Author: mediahitman

By LYNN BERRY Law enforcement agents forcibly evicted the head of one of Russia’s leading human rights groups and about a half dozen others from his Moscow office early Saturday, in the latest attack on a Russian non-governmental organization. Lev Ponomaryov, 72, who heads For Human Rights, said he was beaten all over his body when security forces stormed the building at around 2 a.m. and dragged him out.

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Someone call Tim Burton. This seems like his cup of tea. A Chilean plant with sharp spines known as the “sheep-eating plant” is blooming in a British greenhouse for the first time since it was planted 15 years ago. Botanists at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley branch in Surrey planted the puya chilensis 15 years ago there. Now, after all this time, the monstrous plant’s 10-foot flower spike is finally blooming.

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US federal prosecutors have charged whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in a criminal complaint, and asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a move to extradite him. Charges of espionage and theft are based on Snowden’s extraction of classified documents from NSA servers, which led to publication of several articles regarding the NSA’s surveillance programs

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by Brian Haas A Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy director warned a group of Maury County residents that unfounded complaints about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism.” “We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously,” said Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, according to audio recorded by attendees. “But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis

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The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak. GCHQ’s network of cables is able to process massive quantities of information from both specific targets and completely innocent people, including recording phone calls and reading email messages, it was revealed on Friday.

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A WikiLeaks-linked Icelandic businessman claims to have prepared a private jet to bring NSA leaker Edward Snowden to the country if his asylum request is approved. The whistleblower, who is wanted in the US, reportedly remains in Hong Kong. “A private jet is in place in China and we could fly Snowden over tomorrow if we get positive reaction from the Interior Ministry. We need to get confirmation of asylum and that he will not be extradited to the US.

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Days before National Pollinator Week, an estimated 25,000 bees were found dead in an Oregon parking lot. Some scientists attribute the mass die-off to pesticides, and worry that local crops may be affected. “To our knowledge this is one of the largest documented bumblebee deaths in the Western U.S. It was heartbreaking to watch,” Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said in a press release about the incident.

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BRITISH spies are running an online eavesdropping operation bigger than any member of the espionage alliance ‘the Five Eyes’. The Guardian cited British intelligence memos leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that UK spies were tapping into the world’s network of fibre optic cables to deliver the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes

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The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Training for rebel forces covers the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and has been carried out at bases in Jordan and Turkey since late last year, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

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BRITISH spies are running an online eavesdropping operation so vast that internal documents say it even outstrips the United States’ international internet surveillance effort, The Guardian newspaper says. The paper cited UK intelligence memos leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that UK spies were tapping into the world’s network of fibre optic cables to deliver the “biggest internet access”

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I got lots of flak from the Bitcoin community when I suggested a currency peg to ease the transition for universal acceptance of bitcoin. From the current price of around $100 to an interim target of $1,000, where it will achieve a market capitalization of approximately $15 bn., and a level where more sophisticated institutional products can be created, guidance on pricing needs to come from outside the bitcoin protocol.

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