Over a decade after a similar case shocked the world, a German daily reported that a German police officer may have seduced and murdered a man he met on a cannibalism fetish website. The suspect has been arrested.

Police on Wednesday found body parts on a property in the Ore Mountains, in the eastern German state of Saxony, that, according to German tabloid Bild, came from a murder carried out as part of a cannibal fetish act. The body parts are believed to belong to a 59-year-old man from Hanover, while the main suspect, who, according to Bild, owns the property on which the remains were found, is a 55-year-old police officer.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/cannibal-cop-allegations-rock-germany/story?id=21058055

Federal officials say Americans are joining the bloody civil war in Syria, raising the chances they could become radicalized by Al Qaeda-linked militant groups and return to the U.S. as battle-hardened security risks.

The State Department says it has no estimates of how many Americans have taken up weapons to fight military units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad in the 3-year-old war that has killed more than 100,000 people. Other estimates — from an arm of the British defense consultant IHS Jane's and from experts at a nonprofit think tank in London — put the number of Americans at a couple dozen. The IHS group says Al Qaeds-linked fighters number about 15,000, with total anti-Assad force at 100,000 or more.

This year, at least three Americans have been charged with planning to fight beside Jabhat al-Nusrah — a radical Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist group — against Assad. The most recent case involves a Pakistan-born North Carolina man arrested on his way to Lebanon.

At a Senate homeland security committee hearing this month, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., said: "We know that American citizens as well as Canadian and European nationals have taken up arms in Syria, in Yemen and in Somalia. The threat that these individuals could return home to carry out attacks is real and troubling."

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1130/FBI-warns-about-Americans-joining-Islamic-fighters-in-Syria

America is not safer now than it was a few years ago, according to the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA said there was “huge malevolence” against the United States, and warned that the terrorism threat against the country is on the rise. “I think terror is up worldwide,” she said. “The numbers are way up.”

The U.S. has spent billions of dollars to expand its global intelligence and counterterrorism programs and has run a targeted killing program aimed at alleged terrorist leaders. That program has been criticized for causing too much collateral damage and stoking anti-American sentiments.

House chair Mike Rogers, R-MI, agreed with Feinstein, saying the “pressure on our intelligence services to prevent an attack is incredible.”

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/top-lawmakers-warn-america-not-safer-today

Going into our 14 year of war, some assessment.

The viola organista is an experimental musical instrument designed by Leonardo da Vinci. It uses rotating wheels to vibrate individual strings (similar to how a violin produces sounds), with the strings selected by pressing keys on a keyboard (similar to an organ). The first known implementations made from Leonardo's incomplete designs were in modern times.

Leonardo's original idea, as preserved in his notebooks of 1488–1489 and in the drawings in the Codex Atlanticus, was to use one or more wheels, continuously rotating, each of which pulled a looping bow, rather like a fanbelt in an automobile engine, and perpendicular to the instrument's strings. The strings would be pushed downward into the bow by the action of the keys, causing the moving bow to sound the pitch of the string. In one design, the strings were fretted with tangents, so that there were more keys than strings (multiple notes, for example C and C#, would be played on one string). In another design, each note had its own string.

Leonardo's design is similar to that of the earlier hurdy gurdy, which also uses a rotating wheel to play strings. It differs in that a hurdy gurdy has a small number of strings that are constantly in contact with the wheel, rather than a larger number of strings that can be lowered onto the wheel. A hurdy gurdy has a keybox with tangents that change the pitches of the strings, rather like placing fingers on violin strings. Leonardo's innovation of a keyboard with a lowering mechanism allowed individual notes to be played, alone or in specific desired chords over a large range of pitches.

There is no indication that Leonardo built this instrument. The first similar instrument actually to be constructed was the Geigenwerk of 1575 by Hans Heyden, a German instrument inventor.

Akio Obuchi built several instruments as early as 1993. In 2004, a modern reconstruction of the viola organista by Akio Obuchi was used in a concert in Genoa, Italy .

In 2013, Sławomir Zubrzycki finished construction and performed on his viola organista at the Academy of Music in Kraków.

In December of 1969, a man named Greg Noll rode the biggest wave ever surfed. It happened in Hawaii, at a place called Makaha, and there was no doubt about the magnitude of his achievement; it surpassed all that had come before.

Most stunning of all was Noll's reaction. He was a legend in the sport, a larger-than-life character who had ridden giant waves for years, and he suddenly retired at the age of 31. That was his swan song. For those devoted to the sport and its lifelong benefits, it was difficult to fathom how Noll could simply walk away.

Shawn Dollar understands what Noll was facing.

Dollar, a 32-year-old regular at the famed Mavericks break near Half Moon Bay, is among the most accomplished athletes in Northern California. He has set two world records in the biggest-wave category. He lives comfortably in Santa Cruz with his wife and 2 1/2-year-old son, and is held in awe by young surfers who could only dream of cascading down a 60-foot wall of water.

And he has become, in essence, a prisoner of his talent

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/World-record-surfer-a-prisoner-of-his-talent-5024902.php

On their first weekend together since that terrible day of fire and fear nearly a month ago, Sasha Fleischman's family puttered around their house in Oakland on Saturday, doing as much as they could that resembled normal. Dad Karl Fleischman fried eggs for breakfast. Sasha Fleischman, 18, browsed the Internet. They took calls from friends.

The only things out of place were the bandages wrapped tightly around the teenager's legs beneath a light purple skirt.

"They itch," the youth said with a shy smile, scratching a thigh. "No big deal, though."

That it was no big deal was a big deal in itself.

Fleischman came home Wednesday from a San Francisco hospital burn unit after recovering there from second- and third-degree burns suffered when a 16-year-old boy set the teen's skirt ablaze on Nov. 4 while Fleischman was sleeping on an AC Transit bus in Oakland. Fleischman - who was named Luke at birth but now goes by Sasha - identifies as agender, neither female nor male, and police say the attack was at least partially motivated by homophobia.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-teen-burned-on-bus-ready-to-go-to-school-5024390.php

In April 1957, five unmarked lorries left the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur and drove to a Royal Navy base in Singapore with their cargo of files detailing the secrets of Britain’s rule in Malaya. Their destination was, in the words of one official, a “splendid incinerator”.

This “discreet” mission in the closing days of British rule over what became Malaysia was one of hundreds of similar operations. As the sun finally set on the Empire, diplomats scurried to repatriate or destroy hundreds of thousands “dirty” documents containing evidence that London had decided should never see the light of day. Some 50 years later, the sheer scale of the operation to hide the secrets of British rule overseas – including details of atrocities committed during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya – is revealed in documents released today by the National Archives in Kew, west London.

The so-called “migrated archive” details the extraordinary lengths to which the Colonial Office went to withhold information from its former subjects in at least 23 countries and territories in the 1950s and 1960s.

Among the documents is a memo from London that required all secret documents held abroad to be vetted by a Special Branch or MI5 liaison officer to ensure that any papers which might “embarrass” Britain or show “racial prejudice or religious bias” were destroyed or sent home.

The ramifications of the operation to conceal the resulting archive of 8,800 files – a closely guarded Whitehall secret until the Government recently lost high-profile court cases – are still being felt in compensation claims for victims of atrocities committed under British rule from Kenya to Malaya.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-british-empires-dirty-secrets-went-up-in-smoke-in-the-colonies-8971217.html

Among the documents is a note that officials should carefully control any bonfires of secrets and avoid a situation similar to Indian in 1947 when the local press was filled with reports about the “pall of smoke” which fell over Delhi at the end of the Raj as British officials burnt their papers.

The investigation into claims that Princess Diana was murdered by an SAS hit squad has been closed.

Scotland Yard conducted the probe over an allegation made by an anonymous soldier that emerged at a trial of SAS man Danny Nightingale for illegal possession of a gun.

Relatives of ‘Soldier N’ said that he had claimed the car crash in Paris in 1997 in which Princess Diana was killed was caused by SAS assassins.

He believed that special forces agents had shone a light into the eyes of Diana's driver Henri Paul - leading to him losing control of the car and hitting a pillar in a tunnel in Paris.

The soldier's claims led to the inquiry into the Princess's death being reopened.

However, the Metropolitan Police is now in the process of 'concluding' the investigation.

A police spokesman said: ‘We are in the process of drawing up conclusions, which will be communicated to the families and interested parties before any further comment can be made.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516292/Diana-police-probe-Inquiry-soldiers-claims-Princess-killed-SAS-closed.html#ixzz2mC2qCQlx
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Mojtaba Atarodi, arrested in California for attempting to acquire equipment for Iran’s military-nuclear programs, was released in April as part of back channel talks, Times of Israel told. The contacts, mediated in Oman for years by close colleague of the Sultan, have seen a series of US-Iran prisoner releases, and there may be more to come

The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month’s interim deal in Geneva on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told.

In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs.

American and Iranian officials have been meeting secretly in Oman on and off for years, according to a respected Israeli intelligence analyst, Ronen Solomon. And in the past three years as a consequence of those talks, Iran released three American prisoners, all via Oman, and the US responded in kind. Then, most critically, in April, when the back channel was reactivated in advance of the Geneva P5+1 meetings, the US released a fourth Iranian prisoner, high-ranking Iranian scientist Atarodi, who was arrested in California on charges that remain sealed but relate to his attempt to acquire what are known as dual-use technologies, or equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs. Iran has not reciprocated for that latest release.

<snip>

The history of these deals, though, he said, would suggest that in the coming months Iran will release at least one of three US citizens who are currently believed to be in Iranian custody. One of these three is former FBI agent Robert Levinson.



http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-freed-top-iranian-scientist-as-part-of-secret-talks-ahead-of-geneva-deal/

But lately, Binyamin Netanyahu and almost the entire Israeli political establishment have achieved a new record in foolishness.

Let us start from the end.

Iran is the great victor. It has been warmly welcomed back into the family of civilized nations. Its currency, the rial, is jumping. Its prestige and influence in the region has become paramount. Its enemies in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia and its gulf satellites, have been humiliated. Any military strike against it by anyone, including Israel, has become unthinkable.

The image of Iran as a nation of crazy ayatollahs, fostered by Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad, has disappeared. Iran now looks like a responsible country, led by sober and shrewd leaders.

Israel is the great loser. It has maneuvered itself into a position of total isolation. Its demands have been ignored, its traditional friends have distanced themselves. But above everything else, its relations with the US have been seriously damaged.

What Netanyahu and Co. are doing is almost unbelievable. Sitting on a very high branch, they are diligently sawing through it.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/29/the-greatest-danger-to-israel-is-the-stupidity-of-its-leaders/