GCHQ planted malware on Gemalto computers, which enabled the agency to steal the encryption keys the company put on SIMs sold to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and other wireless companies around the world. Having the key makes it a snap to read all the information, whether voice or data, coming from a phone.   read more

Obama administration officials said Comey wasn’t invited because they didn’t want the conference to focus on law enforcement. However law enforcement officials from other countries, including Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the offspring of the KGB, did attend the meeting in Washington.   read more

Washington agreed to pay $1.9 million for work to mitigate the damage caused to the coral reef. But an environmental group claims it will cost between $17 million and $27 million. "The said financial compensation is not enough to...absolve the U.S. Navy for the crime [it committed] in Tubbataha. The U.S. Navy not only incurred considerable damage to our world heritage site, they also clearly violated our Philippine sovereignty and laws,” said Clemente Bautista.   read more

“Hicks was the first prisoner to be convicted by a Guantánamo military commission, by virtue of his guilty plea, and he’s now the first to have his conviction vacated,” said McClatchy. “I was subjected to five and a half years of physical and psychological torture that I will now live with always,” said Hicks. He claims to have been subjected to waterboarding, beatings, and forced drugging. Threatened with being sent to Egypt to be tortured, he agreed to the condition for release—plead guilty.   read more

With the encouragement of U.S. defense contractors, the Obama administration has, for the first time, decided to allow the export of armed drones to countries other than the United Kingdom. The foreign governments next in line to acquire weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles weren't identified. But it was reported that “allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region” have wanted to get their hands on drones that can attack targets.   read more

Federal authorities are racing against time. The remaining suspects in the shooting of four African Americans are currently in their 80s and 90s. The murders took place on July 25, 1946 at the Moore’s Ford Bridge, where two black couples were forced out of a car, tied up and shot 60 times by a white mob. A new report by the Equal Justice Initiative says the state of Georgia had more lynchings, 586, from 1877 to 1950 than any other state.   read more

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said U.S. and coalition strikes have killed 6,000 ISIS fighters. “That no civilians could be among that figure strikes observers and even military officials as all but impossible,” wrote Yousef. Particularly with 2,300 strikes delivering 8,200 missiles. “Not only does it reinforce the view that the lives of ordinary Iraqis and Syrians...do not matter, it flies in the face of the military’s own recommendations," wrote Gregory and Edney-Browne.   read more

Among the attacks by non-Muslims mentioned in the SPLC report are the April 2012 killings of three African-Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by racists Jake England and Alvin Watts; the August 2012 killing of six Sikhs by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page in Oak Creek, Wisconsin: and the June 2014 shooting deaths of two police officers and a third man who tried to intervene by anti-government extremists Jerad and Amanda Miller in Las Vegas.   read more

Oklahoma rocketed to the top of the earthquake charts in 2014, tripling the number of 3.0 shakers in California, the one-time undisputed champion of the United States. But like the steroid scandal that tarnished baseball and ruined the statistical landscape in the 1990s, many scientists are pointing to the introduction of performance-enhancing chemicals to explain the recent 40-fold-plus increase in quakes—in Oklahoma’s case, hydraulic fracturing (fracking).   read more

Pharmaceutical giant Merck is being accused falsifying data so it could sell a vaccine that wasn’t as effective as advertised and didn’t work for thousands of individuals. Merck is being sued by two virologists who say Merck knowingly faked data about the effectiveness of the vaccine and still put it on the market. Two former Merck employees said in 2010 that the company infused a blood sample with animal antibodies to make it look like the vaccine had elicited increased antibody production.   read more

In 78 published papers on clinical trials with which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found objectionable conditions or practices significant enough to warrant regulatory action, only three mentioned problems with the trials. The violations included researchers falsifying data and occurrences where clinical trial participants should have been ruled ineligible.   read more

The real force behind the lawsuit is a group of conservative lawyers and think tanks bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act. They include the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Former CEI chairman Michael Greve has reportedly described Obamacare as a “bastard” that “has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene.” If the four plaintiffs win their case, up to 13 million Americans could lose their health insurance.   read more

About a dozen protesters in Idaho, Oregon and Washington have received calls from FBI agents saying they are seeking information about the protests. An attorney helping the demonstrators said the bureau appears to be keeping an eye on those opposed to the extraction of the toxic oil and the controversial pipeline project. A member of one protest organization said it was unacceptable what the FBI was doing since all they’re doing is practicing civil disobedience.   read more

Secret HSBC documents revealed dealings with associates of traffickers in blood diamonds and associates of such authoritarian rulers as ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, former Tunisian president Ben Ali and current Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. Some of HSBC’s clients have previously been linked to al Qaeda. A 2012 U.S. Senate report cited an alleged list of financial benefactors to the terrorist organization. That list had been referred to as the “Golden Chain” by Osama bin Laden.   read more

Moussaoui’s claims could be refuted—or verified—if a 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission report that has been kept secret was released, but neither President George W. Bush nor President Barack Obama, has done so. Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), who has seen the section, has repeatedly called for its release, stating, “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.”   read more

Post, speaking at the Air Force’s annual Weapons and Tactics conference, said, “[a]nyone who is passing information to Congress about A-10 capabilities is committing treason,” according to Tony Carr at the blog John Q. Public. Post prefaced that remark by saying: “if anyone accuses me of saying this, I will deny it.”   read more