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Israel Radio reported this morning (Sunday) that the United States has apologized to Israel for disclosing that Israel was behind the strikes on Damascus two weeks ago. According to the report, the decision to disclose that Israel was behind the strikes was made at a low level in the Pentagon, and the US Department of Defense is investigating how that happened. According to the report, Israel believes that it is now facing much stronger threats from Bashar al-Assad as a result of the disclosure.

A western diplomat and three regional security sources said Wednesday that Israel Air Force warplanes struck a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight, hours after Lebanon reported a series of three overflights by Israel in its airspace. Israel has expressed increasing concern over the fate of Syrian chemical and conventional weapons as the country slides further into chaos after almost two years of civil war.

Regardless of who the President is after this close election, the equity markets and the U.S. economy are in trouble. Debt has spread throughout the Western world. The fallout is political dissonance, growing economic hardship and, in some places, mob violence.Ground zero for the spreading fear and panic is Greece, which was once the worldÂ’s greatest civilization and the birthplace of democracy, poetry and philosophy.There is violent evidence of the contradiction from what the ancients taught and what is unraveling in Greece. It would all just be another boring story at the end of the news day, except there is...

South Africa Is On The Brink Of Total Chaos As Strikes Are Leading To Fuel And Cash Shortages Matthew BoeslerOct. 3, 2012, 11:02 AMThe labor strikes that have engulfed the mining industry in South Africa in recent weeks have now spread to one of the country's most vital industries – trucking. Without the trucking industry facilitating the flow of goods between purchasers and suppliers, things can get ugly pretty quickly, as they did in the U.K. in 2001 when truckers went on a similar strike and brought the British economy to the brink. Truckers are already entering their second week...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be spending a lot less time at the Democratic National Convention than he’d originally planned. Originally, the mayor had planned to be in Charlotte from Tuesday through Friday morning. Now, his Communications Director Sarah Hamilton tells Newsradio that Emanuel has changed his plans. Hamilton insisted the mayor’s shortened trip to the convention doesn’t have anything to do with a possible teachers strike. She said Emanuel’s abbreviated trip likewise doesn’t have anything to do with the city’s higher murder rate this year.

<p>JOHANNESBURG — Frantic wives searched for missing loved ones, President Jacob Zuma rushed home from a regional summit and some miners vowed a fight to the death Friday as police finally announced the toll from the previous day's shooting by officers of striking platinum miners: 34 dead and 78 wounded.</p>

A protester and the crowd have a party

A senior Foreign Office official says British government ministers have been told to expect Israeli military action in the wake of the UN watchdog report "as early as Christmas or very early in the new year," the London Daily Mail reported. The ministers were told that Israel would strike Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later" – with "logistical support" from the US. According to the British paper, which has good military and intelligence ties in London, President Barack Obama would "have to support the Israelis or risk losing Jewish-American support in the next presidential election." The bigger concern is...

ATHENS, Greece - Union opposition to the Greek government's austerity program intensified Monday as tax collectors went on strike, and power workers vowed to sabotage a new emergency property tax aimed at plugging a budget gap spotted by international creditors. Tax and customs workers walked off the job for two days to protest cuts in their bonus pay while the power company union said it would "not allow the company to be used as a tax-collecting mechanism" for the property levy, which will be included on household electricity bills and is expected, together with fresh public sector cuts, to reap...

10 rockets, mortal shells explode in Ehskol, Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Councils, Asheklon; no injuries; Erez border crossing damaged; 2 Islamic Jihad members killed, Palestinian report says. A ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza seemed distant Thursday evening as the violence in the south of the country continued with at least 15 rockets and mortar shells exploding in Israeli territory, and Israeli air strikes that reportedly left two Islamic Jihad members dead. The Code Red siren was heard throughout the Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Councils and in Ashkelon as 15 rockets and mortar shells fell throughout those areas, the IDF Spokesman's...

WEST TISBURY, Mass. (AP) — President Barack Obama was teeing off on a Martha's Vineyard, Mass., golf course on Tuesday when the ground around him was shaken by an East Coast earthquake. .. reporters traveling with him said immediately that they had felt it. .. In Martha's Vineyard, CNN broadcast video of Obama speaking on a cell phone on the golf course. It wasn't known what the call was about.

The unusually heavy barrage suggests the US has no intention of halting its drone programme despite tensions with Pakistan Three suspected US missile strikes in north-western Pakistan in less than 12 hours have killed at least 38 alleged militants, an unusually heavy barrage at a time when relations between the two countries are badly strained, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

From The Arizona Republic: Arizona may not wait for the federal government to finish building a fence along its 370-mile border with Mexico. A new law that goes into effect July 20 allows the state to build the fence itself, as long as it can raise enough private donations and get permission to build on federal, Indian, and privately owned land along the border. State Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, who sponsored the legislation, was meeting with Gov. Jan Brewer's staff Tuesday to discuss logistics. Speaking in El Paso, Texas, last week President Obama said the border fence is "now basically...

Palestinians say Hamas targets hit by IAF planes; 6 mortar shells land in Eshkol, 12 rockets fired deep into Israel; Barak condemns attacks. Palestinian officials reported on Thursday evening that the IAF carried out air strikes on buildings belonging to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Initial reports suggest that a number of people were injured during the strikes. Shorty after the IDF finished its operations in the Gaza Strip, 6 mortar shells landed in open fields in the Eshkol Regional Council on Thursday evening. No injuries were reported and no damage was caused. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel...

Palestinian sources say arms depot belongs to Hamas' military wing; attack comes after two rockets and several mortars were fired into southern Israel earlier Thursday; IDF to deploy Iron Dome next week, Channel 10 says. The Israel Air Force bombed an arms depot in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, which according to Palestinian sources, belonged to the military wing of Hamas. The attack was carried out around 8:30 P.M. local time, after two rockets and several mortars were fired from Gaza at southern Israel earlier Thursday. According to Palestinian reports, IDF forces also attacked a military facility which was...

Israeli airstrikes hit smuggling tunnels along Gaza-Egypt border as well as a Hamas training camp in central Gaza; action follows rocket attacks against Beersheba and Ashkelon; no reports of injured in attack. Talkbacks (8) IDF aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip in the early hours on Thursday, Hamas said, a day after Palestinians fired about a dozen rockets and mortars across the border, striking deep into Israel. There were no reports of injuries in the attacks. Hamas said Israel targeted smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, as well as one of its training camps in central Gaza.

Arianna Huffington is being cast by some unpaid Huffington Post contributors as an unethical robber baron. With Huffington awash in funds from AOL’s $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post, contributors have called a strike to demand proper compensation. The Huffington Post, established in 2005, emerged as a leading source of aggregated news content and liberal commentary written by unpaid contributors. With the success of the site, founder Arianna Huffington rocketed to national fame, frequently appearing as a guest on cable news programs. Bill Lasarow, Publisher and Co-Editor of Visual Art Source, announced that his organization is “now going on...

The image is inescapable. The Boston Police Strike of 1919, the ultimate vision of public employee strikes. Stores looted, people robbed, mobs running loose, and a governor tersely stating: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anytime.” Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge fired all striking police officers and called in the National Guard to restore order. London and Liverpool had witnessed earlier strikes by their bobbies, with similar disruption. Winnipeg had suffered a strike by all of its municipal employees. Chicago and New Jersey had seen strikes by transport workers. Boston had also gone through a...

"When I reached home (West Virginia) I found that the salt-furnaces where not running, and that the coal-mine was not being operated on account of the miners being out on a "strike". This was something which, it seemed,usually occurred whenever the men got two or three months ahead in their savings. During the strike, of course, they spent all that they had saved, and would often retrun to work in debt at the same wages, or would move to another mine at considerable expense. in either case, my observations convinced me that the miners were worse off at the end...

Back in the 1970s my daughters used to say: "Let's play princesses!" and a grand old time they had. I imagine that in progressive families, the cry was different. "Let's play community organizers!" No doubt a grand old time was had by the baby radicals too. The trouble is that some people don't grow up. It's one thing to play community organizers in the back yard when you are a kid. It's another thing when real lives are at stake, as in Wisconsin. A better name for "community organizer" is "radical suit," because community organizers are really the lefty version...

Some Wisconsin doctors have offered, at a public event, to write sickness excuses on request for protesting teachers, according to ABC News. A spokeswoman said that they knew they could “get in trouble,” but would take the risk because “teachers have no choice.” The teachers’ choice is to go to work, or go without pay and risk being fired. “It’s the same choice faced by everyone in the world who can’t use someone else’s earnings to pay the bills,” said Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). “Writing a phony sickness excuse is...

I was shocked when I saw this number. The gravy train is really over for public employee unions. Citizens are sick to death of their strikes, threats of strikes, whining, caterwauling, and incompetence. It wouldn't be this bad probably, if government, at any level, worked. But Americans look at the cluster fark that government has become and wonder why we are paying these bozos so much? Politico: "A new poll from the Washington-based Clarus Group asked: Do you think government employees should be represented by labor unions that bargain for higher pay, benefits and pensions ... or do you think...

Last year represented the second-least-active period for strikes and lockouts on record, in a sign of just how troubled the labor market has been, a U.S. government report Tuesday said. Over the course of 2010, there were only 11 major strikes or lockouts involving 1,000 or more workers, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The lowest year for work stoppages was 2009. Last year’s work stoppages “idled 45,000 workers for 302,000 lost workdays, a large increase compared to 2009 record lows, with 5 stoppages idling 13,000 workers for 124,000 lost workdays,” the report noted. The Labor Department report tracks...

DAKAR (AFP) – Tens of thousands of people marched through Dakar on Sunday at the start of the annual World Social Forum, an annual leftist gathering taking place as anti-government protests sweep the Arab world. The 11th edition of the forum, an alternative to the elite World Economic Forum held in the posh Swiss ski resort of Davos last week, brings together anti-globalisation activists opposed to capitalism. This year participants are focusing on the popular revolt spreading across northern Africa with demands for democracy and criticism of dire social conditions reflecting the crisis of capitalism. Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales...

Ron Radosh notes that socialist Frances Fox Piven is back in the Nation magazine calling for a revival of the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.” For those unfamiliar with that strategy, Piven formulated it with her late husband, Richard Cloward, for an article in a 1966 issue of the Nation. According to DiscoverTheNetworks, the Cloward-Piven Strategy “seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”

North Korea threatens continued strikes on South Breaking News: President Lee meets in bunker; witness tells TV channel fire on island burning out of control By Agencies Smoke rises from South Korean Yeonpyeong Island after being hit by dozens of artillery shells fired by North Korea November 23, 2010. Several South Korean civilians and soldiers were wounded and many others were being evacuated to bunkers on Tuesday, a Seoul television reported. The island is located near the western maritime border between the two Koreas, 11 km (7 miles) from the North and about 115 km (71 miles) northwest of Seoul....

Dateline: Asia

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah will likely become the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee early next year. From that perch, he’ll oversee the GOP’s tax-writing policy in the upper chamber. Before then, however, Hatch is keeping busy: In coming weeks, he will be one of the leading figures in the battle over extending Bush-era tax rates, which are set to expire at the end of the year. As he looks ahead, Hatch predicts that there could be a “reasonable compromise” with Democrats and the White House. He urges the president to “come in good faith” to the negotiating...

PARIS (AP) — The French Senate, pushed into an early vote, approved on Friday a hotly contested bill raising the retirement age to 62, hours after riot police forced the reopening of a strategic refinery to help halt growing fuel shortages amid nationwide strikes and protests. In tense balloting after 140 hours of debate, the Senate voted 177-153 for the pension reform. The measure is expected to win final formal approval by both houses of parliament next week. President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government, keen to get the measure passed and quell increasingly radicalized protests, cut short the debate and voting...

As the ongoing strikes in France against austerity continue, and see increasingly more participation, the latest development is all too familiar to all those who travelled through Athens in the summer: huge lines for gas. About 1,000 gas stations across France have run out of fuel because strikers had blocked access to oil refineries and depots, Alexandre de Benoist, a Union of Independent Oil Importers official, told CNN on Monday. It gets worse: per the AP, the head of France's petroleum industry body said fuel reserves were "enough to keep us going for a few weeks." Jean-Louis Schilansky, president of...

Because higher education is largely paid for by taxing those who labor, the average French citizen does not enter the workforce until he is 22 to 25. That is, the care and feeding of the first 22 to 25 years of an average Frenchman’s life are paid for by somebody other than himself; first his parent or parents, then working citizens. After he himself begins working, this homme moyen expects to cease laboring at age 60. The care and feeding for remaining years of his life, which will total roughly between 20 to even 30 or more years, will be...

More than three million people took to the streets of France in protest at pension reforms, with distant echoes of May 1968 as students and schoolchildren swelled numbers to record highs.

MILLIONS of commuters in London endured a grim journey to work today after staff on the Underground train network walked out for the second time in a month, sparking calls for tougher strike laws. People were forced to walk or cycle in heavy rain, squeeze on to packed buses or brave heavy traffic by driving as only 30 per cent of the Tube trains were running in the morning rush hour, according to operator London Underground. The strike follows a walkout in early September as part of a dispute between trade unions and London Underground managers over the planned axing...

Public transit ground to a halt across France and on the London Tube on Tuesday, with tourists and commuters bearing the brunt of a wave of discontent over government austerity measures. French unions challenged unpopular President Nicolas Sarkozy with a major nationwide strike over plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, shutting down trains, planes, buses, subways, post offices and schools.

Greece’s olive-clad hillsides and turquoise sea gleam as enticingly as ever under the hot August sun. But the country’s image as a relaxed Mediterranean destination has been taking a beating. Thousands of tourists were stuck beside the hotel pool last week because of a truckers’ strike that shut down petrol stations across the country. The strikes also triggered a wave of last-minute cancellations by Greeks in advance of the August break – the busiest period of the tourist season. “The strike’s been suspended – but the cancellations still stand. It’s turning out to be a very difficult season,” said Yannis...

NEW YORK (AP) - In a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications for the patenting of human genes, a judge on Monday struck down a company's patents on two genes linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet challenging whether anyone can hold patents on human genes was expected to have broad implications for the biotechnology industry and genetics-based medical research.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US government for the first time has offered a legal justification of its drone strikes against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, citing the right to "self-defense" under international law. The CIA attacks by unmanned aircraft in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere have sharply increased under President Barack Obama's administration but have remained shrouded in secrecy, with some human rights groups charging the bombing raids amount to illegal assassinations. Broaching a subject that has been off-limits for official comment, State Department legal advisor Harold Koh laid out the legal argument for the strikes in a speech late Thursday, referring...

Taxi drivers parked their cabs and walked off the job for 24 hours on Friday in the latest protest against the Greek government's EU-driven austerity programme, which protesters said would hurt only the poor. Some Athens filling stations began to run out of petrol as another strike by customs officials, which began on Tuesday, was extended until at least mid-next week. Long queues formed at petrol stations that still had fuel.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a series of air strikes overnight Thursday against targets in the Gaza Strip, hours after a Qassam rocket fired from the Strip hit southern Israel. One Palestinian was killed, two were wounded and several others were feared trapped inside the ruins, medics said. Explosions rocked Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah, sending flames shooting into the air.

MIR ALI, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike killed three people Saturday in a northwest Pakistani tribal region where militants focused on fighting the West in Afghanistan are concentrated, two Pakistani intelligence officials said. The missile strike was apparently the latest in a lengthy campaign of such attacks by the U.S., which rarely discusses the covert program but has in the past said it has taken out several top al-Qaida operatives. Pakistan publicly opposes the strikes but is believed to secretly aid them. Saturday's strike occurred in the Babar Raghzai area of North Waziristan and also wounded two people,...

SAN'A, Yemen – Yemen's military hit suspected al-Qaida hideouts Thursday and targeted a gathering of top militant leaders, possibly killing a radical cleric linked to the U.S. Army major accused of the Fort Hood mass shooting, in strikes carried out with U.S. intelligence help, officials said. At least 30 militants were believed to be killed in the second such strike in a week. Pentagon officials could not confirm Thursday whether U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed in the strike. Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico and attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, before moving in 2002 to...

MIR ALI, Pakistan (AP) – Two suspected U.S. missile strikes, one using multiple drones, killed 17 people in a Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border Thursday, local intelligence officials said. The officials said the second, bloodier attack involved five drones and 10 missiles – an unusually intense bombardment. The missiles rained on North Waziristan, considered a safe haven for many militants including groups determined to push the U.S. and NATO out of Afghanistan. The strikes in North Waziristan are especially sensitive because they risk angering Afghan-focused militant groups who have agreed to be neutral as Islamabad cracks down on...

Swine flu strikes isolated North Korea By HYUNGJIN KIM, Associated Press Writer - 1 hour 58 minutes ago SEOUL, South Korea – Swine flu has struck isolated North Korea, the regime acknowledged Wednesday, although it was unclear whether there were any fatalities from the virus that has been circling the globe for months. North Korea made its first acknowledgment of an H1N1 outbreak with a short dispatch in state media citing nine confirmed cases in northwestern Sinuiju on the Chinese border and in Pyongyang, the capital. The official Korean Central News Agency reported that a quarantine system to prevent the...

Remember how unions are for “the little guy”? Remember how unions can’t wait to take to the street with obnoxious signs and thug behavior to strong-arm some business or another to their will? It’s all about the workers, dontcha know? Well, unless those workers that want to strike happen to be a union’s headquarters staff, that is. In that case union bosses frown on any striking going on. As LaborReport.com notes, this hilariously hypocritical situation has, indeed, happened inside Teamsters headquarters (known as the “marble palace” for its opulence) in Washington D.C. The HQ staffer’s union has announced that they...

Whatever the outcome of Iran's presidential election tomorrow, negotiations will not soon -- if ever -- put an end to its nuclear threat. And given Iran's determination to achieve deliverable nuclear weapons, speculation about a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear program will not only persist but grow. So what would such an attack look like? Obviously, Israel would need to consider many factors -- such as its timing and scope, Iran's increasing air defenses, the dispersion and hardening of its nuclear facilities, the potential international political costs, and Iran's "unpredictability." While not as menacingly irrational as North Korea, Iran's...

WASHINGTON - Sometimes even unions have union problems. Dozens of employees of the Service Employees International Union picketed their own union Friday over its decision to lay off about 75 workers. The staffers marched outside SEIU headquarters in Washington as they yelled into bullhorns, passed out flyers and chanted, "Justice for all, not just some." "This union is supposed to be at the forefront of the progressive movement, but it can't seem to follow its own ideology," said Malcolm Harris, president of the Union of Union Representatives, which represents 210 SEIU organizers and field staff around the country. (Excerpt,,,)

The nationwide strikes in France over the government's handling of the financial crisis are provoking strong, and diverse, reactions among French observers. The action is attracting sympathy from many in the left-wing press, but is being met with weariness and unease on the right. France's eight largest union federations called the strikes, dissatisfied with the 2.65bn euros of additional public spending pledged by the government following the last day of industrial action on 29 January. The unions are calling for the government to do more to prevent private sector lay-offs and to halt to its own plans to reduce the...

ATHENS, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Greeks disgruntled by their country's economic woes ramped up protests against the government on Wednesday, shutting down airports and disrupting many public services. Public schools and tax offices shut down, and services at ministries and public offices were suspended, as hundreds of workers marched to parliament with banners reading "No to pension reforms, privatisations and job cuts".

January 31, 2009 Dawn of new age of industrial unrest as wildcat strikes spread across UK Strikes at 19 sites over ‘British jobs for British workers’ Francis Elliott, Sam Coates and Fran Yeoman Gordon Brown’s pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” came back to haunt him yesterday when a dispute over foreign labourers sparked a wave of industrial unrest. Wildcat strikes flared at more than 19 sites across the country in response to claims that British tradesmen were being barred from construction jobs by contractors using cheaper foreign workers

A nationwide protest against Nicolas Sarkozy's economic policies drew more than one million demonstrators into the streets of France on Thursday, in the biggest popular challenge to the president since he took office in 2007. Organizers hailed the demonstrations - meant to highlight unemployment and declining spending power in a time of crisis - as a great success. François Chérèque, secretary general of the CFDT union, called the protest "the biggest nationwide demonstrations in 20 years." He said in Paris that private sector workers had turned out in surprisingly large numbers, showing that workers from across the spectrum were "expressing...