Blair Says Riots Not Symptom of Britain’s Moral Decline

LONDON — Former Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday rejected the British government’s claim that this month’s riots were caused by the country’s moral decline, and said talk of “broken Britain” would unfairly tarnish the nation’s reputation.

Prime Minister David Cameron has blamed Britain’s “slow-motion moral collapse” for the riots which raged for four nights in London and other English cities.

Blair wrote in The Observer newspaper that the violence was not caused by social rot, but by “alienated, disaffected youth,” who are found in most developed nations.

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Deadly Airliner Crash in Arctic

OTTAWA — A Boeing 737 crashed in Canada’s high Arctic on Saturday, killing 12 of the 15 people on board, the government transportation agency said.

The plane, owned by First Air, crashed about 1:30 p.m. while approaching Resolute Bay, Nunavut, for a landing, according to the agency, Transport Canada.

Members of a large Canadian military contingent, who were in the area for an Arctic training exercise, rushed to the scene to put out fires and rescue survivors.

CTV, a Canadian broadcaster, reported that two adults and one child were airlifted to a hospital in Iqaluit, Nunavut. One of the adults was reported to be in critical condition.

Because the military intended to stage a mock airliner crash rescue on Monday, investigators were already in the community.

from Ian Austen @ the New York Times

Anti-Qaddafi Forces Advance on Tripoli

Tripoli –  Four strong explosions rocked Tripoli early Sunday amid reports that rebels had cut off crucial supply lines to the capital as clashes raged between forces loyal to Col. Muammar Qaddafi and fighters challenging his long rule.

The blasts were heard shortly after 4:00am local time in the heart of the city as NATO warplanes flew overhead, an AFP journalist said. The targets were not immediately identifiable.

The continued fighting followed reports Saturday that rebels had advanced on the capital, with residents telling various news media organizations that they had sighted the fighters in their neighborhoods.

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Facebook “Like” Button Declared Illegal in Germany

KIEL, Germany –  Facebook's famous "Like" button has been declared illegal under Germany's strict privacy laws by data protection officials.

The north Germany state of Schleswig-Holstein demanded that dozens of websites that carry the button linking to the social networking site remove the offending item by the end of September or face a fine of up to €50,000 ($71,935), The Local reported Friday.

Thilo Weichert, of the state's data protection center, said the application allowed Facebook to illegally piece together a profile of web users' habits.

"Facebook can trace every click on a website, how long I'm on it, what I'm interested in," he said.

Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Facebook rejected Weichart's claim and said in a statement that the plug-ins were in full compliance with European laws.

from FOXNews

Top Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Line to Become Oil Minister, OPEC Head

Iranian lawmakers will decide next week whether a senior figure in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a target of U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions, will become the country’s oil minister – a position that would elevate him to the presidency of the OPEC oil cartel at a time of global economic uncertainty.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday nominated Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghasemi as oil minister, filling a post Ahmadinejad himself unsuccessfully sought to take over earlier this year in a move that brought criticism from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s camp.

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U.N. Group Calls for Abortion for Children, Decriminalization of Prostitution for Youth

Y-PEER, a youth initiative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has issued a call to make access to abortion and contraception an international human right for children as young as 10 years old.

The U.N.-affiliated group also issued what U.N. analysts say is a call for the decriminalization of prostitution and drug use, and for “confidentiality” in health-care services for youth.

The “Joint Youth Statement on the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Young People” was released in preparation for the U.N. Youth Conference, which began Wednesday in New York.

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ATHENS - Ratings agency Moody's cut Greece's sovereign debt by three notches on Monday to Ca, just one notch above default, saying the new bailout set a negative precedent for creditors of other debt-burdened countries.

Euro zone leaders agreed last week to offer Greece debt relief through a new rescue package of easier loan terms, with private creditors shouldering part of the burden via a debt exchange.

The downgrade means Greece now has the lowest rating of any country in the world covered by Moody's, which, like Fitch last week, said it would offer a new rating after the debt swap was completed.

"Once the distressed exchange has been completed, Moody's will reassess Greece's rating to ensure that it reflects the risk associated with the country's new credit profile, including the potential for further debt restructurings," it said.

Last Friday, Fitch Ratings said Greece would be declared in restricted default due to the steps taken in the new euro zone rescue package but that new ratings of a low speculative grade would likely be assigned once the bond exchange is completed.

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Norwegian Gunman Says He Acted Alone

A right-wing zealot who admitted to bomb and gun attacks in Norway that killed 93 people on Friday claims he acted alone, Norway's police said on Sunday.

"He has admitted to the facts of both the bombing and the shooting, although he's not admitting criminal guilt,'' acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim told a news conference about detained suspect Anders Behring Breivik.

"He says that he was alone but the police must verify everything that he said. Some of the witness statements from the island (shootings) have made us unsure of whether there was one or more shooters.''

Sponheim said police had no other suspects for the worst massacre committed in Norway since World War Two, in which 97 people were also wounded. Several people also remain missing, which could raise the death toll.

King Harald and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were among mourners at a service in Oslo cathedral, where the premier spoke emotionally about the victims, some of whom he knew.

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Liberals Salivate

Could This Be The End of
Rupert Murdoch and FOXNews?

The liberal activist group MoveOn.org says it is launching a campaign “to build unavoidable public pressure for full investigations” into Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. news outlets – including Fox News, a favorite target of liberals.

“Could this be the end of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News?” the group asked in a July 21 email message to supporters.

According to MoveOn.org, “the key is to find out how far Fox and rest of Murdoch’s news outlets went here in the U.S. If they’ve been as corrupt and criminal here as it looks like they’ve been in the U.K., then we might just see Murdoch’s media empire crumble.”

Murdoch and his media empire have come under fire in Britain, following reports that employees at Murdoch’s News Corporation hacked into the phone of a 13-year-old murder victim and bribed police and government officials for information leading to tabloid scoops.

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Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Philadelphia archbishop Cardinal Justin Rigali today, sending him into retirement as the archdiocese faces accusations that it covered up a long-running priest sex abuse scandal.

The pope named conservative Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput to succeed him.

The brief Vatican announcement said the resignation of the 76-year-old Rigali was for reason of age. He submitted it on his 75th birthday in April 2010, as required by church law, but the pope did not immediately act on it.

But the Cardinal has been under pressure for his handling of the sex-abuse scandal. In his eight-year tenure, a pair of grand jury reports, one in 2005 and one released in February, have rocked the archdiocese by accusing church officials of covering up abuse allegations against priests.

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Greek Union and Premier Brace for a Fight

Sitting in his office on a recent morning beneath photographs of Marx, Lenin and Che Guevara, Nikos Fotopoulos, the leader of Greece’s most powerful labor union, took a freshly printed flier from a stack. “We are ready for new battles,” it read.

“And we are,” Mr. Fotopoulos said, sipping an energy drink and then chasing it with an espresso. “We will continue with street protests because we still have unfinished business with the government and the troika,” he said, referring to Greece’s three foreign lenders: the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

Last month, amid violent protests, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou narrowly managed to push a new package of austerity measures through Parliament, including plans for selling $71 billion in state assets, a step that economists and the troika say is crucial to overhauling Greece’s bloated public sector.

But whether Mr. Papandreou will be able to carry out the plan will depend to a large extent on people like Mr. Fotopoulos. His union, Genop, represents workers at the Public Power Corporation, which is owned jointly by the government and by private investors.

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For those who ask how this is relevant to them; welcome to the future if OUR government can’t get a handle on local, state, and federal spending as well as the debt that goes with it. – Ed.

UK Government Reeling from Phone Hacking Scandal

Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner resigned Monday, a day after his boss also quit, and fresh investigations of possible police wrongdoing were launched in the phone hacking scandal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch's media empire to the British prime minister's office.

Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency session of Parliament on the scandal and cut short his visit to Africa to try to contain the widening crisis. Lawmakers on Tuesday are to question Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Murdoch's U.K. newspaper arm.

London's Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates stands outside the force's headquarters at New Scotland Yard in London, in this July 9 2009 file photo.

In a further twist, a former News of the World reporter who helped blow the whistle on the scandal was found dead Monday in his home, but it was not believed to be suspicious.

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Warner: Fix Military Schools

Prompted by an investigation revealing that military-base schools across the country are falling apart, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), and a bipartisan group of colleagues are asking new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to make the issue a top priority.

According to the investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, 75 percent of Defense Department-run schools on military installations are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards for safety, quality, accessibility and design.

The Pentagon has placed 39 percent of its 194 schools in the worst category of "failing," which means it costs more to renovate than replace them, reports to Congress show. An additional 37 percent are classified in "poor" physical shape, which could require either replacement or expensive renovations to meet standards, the study shows.

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More Illegal Immigrants from India Crossing Border

Police wearing berets and bulletproof vests broke down the door of a Guatemala City apartment in February hunting for illegal drugs. Instead, they found a different kind of illicit shipment: 27 immigrants from India packed into two locked rooms.

The Indians, whose hiding space was furnished only with soiled mattresses, claimed to be on vacation. But authorities quickly concluded they were waiting to be smuggled into the United States via an 11,000-mile (17,700-kilometer) pipeline of human cargo -- the same network that has transported thousands of illegal immigrants from India, through Central America and Mexico and over the sandy banks of the Rio Grande during the past two years.

Indians have arrived in droves even as the overall number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. has dropped dramatically, in large part because of the sluggish American economy. And with fewer Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the border, smugglers are eager for more "high-value cargo" like Indians, some of whom are willing to pay more than $20,000 for the journey.

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Late Night NATO Air Strikes Rock Tripoli

Tripoli was rocked by a series of airstrikes by NATO forces in the early hours of the morning Sunday.

Libyan television reported that the "NATO crusader forces" had hit civilian and military targets in the eastern suburb of Tajoura.

Just after midnight Sunday, a series of dull rumbles and flashes could be seen to the east of Tripoli, illuminating huge plumes of smoke and accompanied by the sporadic tracers of antiaircraft fire.

The distant rumbling blasts continued for at least an hour, suggesting some kind of facility with explosive materials had been hit.

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Details of Somali Terrorist Recruitment in Minneapolis Revealed in Court Documents

A group of Minneapolis-area Somalis, including some who traveled to their homeland to allegedly take up arms against the Ethiopian army, held secret meetings in 2007 to plan the trips, created fake itineraries to fool family members and challenged one another about their commitment, prosecutors contend in a court filing.

The document was filed this week in advance of a trial for one man accused of being part of the conspiracy.

It sheds new light on how the recruiting operation worked in Minneapolis and how some of the men arrived at safehouses in Somalia, where they received AK-47s and weapons training.

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Lufthansa Starts Biofuels Flights

Germany's biggest airline, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, says it has begun trial flights using biofuels in a bid to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Lufthansa said Friday that an Airbus A321 flying the Hamburg-Frankfurt route four times daily will use a 50/50 mix of regular fuel and biosynthetic kerosene in one of its two engines for the next six months.

The airline says during the test period the use of biofuel will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 1,500 tons.

German environmental group BUND criticized the project, saying any short-haul flight is bad for the environment compared with train travel.

In another effort to reduce emissions and fuel use, Lufthansa said Monday it will begin using a new plastic cargo container that is 15 percent lighter than the traditional aluminum ones.

from the Washington Examiner / AP

Meat From Radioactive Cows Sold In Japan

Four months following the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan and caused a disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, the Japanese government has confirmed that a bit of cesium-contaminated beef from that region has made its way to groceries and likely to the dinner plates of consumers.

But, reports CNN, the state minister in charge of consumer affairs and food-safety is trying to downplay any potential harm the tainted meat, which came from a farm only 18 miles from the damaged reactor, could pose.

"If we were to eat the meat everyday, then it would probably be dangerous," he said at a news conference earlier today. "But if it is consumed only in small portions, I don't think it would have any long-lasting effects on the human body."

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Gawker Tries to Reveal Identity of CIA Agent Behind Bin Laden Kill

The Gawker website is under fire for trying to expose the CIA agent who may have helped lead the effort to kill Usama Bin Laden -- despite efforts by the U.S. government and media to keep his identity secret for security reasons.  

Using red arrows pointing to a full-length picture and close-up photos of the possible agent, Gawker reporter John Cook on July 6 wrote a piece under the headline “Is This the Guy Who Killed Bin Laden?” The story has since sparked an angry response from former intelligence agents -- as well as Gawker’s own readers -- who say Cook’s post was irresponsible and could have deadly consequences.

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Asia Stock Markets Rise After China Growth Figuers

Most Asian stock markets advanced Wednesday as investors welcomed robust growth figures from China amid caution over Europe's debt problems.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 1 percent to 21,878.60, the Shanghai Composite index rose 0.5 percent to 2,768.21, and South Korea's Kospi was up 0.7 percent at 2,125.16.

Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average was nearly flat at 9,926.81 as markets monitored the yen, which briefly hit its highest level since mid-March overnight.

The latest data out of China showed that the country's rapid economic growth slowed only slightly in the April-June quarter to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent in the previous quarter.

The growth report eases fears of an abrupt slowdown and gives Beijing room to tighten controls to fight climbing prices.

The government has been trying to tame the world's No. 2 economy, where inflation hit a three-year high in June. Beijing has hiked interest rates five times since October and tightened controls on lending and investment.

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