Jordan jails three for Syria jihad

Amman: A Jordanian military tribunal jailed on Tuesday three men convicted of trying to join Syria’s jihadist Al Nusra Front and fight Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime. “The state security court today initially sentenced the three to five years in jail each, but immediately halved the prison terms,” a court official said. “They attempted in January to interfiltrate Syria and join Al Nusra Front.” The official said the men were charged with “carrying out acts that the government does not approve and that would expose Jordan to the risk of aggression, as well as possession of unlicensed firearms”. Al Nusra, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in Syria, is among the most prominent groups involved in Syria’s 26-month conflict, which has killed more than 94,000, according to monitors. The ruling comes a day after the same court jailed two Jordanians for five years for going to Syria last summer for jihad, a judicial official said. The two were arrested after they returned to Jordan in August, “pretending that they were Syrian refugees”. In May, the military court handed down similar jail sentences for nine Muslim extremists who wanted to go to Syria. Jordan, which says it is hosting more than 500,000 refugees from Syria’s civil war, has arrested dozens of jihadists as they tried to cross into the war-torn country. Jordanian Salafists have said there were more than 500 jihadists from the country in Syria. Amman denies accusations from the Syrian regime that the kingdom has opened up its borders to jihadist fighters. Jordan generally does not tolerate Salafist groups that espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam. But slain Al Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, hailed from the impoverished northern city of Zarqa, which is considered a stronghold of Muslim extremists.


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Minecraft update 1.7 to completely rework terrain generation

it’s that time again! “That time” being the fateful occasion of a Minecraft update that completely shakes up how its procedural world maps are generated. In addition to introducing new biomes, the upcoming 1.7 patch will include new code that should create more logical climate zones, while doing away with vast, featureless oceans.  www.All909.blogspot.com
The Minecraft blog has given us a look at how terrain is generated now…

And how it will be generated post-1.7…

Unfortunately, it seems like we’re losing the realistic continent shapes and land-to-water ratio. But in return, we should have better biome placement and more logical transitions. No more deserts right next to a snowy forest. This has been accomplished by grouping all the biomes into four meta-biomes: snowy, cold, medium, and dry/warm. Among these groupings are three new biome types, including redwood forests, rocky cliffs, and canyons.

Cloud Adoption: 4 Human Costs

Just a few short decades ago, the most expensive IT resources were computers, and human operators were interchangeable. Now the roles are reversed -- technology assets have become a commodity while organizations place a premium on people.
To that end, the adoption of cloud computing brings with it a series of changes that directly impact the IT workforce. Failing to account for those changes can reduce the value of the cloud and increase IT costs and dysfunction. There are at least four major areas of human cost to assess when planning a cloud strategy and selecting a cloud provider.
No. 1: Cost Of Changed Expectations
Employees aren't rubes when it comes to the cloud. Sure, most people can't differentiate software-as-a-service from platform-as-a-service, but the recent consumerization-of-IT phenomenon has reset expectations. Most people regularly use cloud-based email clients, collaboration tools and even business apps. They've come to expect a new class of services for their digital consumption, and those expectations will be present for any cloud initiative your company starts.
Developers will expect more sophisticated deployments, project teams will expect easier acquisition of environments, and end users will expect their systems to go live faster.
As a result of these expectations, organizations face human costs in a range of areas. What must change? IT organizations must streamline server requisition and approval processes. They must update service catalogs. They may have to update configuration management systems, as well as retool finance systems and processes to move toward IT-as-a-service.
IT operations will see a (major) uptick in requests for temporary environments. One of the transformational aspects of cloud computing is the ease by which you can stand up servers. So once it becomes "easy" to get cloud servers, expect skyrocketing demand for environments to test new software releases, perform proof-of-concepts, execute performance testing or host training instances. Without proper planning, these demands can overwhelm IT organizations already stretched thin.
Fear not. There are ways to prepare for these new expectations. Start small by offering a few new services in the catalog, and constantly iterate over the new processes until you find the right balance between compliance with organizational standards and the necessity to think of service delivery in a new way. Embrace the concept of chargebacks for cloud services. Empower departments to provision (and pay for!) resources as they see fit.
The IT operations team will still have to play a role in maintaining these systems (see point No. 4 below), but you can ease the burden by encouraging a decentralized self-service culture. Cloud computing may be met with great excitement within your organization, but without setting expectations properly, you may struggle to deliver services in the way users hope for.
How can cloud providers help? Consider asking them for case studies on how other customers have dealt with the change management aspect of cloud programs. Make sure that your provider has the ability to deliver per-department invoices and billing so that you don't incur extra overhead parsing a single invoice and trying to dole out expenses.
No. 2: Cost Of Educating Staff
Cloud computing is truly a new model of planning and consuming technology resources, and you'll likely buy these resources from a provider that's not already entrenched in the IT landscape. While there may be resistance to this model by those whose roles will change as a result, the vast majority of cloud initiatives are led by IT organizations, and they want those efforts to succeed.
Don't underestimate the cost of retraining your technical staffers. They may have to learn a new platform that looks and feels like nothing in the data center today. Operations and architecture teams must learn and apply key deployment patterns that are vital to pushing highly available systems to the cloud. Senior staffers should all be trained to recognize the scenarios where "cloud" is the best fit so that they only deploy applications that can add value by running in the cloud.
It's very likely that staff assignments will change, as there's less of a need for physical infrastructure experts and "assembly line" server builders who only do one piece of the provisioning process. All of this means that to create a higher probability of success for your cloud program, you must plan a comprehensive training effort that targets each affected party.
How can you keep the cost of planning and training down and not paralyze your staff in the run-up to your cloud deployment? Find eager members of the architecture, development, operations, project management and business analysis teams and form a small team to evangelize their knowledge to the rest of the organization.
Focus heavily on "gatekeeper" roles such as architecture and operations so that they can keep unsuitable applications from ever reaching the cloud. Have the architecture team revamp existing reference architecture models so that each department can see where cloud environments fit in the overall IT landscape. Finally, make sure that operations, architecture and development teams are trained and ready for the new reality of security, data storage and integration in the cloud.
Cloud providers can help reduce this human cost. Check to see if your provider has an extensive set of whitepapers on how its cloud works. See if it has a professional services organization that can do training for specific roles. And while it may not seem important, verify that your cloud provider provides a logical, well-organized user interface, which will go a long way to reducing the amount of upfront training needed and ease the transition from the existing, familiar toolset.
No. 3: Cost Of Migration
Whether you're planning to migrate existing workloads to the cloud or use the cloud for net-new environments, there's a human cost in setting things up.
It's not trivial to move applications from your data center to the cloud. Analyze your IT landscape for suitable migration candidates; prepare those applications by either refactoring or rebuilding them; load those applications into the new environment; integrate them with the on-premises infrastructure; run both environments in parallel for a validation period; and sunset the on-premises environment. Each of those steps involves a number of cross-functional teams, so coordination is critical.
Even if you don't plan to move any existing applications to the cloud, you must still extend and migrate your existing architecture to the cloud. Consider identity management. New (internal-facing) systems must be aware of the user accessing the system without requiring an entirely new authentication scheme. This means that you will want to extend your identity infrastructure to the cloud to create a seamless experience for end users. To have a truly integrated portfolio -- regardless of where the application is hosted -- you must extend your infrastructure perimeter to the cloud. Your IT operations team will have to spend a fair amount of time planning and implementing this integration layer.
Make migration and integration a core part of your planning discussions. Look for obvious migration candidates, including lightly modified commercial packages such as Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, service-oriented Web applications and applications with bursty, unpredictable usage. Don't waste time trying to retrofit monolithic commercial software, or systems with a web of connections to internal systems.
Establish a cohesive plan for how your core infrastructure components -- identity, networks, data and applications -- will be exposed to the cloud. Choose a non-mission-critical application as a trial balloon.
Look for a provider with a software catalog that lets you easily load your virtual machines and custom applications onto cloud servers. Look for guidance on all the ways you can (and can't!) create integration points between the cloud and your own data center. Work with a professional services group to plan the cutover procedures and minimize disruption to end users. All of these activities will reduce the toll on your staff while preventing trial-and-error migrations.
No. 4: Cost Of Maintenance
Estimates show that at least 70% of IT budgets go to maintenance of existing systems. That percentage may not change dramatically by using cloud technologies, and it could even go up if you don't have the automation to handle the influx of new resources. A successful cloud program will lead to requests for more environments (see point No. 1 above) and will support the construction of new types of applications. But can IT handle that?
What would happen if your organization doubled its server footprint tomorrow? Surveys show that server-to-admin ratios range from 50:1 to 300:1 in a typical enterprise data center. Management of those servers includes installing software, patching, performing security scans and integrating with networks and other systems.
Management becomes more daunting as servers get added -- and deleted -- each hour. By adding cloud servers, IT pros now have to maintain server templates, keep configuration management systems up to date and keep an elastic pool of servers secure and running smoothly. Given that server patching is still one of the most painful and time-consuming activities (because of testing and the inevitable reboots), adding more servers can cripple an organization that doesn't embrace automation.
The only way to truly succeed in the cloud on a large scale is to aggressively identify ways to automate server provisioning, scaling, patching, updating and retiring. Use commercial tools and scripting engines to eliminate manual tasks wherever possible.
Cloud providers offer a range of solutions. Some let you set global security, monitoring and usage policies that cascade to all users. Look for clouds that make it easy to scale servers (automatically) based on utilization, thus saving you the human effort of monitoring and manually resizing servers. Find a provider that makes it easy to schedule maintenance and perform bulk actions against sets of servers. See if you can offload time-consuming aspects of server management -- like patching -- to the cloud provider's managed services team. A cloud provider that embraces automation is a cloud provider that will keep your human cost under control.

Twitter Expands Context With Related Headline Links

Twitter has made a name for itself in the world of breaking news. Now the microblogging platform wants to add more context to these newsworthy tweets with a new feature it announced Monday called Related Headlines. You can find this new section only on the Twitter website -- specifically, on the permalink page of tweets that have been embedded in websites. Clicking the "details" button or the tweet's timestamp will show you a list of websites that have embedded the tweet in an article. When a tweet is embedded, it's displayed with expanded media such as photos, videos and article summaries and includes real-time retweet and favorite counts.
Twitter's Brian Ellin said in a post on Twitter's developer blog that this feature aims to help users discover additional information about the tweet and is a value-add for publishers.
"When you embed tweets in content, the headline of your article and Twitter account will be surfaced on the tweet's permalink page for all to see," he said. "We think this will help more people discover the larger story behind the tweet, drive clicks to your articles and help grow your audience on Twitter."
For example, when Asiana Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport in July, news outlets from across the globe embedded the image of the plane engulfed in smoke that a passenger posted on Twitter. Now you can now find the articles that embedded that tweet on its permalink page.
Most recently, Facebook announced that it was introducing embedded posts, starting with a handful of publishers. Twitter, which is steps ahead of Facebook with this feature, will likely be the favored resource since news outlets now have the opportunity to gain additional referral traffic as a result of being placed in the Related Headlines" section.
While all Twitter users can view this feature, not everyone will be included in the Related Headlines section. Twitter said that publishers who are already using embedded tweets will be in the first group to have their article headlines surfaced. It will add additional publishers in the coming weeks.
To be eligible for Twitter headlines, you need to become an approved publisher. You can be considered by submitting an application using this form. You must be logged into your Twitter account to access it.
This update is the latest in a handful of new changes the microblogging platform has rolled out. Last month Twitter announced improvements to search results and to user interaction on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Mac. Most recently, it unveiled the next version of its two-factor authentication system, which the company said is more secure.

Google Street View takes you to the zoo

"Someone told me it's all happening at the Zoo". Google's Street View team has traveled around the world from coral reefs to canyons and down the trails of National Parks. This time the trekkers caught a break with something a bit more relaxing than a miles long hike or a dive in an area known for its sharks.
Now the team visits zoos, allowing you to get a sneak peak of a place you wish to visit, or simply enjoy the view from the comfort of your chair. "Lions and tigers may be standard attractions, but starting today, you can also use Street View to see the panda bears noshing on bamboo and tumbling around the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China. More than 30 percent of this endangered species calls this important conservation and breeding facility home", says Deanna Yick, Street View Program Manager.
The imagery sets also incudes several popular North American facilities, such as San Diego, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago -- among others. You can also explore the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico, and the Toronto Zoo and Jungle Cat World Wildlife Park in Ontario, Canada.There are also various zoos located in South America, Taiwan, Australia and Germany. These locations all join ones previously available in Spain, Belgium, France and the UK.

Now it is up to you to do the exploring, and you don't need to be Dr. David Livingstone to pull it off. However, it could be dangerous to your wallet -- you may just end up booking yourself a vacation.

Tumblr ‘hack’ leads to a spate of undeletable posts

Tumblr is downplaying a suspected hack attack that left users facing the appearance of a series of undeletable posts in their blogs. Reports of problems spread through Tumblr itself and well as Twitter. The problem is not just that posts are undeletable, but also that they were not created by the blog owners.
While some of the content is fairly tame, some users have complained about the appearance of pornographic posts.  Researchers at ThreatTrack Security Labs are advising users to change their account passwords, as bloggers are left facing not only undeletable posts, but many also finding themselves unable to access their dashboards.Details are currently scant, and it is unclear whether there has been a security breach or if there is some other issue. Tumblr took a while to make any sort of public announcement, but did eventually tweet a message saying that "Our engineering team is working quickly to repair an issue causing incorrect posts to appear on a small number of affected blogs".

Christopher Boyd from ThreatTrack Security Labs reached out to Tumblr support, but only received a cookie-cutter response – "Our engineers are aware of this issue and are currently working on a fix. We hope to have the problem resolved shortly. Thanks for your patience".
Are you a Tumblr user affected by the issue? Share your experiences.

Golden Calls: Will China embrace a champagne iPhone?

BEIJING: If Apple hopes to woo more Chinese by adding a glitzy coating - some call it champagne, some gold - to its next iPhone, it may be in for a surprise.

While gold is hugely popular as a safe haven and a status symbol - China is set to overtake India as the world's biggest gold consumer this year - shoppers at an Apple store in Beijing weren't all convinced it should be coupled with that pinnacle of mobile gadgetry.

Ni Suyang, a 49-year old worker at a Beijing state-owned enterprise, said that colour mattered less to her than the glass surface and silver metallic finish.

"A gold colour looks high-end but is a little tacky," she said.

Gold and mobile phones are not strangers. Britain's Gold & Co makes gold-plated iPhones, iPads and BlackBerrys which it also sells in India and China.

In Shenzhen many small local brands make gold-plated feature phones and smartphones. The less well-heeled can adorn their devices with jewel-studded and gold phone covers.

Apple's decision to add a champagne or gold covered iPhone to its range - confirmed by supply chain sources in Taiwan - would be a departure from its black and white norm.

Apple could be not reached for comment.

Commercially it makes sense, said Jerry Zou, Senior VP and Partner at FleishmanHillard, a public relations firm in Beijing. New colours would add "novelty and variety, both of which are key to winning over fickle Chinese consumers".

A champagne colour "would convey an image suggesting high-end luxury but a bit more restrained and subtle".

ALL THAT GLITTERS...

But browsers at Apple's Xidan store weren't so sure - even on which gender would like it.

"Gold is for guys, I think," said 22-year old Meng Xiang, a retail buyer working in Guangzhou, who said she preferred pink and white. "I would consider buying a gold iPhone for my boyfriend."

Cui Baocheng, a 48-year-old bank manager, disagreed. "I prefer black to gold," he said. "Men usually like black. Champagne might be very ugly."

Indeed, there's a danger that by trying to broaden its appeal Apple may end up undermining what makes the iPhone so desirable in the first place.

Younger Chinese see gold as old-fashioned and tacky, and are increasingly opting for platinum - dubbed "white gold" in Chinese - for weddings and gifts.

"An iPhone with more colours means that Apple is adapting to consumers' tastes, especially a gold colour that Chinese people like," said Xu Fang, a 28-year old real estate agent. "However, I think this might undermine the value and uniqueness of the brand."

Apple's sales in Greater China, its second biggest market, slumped 43 per cent in April-June from the previous quarter. Its market share has almost halved since last year to below 5 per cent, according to industry researcher Canalys.

The bigger problem, says Shanghai-based product designer Brandon Edwards, is that while gold added "cultural relevance on top of Apple's inherent brand value" and may attract premium users from other brands, "Apple's main issue in China and emerging markets is centred around acquiring new customers, and this doesn't hit those people at all".

Indeed, consumers in India, where Apple's market share is just over 2 per cent, were just as sceptical. Mumbai phone retailer Manish Khatri said he did occasionally get customers asking for gold-coloured phones, but the biggest deterrent to buying an iPhone for most of them was cost.

For others, gold is something to buy, not to slap on a mobile device.

Said Vikas Jindal, a 35-year old Delhi businessman and a regular buyer of gold: "I'll look stupid if I carry a gold-coloured phone. A phone should be simple and sober. "

What Do You Do When You No Longer Need Your Slaves?

What does America do when she no longer needs her slaves or surplus workers?

The 1880’s reconstruction era was the first time in our history that America had seen a large surplus of non-white labor.

In the 1870’s many former slaves were integrated into the labor force, but white backlash in the 1880’s and 1890’s led to a permanent underclass through nearly a century of “separate but equal.”

For very different reasons, there was a similar surplus of white labor in the early 1930’s.

Regardless of race, capitalism runs in cycles: It’s called “the business cycle.” There are uptimes when there are jobs for everybody, the labor market is tight, and pay rises. 

Then there are downtimes when the economy has a surplus of workers, falling wages, and a high level of unemployment. 

We saw this cycle during the boom-and-bust of the roaring 20’s and the stock market crash and Great Depression of the 1930’s. After the crash, nearly a third of American workers couldn’t find a job, and the numbers were even worse in minority communities.  

Our economy couldn’t put them to work, because capitalism failed.  

So what do you do with all of those extra workers who can’t find a job?

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, that very question was the subject of a clear and open disagreement between Democrats and Republicans. 

Herbert Hoover and the Republicans believed that when capitalism fails and you have high unemployment, you do nothing. You wait for the “free market” to magically fix things, and for capitalism to right the ship.

FDR and the Democrats believed that the Republican’s benign indifference was the completely wrong approach. Instead, FDR said that it’s the responsibility of government to put people back to work during times of high unemployment.

He enacted his New Deal.  He put Americans back to work planting trees and forests, building schools, and improving the nation’s infrastructure.  Twelve million Americans who’d been unemployed for years went back to work, and capitalism was rebooted in America. 

For much of the 20^th century, Hoover’s and FDR’s approaches represented the two sides of the debate about what to do with surplus workers.

Up until 1980, Republicans said you waited for the market to absorb the surplus of workers, while Democrats said you proactively used the powers of government to put Americans back to work. 

But then Ronald Reagan came to Washington, and everything changed. 

When Reagan stepped foot in the White House, he said the job of the government was not just to ignore a surplus of workers, but to figure out ways to make a buck off of them. Reagan lived by the notion that profit was king.  If America’s businesspeople always and only did whatever made them the most money, that would magically cure all ills with supply-side fairy dust.

He fundamentally changed the way that we deal with surplus workers. Instead of ignoring them, or having the government put them to work, there was now a third option.

Make a profit off of them.

There are a variety of ways capitalists make a profit off of poor and unemployed people, from payday lenders, to “rent to own” furniture stores, to the most radical of them all: Turn them into prisoners.

That latter is the most radical, and has turned out to be the most profitable for America’s capitalists. 

It’s almost elegant in its simplicity.

Turn unemployed Americans into criminals. Track them, punish them for any crime possible, take away their rights and throw them into for-profit prisons.

Once thrown inside a for-profit prison, an inmate needs food, housing, healthcare and other services. This means huge profits for capitalists.  They’re raking in tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner per year – hundreds of percent more than Roosevelt paid to simply put them back to work. 

And turning unemployed Americans into very profitable prisoners is a booming business.

From the beginning of America until 1980, the incarceration rate in America remained fairly steady. While Nixon declaring his war on drugs in 1971 did slightly increase incarceration in the United States, the increase was nothing drastic. 

But then Reagan came to Washington, and his buddies realized they could make a buck off of unemployed Americans.

The nation’s incarceration rate took off like a rocket. 

Thanks to Reagan elevating profit to a religion, between 1980 and 2009, the state and federal prison population in the U.S. increased by over 700 percent.

Since the for-profit prison industry started aggressively buying Congressmen 15 years ago, the number of people thrown into for-profit prisons has exploded. 

And Americans sitting in jail make a very exploitable, very profitable, slave-like labor force.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the minimum wage for a prisoner who works in the UNICOR program, the federal government’s prison industries program, is 23 cents an hour.  The maximum UNICOR wage is $1.15 an hour. 

Across all state prisons, the average minimum wage for prisoners for non-industrial work is 93 cents per hour.  

And some states, like Georgia and Texas, are completely upfront about their slave-labor camps. They pay absolutely nothing to prisoners.  

Because the Reagan Revolution changed America’s value system, we stopped asking, “What’s the best way to deal with surplus workers?” 

Instead, we started asking, “How can we make the most money off surplus workers?”

The logical answer was a return to slavery, and it has been embraced by capitalists with a vengeance. 

And that is insane brutality.

Egypt crackdown: ‘If I see you again, I’ll shoot you in the leg’

CAIRO—The warnings had been coming for weeks.

But the violent attack by soldiers and police upon opposition protesters’ main camp in Cairo was stunning in its ferocity, an assault that transformed nearby streets into a war zone.

Gunfire crackled as police in flak vests, armed with assault rifles, ran in and out of the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp. Plumes of black smoke and white smoke rose from the fires and tear-gas canisters. Bulldozers plowed into tents and tore through the protesters’ walls of sandbags.

Two colleagues from the Washington Post’s Cairo bureau and I reached the site just before 8 a.m. Wednesday, about an hour after security forces launched a raid on the camp where men, women and children have been rallying for the past six weeks, demanding the reinstatement of ousted president

By then, violence was spilling over into side streets. Police carried a wounded colleague past us. A police officer beat a teen over the head with a handgun before hauling him away. A woman implored a police officer not to kill protesters as they shoved back a man who, through tears, said he was trying to get to his little sister, who was trapped inside Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.

Full coverage:Crisis in Egypt

It wasn’t long before the police opened fire with tear gas and then live ammunition, on spectators too. Women and men ran down the block, screaming for cover.

“If I see you again, I’ll shoot you in the leg,” a police officer told me and my colleagues, Sharaf al-Hourani and Mansour Mohamed. Security forces on the roof of a nearby building watched us through binoculars. Two helicopters circled overhead.

We found ourselves trapped between police cordons as pro-Morsi protesters marched on a line where hundreds of black-clad police faced outward.

“With life, with blood, we sacrifice for Islam,” they chanted, until police opened fire with an onslaught of bullets and tear gas.

The rapid fire of automatic guns was echoing between buildings as we crouched with neighbourhood residents against a wall.

By 11 a.m., a bullet whistled too close, directly over our heads. I have no idea where it came from. At times, it sounded like the gunfire was coming from all directions, from side streets and the towering apartment blocks.

Sharaf, Mansour and I dropped to the pavement and crawled downhill into a low alley shielded on two sides from the street. We lay there with two young Egyptian reporters as barrage after barrage of gunfire resounded a few hundred metres away, where police appeared to be clashing with protesters.

Young men wheeled four metal carts down the street, each containing a wounded man. They approached the cordon cautiously, hoping to deliver them to the other side.

Egypt’s military-backed interim government had vowed for weeks to break up the sit-ins. Government officials and local media had painted Morsi’s supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists bent on the destruction of the nation.

But now, government forces were unleashing sniper fire that seemed indiscriminate. Along with scores of Morsi supporters, those who were felled included two journalists and the teenage daughter of a prominent Brotherhood leader. (A photojournalist friend was shot in the leg.) Snipers also shot at people who tried to approach or leave a makeshift hospital inside the camp, where dozens of dead lined the floor.

By noon, the clashes that were pinning us down begun to abate, the police having pushed protesters back from their cordon. We edged our way out, past rows of police and a vehicle, to where bloodied men detained by government forces sat on benches, clutching their heads and awaiting their fates.

Egypt authorizes police to use deadly force

The Associated Press

CAIRO —

Egyptian authorities on Thursday authorized police to use deadly force to protect themselves and key state institutions from attacks, after presumed supporters of the deposed Islamist president torched two local government buildings near the capital in the latest of a series of apparent reprisals to follow a bloody crackdown on their protest camps.
The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of national security, said in a statement that the new measures come after an angry crowd stormed the buildings in Giza, the city next to Cairo that is home to the Pyramids.
"The ministry has given instruction to all forces to use live ammunition to confront any assaults on institutions or the forces," the statement read.
Attackers set fire to churches and police stations across the country on Wednesday after security forces assaulted two Cairo sit-ins where thousands of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi were camped out. Officials say the death toll is now 578, mostly Morsi supporters, and 4,200 injured.
Meanwhile, Egypt's military-backed government pledged in a statement to confront "terrorist actions and sabotage" allegedly carried out by members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group.
"The Cabinet expressed its determination to confront the terrorist actions and sabotage by elements of the Muslim Brotherhood organization," it said. "These actions are carried out as part of criminal plan that clearly aims at toppling down the state."
On Wednesday, the government declared a nationwide state of emergency and a nighttime curfew.
Associated Press reporters witnessed the burning buildings in Giza — a two-story colonial-style villa and a four-story administrative building. The offices are located on the Pyramids Road on the west bank of the River Nile.
State TV blamed Morsi supporters for the fire and broadcast footage showing both structures burning as firemen evacuated employees from the larger building.
The Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb said thousands marched through Giza but were attacked by pro-military "militias." It did not say how the government buildings were set on fire.
In the coastal city of Alexandria, witnesses and a security official said, Morsi supporters stabbed a taxi driver to death for hanging a picture of Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, the leader of the July 3 coup.
"The driver was caught in middle of a protest by the Muslim Brotherhood chanting against the military. He argued with them to watch out, they pulled him out (of his car) and stabbed him," said Mohammed el-Mashali, a reporter for the al-Fagr weekly who said he witnessed the killing.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Tamarod, the youth movement that organized mass rallies calling for Morsi's ouster, said citizens should set up neighborhood watch groups to protect government and private property.
Meanwhile, successive attacks on Coptic Christian churches continued for a second day, according to Egypt's official news agency and human rights advocates.
Egypt's MENA agency said Morsi supporters set fire to the Prince Tadros church in the province of Fayoum, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Cairo.
Ishaq Ibrahim from The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights says his group has documented as many as 39 incidents of violence against churches, monasteries, Coptic schools and shops in different parts of the country on Wednesday.

Copyright The Associated Press

Republicans Stiff-Arm Rand, Side with Dems on Egypt Aid

Republicans overwhelmingly united with Democrats on Wednesday to continue funding aid to Egypt, despite U.S. law requiring a suspension of aid to countries that undergo a military coup.
In a 86-13 vote, the Senate moved to table an amendment by Sen. Rand Paul that would've redirected $1.5 billion in aid to bridge construction and repair in the United States and suspend further aid to Egypt until the country holds elections.
Despite the landslide vote, the issue prompted a heated debate on the Senate floor with Republican senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Bob Corker lashing out at Paul for adding the amendment to a transportation and urban development appropriations bill.

"It would be a terrific mistake for the United States to send a message to Egypt: you're on your own," McCain said on the Senate floor. "I urge my colleagues to vote to table the Paul amendment." 
Paul punched back, noting that the Foreign Assistance Act, first enacted in 1961, requires a suspension of foreign aid to any country that undergoes a coup. "How do we lead by example when we're not going to obey our own laws?" Paul inquired. "When the president refuses to acknowledge that it's a coup ... Americans should be outraged and insulted by such blatant shirking of the law. Either we're a nation of laws or we're not."
The remarks seemed to cause certain lawmakers to blink, if only slightly.
"Yeah, it probably fits the definition of a coup," said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) before noting that the U.S. could simply not afford to lose its leverage with the Egyptian military. "If it's not going to be [U.S.-supplied] F-16s, you're going to find yourselves with MiG-29s coming from Russia."
"Why are we selling weapons to Egypt?" added Graham. "If we don't, someone else will." 
Inhofe joined 32 other Republicans in voting against the amendment, including Paul's rumored 2016 presidential primary rival Sen. Marco Rubio. "Our foreign aid should be restructured, not simply cancelled," said Rubio.
The timing of the vote comes as the Egyptian military continues its crackdown on the deposed Muslim Brotherhood, gunning down some 80 people in the streets of Cairo this week. Paul also used the bankruptcy of Detroit to haul out an oft-repeated Tom Friedman catchphrase about nation-building at home. "The American people don't want good money after bad shoveled and sent overseas. They want to fix some of the problems we have at home. They want to do some nation building here at home."
But the more interventionist wing of the Republican Party clearly won out on Wednesday, as senators lined up to table the amendment, noting the preference of Israelis to continue the aid, which is seen by some as a guarantor of peace between Egypt and Israel.
"I have a letter here from AIPAC. I asked them to comment," said Graham, before reading the statement aloud: "We do not support cutting off all assistance to Egypt at this time."
Paul rejected the notion that the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee speaks for the entirety of pro-Israel supporters. "There is no unified statement from the nation of Israel," he said. "If you talk to the people, the grassroots and not the so-called leadership you'll find a much different story."
The most interesting vote of the day came from the senior senator from Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted for the Paul amendment. A typically orthodox voter on foreign policy issues, McConnell has become less predictable as national conservative and Tea Party groups consider backing a challenger for his 2014 primary race.
It remains unclear if opponents of aid to Egypt will get a better opportunity to change the long-standing policy in the Senate. Sen. Robert Menendez , chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised to allow debate on issue in his committee, but Paul said he had tried and failed to raise the issue in that venue. "They don't want this debate," he said.

Signs of a Rebellion in Egypt's Army?

In what might be signs of a rebellion within Egypt’s army, a local website published a statement on behalf of officers in the Egyptian army on Wednesday evening, in which they announce that they are rebelling against the Egyptian chief of staff and Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
The statement was published on a website calling itself “The Egyptian Uprising”, according to Arab affairs expert Dalit Halevi.
The statement, said Halevi, was written by “the free officers of the Egyptian army”. The officers noted in their statement, called "Statement Number 1", that the duty of the army is to defend the homeland, religion and values ​​of the state.
According to the officers, the army should protect democracy, the country's borders and the legitimacy of government, and not to intervene in the struggle between political forces or to disperse demonstrations.
They stress that will not betray the commander in chief of the armed forces, who was elected democratically with the blessing of the international community, a reference to ousted President Mohammed Morsi.
In their message, the so-called “free officers” noted that al-Sissi erred when he chose to intervene in the political situation in Egypt while betraying his commanding officer (Morsi), and therefore he shall “bear the punishment of Allah and the people.”
Many deaths were recorded on Wednesday as Egyptian police began a crackdown on supporters of the deposed president.
Islamists claimed that 2,000 died and thousands were injured, but the government said the number was much lower.
The killings took place when police swooped down on protesters camping out in support of the Islamist leader at Rabaa al-Adawiya, where Morsi supporters have been staging sit-ins for weeks, demanding he be reinstated.
The Egyptian interim government declared a state of emergency, as the death toll continued to mount in clashes between security forces and Morsi supporters.
The state of emergency began at 16:00 local time. It is set to last for only a month, but some analysts are already pointing out that Morsi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, who was also ousted after a popular uprising, utilized the "emergency law" powers for 31 years as a tool to quash opposition and silence political dissent.

Abbas not authorised to negotiate with Israel: Hamas

The Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip said Monday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was not authorised to negotiate peace with Israel.
Mahmoud Zahar, a high-ranking Hamas official, told reporters at a press conference here that resumption of the peace talks with Israel "contradicts with the Palestinian national consensus", Xinhua reported.
"Abbas agreed to restart the US-brokered negotiations, ignoring the national consensus of the people and political factions who reject this manner which may blow up the Palestinian cause," Zahar said.
On Wednesday, a second round of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians will kick off in Jerusalem after nearly three years of stalemate over Israel's continuous settlement activities in the West Bank.
The senior Hamas leader has called on the Arab League not to legalise talks with Israel and to form an "opposition Arab front" standing against making any concession. He also called on ending the Palestinian internal division.
Refusing to recognise Israel, Hamas, which is listed as a global terrorist organisation in many countries, opposes the entire peace process.

Ex-NATO Chief: 15,000 Troops Should Stay in Afghanistan

The United States and its allies should immediately announce how many troops will stay on in Afghanistan after 2014, former NATO supreme commander Admiral James Stavridis argued on Wednesday.
Stavridis, who recently finished a four-year stint as the alliance's top military leader, said it was vital to unveil the troop plans quickly to counter Taliban propaganda claiming foreign troops are abandoning the country.

In a commentary, Stavridis wrote that he supported keeping 15,000 US and allied forces in the country after the bulk of coalition troops withdraw as planned in 2014.

"I believe the correct number is about 9,000 US and 6,000 allied troops, for a total of about 15,000 allied trainers who would focus on mentoring, training, and advising the 350,000 strong Afghan National Security Forces," Stavridis wrote in Foreign Policy.

"Instead of waiting for months, we should move now to decide and publicly reveal the commitment," the admiral said.

There are now roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in the NATO-led coalition, with the Americans making up about two-thirds of the force.

US officials have long suggested they expected to retain a smaller force of about 8,000 to 12,000 troops after 2014.

But, amid difficult negotiations on a long-term security accord with Kabul, White House officials have spoken of a possible "zero option" with no US boots on the ground after next year.

The former top commander of US and alliance forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has called for keeping 13,600 American troops in the country, as well as a number of NATO forces. He too has urged President Barack Obama to announce the troop decision as soon as possible.

By announcing troop plans now, Stavridis said the allies "would break the Taliban narrative decisively, making a lie of their oft-repeated trope that 'the foreigners are leaving,'" the admiral wrote.

The move "would reassure the Afghans" and "demonstrate needed leadership to the large international coalition that is awaiting US decisions," he wrote.

"It would also encourage the conclusion of the strategic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan, " he added.

The current head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, General Joe Dunford, has indicated he would provide recommendations on troop numbers after this year's "fighting season" ends in October.

While acknowledging serious difficulties in the war effort, Stavridis defined "success" in Afghanistan as a "democratic (if somewhat corrupt) nation that has reasonable control over its borders" and dominance over an insurgency that does not pose a dire threat to the state.

If 15,000 allied troops stay in Afghanistan, there was cause to be "cautiously optimistic" the country would meet the criteria of success, he wrote.

But if no foreign troops remain after 2014, that would mean "probable mission failure," according to Stavridis.

Berber protesters enter Libya parliament

Members of Libya's ethnic Berber minority have forced their way into the parliament building in Tripoli, smashing windows and destroying furniture, in a demonstration to push for greater recognition, an assembly spokesman said. The protest occurred on Tuesday during a break in a regular session at the assembly, General National Congress spokesman Omar Hmaiden said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but Hmaiden said furniture had been smashed and some documents belonging to assembly members were missing. Violence and lawlessness, much of it involving former rebel groups, has hobbled governance in the country since the war that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The indigenous people of North Africa, known to others as Berbers and among themselves as Amazigh, were brutally suppressed under Gaddafi, who considered the teaching of their language and culture to be a challenge to Arab dominance. They were among the mainstays of the rebellion, with their stronghold in the Nafusa Mountains southwest of Tripoli emerging as one of the main fronts. Berber was the main language of North Africa before Arabic arrived with the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. It is still spoken in the Sahara and in mountainous parts of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as well as Libya.

Story of a human being: Who gets to be Bradley Manning?

EnlargeBradley Manning (Credit: AP/Patrick Semansky)

A short, sad apology was made on Wednesday in a Fort Meade military courtroom. Just who made the apology — who is Bradley Manning — will become the stuff of history books. For all its seeming simplicity, it is a complicated question indeed, which cuts to the heart of the sentencing portion of this historic case.
Manning’s sentencing — the decision about how much of a possible 90-year sentence for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks the whistle-blower will serve — has seemingly come down to a referendum on Manning as a person. It has been decided which laws Manning has broken; it has been admitted that the leaks led to no American deaths and an unproven amount of U.S. diplomatic discomfort. The sentencing arguments have now focused squarely on Manning’s person. This, despite the fact that for over 1,000 days in pretrial military detention, the 25-year-old has been denied the most basic vestiges of personhood afforded U.S. citizens.
So who offered an apology to military Judge Denise Lind on Wednesday?
Some will say that Bradley Manning — a naive but well-intentioned whistle-blower — apologized for any potential harms his leaks may have caused his country (even though Pentagon testimony could show no American deaths as a result of Manning’s leak of classified documents). “I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions,” Manning told the court.
Some will say that the apology came from Bradley Manning, a dangerous and unpatriotic former military analyst with machinations to attack the United States. “I understood what I was doing, and decisions I made,” Manning said.
Some will say the apology came from Bradley Manning, a brave, articulate truth-teller hoping to lessen his sentence with a performative mea culpa. “When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people,” Manning said Wednesday.
Some will say it was Breanna Manning who apologized; a traumatized, fragile soldier who identifies as female. “At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues, issues that are ongoing and continuing to affect me,” the soldier said.
There are more versions of this story still. But the point is this: Bradley Manning’s sentencing has become about an issue so basic but so deeply complicated at the same time — who is Bradley Manning? Who does Bradley Manning get to be?

John Kerry: 'This Little Thing Called the Internet ... Makes It Much Harder to Govern

(CNSNews.com) - Speaking to State Department personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that "this little thing called the Internet ... makes it much harder to govern."He also said that "ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators.""I’m a student of history, and I love to go back and read a particularly great book like [Henry] Kissinger’s book about diplomacy where you think about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the balance of power and how difficult it was for countries to advance their interests and years and years of wars," Kerry said to a gathering of State Department employees and their families."And we sometimes say to ourselves, boy, aren’t we lucky," Kerry continued."Well, folks," he said, "ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year."It makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest," said Kerry, "and that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for. So we need to keep in mind what our goals are and how complicated this world is that we’re operating in.

Warrant served by SWAT team causes scare in South County

SOUTH COUNTY, MO (KTVI)– Residents were alarmed after a SWAT team lined a South County neighborhood Tuesday night.
The quiet South County street was crawling with SWAT officers, an unnerving situation which turns out to have been the relatively routing service of a warrant.
An unidentified man pulled up around 8:15 p.m. was frisked by police and then detained for questioning, but what got neighbors here very upset happened a few minutes earlier.  It was the presence of a SWAT team, complete with officers wearing armor and carrying assault rifles surrounding the man’s home as police went to the door.  One woman frantically told her husband, the army’s here.
As it turns out, St. Louis County police say the use of the SWAT team is standard procedure in serving a felony warrant, no matter what it’s for.  In this case officers say it was an administrative warrant, though they wouldn’t elaborate.  For people on Autumn Drive, it was all a little unsettling.
Police say that it was the service of an administrative warrant by their special investigations unit.  Officers will not go into any greater detail, though SWAT team members were downplaying it again saying that their presence on any felony warrant search is standard practice.

Texas cops raid farm commune when mistaking tomato plants for marijuana

“They can’t even tell the difference between tomato plants and a marijuana drug cartel,” farm resident Quinn Eaker told KXAS-TV. “That’s just really bad intel.” Eaker said to KXAS that he and several residents at the “Garden of Eden” sustainability garden were handcuffed at gunpoint by officers during the Aug. 2 raid, which also involved a SWAT team, after an undercover officer and helicopter surveillance allegedly gave authorities probable cause to believe there was marijuana being grown on the premises.
“They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation,” owner Shellie Smith told WFAA-TV. “They destroyed everything.”
The Dallas Morning News reported that the farm’s account of the raid, which accuses police of destroying plants and removing needed materials from the farm, has spread online, while police counter that they conducted themselves professionally during the action.
“Yes, they were initially handcuffed,” police spokesperson Christopher Cook told the Morning News. “However, once it was determined it was secure they were taken out of handcuffs. Typically we wouldn’t do that, but they were compliant.”
Watch KXAS’ report, posted on YouTube by user “TheSublimeDegree” on Wednesday, below.

U.S. budget cuts hitting long-term unemployed hard

Phyllis Kennedy is facing a bleak future. U.S. government budget tightening has slashed her weekly unemployment check by more than a fifth, and her prospects of finding a job are grim after over a year of unemployment. Kennedy, 57, from Little Falls, New Jersey, had her $380 weekly unemployment check cut by $85 at the end of June. Just when she was coming to terms with the blow, she learned her benefits would end altogether in three weeks, more than two months earlier than she had anticipated.
She is among the 4.3 million in the United States who are officially counted as being unemployed for more than six months. According to the U.S. Labor Department, only 37 percent of that group received benefits in July compared with a peak of 93 percent in February 2010 when there were 6.2 million long-term unemployed.
The economy's slow recovery and federal and state cuts to unemployment insurance programs have slashed the numbers receiving benefits.
"For people that are on their own, like me, a cut like this is devastating," said Kennedy, who lost her job as a mental health center administrator, and a $32,000 salary with it, more than a year ago. "I have very little emergency money left."
Thousands of miles away in Las Vegas, John Payne is also reeling from benefit cuts, which reduced his weekly check by a third to about $250. The 55-year-old commercial glass installer has not had regular work since late 2009.
"Not even when I moved out of the house as a teenager did I struggle this much," said Payne, who plugs the gaps between sporadic construction projects with unemployment insurance. "I was stunned. I knew the cuts were coming, but I never imagined it would be that much."
Benefit reductions like those suffered by Kennedy and Payne, part of the federal budget cuts known as sequester, have hammered those who have struggled the most to find jobs in this listless recovery.
The $2.4 billion cut in emergency unemployment benefits, which began to go into effect on March 1, are part of a wider push to reduce the federal government's budget deficit.
EMERGENCY AID IS SHORTENED
Even before sequester, benefits had dropped in most states as jobless rates fell below levels that allow the jobless to claim for additional weeks. In July, the unemployment rate dropped to a post-recession low of 7.4 percent.
Before the 2007-09 recession states would pay at least 26 weeks of benefits. Since 2008, federal emergency benefits have provided additional weeks of aid based on each state's unemployment rate.
States can receive up to four tiers of these benefits, with all tiers except the first requiring a certain level of unemployment in the state.
Only three states currently qualify for the 10 weeks of tier four emergency benefits, for a total of 47 weeks: Illinois, Mississippi and Nevada. On Sunday, California and Rhode Island became the most recent states whose residents will lose access to those extra weeks, meaning more than 100,000 of the long-term jobless population will soon lose assistance.
Emergency benefits offered a maximum of 53 weeks before Congress scaled back the program last year. The program will expire on December 28 without a renewal by Congress, leaving only state benefits.
New Jersey's average unemployment rate fell to 8.7 percent in June, below the tier four threshold, so Kennedy will not receive the extra 10 weeks of benefits once her already trimmed checks end.
"I might have to sell my home," said Kennedy, who has a $1,200 monthly mortgage payment and owes $115,000 on a house worth about $250,000.
Kennedy said she has considered moving to another state where the cost of living is cheaper. "It would kill me to leave my children, but I might just be pushed out," she added.
Her three grown children also live in New Jersey.
STATES ALSO TARGET BENEFITS
Though the recession ended four years ago, the pace of economic growth has been too slow to generate sufficient employment, leaving millions of workers unable to find jobs before their benefits run out.
Adding to the squeeze, eight states have cut their weeks of state benefits to between 18 and 25 from the standard 26.
North Carolina not only reduced the initial number of weeks residents could receive aid to 20, but slashed state jobless benefit checks by more than one-third.
This violated a provision of emergency unemployment aid that prohibits states from reducing average weekly benefits, according to the Department of Labor.
After June 28, emergency benefits ended in North Carolina and 65,000 immediately lost assistance. The move allows the state to pay back $2.6 billion to the federal government three years earlier, said North Carolina commerce department spokesman Josh Ellis, sparing businesses from higher unemployment insurance taxes.
CALIFORNIA 'PIPE DREAM'
In Nevada, where the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent, Payne is contemplating moving to northern California, but the lack of money makes it a challenge. He has been unable to fix his car and often takes public transport, to go to temporary jobs, while carrying heavy tools.
"My ability to move to northern California is a pipe dream because I don't even have the money for that," said Payne.
Sharon Williams of Newark, New Jersey is also feeling the pinch after the 22 percent cut to her weekly unemployment check.
"I don't sleep well at night because I don't know what utility will get shut off next," said the 62-year-old licensed practical nurse.
Her license is limited to New Jersey and she did not update it with currently required skills.
Lisha Fields, 36, a single mom laid off a year ago after 10 years with Verizon Wireless in Chicago, has only received minimum wage job offers that amount to less than her unemployment benefits. Accounting for child care costs, these offers are not feasible, she said.
The risk is that the longer she and the others remain unemployed, the less the chances of them finding jobs.
A study by the Boston Federal Reserve Bank released earlier this year found that callback rates dropped precipitously for those unemployed longer than half a year.
"There's this concern that you have all these workers who might become a permanent class of the unemployed," said Kory Kroft, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto.
"People think we're unemployed because we want to be," Fields said. "No."
(Reporting By Paige Gance, additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Dan Burns and Leslie Gevirtz)