The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.
The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units
U.S. sending hundreds more spies overseas
Alex Baer: Really Looking at Vision, Sight, and Seeing
For such a visual world, we humans sure have problems distinguishing between and among vision, sight, and seeing.
Chip in some added challenges from interpretation, translation, or point of view, and coming to grips with the world around us becomes quite a balancing act. There's more to understanding what's going on than just taking a snapshot of the view.
Unlike cameras, human try to make sense of what it all means, from the infamous Big Picture down to the smallest detail. When the light hits the medium in a camera, the camera's work is done. But, when light enters the human eye, the work has only just begun.
The 12 biggest companies paying workers the least
The gap between rich and poor is well illustrated by the large multibillion-dollar corporations employing thousands of low-wage workers. With the Great Recession over, not only are many of the companies posting record profits, but executive pay remains extremely high.
Meantime, the federal minimum wage earned by many workers at those companies is worth 30% less than it was in 1968 in purchasing power, according to a 2012 report from the National Employment Law Project.
Two-thirds of low-wage workers — those paid less than $10 an hour — are employed by large corporations with at least 100 employees, NELP says.
As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price
A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.
The cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid.
Australia smokers given plain packs
Australia has become the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. From now, all tobacco company logos and colours will be banned from packets.
They have been replaced by a dreary, uniform, green/brown, colour accompanied by a raft of anti-smoking messages and photographs. The only concession to the tobacco companies is their name and the name of the brand variant in small print at the bottom of the box.
Alex Baer: Transmogrifiers Only Need Apply
Anyone halfway intelligent and alert can pay attention to current events, put the pieces together for themselves, thereby triggering hundreds of emotional responses ranging from idle, bemused concerned to stark terror and utter fear.
It may be that anyone who is completely, fully intelligent never dwells in the vast middle, but operates only at either end of the spectrum -- either completely tuned out and disinterested, or wealthy as all-get out, and out buying their own reality, somewhere pleasant.
Associated Press Publishes Ridiculous Fake "Evidence" of Iranian Nuke Program
Two physics experts say a document obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday, which the news organization said “suggests” that Iran is “working on” a nuclear weapon, contains a “massive error” and might be a “hoax.”
The AP’s publication of the document generated headlines on Tuesday because the graph, according to the AP, showed that Iran was running “computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.”
Bradley Manning: a tale of liberty lost in America
The US does nothing to punish those guilty of war crimes or Wall Street fraud, yet demonises the whistleblower.
Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.
The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as "cruel and inhuman". President Obama's state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning's treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning's conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.
GOP lawmakers try to supress fracking study
A group of GOP House energy leaders advised Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to exercise caution in a possible study on the health impacts of natural-gas drilling.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering examining a potential link between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and drinking water contamination.
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