Israeli boats have obstructed the path of a Libyan cargo ship en route to the Gaza Strip.

The ship was said to be carrying about 3,000 tonnes of goods for residents of the Strip in defiance of an Israeli sea and land blockade of the territory.

Monday's scheduled docking was the first attempt by a foreign government to break the blockade.

The global automotive industry faced a fresh wave of bad news Monday, as data showed drops in Swedish, Japanese and South Korean November car sales, with figures for France, Spain and Italy due out later in the day. Automakers are cutting production as well as seeking help from governments to survive as they battle against the effects of the financial crisis and worsening economic climate on consumer confidence.

Breaking with a military tradition of keeping silent about policy, a top German general has branded his country's efforts in Afghanistan a failure, singling out its poor record in training the Afghan police and allocating development aid.

Some staffers reviewing candidates for jobs they held in Clinton Administration
Exactly where does change end and President Bill Clinton begin?

President-Elect Obama will announce New York Democratic senator Sen. Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State today -- the most public signal of the two primary campaigns' rapprochement. Beneath the surface, the distance between Obama and Clinton has shrunk even further.

Politics surely makes for strange bedfellows. President-elect Barack Obama will officially announce on Monday his choice of New York Senator Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, a position that will make her the nation's, and the world's, top diplomat. It's an appointment that for some comes as no surprise, as some sort of Obama/Clinton marriage always seemed inevitable. But to others, this decision is sure to be truly unfathomable.

As Mumbai struggles to return to normalcy in the wake of terrorist attacks, a Pakistani village named Faridkot is being mentioned in the Indian media as the place of origin of the lone gunman arrested by Indian commandos. He has been identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab.

The media, however, conveniently avoids mentioning that there is also a town with the same name in the Indian state of Punjab.

The company's decision followed actions by the LA Auto Show to muzzle AFS Trinity from highlighting the 150 miles per gallon fuel economy of its XH150 prototype vehicles. The suppression by the automakers of information about technologies such as this raises serious questions about the judgment, vision, intentions and capabilities of the leadership of these companies, said Edward W. Furia, Chairman and CEO of AFS Trinity.

Israel's national intelligence agency Mossad has been behind a failed coup in Turkey, the Turkish daily newspaper, Milliyet reports.

A secret investigation into detained Ergenekon group members and other studies outside Turkey indicate that Mossad orchestrated the coup plot against the Turkish government, the report says.

The problem is that since 1944 the United States had promised to act responsibly and hold the value of the dollar constant, controlling the money supply, and thus preventing inflation and runaway booms like the gold standard did, so that all the other countries could take the easy way out and merely use the dollar as their "gold" reserves against which they could value their own currencies, instead of hassling with all that metal back and forth.

BABIES with a severe form of epilepsy risk having their diagnosis delayed and their treatment compromised because of a company's patent on a key gene.

It is the first evidence that private intellectual property rights over human DNA are adversely affecting medical care.

Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Sunday called for closer cooperation between Iran, India, and Pakistan in their efforts to bring back “tranquility” to the war-torn Afghanistan.

“Resolving the current crisis in Afghanistan requires extensive cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran, India and Pakistan. This cooperation can bring tranquility to the region,” Rafsanjani told visiting Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

He said the situation of foreign troops in Afghanistan is similar to that of the Soviet army in 1979-1989 war.

Matichon quotes PAD spokesman Anchalee as stating on the PAD stage that PAD will send people to surround Channel 3 as they are unhappy about the coverage of the PAD protests on "Reung Low Chow Nee" and the "attack" they came under this morning. This will affect Channel 3's coverage at the airport. They are revoking their accreditation.

At least five terrorist gunmen have evaded capture in Mumbai and could make a secondary strike on India's financial capital, it was feared this morning.

Mumbai’s night of terror underscores a phenomenon concealed by the Indian government and intelligence agencies and deliberately ignored by a biased Anglo-American media for a long time: The rise of a virulent form of Hindu terrorism that begets violence from other minorities. Here is a list of almost one hundred groups that are fighting the Indian government. All of them thrive in India.

European Union observers in Georgia say they will move their offices closer to a volatile area around the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Piles of sand and mud began popping up in front of houses in Rafah last week. The traditional signs of home renovations or construction, the neighborhood wondered about the reasons behind these piles, since no construction materials have come into Gaza for months.

On closer inspection it becomes obvious that the piles cannot be construction materials, since the sand is not the same color of the sand from Gaza’s abandoned settlements, from where most material has been salvaged.

The sand, in fact, is the same color as the sand beneath the homes of the southern area of the Gaza Strip.

Georgian and separatist South Ossetian authorities are accusing each other of opening fire across the line of control in the ex-Soviet republic.

Russia is developing missiles designed to avoid being hit by space-based missile defence systems that could be deployed by the United States, a top Russian general was quoted as saying Monday.

"Development is now under way on the combat outfitting of missiles whose flight falls outside the range of space-based missile defence systems," Nikolai Solovtsov, the commander of Russia's missile forces, told Interfax news agency.

Solovtsov called the project a countermeasure to what he described as US plans to deploy weapons in space, according to Interfax.

A day after he sent Russian forces into South Ossetia to repel the Georgian army, President Dmitry Medvedev responded to mounting Western criticism by saying the truth was on Russia's side and that, eventually, it would become apparent to the whole world.

That day has finally come, and Russia is vindicated. Its story has not changed and is holding up, while Saakashvili's version is collapsing. Medvedev's credibility is rising.

President George W. Bush pledged full U.S. support to India after the 60-hour siege of Mumbai killed hundreds, including at least six Americans, in the bloodiest assault in the South Asian nation in 15 years.

“The killers who struck this week are brutal and violent, but terror will not have the final word,” Bush said yesterday as returned to the White House after spending Thanksgiving at Camp David in Maryland. India “can count on the world’s oldest democracy to stand by their side.”

On Sunday, Indian media began reporting that the only attacker captured alive, a Versace-T-shirted 21-year-old by the name of Ajmal Amir Kamal, was Pakistani, and that he had identified all his fellow militants as being trained by the banned Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba. Pakistanis are suspicious of these claims. "There is simply not enough evidence at this point to blame Pakistan," says Najam Sethi, editor of the English political weekly, the Friday Times.

A Muslim graveyard has refused to bury nine gunmen who terrorized Mumbai over three days last week, leaving at least 172 people dead and wreaking havoc at some of its most famous landmarks.

The men are not true followers of the Islamic faith, according to the influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre (three-hectare) Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai.

"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee. "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime."

The discovery of a Temple-era pomegranate, in particular, was always going to provoke excitement. The pomegranate is a deeply resonant fruit in Judaism that, according to the Bible, was used as a decorative motif in Solomon's temple. There is a Rabbinic reference to its seeds, which in legend always number 613 - one for each of the commandments of the Bible. One Israel museum press officer explains the effect of seeing such relics: "It is very exciting, very emotional, very Jewish feelings," she says.

With a traumatized nation and a paralyzed government, a core group of secular ideologues and Hindu nationalists are executing a ‘soft coup’ in New Delhi to bring to power hawks who want to pursue America’s agenda of grooming India as a regional policeman, sort out Pakistan and confront China.

India will self-destroy in the process. India’s military and intelligence has been penetrated. The man who uncovered the plot, Hemant Karkare, the anti-terrorism chief of Mumbai police, was the first target of the mysterious terrorists. Patriotic Indians need to wake up and save their country.

Across America's upper strata, rich folk like Hirtenstein are experiencing an unfamiliar emotion: luxury shame. The late Coco Chanel, doyenne of 20th century fashion, long ago said that luxury is "the opposite of vulgarity," not of poverty. But in these recessionary times, it seems vulgar to flaunt one's luxurious lifestyle.

Am I premature in assuming that, once again, Israel was deep in the fell doings of one more outrage against the human estate? It seems not and ‘seems’ is the problem. It doesn’t matter how clearly something seems to be, because it seems that few are going to hear about it.

Early results from the Black Friday weekend, which kicks off holiday sales one day after Thanksgiving, bolstered forecasts by some analysts that total holiday sales could contract for the first time since that data started being collected in the early 1990s.

ShopperTrak, which measures customer traffic, said Saturday that Black Friday sales rose 3 percent to $10.6 billion. That was slower than an 8.3 percent rise in 2007.

"The initial response by many people may be positive," said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman of the increase.

The mainstream press will not show you the true horrors of the war, but the miracle of the Internet transmits reality as soon as it happens. WARNING: Graphic Images.

As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease's spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

"AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it's just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies," said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

Washington is Fostering Political Divisions between India and Pakistan

Growing concerns over the exposure of pregnant women to chemicals that may lead to birth defects have prompted calls for a new EU-wide cosmetics labelling system which would mark out some products as off-limits to mothers-to-be.

The Imperial College London study suggested that the birth defects were linked to chemicals in hairspray shown to disrupt the hormonal systems in the body and affect reproductive development.

"One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning–and should at least be vociferously praising–everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution.

Observers are already seeing how the hawks within the Indian establishment and Hindu militant organizations have seized the initiative from a paralyzed government. The Indian army and intelligence are already penetrated. Now the real culprits are channeling the fears of a traumatized people toward Pakistan.

According to a report by The Associated Press, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, finds it "baffling" that there are apparently no commercial satellite pictures available of a site in Syria taken in the months just after the Israelis allegedly destroyed whatever was allegedly there prior to September 6th, 2007.

Except, of course, for the before/after photos, allegedly taken via commercial satellite, somehow obtained and published [.pdf] last year by David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security.

Amir Kasab, 21, told investigators that this was why they targeted the Chabad House, also known as the Nariman House in Mumbai, an outreach center meant for local Jews and Jews touring India, including Israelis. Sources said Kasab's colleagues killed in the operation had stayed at the Nariman House in the past.

"They have stayed in Nariman house on rental basis identifying themselves as Malaysian students.'' said a source. Police were trying to determine why Nariman House rooms were given to non-Jews, the Times of India reported.

Hassan, whose pretzel cart has sat outside the Disney store on New York’s Fifth Avenue for almost 10 years, had never seen a Black Friday like it.

“Last year, I sold almost 1,000 breads. This year it’s only 100 or 150,” he said.

"One police officer who encountered the gunmen as they entered the Jewish centre told the Guardian the attackers were "white" (all of them? How many of them), although this could mean they were paler-skinned Indians from the country's north.

"I went into the building late last night," he said. "I got a shock because they were white. I was expecting them to look like us. They fired three shots. I fired 10 back."

The U.S. government will not reach its goal of balancing the federal budget by 2012 because of the response to the global financial crisis, the White House said on Wednesday.

Just before the United States entered that war, our politicians bailed out the Wall Street bankers, reimbursing them for huge, unsecured loans to European governments. Those governments had spent the money for U.S.-made war materials. U.S. taxpayers got their worthless IOUs.

Discussion about the swindle was suppressed by professionally organized pro-war demonstrations, propaganda hoopla about "freedom" and "democracy," and "sedition" laws to imprison anyone who told the truth.

Just like the Neocon/Zionists, the RSS are staging acts of terrorism and putting the blame on muslims. However, unlike the Neocon/Zionists, the RSS terrorists have been exposed by some honest elements whithin the Indian police.

Pakistani troops and Air Force have been put on high alert in the face of "escalation" by India on the eastern border and the forces deployed on the western frontier could also be pulled back, according to local press reports Sunday.

Leaders in Pakistan have condemned the Mumbai attacks and pledged action against any group found to be involved, saying that any increase in Pakistan-India tensions would be a victory for the extremists.

Few people in Vermont remember Dr. Robert W. Hyde, but one of his former patients can’t forget him. The doctor was involved in one of the nation’s darkest chapters in medical science: In the 1950s, Hyde conducted drug and psychological experiments at a Boston hospital through funding that apparently originated with the CIA. Later, he became director of research at the Vermont State Hospital.

The patient, Karen Wetmore, is convinced that Hyde and other researchers subjected her and possibly other patients to experiments paid for by the CIA at the Waterbury facility.

The Chinese Communist party’s mouthpiece — the People’s Daily — has carried a news article, indicating involvement of Hindu radicals in the Mumbai Terror attacks. The article has based its argument on a “red thread” worn by the attackers on their wrists.

While American TV News is calling the terrorism in Mumbia "India's 9/11" and blaming radical Islamic terrorists as the culprits, some foreign news is beginning to trickle in with a different story: that perhaps the real culprits behind the terrorism where in fact Hindu and white extremists pretending to be Muslims, a classic false flag tactic.

— A highly decorated six-year veteran who had been named noncommissioned officer of the year for the Chemical Corps. He was accused of having sex with four trainees, including in the unit supply room and laundry room, his truck, a hospital room, a hotel room and his home.

— A drill sergeant with 16 years of service accused of having sex with five of his soldiers on and off post, including once in a vehicle while another recruit drove, and three times at a fellow drill sergeant's apartment.

Few prominent economists will say it, but to me it looks and feels like we are in another Great Depression or a reasonable facsimile.

The current meltdown is dubbed a "financial crisis." But a rose by any other name would still inflict the same hardship and suffering on most people and businesses.

Clearly, the lessons have not been learned from the Herbert Hoover era. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, says the current banking crisis is "functionally similar to that of the Great Depression."

Look, it is this simple - the Intelligence was not just sexed-up, it was concocted - further, the legal advice was not just sexed-up, it was also concocted - so, "the supreme international war crime" (according to the Geneva Conventions) of waging aggressive war on a sovereign state, was indeed committed by Blair, Goldsmith, Straw, Hoon, Falconer, Morgan and others.

Zimbabwe health authorities say 425 people have died in a cholera outbreak and they are concerned it will worsen with the onset of the rainy season.

More than 11,000 people have been sickened since August, the official Sunday Mail newspaper reported. The number of cases has shot up in the past two weeks.

City authorities in Harare on Friday offered free graves to impoverished families of cholera victims.

The young gunmen said little during the harrowing drive, but spoke Hindi with a strong Punjabi, north-Indian accent.

Indian intelligence officials, too, were surprised by the nationality profile of the eleven. "They are surely Muslims; they say that they have been on tabligh (preaching Islam) in India for two months. But they are Israeli nationals from the West Bank," said a Central Intelligence official.

Hundreds of people were killed in the central Nigerian city of Jos when Christians and Muslims clashed over the result of a local election, witnesses said Saturday.

Local residents said several churches and mosques were razed in the violence, which started with a rumour that the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) had lost the election to the federal ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).

The ANPP is perceived locally to be a predominantly Muslim party, and the PDP to be mainly Christian.

India will increase security in the country and on its borders to a "war level" in the wake of the deadly attacks in Mumbai that have been blamed on militants linked to Pakistan, a government minister said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday called for developing an alternative economy in the face of the “total failure” of socialism and capitalism.

Routine to us, perhaps astonishing to much of the world, this peaceful passing of "the football" will propel Obama into a maelstrom. What awaits the new commander in chief is the weighty responsibility of defending the United States - and a nasty brew of nuclear weapons problems that range from the threat of terrorist attacks to potential new regional and superpower arms races. Iran and North Korea are rushing headlong toward building nuclear arsenals. And the main arms reduction treaty with Russia expires next year.