A lesbian couple who claimed they were victims of a hate crime have been arrested after police determined they staged the incidents.

Denmark to ban labeling West Bank products as ‘Made in Israel’, report says

Mark Zuckerberg has trust issues, big ones, and they could sink his extraordinary company. We all know his successes, including commanding an astonishing $104 billion for the company he built on the backs of an equally astonishing 900 million Facebook users.

But Zuckerberg has also made several missteps that raise fundamental questions about his reliability and ultimate intent. The miscalculations are serious enough that they threaten permanent damage to Facebook's relationships with users - and, ultimately, to its advertisers, investors and brand.

The discovery of a page, on the FDA’s own website, proves the FDA is fully aware that:

the drugs it certifies as safe have been killing Americans, at the rate of 100,000 per year.

This writer's residence advised "leaving town between May 18 - 22." Otherwise limit city travel. Have essentials on hand, including food and water. Consider working at home. Avoid certain parts of the city. Observe curfew and other mandates.

No large deliveries will be allowed. Special precautions are being taken. Visitors must have verifying photo IDs. Vehicular restrictions will be enforced. Portions of the building will be locked and inaccessible. Avoid large gatherings if at all possible. Stay close to home.

In early May, CBS local affiliate Channel 2 reported that "the government is informing small plane pilots that if they enter (a restricted) no-fly zone during the summit, they might be shot down."

"This is no joke," the report continued. "It will be enforced from May 19 to May 21."

The FAA established flight advisory rules. Non-commercial aircraft are prohibited from flying within 10 nautical miles of downtown at altitudes below 18,000 feet.

Company filings after the market closed on Friday night however revealed the extent to which the banks who led Facebook’s initial public offering - in which $16bn of shares were sold to new investors - were forced to move in to the market and buy shares in order to keep the price above the $38 level. Morgan Stanley, Facebook’s lead financial adviser, ended the day with 162m shares, worth $6.16bn. Other banks including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs also bought shares, ending the day with $3.2bn and $2.4bn holdings respectively.

The ‘sell’ recommendation to investors will make Facebook’s advisers even more nervous ahead of the resumption of trading on New York’s Nasdaq exchange on Monday morning.

He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music which promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice.

He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employee, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons.

Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop. I remember looking around to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and saw half of the people with dropped jaws. My daze was interrupted when someone shouted, “Is this a f****** joke?”

According to law enforcement sources and police reports obtained by the Tribune, the arrests were the result of a monthlong investigation into a group suspected of making Molotov cocktails — crude bombs usually created by filling glass bottles with gasoline.

But the National Lawyers Guild criticized the police raid, saying the nine NATO protesters only had beer-making equipment in their possession.

Several major tourist attractions in Chicago will be closed this weekend because the city is hosting the annual North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit of world leaders.

The Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium and the Art Institute of Chicago will be closed from Saturday the 19th, reopening on Tuesday the 22nd. Under previous arrangements with the U.S. Secret Service, the museums would have only been closed Sunday the 20th.

Erin Hogan, a spokeswoman for the Art Institute, said the decision was made to close the Institute from this time period for logistics reasons, citing employees getting to and from the location. The Museum’s new exhibit examining the works of the artist Roy Lichtenstein will be open to the public on Tuesday the 22nd.

The three men were among nine people that were collared Wednesday night in a raid on an apartment building in the 1000 block of West 32nd in the Bridgeport neighborhood, she said.

She said in a written statement released later Saturday that at 11:30 p.m., “police broke down doors with guns drawn and searched residences without a warrant or consent.”

Gelsomino said she still doesn’t know the details of the charges.

“Although some accusations of Molotov cocktails have been made by police, they have provided no evidence of criminal intent or wrongdoing on the part of the activists,” she said in the statement. “On Thursday, when asked about the raid at a press conference, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy knew so little about the alleged terrorism investigation that he said he would have to gather further information before commenting.”

A look back at the first rally of NATO weekend in Chicago, where thousands of protestors from National Nurses United and a variety of Occupy chapters marched to Daley Plaza on Friday, May 18, 2012.

Facebook is a sucker’s stock.

Why do I say that?

The media hyped it. And the only folks who seem to be itching to snatch it up are the inexperienced stock investors.

All my friends who aren’t stock investors are the ones who were looking to potentially buy it. All of my other friends who have a ton of years in the financial industry all shunned it. It’s simply overpriced.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Sean Hyman: Facebook Is a Sucker’s Stock
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

National Lawyers Guild spokesman Kris Hermes says Chicago police officers unjustly raided a Bridgeport apartment complex on Wednesday evening and detained several people without cause.

The FY 2013 military budget (NDAA) is up for a vote in the House this Friday. It contains more than $642 billion of taxpayer money to pay for a war the majority of Americans oppose; nuclear upgrades that threaten non-proliferation agreements; programs and weapons that even the Pentagon doesn't want. The bill also promotes reckless threats on Iran, enables reckless actions by Israel and prohibits the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo to the United States.

It's not just the Republicans, who are at fault. The majority of Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee have voted in favor, producing a lopsided 56-5 margin for an outrageous bill. Partisan rhetoric should not obscure the reality that if this over-sized military budget passes the Congress, it will be paid for by programs that affect the most vulnerable- food stamps, school lunches, health insurance for low income children, "Meals-on Wheels" for the elderly.

When the leaders of the Group of 8 gather at Camp David on Friday, President Obama and the others must press Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to commit to a euro-zone growth package. This is no time to mince words: Her one-size-fits-all austerity program has been a failure, pushing heavily indebted countries deeper into recession, making it even harder for them to pay off their debts. It is putting the already-weak recovery in the United States at risk and is fueling instability and extremism in Europe.

The local council has sent thousands of letters to residents asking if they would be willing to let their backyard be the nation’s first Nuclear Research and Disposal Facility. Building would start in 2025 at the earliest and the first “pods” of waste, vitrified as glass and coated in concrete or clay, would go underground as early as 2040, to be stored in miles of tunnels more than 3,000ft deep.

“I was absolutely horrified,” said Gagnon, of Camp Verde, Arizona. “I never gave them permission to drill into my son’s mouth. They did it for profit.”

Isaac’s case and others like it are under scrutiny by federal lawmakers and state regulators trying to determine whether a popular business model fueled by Wall Street money is soaking taxpayers and having a malign influence on dentistry.

Isaac’s dentist was dispatched to his school by ReachOut Healthcare America, a dental management services company that’s in the portfolio of Morgan Stanley Private Equity, operates in 22 states and has dealt with 1.5 million patients. Management companies are at the center of a U.S. Senate inquiry, and audits, investigations and civil actions in six states over allegations of unnecessary procedures, low-quality treatment and the unlicensed practice of dentistry.

The corporate funding under the food initiative will be partly from African companies, with just under half of the investments coming from businesses there and the rest from other companies around the world, according to the White House. The program's goal is to promote sustainable agriculture and remove 50 million people from poverty during the next decade.

In 2006, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Germany's Sat. 1 channel:

"Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?"

Later he denied what viewers clearly heard him say. Calls for him to step down followed. So did accusations of ineptitude for acknowledging Israeli nuclear weapons publicly.

Four years ago, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul got the cold shoulder at the Minnesota GOP convention, as he was denied a speaking slot and relegated to a nearby park to address supporters.

How times have changed.

The libertarian Texas congressman found a raucous and receptive audience for his message of personal liberty and curbing the scope of government when he addressed the state convention Friday night, May 18, in St. Cloud.

Paul isn't actively campaigning for the party's presidential nomination, but you wouldn't have been able to tell that from the raucous applause and chants of "President Paul! President Paul!" as he delivered his speech.

The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined. It requires the White House to prepare an annual report on how that superiority is being maintained. The resolution passed on May 9 by a vote of 411–2 on a “suspension of the rules,” which is intended for non-controversial legislation requiring little debate and a quick vote.

A class action lawsuit filed against Facebook in California is seeking a whopping $15 billion in damages for privacy violations tied to the tracking of Web users.

The suit, which was filed by law firm Stewarts Law US, combines 21 privacy lawsuits filed against the social network in more than a dozen states into a single legal action. The case stems from accusations made in September 2011 that Facebook tracks user activity even after people have left the site.

According to Stewarts Law, the $15 billion figure was arrived at using statutory damages set by the federal Wiretap Act, which allows for damages of $100 per day per violation for each user, up to a maximum of $10,000. The lawsuit also claims Facebook violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, various California statutes and California common law.

It was another Wall Street bailout — but this time the banks had to cough up the cash.

Facebook’s underwriters propped up the social-network’s trading debut yesterday, as the shares threatened to crash through the initial public offering price of $38.

The banks working on the massive $16 billion IPO, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, did their duty by buying up large blocks of Facebook stock toward the end of the day to support the price.

A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants.

The attack – like all other US drone strikes outside warzones – was supposed to be clandestine. Yet within minutes Sanaa-based lawyer Haykal Bafana was reporting the strike in almost-realtime.

The scheduled launch of a private rocket from the Cape Canaveral space centre in Florida has been dramatically aborted at the last second apparently due to a possible problem with one of the rocket's engines.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was due to launch on Saturday, sending its Dragon capsule on a mission to the International Space Station which would have marked the end of NASA's decades-long dominance industry and and the debut for commercial space operators.

But the rocket failed to lift off as the countdown reached zero.

The parents of a 4-year-old girl are outraged after their daughter was placed under the care of Child Protective Services and then heavily medicated with psychotropic drugs.

Christina and David Harrison were heartbroken when Child Protective Services took away their daughter, Rachel, when she was only three. At the time, authorities suspended their parental rights after the child’s mother tested positive for cocaine, something she now says she heavily regrets. When she finally got to see her daughter again, however, she noticed some serious changes with Rachel.

The next time the Harrison’s saw their daughter, it was Rachel that was on drugs.

"She was never abused or neglected in any way except by CPS," Debbie Flores, Rachel's grandmother, tells a Fox New affiliate in Houston.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Thursday military intervention in the affairs of sovereign states could lead to war, even nuclear war.

The National Lawyers Guild confirms that law enforcement agents broke down the door of a 6-unit apartment building in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Bridgeport at around 11:30 pm on Wednesday. Once inside, they entered the apartment of known activists with guns drawn and then cuffed the residents.

For two hours, tenants were shackled and questioned by officers with the Organized Crime Division of the Chicago Police Department. The Chicago Tribune writes that police reports detailing the incident have been obtained by the newspaper and confirm that nine people were arrested in the raid for allegedly making or possessing Molotov cocktail explosives. Police sources add to the paper early Friday, however, that none of the suspects had been charged.

FHA insured loans have been a big booster for the current market. Historically FHA insured loans made up roughly 8 to 12 percent of all mortgage originations but in 2009 they hit 30 percent. For first time home buyers it was a stunning 50 percent showing that most people can only purchase a home today with a very small down payment. Yet small down payments create instant negative equity positions if the market moves sideways or pops lower (aka our current market). For example, the 3.5 percent standard FHA down payment is wiped away by the 5 to 6 percent selling costs. What is interesting with this is that the FHA insured loan market is fully backed by the government (i.e., you) so any losses will be completely shouldered by the public. The move to increase premiums recently was no fluke. One piece of data that stood out to me was of the number of homes in negative equity, how large the FHA numbers grew.

At least 50 percent of people surveyed in U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic favor military action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

One of the Israeli attackers shouts, amid flashes, flame and smoke: "I want to open these gates and take care of these little sons of whores." Other Israelis shout vulgar Arabic insults at the prisoners regarding their mothers.

Prisoners writhe in agony and fear. One can be seen – in images reminiscent of Abu Ghraib – lying on the ground as an Israeli points a gun at him shouting "lie on your stomach!"

Others are shot without apparent reason.

These are scenes from a video that was shown in April 2011 by the investigative program Ovda on Israel’s Channel 2 television station. The violent attack it records against the Palestinian prisoners on 22 October 2007 was real, but it was carried out as a "training exercise" for Israeli security personnel at Ketziot Prison to boost their "morale" and "motivation."

In Arizona, Republican senators have passed a bill that would allow doctors to withhold important medical information from their pregnant patients. The legislation is aimed at reducing so-called ”wrongful birth” lawsuits by making it legal for doctors not to tell a pregnant patient that she, or her baby, is facing a potentially life-threatening issue.

Another “wrongful birth” bill under consideration in Kansas, though, takes the things even farther: In order to prevent women from choosing to end a pregnancy if the fetus has life-threatening medical issues, the Kansas bill allows doctors to lie outright if they discover during routine screenings that a pregnant patient has a medical condition that could affect her or her unborn child, The Daily Beast reports.

Whatever happened to “First, do no harm”?

After an attention-grabbing half-hour delay to start its initial public offering, Facebook shares [FB 38.2318 0.2318 (+0.61%) ] opened at $38, surged as much as 11 percent during the day, but ultimately finished just above unchanged after hitting an intraday high of $45.

Late in the trading day the stock threatened to hit negative numbers, vacillating around unchanged as underwriters put up a vigorous fight to defend the breakeven point.

If anyone has doubts about what it means here at home when the U.S. seeks to militarily dominate the world, take a trip to Chicago, this week. There, you’ll see the Chicago police, the second largest force in the country, reinforced by cops from Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and backed up by two high decibel noise machines that were first used against American civilians in Pittsburgh to blow out the eardrums of protesters, back in 2009. Overall security for the NATO summit meeting is overseen by the FBI and the Secret Service, who in recent months have been given unprecedented police state powers, thanks to President Obama and a bipartisan Congress.

NATO is strengthening its positions in Central Asia, for the first time inviting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to its Chicago summit on May 20 and 21 in hopes of expanding partnerships with the countries. Now, NATO has only cargo transit deals in the region but is eyeing new military bases to compete with Russia and China.

The summit will deal with the alliance’s new policy on Central Asia. The above-mentioned countries were invited to the Afghanistan meeting as they provide transit for alliance forces in the country.

NATO openly speaks about its plans to deploy its troops in Central Asia and the invited countries are perfectly aware of it. Now they are thinking of how to get the most out of this situation, says political analyst and chief editor of Ferghana.ru web portal, Daniil Kislov:

When Queen Elizabeth II receives her guests at Windsor Castle today to celebrate 60 years as head of the British state she will be greeted and fawned upon by some of the world’s most ruthless dictators.

In attendance at the lavish banquet will be the kings, emirs and sultans of the Persian Gulf monarchies: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the European royal counterparts can claim to be antiquated throwbacks to centuries past, who now possess largely ceremonial titles that do not impinge on the democratic workings of their societies, not so the Gulf monarchs. For these are absolute rulers who preside over their subjects with ruthless and untrammelled power. The oil-enriched dictators do not brook the slightest public dissent, and invariably command their state treasury and army like fiefdoms.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the President has the authority to override Congress' exclusive power to declare war, if some "vital interest" is at stake.

Doing away with the pretense that US troops in Yemen are exclusively there on a “training mission,” officials are confirming that “about 20 US special forces” are on the ground and engaged in a “focused counter-terrorism campaign.”

With drones pounding southern Yemen on a near daily basis, the confirmation shows that the troops are not just in Yemen, but are actually directing the Yemeni military in their suddenly aggressive offensive against the Abyan Province.

Romney, like Whitman, has contended that his successful record in the private sector means he would know how to increase employment and balance the books while in high public office. But given all the talk of jobs losses and offshoring in this campaign, his praise for former eBay CEO Whitman's cost-cutting chops came at a less-than-fortuitous time. The same day Romney's National Review interview ran, The New York Times reported that Whitman plans on slashing at least 30,000 jobs at HP next week through layoffs and early retirement, while likely sparing its presumably cheaper work force in China:

“The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them.” Obama aides have likewise referred to the weeks before the vote as the “sweet spot” for the war.

It is this near certitude about the wisdom of starting a war that has Israeli officials scared to death of the P5+1 negotiations next week in Baghdad. Though the US is always around to try to foil any deals reached, the latest word has been that the sides are making serious progress, and could spoil Netanyahu’s crusade into Tehran.

U.S. "aid to Israel is, by far, the largest chunk of our foreign aid budget. That portion of the budget is increased (an extra billion in this year's budget) while real aid programs to the sick, hungry and impoverished in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is always on the budget cutters' chopping block. (Mitt Romney says China should provide non-military foreign aid, not us -- the wealthiest nation on earth).

It's no secret why Israel's gifts from the U.S. are immune. The Israel lobby uses its power to direct campaign contributions to ensure that no Member of Congress, or president for that matter, ever dares suggests that Israel take a hit as Americans do.

You have to wonder why Israel, at least for propaganda purposes, does not offer to accept a cut given that so many Americans are hurting so badly. I suppose the Netanyahu government does not want to establish any precedent by which Israel aid goes any direction but up, regardless of how badly the U.S. economy is doing.

FBI agent Ross Rice said the agency will be on heightened alert in Chicago, with extra agents brought in to react if its intelligence network sniffs out a plot. The FBI has agents in 70 countries, gathering intelligence.

"Several international terrorist groups have elevated Chicago in their mind to their No. 1 target for terrorist attack," Rice said in an interview at the U.S. government's nerve center inside a non-descript suburban Chicago office complex. Reporters were asked to keep the location secret.

"But there's absolutely no indication that we've developed that any group or organization has a plan afoot to disrupt the summit this week," Rice said.

The shifting of the so-called “red-line” is instructive. Hawkish rhetoric for some time now has been that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and this provides a pretext for war unless we can reverse their course. The problem is that this rhetoric is not true: the U.S. military and intelligence community are in consensus that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

And so the red-line shifted to include something Iran is doing, namely enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. Some argue that the Iranian government simply having the know-how for building nukes is enough to attack it, but that is an absurd justification for war if for no other reason that knowledge doesn’t amount to an imminent threat.

Despite the recent fall in oil prices, analysts say President Obama may tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as sanctions on Iran take hold.

Jamie Dimon's worst fears for the scale of losses on the "London Whale" derivatives disaster could be coming true in double-quick time.

The eurozone storm showed no signs of clearing tonight as fears over Spain and Greece saw £80 billion wiped from the value of London's leading shares index in just one week.

The number of radical hate groups and militias has exploded in recent years in reaction to the changing makeup of America, and new census figures showing the majority of babies born in 2011 were non-white could fuel those simmering tensions, experts who track hate groups warned.

"White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the census bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050," said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. "The demographic change in this country is the single most important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years."

A former Roman Catholic priest was found guilty on Thursday of hiring a hit man to kill a boy who had accused him of sexual abuse.

John Fiala, 53, showed no emotion as a Dallas jury found him guilty of plotting to kill the boy, according to The Dallas Morning News. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Prosecutors said that Fiala had tried to hire at hit man for $5,000 in November 2010, but the would-be assassin turned out to be an undercover police officer. Video and audio of the meeting were presented to the jury on Wednesday.

Suddenly, it has become easy to see how the euro — that grand, flawed experiment in monetary union without political union — could come apart at the seams. We’re not talking about a distant prospect, either. Things could fall apart with stunning speed, in a matter of months, not years. And the costs — both economic and, arguably even more important, political — could be huge.

How come we hear everything that happens in Egypt but no news about what’s happening in Iceland:
…
In Iceland, the people has made the government resign, the primary banks have been nationalized, it was decided to not pay the debt that these created with Great Britain and Holland due to their bad financial politics and a public assembly has been created to rewrite the constitution.

And all of this in a peaceful way. A whole revolution against the powers that have created the current global crisis. This is why there hasn’t been any publicity during the last two years: What would happen if the rest of the EU citizens took this as an example? What would happen if the US citizens took this as an example.

One of the biggest risks to the world's financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It's complex, it's unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost -- and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so.

A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. Yet according to one of the world's leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University (and whose speaking voice sounds eerily like John Lennon's), $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world's annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion.

U.S. health officials want all baby boomers to get tested for hepatitis C.

In its initial public offering (IPO), which is happening today, the firm is expected to be valued at $104 billion. One Hundred And Four Billion Dollars.

That's nuts, but let's just explain why. Ordinarily, an investor would hope to earn at least 5 per cent on an investment – ideally more, since historically, you can earn that just buying Government bonds. So for a company to be worth $104 billion, you would hope for at least $5 billion a year of profit. Really, to justify the risk of owning shares, you'd want more – $10 billion perhaps. Every year. Forever.

But Facebook's revenue is currently just $3.7 billion, and its profit is around $500 million. So the website is making less than one tenth of the profit you would hope it to earn in the long run. By contrast, Google earns 10 times as much revenue – $37 billion – and 20 times as much profit, and yet is only valued at around $200 billion.

The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined.

But the objective is to provide Israel with the resources to attack Iran, if it chooses to do so, while tying the U.S. and Israel so closely together that whatever Benjamin Netanyahu does, the U.S. “will always be there,” as our president has so aptly put it.

But the scariest bit of the bill is its call for “an expanded role for Israel within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including an enhanced presence at NATO headquarters and exercises.” If Israel becomes part of NATO, which is clearly Congress’s intent, the U.S. and other members will be obligated to come to the aid of a nation that is expanding its borders and is currently engaged in hostilities with three of its neighbors.

Straightjacket Eurozone rules trap 17 dissimilar countries. Greece proved most vulnerable. It's cratering under imposed austerity.

It's the epicenter of Europe's deepening economic crisis. Fed up Greeks want change. May 6 parliamentary elections favored anti-austerity candidates.

Coalition talks failed. On June 17, new elections may or may not settle things. Round one runner-up SYRIZA (the Coalition of the Radical Left) campaigned on "tear(ing) up the barbaric accord."

On Greece's NET TV, its leader Alexis Tsipras said:

"We are being asked to agree to the destruction of Greek society. SYRIZA won't betray the Greek people."

Facebook shares were trading barely above their IPO price of $38 Friday after investors surprisingly shied away from the social network's highly-anticipated market debut.

Many Wall Street figures had expected shares to rise sharply on their first day of trading, following in the steps of recent tech debuts -- like LinkedIn and Groupon -- that saw success on their first day of trading.

But investors apparently cooled off after shares hit the market, fearing the creation of a tech bubble.

Strickling says that NTIA looked into the situation and found that the average cost of the routers was only $12,000—not the $22,600 reported by the paper. (The contract for the devices was $24 million and 1,064 were purchased; 1,064 x $22,600 = $24 million. It's not clear how Strickling broke down the numbers.)

He explained that West Virginia actually got a good deal. "Had they tried to determine the individual router capacity," he said, "they felt that they would end up spending more money" thanks to Cisco's package discount. The gear is future-proofed, and it's also easier for techs to deal with the same router across the state.

"This was the most economical way forward," Strickling said.

Walden wasn't buying it, but his time had expired.

Even after a federal court deemed the NDAA unconstitutional, the US House of Representatives refused to exclude indefinite detention provisions from the infamous defense spending bill during a vote on Friday.

An attempt to strike down any provisions allowing for the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge from next year’s National Defense Authorization Act was shot down Friday morning in the House of Representatives.

The Elite Financial Players Are Manipulating the Game So that They Get the Stimulus … and the Little Guy Gets the Austerity

74% of Spanish respondents (an increase of 8% from last year) and 56% of French respondents (an increase of 9%), see Israel in a negative light.

For decades, Arabs have been lectured to and hectored. They were told that no sympathy for their causes is possible without adherence to non-violence by the Palestinians and their supporters. They were told that the reason why Western governments and media don’t sympathize with their cause is because Western public sentiments run counter to any violent practices.

Of course, such claims were bogus because Israel has never wavered in its consistent and regular resort to war crimes and massacres without ever disappointing its supporters (conservative and liberal alike) in Western countries.