Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge
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The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.
The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.
Erdogan takes combative stand on return to Turkey
More than 10,000 supporters cheer prime minister in wake of anti-government protests
Turkey’s prime minister took a combative stance on his return to the country early this morning, telling supporters that the nationwide protests must come to an end.
In the first extensive public show of support since anti-government protests erupted last week, more than 10,000 supporters cheered Recep Tayyip Erdogan with rapturous applause outside Istanbul’s international airport.
Despite earlier comments that suggested he could be softening his stand, Mr Erdogan delivered a fiery speech on his return from a four-day trip to North Africa.
Warming World: It's Time to Give Up the 2 Degree Target
Limiting global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius, as called for by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has become patently unrealistic. Political will is lacking and emissions continue to increase. The target needs to be revised.
At the United Nations climate conference in the former German capital of Bonn on Wednesday, delegates and stakeholders discussed the options for reaching the overarching objective of international climate policy: that of limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That upper limit is considered to be the threshold to "dangerous climate change."
Suu Kyi reveals presidential aspirations
June 7, 2013 - 11:24AMLindsay Murdoch
South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media
Mynamar's opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has declared she wants to be her country's next president and called for a military-drafted law to be amended to allow her to contest elections in 2015.
“If I pretended that I didn't want to run for president I wouldn't be honest,” Ms Suu Kyi told delegates at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in the country's capital Naypyitaw.
"I want to be president and I am quite frank about it,” she said.
The comments increase pressure on Myanmar's quasi-civilian government to amend a law that blocks anyone whose spouses or children are foreigners from leading the country.
Uncertain future for soldiers of fortune in volatile East Africa
What do a handful of South African mercenaries do for an encore in Somalia once all the pirates are gone?
It's not easy to be a mercenary these days. The once-booming markets in Iraq and Afghanistan have shrunk, and lingering controversy surrounding the mercenary poster-boy company Blackwater has served to paint private security contractors as reckless and unaccountable war junkies.
A good gig as a soldier of fortune is becoming harder to come by.
Yet there's one war-torn country where demand for guns-for-hire is still high. A contingent of mercenaries has managed to carve out a niche for itself in the failed state of Somalia. Initially brought in on an internationally controversial mission to combat pirates terrorising Somalia's coastal waters, the mostly South African corps has now turned to fighting Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked terrorist menace, al-Shabab.
7 June 2013 Last updated at 02:20 GMT
Qusair - the Syrian city that died
There is a maxim that's often been invoked in war - to save a city, you have to destroy it.
Before it was plunged into battle some 18 months ago, it was a thriving border city of 30,000 set in lush groves of olives and apricots.
Now, local officials tell us, only about 500 people still live in a place that lies in utter ruin.
On our second visit to Qusair since it fell to government forces in the early hours on Wednesday, we found a calmer place, with none of the edginess or frenzied celebration we witnessed in the immediate aftermath of battle.
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