Zookeepers at the Giza Zoo in Egypt accidentally killed three black bears and officials then tried to cover up their negligence. A local newspaper, Al Watan, uncovered their deception and now activists are calling to close all seven government zoos due to prolonged abuse of wild animals throughout the system.

After three black bears died overnight on May 5, 2013 at the Giza zoo in Egypt, officials released an official report claiming that they had mauled each other to death. Two females were said to have fought each other over a male bear – a fight that lasted from 3pm to midnight, they said.

An in-house pathology report detailed injuries sustained by the bears, including broken necks and lower jaws, chest bones and spinal cords. Suspicious of the various inconsistencies revealed in the report, local press and animal activists decided to investigate further, and it didn’t take long to realize that zoo officials had masterminded a terrible cover up that would be comical if their negligence was not so complete.

Spring floods across the Midwest are expected to contribute to a very large and potentially record-setting 2013 Gulf of Mexico "dead zone," according to a University of Michigan ecologist and colleagues who released their annual forecast today, along with one for the Chesapeake Bay. The Gulf forecast, one of two announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, calls for an oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic, region of between 7,286 and 8,561 square miles, which would place it among the 10 largest on record.

The low end of the forecast range is well above the long-term average and would be roughly equivalent to the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined. The upper end would exceed the largest ever reported (8,481 square miles in 2002) and would be comparable in size to New Jersey.

Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste, some of it from as far away as the Corn Belt, is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the annual Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. In its 2001 and 2008 action plans, the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, a coalition of federal, state and tribal agencies, set the goal of reducing the five-year running average areal extent of the Gulf hypoxic zone to 5,000 square kilometers (1,950 square miles) by 2015.

When two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, it felt as though the shrapnel shot all the way to Brazil. For those responsible for security during the Confederations Cup and other major events to be held in the country from now until 2016, the tragedy in Boston reaffirmed the need to be prepared to handle terrorist threats. Brazil historically hasn’t been a target of terrorist attacks, but the high-profile event has put authorities on alert.

In addition to the Confederations Cup (six cities, June 15-30), Brazil will host World Youth Day (Rio, July 23-28), the World Cup (12 cities, 2014), and the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Rio, 2016). “We’re working to ensure that these major events transpire without incident, and integration [among the security forces] will be one of the most important factors,” Defense Minister Celso Armorim said in March upon approving the Strategic Security Plan for the 2014 World Cup.

Hamid Karzai

Afghanistan has suspended negotiations with the U.S. on a bilateral security deal, in a dispute over proposed U.S. talks with the Taliban. A statement from Afghanistan's National Security Council on June 19 cited "the contradiction between acts and the statements made" by the U.S. in regard to the peace process. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said on June 19, the same day that U.S. made a symbolic turn-over of overall national security to the Afghani government.

In a statement, Karzai said, "In view of the contradiction between acts and the statements made by the United States of America in regard to the peace process, the Afghan government suspended the negotiations, currently underway in Kabul between Afghan and U.S. delegations on the bilateral security agreement." He was apparently miffed about being excluded from the talks.

The U.S. talks with Afghanistan are focused on what American and coalition security forces will remain in the country after 2014. On June 18, the U.S. announced it was opening talks with the Taliban on on June 20 in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, in a push to establish a framework for ending more than a decade of war in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said he is not surprised by the Afghan government's reaction. He says U.S. officials had anticipated that there would be some areas of "friction" at the start of the process. During a June 19 news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said he hoped that despite challenges, the reconciliation process in Afghanistan would proceed.

Controversies are taking a toll on U.S. President Barack Obama's popularity with Americans, according to a public opinion poll published by CNN. The data show Obama's approval rating fell eight percentage points over the past month, to 45 percent. CNN said that is the lowest approval rating in a year and a half.

The poll follows revelations about government surveillance of Americans, unfair treatment of conservative groups by the tax agency, government snooping into reporters' phone records, and questions about the way the administration handled an attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya.

The U.S. military says that within the next three years, it will put women in key combat roles from which they were previously excluded.

American women have been serving in combat roles and hundreds have been killed on the front lines for years, but they have been excluded from key positions in areas including Special Operations and infantry.

In January, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced changes to regulations banning women from 237,000 positions.

On Tuesday, officials from all four branches of the U.S. military gathered at the Pentagon to announce a timeline for those changes. The Marines already have come up with new gender-neutral physical tests, and by the middle of 2015, the Army will have new standards that will allow women to be part of its elite Ranger regiment.

Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez and Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

A majority of Latin Americans have a negative view of Iran, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center released the same week in which Iranians went to the polls to elect a new president.

The June 14 election, which saw a turnout of nearly 73% of about 50.5 million eligible voters, was won by 64-year-old moderate cleric and ex-lead nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani, who will succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in early August.

According to the June 11 survey, more than half of respondents in Brazil (72%), Chile (55%), Mexico (52%) and Venezuela (51%) expressed an unfavorable opinion of Iran. Negative reactions also were the majority in the other countries included in the survey, including Argentina (49%), El Salvador (36%) and Bolivia (35%).

More than half of respondents in the seven countries in the region who were surveyed also said they don’t believe the Iranian government respects the personal freedoms of its people. The percentage reached 82% in Brazil, followed by Chile (65%), El Salvador (64%), Argentina (56%), Mexico (55%), Venezuela (53%) and Bolivia (50%).

President Obama officially declared June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. However, despite advances in civil rights, sexual minority youth are still at greater risk for suicide than their heterosexual peers, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

“Psychologists sometimes face a particular dilemma when treating sexual minority youth, many of whom are still in the process of developing their sexual identity,” said Alex Dopp. “Serious mental strain can result if a core piece of a young person’s emerging identity is unacceptable to his or her family. Parents may observe this anguish and want to know what is troubling their children. However, when therapists share that information with parents, they may reveal a youth’s sexual identity, which may exacerbate the problem.”

For example, parents may bring a depressed and suicidal adolescent in for therapy, Dopp explained. The youth may then confide in the psychologist that they are suicidal because they fear their family won’t accept their identity as a sexual minority. The therapist faces an ethical dilemma: on the one hand, bringing the youth and parents closer together is critical to the youth’s adjustment, but on the other hand, opening up to the parents  could exacerbate the youth’s suffering and suicide risk (if revealing their sexual minority status leads to increased conflict in the home, parental rejection, etc.).

Inner-city schools in the United States are in crisis, plagued by high drop-out rates, crime-infested neighborhoods and underfunded programs.

Kid Pan Alley, a small, creative non-profit that conducts songwriting workshops for students nationwide, recently visited a school in Washington's tough Anacostia neighborhood.

Songwriter and recording artist Paul Reisler founded the organization in 1999, working with more than 35,000 students and producing over 2,200 songs since then.

An influential musician who has performed widely since the 1970s, Reisler founded and led the influential folk band Trapezoid and continues to perform with his new group Paul Reisler & A Thousand Questions. He said music's transformative power can teach children skills they would not otherwise receive in an American educational system that relies increasingly on standardized tests to measure success.

While many Americans want to reduce both pollution and energy costs, the nation's automobile-based transportation system undermines these goals by being largely dependent on petroleum.

But in the western state of Oklahoma, Ethel Clayton drives a truck that can run on much cheaper and cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG).

"Not just because you save a whole lot of money, but it is also good for the environment and it also keeps your engine in better condition," Clayton said.

Thanks to support from local natural gas producing companies, there are plenty of CNG filling sites around Oklahoma, and Clayton says online guides also show places to refuel when traveling out of state. "They will actually route your destination where there will be CNG filling stations," she said. "So it is getting better."

The dramatic increase in U.S. natural gas production has made the fuel cheaper and driven projects that would use this resource to replace far dirtier fossil fuels. Companies are experimenting with various ways to use natural gas as a transportation fuel.

When an outgoing president has as many enemies as does Iran's Mahmud Ahmadinejad, there would seem to be little future left for him.

It is not only Ahmadinejad's reputation abroad that plunged during his two terms in office. Statements at the United Nations in which he called the Holocaust a myth and the 9/11 attacks a "mysterious" precursor to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq helped make him an unpopular figure in many countries.

But more dangerously, Ahmadinejad's standing has also plummeted within Iran's establishment itself. That is due to his efforts to increase his power at the expense of influential figures around Iran's supreme leader. And it suggests that when he leaves office on August 3 he could find a host of enemies gunning for him.

President Obama's decision to arm Syrian rebels -- after resisting such a course for nearly two years -- has come under some withering criticism. Marc Lynch, who has long opposed military intervention in Syria, calls it "probably his worst foreign policy decision since taking office," while Daniel Larison casts it as "certainly one of the two or three worst [decisions]." Despite being on the opposite side of the debate -- I began writing in favor of military intervention nearly a year and a half ago -- it is hard to disagree with their assessment that providing "small arms" to the rebels is unlikely to make much difference.

What makes Obama's decision so unsatisfying -- and even infuriating -- to both sides is that even he seems to acknowledge this. As the New York Times reports, "Mr. Obama expressed no confidence it would change the outcome, but privately expressed hope it might buy time to bring about a negotiated settlement."

The American people often prove to be more sophisticated about themselves, their rights, and their government than they get credit for. Even if they can't enumerate the clauses, most people know the Bill of Rights is designed to restrict the government's ability to curb their speech or religious practice; take their weapons; search their persons or property without a warrant; make them incriminate themselves; deny them a lawyer, a speedy trial, and a jury of their peers; or set excessive bail. Some people know that at least in peacetime, the Army can't live in your house without your permission. But they're not absolutists about it.

Even after the discovery that the Federal Government has been collecting voluminous data -- including aggregated information on credit card usage, e-mails, telephones and EZ-passes -- on American citizens, the Pew Research Company found that 56 percent of Americans consider it "acceptable" for the NSA to get "secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism," while 41 percdent said it was not. In addition, 62 percent say, "it is more important for the government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy," while 34 percent reject government intrusion, "even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats." 

Iranians went to the polls Friday to elect outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's successor. Candidates reported few serious problems with the process, and the losers sent congratulations to the eventual winner, Hassan Rouhani. Compared to the political instability that followed Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election, this process was relatively boring. But however the news media felt about the election, Iran needs domestic stability if it is going to change its foreign policy in a very challenging geopolitical environment. Domestic stability has been the first goal for any regime that would project power from Iran's central highlands. The Persian Empire first emerged only after a central power subjugated the various groups of Indo-Iranian, Turkic and Semitic peoples within its borders.

 The June 14 Iranian presidential election was won by Hassan Fereidoun Rowhani. With approximately 51 percent of the votes, he was far ahead of the five other candidates.

Rowhani was born in 1948 in the north Iranian city of Sorkheh, Semnan Province. He is a cleric who carries the title Hojjat-ol-Eslam. In 1960 he began studying religion in Semnan Province and then transferred to the religious seminary in the city of Qom. As a young man he was involved in the revolutionary movement against the Shah, for which he was arrested on several occasions by Iran’s security services. In 1978 he joined Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution, who was living in exile in Paris.

Following the latest in a string of firebombing attacks on Jewish targets in Montreal, Canada, a Jewish community group is demanding answers from the police.

The B’nai Brith Canada is “calling on the Montreal Police to get to the bottom of the attacks before people are seriously injured,” wrote the group in an email to reporters. “The Police must explore every avenue of investigation and put an end to these attacks,” said Steven Slimovitch, the organization’s National Legal Council.

The B’nai Brith expressed concern on behalf of Montreal’s Jewish community over the frequency of the attacks and how they have been able to continue unabated. “This is the 3rd Jewish-owned business that has been fire-bombed in less than 2 weeks and our concern for the safety and welfare of the community is high. The Police must take concrete steps to reassure the community that their safety is not in jeopardy,” Slimovitch demanded.

Folks, there is reason to be hopeful that our lawmakers can put aside their ideological differences every now and then and do what makes sense for constituents.

In fact, last week some of the people we have elected to represent us — at least at the state level — even showed a willingness to put careers at risk by doing what they believe is the right thing.

One of the most contentious issues during state legislative sessions this year has been whether to expand the Medicaid program for low-income individuals and families, as Congress intended when it enacted health care reform three years ago.

The state-level debate was made necessary when the Supreme Court ruled last year that Congress can’t force the states to expand their Medicaid programs, even if the feds will always cover no less than 90 percent of the cost. Medicaid is jointly funded by the states and the federal government.

The Obama administration promised four years ago that it would significantly shrink the number of private contractors working for U.S. intelligence agencies. But a key member of Congress said this week she remains unconvinced the administration has done enough to shift critical intelligence-related jobs back to government employees.

The most recent public data from the intelligence community depict a one-year decline of 1 percent in the number of contractors holding security clearances, leaving private-sector workers still holding about 22 percent of all those clearances.

In the wake of new controversy about such work, stemming from the recent leak of secrets about U.S. surveillance tactics by a federal contract employee in Hawaii, officials this week cited the decline as a sign of the administration’s commitment to reduce the outsourcing of intelligence work, reversing a hasty expansion of the contractor population after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

At least five and perhaps as many as eight of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court are millionaires according to recently released financial disclosures, and only two hold any consumer debt.

Assets on the forms are reported in a range making it impossible to say precisely how much each justice is worth, but suffice to say, none of them are hurting financially.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg boasts the highest potential net worth at $18.1 million with Stephen Breyer a close second at $17.1 million. Both were appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

However, Ginsburg’s actual net worth may be as low as $4.4 million and Breyer’s as low as $5 million. Federal officials are also exempt from disclosing the value of their homes, making an accurate calculation even more difficult. After collecting nearly $2 million in book advances, Justice Sonia Sotomayor's assets rose to between $1.7 and $10.3 million, ranking her No. 3 in terms of highest potential net worth. Sotomayor is an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Award-winning investigative author Edwin Black will detail the design specifics of the Iranian nuclear warhead in a special broadly-sponsored community event in Toronto, June 19, 2013, entitled “Inside Iran’s Nuclear Warhead.” In original research for a syndicated series, Black revealed the three-step detonators, and hi-tech warhead configuration Iran had painstaking developed in its years-long march toward nuclear confrontation with Israel. This information along with update specifics will be presented at Shaarei Shomayim Synagogue, 7 PM, June 19.

In a special leadership event sponsored by B’nai Brith Canada, Black will also chronicle IBM's robust 12-year alliance with Nazi Germany detailing how the company co-planned and co-organized the Holocaust. Black has established a track-record of riveting sessions documenting the conscious involvement of IBM in co-planning and co-organizing all six phases of Hitler's Holocaust: 1) identification; 2) exclusion; 3) confiscation; 4) ghettoization; 5) deportation and 6) even extermination. The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number.

IBM's program of complicity in genocide, purely for profit, was first exposed in Black's international and New York Times best-selling book, IBM and the Holocaust, now with more than a million copies in print in 14 languages in 80 countries. The author has garnered numerous awards for the work and speaks on the topic at campuses and Holocaust museums across the United States and overseas. Despite being flooded by more than a decade of requests from media and communal leaders, IBM has never denied or explained the details of the book.

Egemen Bagış, Turkey’s European Union minister, said in an evening televised interview on June 16 that anyone entering Istanbul's Taksim Square will be considered a terrorist. According to Hurriyet Daily News, the Turkish politician said, “I request our citizens who supported the protests until today kindly to return to their homes,” in an interview on broadcast television station A Haber.

“From now on the state will unfortunately have to consider everyone who remains there a supporter or member of a terror organization,” said Bagış. “Our prime minister has already assured [activists] about their aim with the protests. The protests from now on will play into the hands of some separatist organizations that want to break the peace and prioritize vandalism and terrorism.”

Following the latest in a string of firebombing attacks on Jewish targets in Montreal, Canada, a Jewish community group is demanding answers from the police.

The B’nai Brith Canada is “calling on the Montreal Police to get to the bottom of the attacks before people are seriously injured,” wrote the group in an email to reporters.

“The Police must explore every avenue of investigation and put an end to these attacks,” said Steven Slimovitch, the organization’s National Legal Council.

Protesters continued to demonstrate in the Turkish capital, Ankara, ahead of a nationwide strike planned for June 17 to express disapproval of the forced evictions of demonstrators from the Gezi Park near Taksim Square in Istanbul over the weekend.

Ankara riot police used tear gas and water cannons to try to disperse thousands of protesters marching into the evening on June 16. Some protesters pointed lasers at the police operating water cannons to get them to stop.

Labor unions have planned a one-day strike for June 17 to support the protesters, though it is not clear how much the strike will affect daily life in Turkey.

In the last two years, media outlets have reported the actions of the so-called “Occupy” movement that began on Wall Street and subsequently spread across the globe. Beyond the individual episodes, occupying has nowadays become a way of life to raise voices against social and economic inequalities and injustices all over the world. Brazil is not an exception, nor is the phenomenon likely to disappear soon.

On June 3, 2013, the website of the Italian newspaper La Stampa included a piece titled “Occupy Mato Grosso—La Protesta Degli Indios Brasiliani” (“Occupy Mato Grosso—The Protest of Brazilian Indigenous Peoples”). But what is this protest about? Which injustices are the Brazilian Mato Grosso experiencing today?

The 686 men who expressed their desire to run in Iran's presidential election were whittled down to 8 -- not by primaries, debates and polls, but by the six theologians and six jurists on the Guardian Council. The candidates had to be Iranian-born, over 21, and believe in "God, Islam and the Iranian Constitution." Education, military service and "public service" were also taken into account by the Council. So while in the West much has been made of the differences among them, similarities rule.

Nevertheless, the Iranian people used their franchise to vote for the man on the ballot most opposed by the Mullahs. They made their statement in overwhelming numbers, proving the existence of the much-sought-after "Iranian moderates." That is the good news.

Since 1938, a red-caped superhero impervious to most earthly pitfalls has captivated the imagination of comic book, television, and movie fans around the world.  Superman has become a cultural icon of the United States, and the merchandising and promotion of the character is a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. The release of the newest Superman movie, Man of Steel, is helping one small Illinois town cash in on its connection to one of the most beloved comic book heroes of all time.

Plano, Illinois, has a population just under 11,000, and is as American as the flags flying throughout the downtown streets. Plano Mayor Bob Hausler said, “I would say a great Midwestern small town, and we epitomize that.”

Hausler was in charge of the city's government in 2011 when a Hollywood production company came to town. “There was a lot of secrecy about what the storyline, and even who the main character was.”

But in a town as small as this, it’s hard to keep a secret. Once the trucks, lights, and movie cameras moved onto Main Street, news quickly spread it was not just any Hollywood movie, but the big budget Man of Steel, a new version of the beloved and iconic comic book hero Superman. “It was very exciting that our town would be picked for a major motion picture. I used to watch him on a black-and-white TV, and it was one of my favorite shows growing up,” said Hausler.

Hundreds of people rallied in Hong Kong Saturday in support of former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden, who fled to the semi-autonomous Chinese city last month after confessing to leaking documents on two top secret U.S. surveillance programs.  To many, the case raises questions about Snowden’s choice of Hong Kong as a haven as he fights an expected legal battle against extradition, and the broader implications regarding the secrets he has revealed.

Amid monsoon rains in the city where Snowden remains in hiding, hundreds of Hong Kongers, expatriates and tourists marched on the U.S. Consulate. Participants delivered a letter for Ambassador Stephen Young, condemning U.S. cyber monitoring activities exposed by the former security consultant who fled Hawaii May 20.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says the nation’s militant Shia movement, Hezbollah, is risking the “fate of the nation” by taking on an expanded front-line role in neighboring Syria’s civil war.

The warning from Hariri comes a week after Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon, fighting beside Syrian government troops, led the attack on Qusair a strategic Syrian town on the main highway into Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The government’s capture of Qusair is considered a major blow to the Syrian rebel movement, which has been trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah, the militant arm of a Shia Muslim movement considered stronger than Lebanon’s own army, has been closely allied with Assad, whose Alawite religion is an offshoot of Shia Islam. Most Syrian rebels belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.

The United Nations estimated about 93,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war, which has been going on for more than two years. On Thursday, the Obama administration in Washington said it had concluded that Assad’s forces had been using chemical weapons in the fighting and that the United States would begin helping to arm the rebels.

He gained renown as the champion of a law against "gay propaganda." He memorably crossed swords with Madonna. And now Vitaly Milonov has a new bone to pick -- fast food.

Milonov, a lawmaker in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, is calling for national legislation to regulate the quality of Russian food and impose limits on the amount of unsaturated fat present in foodstuffs, high levels of which can contribute to heart disease.

On June 5, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly passed the first reading of a bill to this effect. It will soon be sent on to the Russian State Duma for consideration at the national level. The legislation proposes outlawing the production, import, and trade of food containing over 2 percent trans fatty acids. Milonov is also calling for such foods to contain a health warning. He singled out fast food restaurants as the worst offenders and expressed hope that his initiative would improve diets. Milonov has also proposed requiring restaurants to label the nutritional value of food on menus.

America likes the idea that we have made a solemn promise to generously compensate our military service members. After all, the argument goes, how can we ever fully repay them for risking their lives for us? Providing  benefits like low-cost premium health care, comfortable pensions, housing allowances, grocery discounts, tuition assistance, tax breaks and much more, feels like the right and honorable response.

Because so few serve on behalf of the rest of us, the nation has wanted to ensure we give the very best to those who risk death on the battlefield. Americans view it as their obligation, as well, to take exquisite care of those personnel and their families after they return from combat.

There is, however, another unspoken contract between Americans and our forces in uniform: we will make sure you get the best weapons and technology, along with the best intelligence, training and logistics money can buy. The goal is simple: we want to ensure you are never in a fair fight. Should fighting start, we tell them, we’ve done everything we can to make sure the enemy will die and you will live.

To make it in this economy, you have to have skills that customers or employers value. The need for skilled workers is at the heart of debates about immigration policy, innovation, education, and opportunity. It raises questions about how to better prepare students, spark entrepreneurship, and spur innovation as part of the broader quest to revamp our stagnant economy and bring more Americans into the middle class.

But these questions can’t be answered without a proper definition of our skilled workforce, and we don’t have that. It is well established that knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects leads to high-paying careers, but we have the misconception that all STEM workers are advanced degree holders.

As my new report shows, half of America’s highly-skilled technical workers do not possess a doctorate or even a bachelor’s degree. Instead their knowledge is acquired through a combination of on-the-job-training, experience, and relatively short periods of post-secondary education. These are unheralded STEM jobs, in the background of every city and town, far removed the public accolades, or support, reserved for scientists and tech workers.

What happens when an American economy built in significant part on intellectual property collides with overt second-class treatment of foreigners who entrust their data to American networks and systems? We’re about to find out.

On June 5, the world learned from the Guardian of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court requiring Verizon to provide NSA with “metadata” for all Verizon phone calls involving at least one party within the United States. Metadata can include the calling and receiving phone numbers, location of the parties, and call time and duration, but not the actual audio content. A day later, the Washington Post described an NSA program called PRISM, which reportedly enables NSA to access data carried by “nine leading U.S. Internet companies” to extract “audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets.”

In a pair of statements on June 6 and June 8, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper explained that the “collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” includes “extensive procedures . . . to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted,” and that “Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States.”

The fire raging in Colorado Springs forced William (Bill) Scott and his wife Linda to evacuate their home. Last we spoke, Bill didn't know if they'll have a home to return to. As of Saturday afternoon, June 15, the apparent arson that set Colorado's Black Forest on fire last Tuesday killed at least two people and destroyed and damged more than 388 homes. The fire that burned 15,500 acres led to the evacuation of 38,000 people. The six-hour delay of federal air tankers to help extinguish the fast spreading fire didn't help. All the while, local law enforcement and firefighters have been collecting whatever evidence they can find to identify the arsonist(s). 

Bill Scott, who's a senior fellow at ACD, warned about such a scenario last July, speaking at the ACD/EWI Economic Threats briefing on Capital Hill. An expert on aerial firefighting, he presented a sobering analysis of the devastating Waldo Canyon Fire, pointing out that the striking rise Western U.S. wildfires may be caused by elements other than nature.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday called an attack on a former U.S. Marine base in Iraq that houses Iranian exiles “brutal, senseless, and utterly unacceptable.”

A mortar attack on Camp Hurriya killed three people in Baghdad on Saturday, police sources told Reuters. The Mujahidin-e-Khalq group said Iran was probably to blame, with Iraqi complicity, according to the news service.
“At the highest levels, we have personally urged the Government of Iraq to render all possible medical assistance to the victims and ensure the safety of the camp’s residents, consistent with its commitments and obligations.” Kerry said in a statement. “We’ve also called on the Government of Iraq to investigate this attack and bring the terrorists responsible to justice.” Kerry said officials are also consulting with Iraqi officials and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) “to ascertain the full extent of this unprovoked terrorist attack.”

The weight of the traditional steel cable that hoists today's elevators has prevented them going any higher than 500 meters in one run. That means that people going up and down inside the world's tallest building, Dubai's 828-meter-high Burj Khalifa tower, need to switch lifts to go above the top mark.

But in London this week one of the world's leaders in the elevator industry, Finland’s Kone, unveiled its new UltraRope.

Kone President and CEO Matti Alahuhta claims this innovation will "revolutionize the elevator industry for the tallest segment of buildings across the globe." "Kone has an impressive record of new industry innovations," he says. "This is again a major, new breakthrough. And the long-term business opportunities, they indeed look very, very interesting."

Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time, yet most countries in the Middle East and North Africa continue to subsidize energy derived from fossil fuels. Seeking solutions, The Guardian launched a three part Global Public Leaders Series and sent us this recent lecture by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Deputy managing director Nemat Shafik warns that subsidies underpin both climate change and public debt.

Nemat Shafik’s presentation in Washington D.C. gave an illuminating look at how energy subsidies are linked to both climate change and public debt. Shafik estimates that cutting subsidies could reduce global carbon emissions by as much as 4.5 billion tons or 13 percent of the current output.

In the near future, a buzz in your belt or a pulse from your jacket may give you instructions on how to navigate your surroundings. Think of it as tactile Morse code: vibrations from a wearable, GPS-linked device that tell you to turn right or left, or stop, depending on the pattern of pulses you feel. Such a device could free drivers from having to look at maps, and could also serve as a tactile guide for the visually and hearing impaired.

Lynette Jones, a senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, designs wearable tactile displays. Through her work, she's observed that the skin is a sensitive — though largely untapped — medium for communication.

"If you compare the skin to the retina, you have about the same number of sensory receptors, you just have them over almost two square meters of space, unlike the eye where it's all concentrated in an extremely small area," Jones says. "The skin is generally as useful as a very acute area. It's just that you need to disperse the information that you're presenting."

It is a mistake to think of the nation's budgetary challenge as something associated solely with the size of near-term deficits. That was never the case.

Since the financial crash, the U.S. has run up extraordinary amounts of debt. Between 2009 and 2012, the U.S. ran a cumulative $5 trillion deficit. These enormous deficits were always going to recede when the nation's economy moved closer to normalcy again; it was just a matter of time.

It is also the case that some policy decisions have reduced the near-term deficit modestly as well. The president and Congress agreed to a tax deal earlier this year that raised revenue relative to the full extension of the Bush-era tax schedule, and the spending cuts associated with the sequester have been allowed to go fully into effect in 2013. The result is that the short-term outlook is now slightly less bad that it was a year ago. The Congressional Budget Office now projects that the federal budget deficit will total $642 billion in 2013 and $560 billion in 2014. Last summer, CBO was projecting that the deficit would remain over $1 trillion in 2013 and reach $924 billion in 2014. Those earlier CBO projections assumed full extension of the Bush-era tax schedule and elimination of the spending cuts required by the sequester.

On increasingly rare occasions, the relentless cacophony inside the Beltway gives way to harmony. Such was the case last week when the doyens of DC’s think-tank community united their voices to urge painful yet necessary Pentagon reforms. On Monday, a group of 25 scholars from ten different think tanks released an open letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and senior congressional leaders of the defense committees on June 3 in The Hill newspaper.

The authors issued a clarion call on the need for quick action on excess bases, the size and structure of the defense civilian workforce, and make-up of military compensation. Many of the necessary measures will face steep political resistance from entrenched interests in both branches of government as well as many communities and constituencies across America. While all of these concerns must be weighed equally, what should not get lost is the other key Pentagon priority to provide service members the cutting-edge tools and training, maintenance, and readiness they need to fight and win as safely, effectively, and quickly as possible. Yet this is increasingly a zero-sum outcome if policymakers continue to allow DoD structural costs to squeeze the defense budget from within.

Students at the University of Virginia have developed a new way of purifying water that they say could bring improved water quality for millions in the developing world.  It's called a Madi Drop. Field testing begins this month in South Africa.

The lab operates like a kitchen. They add several ingredients. Then they mix, weigh, press and bake them. What's created is called a MadiDrop - a ceramic disc infused with silver. When dropped in water, silver ions, which are atoms that have an electrical charge,, are released to purify the water.  And, testing here at the University of Virginia shows clean, safe water.

“It's not just about making a really great technology that effectively removes or kills bacteria and pathogens.  It's about making a low cost, simple to use one, tailored to people in developing countries who don't have many resources,” said Beeta Ehdaie, a doctoral candidate at UVA.

Greek police carrying out a crackdown on irregular migration are accused of conducting abusive stop and searches and detaining thousands of people, according to a report published Wednesday.  Human Rights Watch says people are being treated unfairly based on their race or ethnicity.

“There are police patrols deployed daily in the center of Athens who are stopping people presumed to be undocumented migrants," says Eva Cossé, a Greece specialist at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "If you take a look in the center of Athens you will see police officers with 10, 20 people who look like migrants behind them.” Afterwards they are detained on police buses, brought to police stations and held for hours, she said.

The weakness of the economic recovery in advanced economies raises questions about the ability of new technologies to drive growth. After all, in the years since the global financial crisis, consumers in advanced economies have adopted new technologies such as mobile Internet services, and companies have invested in big data and cloud computing. More than 1 billion smartphones have been sold around the world, making it one of the most rapidly adopted technologies ever. Yet nations such as the United States that lead the world in technology adoption are seeing only middling GDP growth and continue to struggle with high unemployment.

There are many reasons for the restrained expansion, not least of which is the severity of the recession, which wiped out trillions of dollars of wealth and more than 7 million US jobs. Relatively weak consumer demand since the end of the recession in 2009 has restrained hiring and there are also structural issues at play, including a growing mismatch between the increasingly technical needs of employers and the skills available in the labor force. And technology itself plays a role: companies continue to invest in labor-saving technologies that reduce demand for less-skilled workers.

Fort Hood, in Texas, is named after Confederate General John Bell Hood, who lost his arm and leg at Gettysburg and Chickamauga but was defeated at Nashville and Franklin, Tennessee. It employs 50,000 troops and civilian employees and is close by the city of Killeen, population 130,000, and which, like most military satellite cities and towns, thrives because of its location, selling food, goods of all sorts, housing, and loans, some no doubt predatory. In fact, as Kenneth T. MacLeish writes, Killeen is “more prosperous than Austin, the state capital, home to a large university and a booming tech sector.” When he asked soldiers what impression off-base civilians mistakenly held of them he was told “That we have a lot of money.”

What McLeish, assistant professor of medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University, has done is explore the impact of our recent wars on the military men and women and their families and loved ones. For those who have never served in the military and been burdened by its demands, Making War at Forth Hood is a humane and penetrating look in some depth at a huge military base and its military and civilian inhabitants. Some of his material is very familiar, given the combat experiences of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But what he does that is different is put it all into context.

MacLeish frankly admits at the outset that we -- presumably himself too -- Americans “don’t know as much as we think we do about what the violence done by and visited on soldiers means for them or for us “ Dime -- a pseudonym, like all his interviewees -- is a thirty-five-year-old veteran of Iraq, married with kids, who joined up at age thirty-one so his kids would have health insurance, who tells MacLeish the first time they met,” Don’t fuckin’ leave any of this shit out.”

Terrorist attacks in Afghanistan appear to be getting bolder in recent days.  The Taliban also increasingly is targeting the civilian population, including children.

A suicide bomber blew himself up right outside the Supreme Court building in the capital, Kabul, Tuesday, killing 17 people and wounding almost 40 others.  Mohammad Zahir, Chief of the Kabul Police Criminal Investigation Department, said all of the victims were civilians, including women and children.

"There are children and women among those who were martyred (killed) and wounded, all the ones who are martyred [killed] and wounded are civilians and there aren't any military personnel among them," said Zahir. The United Nations said Tuesday that the civilian death toll in Afghanistan has increased by almost 25 percent compared to the same period last year. 

U.N. Special Envoy for Afghanistan Jan Kubis said that more than 3,000 people in Afghanistan have been killed or wounded since the beginning of this year, mostly by insurgents. "What is even of more concern is the fact that the children account for 21 percent of all civilians killed or wounded in 2013," Kubis noted. "This is an increase of 30 percent compared to 2012 and 34 percent compared to 2011.''

One day people will ask how the United States and several European countries became involved in mass killings, genocide, corruption, arms smuggling, and the creation of another anti-Western and regionally destabilizing government. Even if a single Western soldier is never sent, the West is on the verge of serious intervention in Syria. The choices are unpalatable and decisions are very tough to make but it appears to be still another in a long history of Western leaps in the dark, not based on a real consideration of the consequences. At least people should be more aware of the dangers. As I entitled a previous book on Iran (Paved with Good Intentions), the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. People are dying and suffering in Syria. That’s true. But will this make more people or fewer people die and suffer?

A week ago, during the annual general assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), Secretary of State John Kerry met with his Venezuelan counterpart,  Elias Jaua, to discuss improvement of relations between the two countries. Relations between the two  have been severely strained during the 14- year rule of Hugo Chavez.
 
The meeting took place when the United States government had not yet officially recognized the legitimacy of President Nicolas Maduro whose election on April 14th raised suspicions of fraud. The Obama Administration also supported a recount. The  recount was conducted but without checking paper ballots  which the opposition had specifically requested. Since this was not done the opposition refused to recognize Maduro‘s victory. Yet, the meeting between the two diplomats took place in a “positive” atmosphere. Secretary Kerry declared that both countries agreed to “find a new way” forward. Venezuela, as a gesture, released from jail an American documentary filmmaker who had been accused of conspiring against the government.

Syrian rebels temporarily seized control of the Quneitra crossing between Israel and Syria on June 6, spurring Austria to withdraw all of its 380 peacekeepers stationed in the Golan Heights. Vienna attributed its decision to vacate the buffer zone, where international forces have been stationed since the 1974 armistice, to the escalating regional violence. Last Thursday's rebel attack sent the roughly 1,000 UN forces fleeing for their bunkers and injured two peacekeeping troops before the Syrian army recaptured the area.

The four-week withdrawal of Austrian forces will leave the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) with less than half the troops it possessed a year ago. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann supported the controversial decision, saying, "We never could have and would never have wanted to take on a military mission to mediate or intervene between the opposition rebels and governmental troops." Japan and Croatia also withdrew their presence as the fighting intensified in recent months, further diminishing the precarious security buffer.

As a diplomat for 42 years, 16 of which I spent at the Elysée, under three presidents (Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy), I’ve always believed that one of the most difficult tasks of an advisor involved in the action is to understand the long-term consequences of key events beyond their immediate impact, which can be misleading.

To take the image of a game of chess, how can you think not just tactically but strategically, calculating not just the next move but the fifth or sixth one down the line, based on all the possible reactions of the other player? With an additional difficulty: In international relations, the number of players—both state and non-state—is considerable.

The demise of the Soviet Empire and reforms in China marked the end of a century of ideologies. The market economy now reigned supreme.
Without rewriting history, it’s possible to illustrate my remarks by looking at key moments in recent decades that eventually led to upheavals that were unsuspected at the time.

1979: Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on Christmas day. The USSR was on the offensive, making gains in Africa, Angola and Ethiopia. Faced with this event, along with the loss of an ally, Iran, and bogged down in the Teheran hostage crisis, President Carter projected an image of America on the defensive. This was also true on the economic front, due to the meteoric rise of Japan, which was buying up Hollywood properties and the Empire State Building. According to a number of analysts, it was about to become the world’s leading economic power.

Once the most powerful seat of learning in Egypt, Alexandria has some catching up to do when it comes to renewable energy. Which may be why the governor has entered into an agreement with a Catholic technical institute to bolster photovoltaic education and installations.

Alexandria governor Muhammad Abbas told Daily News Egypt that the city’s partnership with the Don Bosco Institute, an Italian group with Catholic roots, is one of the country’s most important projects.

The idea to install a photovoltaic array on Don Bosco’s roof to provide energy for its own street lighting first arose in 2009, when Egypt imported its first solar cell from Germany, according to DNE. A group of German, Polish and Italians decided to build the country’s first inverter in order to enable the conversion of DC to AC and 10 power distribution points were installed.

While one rooftop array is hardly going to ease the country’s incredible energy deficit, Don Bosco has worked with both the Egyptian Government and the European Union to officially recognize a practical educational system that it has devised.

Project RAY, now launching in the US, opens the benefits of digital access to commercial and public services to people with visual disabilities.

The world’s first smartphone for people with visual disabilities, already making daily life easier for many Israelis, is launching in the United States in collaboration with Qualcomm, Amazon and T-Mobile. Three Israelis poured extensive mobile telecommunications experience into Project RAY. They leveraged advanced smartphone technologies (multiple sensors, camera, compass and audio) and communication services (phone, messaging and cloud) to give users greater independence and accessibility to essential public digital services.