While the president of the Palestinian Authority speaks at the United Nations, reporting to government leaders and ambassadors about Palestinian preparedness for an independent state, Yehuda Etzion is working on his own plan for the region.
Etzion, a resident of the settlement Ofra, has a draft master plan for Jerusalem, which he is preparing with a team of Ofra residents and an architectural firm. The plan centers around the Third Temple: where a ring road will pass, where pilgrims will park, where observation points will be located. The Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem will be demolished. They are not part of the plan.
In a stunning conflict of interest, public hearings on federal approval for a proposed tar sands pipeline are being run by a contractor for the pipeline company itself. The U.S. Department of State’s public hearings along the proposed route of the TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline this week are under the purview of Cardno Entrix, a “professional environmental consulting company” that specializes in “permitting and compliance.”
Much of the focus on hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) for natural gas pertains to potential effects of this technology on water resources, as I discussed in an earlier blog entry.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.
With each new change Facebook makes, users' privacy becomes a little less ... nonexistent, if you will. The most recent "News Feed" modifications, for example, display everything you say and do on the site to all of your "friends," and even to the public. And now, even after logging out of Facebook, permanent "cookies" track all your movements on websites that contain Facebook buttons or widgets.
The United States secretly sought Japan's support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world's oceans under the London Convention, an international treaty being drawn up at the time.
It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.
The eastern Ohio area is dotted with old wells and abandoned mines. But the humongous drilling rig in a farm field east of Carrollton represents something new, something that promises to change Ohio forever. 
Raziq has long been publicly suspected of drug trafficking and corruption; allegations that he and his men have been involved in extrajudicial killings, torture, and illegal imprisonment have been trickling out for years. Raziq categorically denies all such charges, telling The Atlantic, “When someone works well, then he finds a lot of enemies who try to ruin his name.”
