit-card transactions.

LA Times | Private equity firms are investing in chains of used-car lots, and auto loans are being packaged into securities much like subprime mortgages. They're attracted by the industry's average profit of 38% for each car sold

Black Agenda Report | Never in living memory has a Noble Peace Prize recipient gone on to cause more death and misery than Barack Obama, who now puts hits on U.S. citizens.   His foreign policy “successes,” as rated by his supporters, all involve assassinations – he is The Assassinator. Moammar Gaddfi is a singular victim, but so are thousands of Black Libyans and migrants

UCLA Newsroom | In Africa 140 years ago, David Livingstone, the Victorian explorer, met Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald and gave him a harrowing account of a massacre he witnessed, in which slave traders slaughtered 400 innocent people. Stanley's press reports prompted the British government to close the East African slave trade, secured Livingstone's place in history and launched Stanley's own career as an imperialist in Africa.

BBC | US space agency Nasa has funded a study of "tractor beams" to gather samples for analysis in future missions.  The $100,000 (£63,000) award will be used to examine three laser-based approaches to do what has until now been the stuff of science fiction.

National Journal Underscoring widespread discontent with all political leaders, registered voters now divide almost exactly in half on whether President Obama and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives each deserve another term in power, according to the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll.

Gigaom | Many internet users in the United States have watched with horror as countries like France and Britain have proposed or instituted so-called “three strikes” laws, which cut off internet access to those accused of repeated acts of copyright infringement. Now the U.S. has its own version of this kind of law, and it is arguably much worse: the Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced in the House this week, would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet on the flimsiest of grounds, and would force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police.

PennLive The Patriot News | The 42-year-old Black man also claims authorities didn’t return all the money they took after an arbitration board appointed by Dauphin County Court rebuffed the forfeiture request in March. He contends that nearly $43,000 was seized and that he received only $28,980 back.