Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives considered a bill last year that would require more transparency and evaluation of all foreign aid programs, including military assistance. But administration officials lobbied the bill’s authors to exempt security assistance from the mandate. The U.S. spends about $25 billion annually on security assistance.   read more

The building in question, located at 650 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, is owned by the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp. The U.S. Attorney based in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, argued before a federal judge that Assa Corp. was nothing more than a front for Bank Melli, which was said to be a front for the government of Iran.   read more

IHS Jane’s says the rebels include 10,000 jihadists with ties to al-Qaeda, as well as another 30,000 to 35,000 hardliners who see eye-to-eye with the jihadists, although they are focused on toppling Assad and not on a global struggle against the West. “The insurgency is now dominated by groups which have at least an Islamist viewpoint on the conflict,” Charles Lister, author of the study, wrote. “The idea that it is mostly secular groups leading the opposition is just not borne out.”   read more

To draw attention to the problem of illegal poaching, the U.S. government has decided to destroy more than six tons of confiscated ivory that’s been collecting in a federal warehouse northeast of Denver. The move is part of an initiative launched in July by the Obama administration to combat the killing of protected wildlife and end the trafficking of products derived from poaching.   read more

Israel can pretty much do whatever it likes with the “raw Sigint” (signal intelligence) it gets from the NSA. The raw Sigint includes “unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content,” and possibly more. Also, the NSA does not filter out any of the data before forwarding it, which means Americans’ emails and phone calls could be sent to Israel.   read more

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of spying on Brazil’s state-run oil company, according to a news report from the South American country’s largest television network. The implication is that not all NSA espionage has to do with fighting terrorists or even criminals.   read more

Kanye West has become the latest celebrity to get into trouble for attending a Central Asian dictator’s lavish celebration. This time the country was Kazakhstan, where West showed up—after getting paid $3 million—to participate in the wedding festivities of Aysultan Nazarbayev, grandson of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s ruler.   read more

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno led an effort with author and former Central Valley resident Tim Z. Hernandez to raise money for an official memorial, complete with the names of those who died. It was unveiled on September 2 at a ceremony attended by more than 500 people, including family members of some of the farmworkers who traveled all the way from Mexico.   read more

Under the rules, importers would have to ensure that their foreign suppliers comply with FDA safety rules or equivalent local regulations. Industry groups, which the FDA consulted during the drafting process, generally support the rule. Although consumer advocates were cautiously supportive of the new rules, they also worried that the companies were getting too much discretion over whether to require on-site inspections of the sites where food is grown and processed.   read more

After reviewing classified materials regarding the U.S. intelligence budget, The Washington Post concluded: “No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern.” The “black budget” documents also revealed that the Obama administration has critical intelligence gaps when it comes to knowing what’s going on inside Pakistan, which has received nearly $26 billion in U.S. aid over the past 12 years.   read more

Under the terms of a 2010 arms deal worth $2.5 billion, Lockheed Martin was supposed to provide 20 F-16s to the Egyptian military. So far, 14 aircraft have been delivered, with the remaining six scheduled for delivery by December 2014. Lockheed Martin also has benefited from a $46 million contract given to one of its Florida subsidiaries to supply night vision sensor systems for Apache helicopters in Egypt. The Apache helicopter is made by another U.S. arms merchant: Boeing.   read more

The documents included an NSA slide dated June 2012 showing passages of written messages sent by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who was running for office at the time. The messages revealed whom Peña Nieto was considering for his cabinet once he won the election. Another NSA slide displayed communication patterns between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her top advisers.   read more

Michael Sivak wrote for the American Scientist. “I have estimated that in metropolitan Mumbai [India] alone, the large population and hot climate combine to create a potential energy demand for cooling that is about a quarter of the current demand of the entire United States.”   read more

The Swiss banking industry can avoid being probed by the Justice Department if they agree to pay substantial penalties; disclose all of their cross-border activities; provide detailed information on an account-by-account basis for accounts in which U.S. taxpayers have a direct or indirect interest; cooperate in treaty requests for account information; and agree to close accounts of account holders who fail to come into compliance with U.S. reporting obligations.   read more

Charles Falconer, a longtime Labour Party politician, helped introduce Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act. “There is no suggestion that Miranda is a terrorist, or that his detention and questioning at Heathrow was for any other reason than his involvement in his partner Glenn Greenwald’s reporting of the Edward Snowden story. The state has not even hinted there is a justification beyond that involvement,” Falconer wrote.   read more

One internal document showed NSA officials were very pleased once they began eavesdropping on UN talks by tapping into the video conferencing system. “The data traffic gives us internal video teleconferences of the United Nations (yay!),” the document reads, according to Der Spiegel. The 1970s program “Blarney” involved the cooperation of at least one American telecommunications company, while going after “diplomatic establishment, counter-terrorism, foreign government and economic” targets.   read more