Indonesian Officials: Airliner with 54 People Loses Contact Over Easternmost Province

Source: Associated Press

Asia & Pacific
Indonesian officials: Airliner with 54 people loses contact over easternmost province of Papua

By Associated Press August 16 at 5:34 AM

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian officials: Airliner with 54 people loses contact over easternmost province of Papua.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indonesian-officials-airliner-with-54-people-loses-contact-over-easternmost-province-of-papua/2015/08/16/f3899d98-43f9-11e5-9f53-d1e3ddfd0cda_story.html

Newly Revealed Documents - AT&T Helped N.S.A. Spy on an Array of Internet Traffic

Source: New York Times

AT&T Helped N.S.A. Spy on an Array of Internet Traffic

By JULIA ANGWIN, CHARLIE SAVAGE, JEFF LARSON, HENRIK MOLTKE, LAURA POITRAS and JAMES RISEN
AUGUST 15, 2015
By Julia Angwin, Charlie Savage, Jeff Larson, Henrik Moltke, Laura Poitras and James Risen

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html

Truck bomb kills at least 60 in Baghdad's Sadr City

Source: Reuters

Truck bomb kills at least 60 in Baghdad's Sadr City - sources

Source: Reuters - Thu, 13 Aug 2015 04:59 GMT

BAGHDAD, Aug 13 (Reuters) - At least 60 people were killed and 200 wounded on Thursday when a refrigerated truck packed with explosives blew up in a crowded market in Sadr City, a Shi'ite district in northeastern Baghdad, police and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but Islamic State, ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants who seized swathes of northern Iraq last year, have claimed similar attacks targeting Shi'ite neighbourhoods. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Read more: http://www.trust.org/item/20150813050028-z2ghu

Jimmy Carter Says He Has Cancer, Revealed by Recent Surgery

Source: Associated Press

Jimmy Carter Says He Has Cancer, Revealed by Recent Surgery

by The Associated Press
8/12/2015 1:41pm PDT

The former U.S. President had surgery earlier this month to remove a small mass in his liver.

ATLANTA (AP) — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says he has cancer and will undergo treatment at an Atlanta hospital.

Carter announced the diagnosis in a statement from the Carter Center on Wednesday afternoon.

Carter, 90, had surgery earlier this month to remove a small mass in his liver. He says in Wednesday's statement that the surgery revealed the cancer.

Read more: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jimmy-carter-says-he-has-814880

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Nate the Neonservative Gets It & You Don't!

Tyler Drumheller, CIA Officer Who Exposed U.S. Reliance on Discredited Iraq Source ‘Curveball,’ Dies

Source: Washington Post

National
Tyler Drumheller, CIA officer who exposed U.S. reliance on discredited Iraq source ‘Curveball,’ dies at 63

By Greg Miller August 6 at 6:48 PM

Tyler S. Drumheller, a high-level CIA officer who publicly battled agency leaders over one of the most outlandish claims in the U.S. case for war with Iraq, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 63.

- snip -

But he was best known publicly for his role in exposing the extent to which a key part of the administration’s case for war with Iraq had been built on the claims of an Iraqi defector and serial fabricator with the fitting code name “Curveball.”

- snip -

Curveball, who had defected to Germany in the late 1990s, was the primary source behind the administration’s assertions that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had developed biological weapons laboratories — lethal germ factories supposedly built on wheels or rails to evade detection.

The claim was included in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech as well as then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations designed to marshal international support for intervention in Iraq.

Mr. Drumheller later came forward to say that he had learned early on that German authorities had grave doubts about Curveball’s credibility. In his book “On the Brink” (2006), written with Elaine Monaghan, he recounted the Curveball debacle in detail, noting that his German counterpart had cautioned that Curveball “could be a fabricator. He’s a very erratic character.”

Mr. Drumheller said he relayed that warning to top CIA officials, and even attempted to strike the language on mobile labs from an early draft of Powell’s speech, only to be stunned to learn that the text was subsequently restored.

In “On the Brink,” Mr. Drum-heller described feeling his “heart sinking” as he watched Powell’s speech.

“We had failed,” he wrote. “It was bad enough that we had not prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and we were being blamed for that. Now the nation was about to embark on a war based on intelligence I knew was false, and we would surely be blamed for that, too.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tyler-drumheller-cia-officer-who-exposed-us-reliance-on-discredited-iraq-source-curveball-dies-at-63/2015/08/06/b45aeed2-3b99-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html

Jon Stewart: "The best defense against bullshit is vigilance."

Final commentary.