Romanians have protested in cities around the country for a third day against the government, whom they blame for austerity cuts and falling living standards.

One policeman was injured in the Romanian capital Saturday after clashes with demonstrators protesting the government’s austerity programme, AFP reported.

Hundreds of Romanians rallied in Bucharest to protest against austerity measures and planned health care reforms, calling on President Traian Basescu to quit.

Some of the protesters, chanting anti-Basescu slogans, marched towards the presidential palace, closely monitored by police.

Clashes erupted between demonstrators who blocked traffic in University Square and riot police. As demonstrators pelted police with stones, one officer suffered a head injury.

Police used tear gas on the demonstrators, witnesses told local media.

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Human rights groups are holding demonstrations to protest the tenth anniversary of the US military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay while hopes for its closure weaken, Press TV reports .

Protesters dressed in orange prison jumpsuits, paraded in front of the White House to demand that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed.

Detainees at the US Navy base also plan to mark the day with sit-ins, banners and a refusal of meals.

Guantanamo Bay “war prison” turned 10 years old on Wednesday, while US president Barack Obama promised two years ago to shut down the prison within a year of taking office.

Meanwhile, no detainee has left in a year because of restrictions on transfers, and indefinite military detention is now enshrined in the US law.

On December 15, the US House of Representatives passed a bill, which allowed the authorities to jail terrorism suspects for an indefinite period.

Under the new legislation signed by Obama, the US military is given the custody of anyone, who is deemed to be a member of al-Qaeda or one of the terrorist group’s affiliates.

The Guantanamo detention facility was initially established at a US naval base in Cuba after the US invasion of Afghanistan on January 11, 2002, under former US President George W. Bush.

Gitmos still houses 171 detainees.

The US has used torture techniques, including simulated drowning, known as waterboarding, on alleged terrorist suspects over the past years.

Human rights groups and lawyers for prisoners are disappointed that Obama failed to overcome resistance in Congress and close the prison. Besides, his administration has resumed military tribunals at the base and even continues to hold prisoners cleared for release.

The 10th anniversary of Guantanamo has been the focus for demonstrations in London and Washington and Paris this week.

The protesters also demand the closure of the US military’s Bagram prison in Afghanistan and the repeal of provisions of the 2011 Defense Authorization Act.

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been indicted for involvement in bribery to advance the so-called Holyland luxury housing project in West al-Quds (Jerusalem).

On Thursday, Olmert was indicted along with 17 other Israelis suspected of offering or taking bribes to advance the Holyland project and various other real estate ventures in the occupied territories.

In April 2010, Olmert was charged with accepting bribes, when he was the mayor of al-Quds between 1993 and 2003, over the construction plan.

A prosecution witness, who acted as the middleman for the bribes, said that “in talks I held with Mayor Olmert, with chairman of the local planning and building committee Lupolianski and with members of the local committee, it was made clear to me that via the ‘give and take’ method, I could get [the benefits] I desired… I want to stress: The hints were from those people to me, not the reverse, because I wouldn’t have dared.”

In March 2011, Israel’s judiciary announced that there was enough evidence to indict 18 people, including Olmert, former al-Quds Mayor Uri Lupolianski and former Israel Lands Administration director Yaakov Efrati over the scandal.

Lupolianski was suspected of receiving bribes, money laundering and fraud, breach of trust, tax evasion and conspiracy in connection with the project.

The developer companies involved in the Holyland project were given huge tax breaks, additional building rights and other privileges.

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A large corruption scandal involving President Nicolas Sarkozy has been gathering pace in France. According to Liberation newspaper, which refers to the investigative materials, Mr. Sarkozy, when serving as the Budget Minister, was involved in establishing a mechanism to pay so-called “kickbacks” when selling submarines to Pakistan during the 1990s, RBC TV reports.

The French newspaper obtained a transcript of the interrogation of a former official from the Ministry of Defense. The official said that in 1994, Sarkozy, while still in the position of the Budget Minister in the government of Edouard Balladur, allowed the establishment of two agency firms, reports Vesti.Ru. Their accounts in Luxembourg were used to receive the so-called kickbacks from the contracts to sell submarines to Pakistan.

In 1994-1995, one of the agency firms, Heine, received 185 million francs that were supposed to be wired to DCNI (an international department of DCN), BFM.ru reports. According to the former CFO of the International Division of the Directorate of Shipbuilding, Gerard Philippe Menayas, Heine was one of the “quiet havens” that were used to accumulate the funds received in the form of “commissions” from governmental defense contracts.

Menayas had been working at the Ministry of Finance for six years. He claims that he knows how such affairs can be handled. “I can not imagine that such a decision (to register the firm) was made without the knowledge of the office of the minister,” the former top manager said at the interrogation.

The judicial investigation also suspects that a part of those “commissions” was used to finance the election campaign of former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. Nicolas Sarkozy was the press secretary of his election headquarters.

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Detention Act will imprison Americans abroad

If you’re upset that congressional approval of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 can send you away to military prisons and be tortured in America, don’t worry — it could be worse.

The US could send you somewhere else.

No, really. They could. And they can. Anywhere else, too. Really.

While the bill that left Capitol Hill last week and awaits authorization from US President Barack Obama allows for the United States to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens suspected of aiding enemy forces, one provision in the bill specifies that that detention doesn’t necessarily have to occur domestically — nor does it have to be in a foreign prison run by the US.

The ongoing detention of foreign terror suspects at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been a hot topic since the War on Terror began, with American military authorities torturing could-be criminals without ever bringing them to trial. An exposé years earlier on the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq revealed how American troops were subjecting detainees to disgusting, inhumane conditions; conditions which left some dead without ever going to trial. While Abu Ghraib has since been shut down, Guantanamo Bay continues to hold suspected criminals despite a promise to Obama to shut it down.

When the commander-in-chief inks his name to NDAA FY2012, Americans can be on their way to the same torture cells that have kept al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked terrorists for the last decade. It’s now been revealed, however, that US citizens and anyone suspected of a crime against America can be sent all over the world.

Under the legislation, the president has the power to transfer suspected terrorists “to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.”

China? Sure. Iran? Why not! North Korea? That’s a possibility too. David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, tells Mother Jones that this was an authority that the president has had before, but only under the new NDAA is the legislation endorsed and insured that it could be applied to Americans.

“If the president could lawfully transfer a German prisoner of war to a foreign country, then in theory he could do the same thing with an American prisoner of war,” Glazier says.

Under the Feinstein Amendment imposed under NDAA FY2012, the Democratic senator from California proposed a law which would not change “existing law” with regards to detaining Americans. As Mother Jones notes, however, the jury is still out on what exactly “existing law” is when it comes to the topic, with those suspected of hostilities against America already being imprisoned without trial — citizen and otherwise. Both US-born Bradley Manning has been under military watch, isolation and torture for nearly two years, and the same has applied to a countless number of suspected terrorists at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

Al Franken, a Democrat senator from Minnesota, wrote in an op-ed last week that the provisions put in NDAA such as Feinstein Amendment were enough for some lawmakers to sign onto the legislation, but he said the final draft was still “simply unacceptable.”

“These provisions are inconsistent with the liberties and freedoms that are at the core of the system our Founders established. And while I did in fact vote for an earlier version of the legislation, I did so with the hope that the final version would be significantly improved. That didn’t happen, and so I could not support the final bill,” wrote Franken.

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When he’s not recording tunes like “Personal OG” and “National Anthem (Fu*k the World),” rapper Freddie Gibbs likes to travel. He also likes to smoke weed. A real lot.

Somehow for Gibbs, real name Fredrick Tipton, he didn’t think there would be much of a problem with combining those two passions lately, even if it involved the US government’s notoriously tough Transportation Security Administration in the equation. And — yes, somehow for Gibbs — he was right.

The rapper took to Twitter on Wednesday to let the micro-blogosphere know that while boarding a flight this week, a TSA agent managed to intercept Gibbs’ stash of marijuana but, rather than confiscate it, issue a citation or make an arrest, the officer put the contraband back in the passengers luggage along with a note.

It read, “C’mon, son.”

Gibbs took a photo of the weed and the lovely little note from the TSA and posted it to his Facebook account, where around 40,000 fans follow his happenings in 140-character blurbs.

“LOL,” added Gibbs.

In a cookie-cutter response from the Administration, a spokesperson issued a statement saying, “TSA takes all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim.”

Gibbs posted the photo after landing in Denver, Colorado and tweeted from Los Angeles, California earlier in the day; both states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. While the rapper posted a photo of a sizeable stash of weed Friday afternoon with a “Rx” label, it’s not exactly clear if it was obtained with a doctor’s permission — or why Gibbs needed to transport a half-ounce or marijuana across the state lines in a plane knowing he would go through a government checkpoint.

In Colorado, unlawful possession of a half-ounce of pot is a felony offense which comes with up to three years in prison and upwards of $100,000 in penalties for only a first offense.

Gibbs isn’t about to let the man keep him down, however. “Still smoking,” was his latest Twitter posting as of this publishing.

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Former French President Jacques Chirac

A court in France has handed former French President Jacques Chirac a two-year suspended prison sentence after finding him guilty of embezzlement and misuse of public funds.

Chirac was tried on Thursday over a party-financing scandal during his 1977-1995 tenure as Paris mayor, AFP reported.

Chirac, who did not attend the trial due to doctors’ recommendations, denied the charges.

The 79-year-old former president, who ruled the country from 1995 until 2007, was accused of a scheme that faked paid jobs. The salaries were then used to finance his conservative party.

The country’s current foreign minister, Alain Juppe, was convicted in the same case in 2004, but has since returned to public life, and is a key ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

This is the first conviction of a head of state in France since 1945 when Marshal Philippe Petain was found guilty of collaborating with the Nazis.

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Secret CIA prison revealed in Romania

One of CIA’s secret prisons was probably located in the capital of Romania, Bucharest. Reporters of two Western media companies visited the European country, to take a look at the place, where the CIA could keep its Afghan POWs.

The subject of CIA’s secret prisons has surfaced again after an anonymous agent of US special services unveiled information about the existence of the prison code-named “Bright Light.” According to him, US special services would keep prominent al-Qaeda members in the “romantic” prison. Sheikh Mohammad, a suspect of 9/11 attacks in the USA, was also kept at the Romanian prison, the officer said on conditions of anonymity.

The former intelligence official also said that the prison had supposedly started working in the autumn of 2003. It happened after the CIA decided to relocate its prisoners to Romania from a secret object in Poland. The Romanian prison operated for three years. In 2006, all the prisoners were delivered to the notorious Guantanamo base.

According to the agent, the secret prison was inside the National Registry for Classified Information in Romania. The registry receives all the data from NATO and the European Union. The crews of the Associated Press news agency and Germany’s ARD Panorama TV company managed to visit the secret object.

Adrian Camarasan, an employee of the registry, said that the Americans had never been the masters in the prison. The location for the prison was perfect, the officer said. Local residents knew that there was a state-run institution in the building. However, it could never occur to anyone how they used the basement of the respectable building.

According to the Romanian official, there were six cells in the secret prison. The prisoners were tortured there for about a month. Afterwards, the attitude to the prisoners began to improve. Doctors would often examine them, whereas the food for the prisoners would be cooked according to Islamic requirements.

The story raises many questions to both the United States and Romania. The subject of CIA secret prisons appeared in 2004-2005, after the report from Swiss deputy Dick Marti. An article on the subject in The Washington Post followed soon afterwards. The Observer provided the list of the countries, where the CIA had its secret prisons. The geography of that was astonishing indeed: Morocco, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. The suspects would be tortured with the imitation of drowning, cold, loud music, pork (which all Muslims reject), sleep deprivation, etc. Human rights activists showered then-President George W. Bush with criticism, but US officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, rejected all of those claims.

The USA eventually acknowledged the existence of secret prisons. However, US officials did their best to justify the use of severe methods of interrogation. According to them, it was the only language that terrorist suspects could understand.

The US reputation was stained. Barack Obama ordered to close all secret prisoners as soon as he took office as President. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the activities of the CIA would be investigated. However, the investigation moves at snail’s pace.

One may have many questions to the countries that agreed to provide their territories and premises for the secret prisons. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite admitted two years ago that the CIA had a secret prison not far from Vilnius in 2003-2004. Lithuanian ex-President Valdas Adamkus was aware of all that, of course, but he simply got away with it.

A similar scandal has begun in Poland as well. Tomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that there was a secret object in Poland in 2002-2003 too. According to the official, two extremely important prisoners – Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaidah – were kept at the secret prison in Poland. Neither Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, nor Prime Minister Donald Tusk have said a word on the subject yet.

It appears that it is now the turn for Romanian President Traian Basescu to explain the presence of CIA prisons in his country. He came to power in 2004. It was in his power to close the prison, but Basescu did not do it. The above-mentioned employee of the Romanian Registry for Classified Information said that the Romanian administration was aware of that all. It just so happens that European countries can turn a blind eye on their sovereignty to please the USA. Does that mean that Romania, Poland, Lithuania and many other “sovereign” countries are not quite independent?

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Did we the British public know that our current Prime Minister was instrumental in the loss of three illegal nuclear weapons?

Is the UK frantically trying to find out where they were sold on the “Black Market”?

We know something that you don’t…… but can’t talk about it Under the Nuclear Explosions Act otherwise we will all end up in gaol for life.

Chris McGreal of the Guardian newspaper published an article 24th of May 2010 revealing how Israel offered to sell nukes to South Africa during the apartheid era. What he failed to reveal was that Israel struck up a deal with South Africa to move its technicians down to the high-security weapons research and development facilities at Pelindaba.

It was at this location that the Israeli technicians managed to covertly give themselves nuclear weapons but also under the table gave South Africa its own nuclear capability but guess what?…….the US and UK knew all about the programme but the UN did not!!!…….what was even more amazing was the fact that the UN sent a team to South Africa where they were convinced that South Africa had curtailed its nuclear weapons programme when in actual fact it had not!!

It is fairly obvious why Israel is totally consumed in trying to find these stolen weapon and needless to say the US and British Governments are equally as concerned and yet are not in a position to admit to their loss as in doing so would incriminate past and current very senior politicians including our current Prime Minister David Cameron.

It always appear to be the case that your past always comes back to haunt you. So let’s just recall the history behind these weapons that were designed and commissioned all during the UN embargo years and who was allegedly involved.

I must also make it quite clear that many of the world leaders and senior members of government have been involved in these under the table deals which has resulted in many of them accumulating much wealth either for the party election funds or for their own personal gain. When one further considers that these faceless individuals not only govern out country but are also directly responsible for the death of millions of people both military staff and civilians it is extremely hard to understand.

How can any government have such a flawed intelligence network and allow such things to take place without some sort of audit to see what is going on behind the scenes. We have seen both the US, UK, EU and Israel transfer almost everything from chemical and biological weapons to nuclear part to countries which they have since called the “Axis of Evil.”………..that statement is not totally true because the “Axis of Evil” is right here in the heart of London!!

It was in the late 1970 when the South African nuclear programme started to go into full swing with the compliments of the Israeli scientists resulting in the first test and only test firing of a nuclear weapon. The test took place on a moored vessel anchored off Prince Edward Island on the 22nd of September 1979 when a typical double flash was observed from a passing US satellite.

One has to understand that this was all under the radar of the United Nations with the full knowledge of selected members of the US and British Governments. The US immediately went on the defensive by creating their “False Flag” report known as the “Vela Incident” in which they explained the following:

The conclusions of the Presidential panel (the Ad Hoc Panel) were reassuring, as they suggested that the most likely explanation of the Vela detection was a meteoroid hitting the satellite – in part because of the discrepancy in bhangmeter readings Others who examined the data, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the national laboratories, and defense contractors reached a very different conclusion – that the data supported the conclusion that on 22 September 1979, Vela 6911 had detected a nuclear detonation.

What I find ironic here is the fact that several agencies confirmed it was a nuclear explosion but the US Government conveniently put it to bed. I can assure you that through my own scientific contacts in the US this did actually happen and an internal memo at the Los Alamos nuclear research facility confirmed that it had been a nuclear explosion. One has to understand the high stakes involved in such programmes, especially when vast sums of money are being banded around senior political figures. This is truly corruption at its best!

The joint venture (Israel – South Africa) created 10 Battlefield Bombs and after the first test that left nine. The bombs were designed to be highly mobile and reasonably compact and could be carried by the British Canberra bomber or the Buccaneer.

It became apparent in later years that the supremacy of white power in South Africa was about to finish and so they had to open up discussion with the Americans and British as they feared these weapons getting into the hands of the blacks. It was during this time that a decision was made to ship all nine bombs to Chicago for de commissioning. However, our dear “Iron Lady” Maggie Thatcher decided that it would be a good idea to maybe acquire a few of the weapons for possible use against Iraq in the event Saddam did not toe the line.

Thatcher then ordered her Page Boy, David Cameron, to go down to South Africa along with what was believed to be the only technical man available (non other than the now( Sir) Kenneth Warren). Others also believed to be implicated was David Wilshire and many other senior members of government. In actual fact as we follow this charade up to the current time we could possible include other very senior person such as Lord McAlpine, Peter Lilley, Alan Clarke and Ken Clarke and others I have previously named in other articles. The late Dr. David Kelly was also involved.

We have to remember that this was almost a private sector deal with many political figures implicated some of whom became share holders in the illegal nuke purchase. We are talking here about an extremely high risk deal, with little security for the weapons themselves as everything had to be done in a low key covert way.

As we already know David Cameron was able to secure a deal for his lady mentor, Maggie Thatcher, and returned with a deal for three nuclear weapons. They were shipped to Oman whereby they were put in private sector storage and eventually stolen by John Bredenkamp, the arms dealer who sold them to Britain and then stole them back to sell on the Black market and the rest is now history.

We have to understand that British Tax Payers money was then placed in the Conservative Party Electoral Fund (£17.8m) which to this day has not been accounted for and other money was made available to Tony Blair (£1m) compliments of Bernie Ecclesone. On top of this a slush fund was also developed to silence other third parties that knew of the deal and our dear Mr. Ken Clarke then implemented his gagging orders to those involved!!

I guess you do not believe this story……why don’t you check it out yourself it is written in Hansard 22nd June 1993, and starting at Col. 197 when Lord Doug Hoyle raised the issue in the House as follows:

“Mr Hoyle: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall tell him what information is now given to us. We understand the expenditure and what Tory central office receives. In 1992, central office received £20.7 million. When we asked about that and about company donations, the Tory party told us to look at company accounts. I repeat: in 1992, the Tories received £20.7 million. When the records were checked by Companies house, only £2.9 198million was shown in company accounts. That means that there is a deficit of £17.8 million. We want to know where that £17.8 million came from.

Mr Tim Smith: The hon. Gentleman has made the suggestion about the accounts of the Conservative party that was made by a member of the Select Committee last week: that no accounts had been published between 1979 and 1983. They were published, and I undertook to send copies to the Select Committee.

Mr Hoyle: I gave way to the hon. Gentleman because I expected him to tell me where the difference of £17.8 million came from. I shall give way again to him. I am told that he is a treasurer of the Conservative party. I give way to him now so that he can stand up and tell us where the £17.8 million came from. Does the hon. Gentleman care to do that? I am waiting. I do not think that we shall get the information from the horse’s mouth. We certainly did not get it from the Secretary of State.”

I could write article after article on the many levels of corruption that occurred in both the US and the UK (not forgetting Israel) and the terrible consequences of this greed resulting in the death of many of our own troops and innocent civilians….all for their own pocket. Solid evidence proves that over the period of 1982-90 Iraq was supplied by the US and UK with WMD, including biological cultures and chemical precursors of nerve gases etc.

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London’s elite real estate reached another maximum level in September. The average price on a real estate object in the British capital hit the level of 3.968 million pounds sterling. This is 4.5% higher than before the crisis in March 2008. Houses and apartments in London became 11.4% more expensive within a year.

In comparison with March 2009, the prices have grown by 37.2%. London remains the only territory in the country where prices continue to grow. Moreover, according to PropertyWire, the contrast between the market situation in the British capital and other regions of the country has been strengthening recently.

The average cost of the houses in England and Wales made up 162,347 pounds, which was 2.6% lower than in July. The growth of prices on real estate in London made up the average of 2.1%. However, the sales of houses priced over 1 million pounds reduced in the country by 28 percent.

The growth of prices in London, which shows the opposite British dynamics, can be explained with the demand on the part of foreign customers. They conclude 55% of luxury real estate deals, Bloomberg reports. The index made up 49% a year before.

The number of wealthy buyers from Russia has been growing steadily. As many as 6.3% deals with real estate in the center of London were concluded with customers from Russia. The buyers from the United Arab Emirates and the USA purchased a lot less – 4.7% and 3.9% real estate deals respectively, Knight Frank said.

A Russian customer made the most expensive purchase of the year. A person, whose name has not been exposed yet, bought a 300-year-old Park Place estate on the outskirts of London. The person paid 140 million pounds for the estate and 200 acres of land.

A research by Blackwood said that the volume of real estate transactions priced over 2 million pounds increased by nearly 100% from April 2010 to April 2011. There were 141 transactions registered in this segment of the market in April of the current year.

London experts say that wealthy individuals invest in London real estate just because England is the safest place in the world. There is no threat of state coups in the country, no threat of political instability and no risk of expropriation of property.

The sales of elite houses in the USA have also been growing. The sales of mansions with price tags of over $20 million have been growing at the expense of buyers from Russia, China, Brazil and India. The growth of such sales is registered in Florida, California and New York.

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Former French President Jacques Chirac

A French lawyer and former aide to Jacques Chirac says the ex-president of the country and his prime minister received millions of euros in cash from despotic leaders of African nations.

Robert Bourgi, who served as an adviser to Chirac and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin before switching sides and joining the conservative camp of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, alleged on Sunday that several African governments had handed “briefcases” of cash to former officials of France, AFP reported.

However, the report does not at all mention what the despotic, Western-backed leaders of the poor African nations expected to get in return for pumping such large sums of money into election campaigns in France, one of Europe’s richest countries.

According to Bourgi, he “took part in handing over several briefcases to Jacques Chirac in person, at Paris city hall” in the 1980s and 1990s.

“There was never less than five million francs (more than 750,000 euros). It could go up to 15 million,” he noted, adding “I remember the first handing over of funds in Villepin’s presence. The money came from Marshal Mobutu (Sese Seko), president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo).”

Both Chirac and his prime minister at the time, who may run for the next year’s presidential elections in France, have rejected the allegations.

The current President of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade, former President of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaore, Ivory Coast’s ousted President Laurent Gbagbo, and Gabon’s Omar Bongo were among the African leaders that attended Villepin’s office for talks, Bourgi further explained.

The delivered cash amounted to “several million francs a year. More during elections,” the ex-advisor claimed.

Meanwhile, Mamadou Koulibaly, a former aide to deposed Ivorian leader Gbagbo, has confirmed Bourgi’s claims against Chirac, revealing that “around two billion West African francs (around three million euros) [was] brought from [Ivory Coast's] Abidjan to Paris in a suitcase” in 2002.

“I told the president (Gbagbo) that we’re a poor country and we shouldn’t have to pay to finance elections for politicians in rich countries,” Koulibaly added.

Chirac, 78, failed to attend his corruption trial last week due to health issues. He stands accused over alleged ghost jobs created during his time as Paris Mayor during the 1980s and 1990s.

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A former US government scientist pleaded guilty on Wednesday to attempted espionage for passing top-secret national defence information to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

The plea deal calls for Stewart Nozette, 54, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, to receive a sentence of 13 years in prison. The judge said at the hearing that he would accept the guilty plea and would impose the agreed-upon prison term.

Nozette admitted that in 2009 he provided classified information about US satellites, early warning systems, defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence and key defense strategy elements.

According to the charge, he did it with the intent to hurt the United States and to help Israel. As part of the deal, he pleaded guilty to one count and US. government prosecutors agreed to dismiss the remaining three counts against him.

“Stewart Nozette betrayed America’s trust by attempting to sell some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets for profit,” said Lisa Monaco, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s national security division.

The Justice Department said the criminal charges do not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under US laws in the case.

Nozette, who had top-secret security clearances, worked for various government agencies, including the Department of Energy and the the US space agency, NASA.

He worked at the White House on the National Space Council in 1989 and 1990, developing a radar experiment that helped discover water on the south pole of the moon.

Nozette also was president of the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a non-profit corporation where he had access to classified information.

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Former French President Jacques Chirac

The trial of former French President Jacques Chirac has opened in his absence in Paris on charges of misusing public funds during his time as mayor of the city.

Chirac’s lawyers had last week submitted a medical report to the court, explaining that the 78-year-old is in a state of vulnerability that makes him unable to answer questions about his past, the Associated Press reported on Monday.

The lawyers had also asked the court on behalf of Chirac to proceed despite his absence.

The judge faces several options of choosing to suspend the trial until further medical expertise has been provided, proceeding without the defendant, or dismissing the case.

Chirac has been accused of misusing public funds, abuse of trust and incurring illegal gains in a period between 1992 and 1995 when he was the mayor of Paris.

If found guilty, he could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of EUR 150,000 (USD 213,400), though analysts say a suspended sentence is more likely in practice.

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The Federal Reserved reached into public funds — about $1.2 trillion — to help bail out banks during the 2008 financial crisis, a new report reveals.

A Freedom of Information Act request put together by Bloomberg has allowed for the hard numbers to finally be made available to the public about the loans the Fed dished out to keep financial firms afloat in the midst of an economic collapse.

The Federal Reserve has refrained from disclosing info on the loans, which began in August 2007, and as one economics professor told Bloomberg, “was supposed to be secret and never revealed.” The Fed argued in court for two years that revealing the names and terms of borrowers and their loans would damage stocks, and some of the biggest banks involved asked the US Supreme Court last year to withhold some of the information. The Fed attested that revealing the secretive loans to the public, or even being disclosed to the Government Accountability Office, would expose the weakness of the American economy. Nonetheless, their appeal was declined and data released, at nearly 30,000 pages, shows 21,000 transactions occurring over the course of three years.

Now, at least, the world knows that long-standing secret that the economy was in trouble.

“These are all whopping numbers,” Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official, tells Bloomberg. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.” Bloomberg notes that $1.2 trillion is also around how much money US homeowners owe on over 6 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages.

Of the banks involved in the loans, Morgan Stanley was the biggest of borrowers, taking in over $107 billion. Citigroup received $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, reads the report. The Fed says that they suffered no credit losses as part of the program, and actually brought in around $13 billion in interest in fees between August 20007 and December 2008.

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Police disperse supporters and opponents of Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in front of a court building during her trial in Kiev.

A Ukrainian court has ordered the arrest of country’s former Prime Minister and high-profile opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko.

­Around 30 police officers surrounded Tymoshenko’s table and escorted the ex-PM out of the court room.

After the judge voiced his decision, Ukrainian parliamentary deputies who supported Tymoshenko began chanting “Shame on you!” and “Yulia! Yulia!”

They also organized a fight with the police as the law enforcement officers prevented the MPs from leaving the court room.

Tymoshenko’s supporters continued their actions outside the court with opposition MPs organizing a human shield to block the path of the police vehicle carrying their leader along Kiev’s main Khreshchatyk street.

An application to arrest Tymoshenko came from prosecutor Liliya Frolova, who claimed statements made by the politician as well as her behavior disrupted the functioning of the court.

Tymoshenko has criticized the trial, calling it an attempt by President Viktor Yanukovich to bar her from elections. She has also refused to stand up while addressing the judge, repeatedly insulted him and questioned his objectivity.

The hearings were also regularly disrupted by Tymoshenko’s supporters.

Policemen surround a van in which Ukraine′s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was placed to be driven to prison after her arrest.

­The arrival of Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Nikolay Azarov, on the witness stand became the tipping point which pushed the judge to agree to the arrest.

Azarov said he holds Tymoshenko and her cabinet responsible for the gas crisis of 2009, which saw Russia cutting gas supply to its Ukrainian and European customers.

“The government was, essentially, carrying out the line of breaking the existing gas contracts with Russia and this led to the gas crisis,” he explained.

Tymoshenko, for her part, accused Azarov of corruption during the period when he was in charge of the country’s tax administration. She then demanded a translator.

“I don’t speak Russian. Provide me with an interpreter so that I could understand the Ukrainian prime minister, who can’t speak Ukrainian,” she said.

Azarov replied by saying that Yulia Tymoshenko has never understood him, but that that had nothing to do with language.

Yulia Tymoshenko considered her arrest “reprisal against a political opponent.” In a letter she wrote prior to her arrest, Tymoshenko also stressed that she is not “inclined to commit suicide.”

“I want to make a statement in connection with the realization of the plan to arrest me. Clearly, this is a reprisal against a political opponent, but I’m not about this. I want to say that I have no inclination to commit suicide,” Tymoshenko said.

Tymoshenko’s defense lawyer, Yury Sukhov, is intending to appeal the court’s decision to arrest the former prime minister next Monday.

Despite Sukhov earlier saying that he had obtained permission to visit Tymoshenko to bring her personal belongings, the lawyer was not allowed to meet his client. He entered the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention facility, but almost immediately left.

“I was not let in,” he said. He added that until the next court hearing Tymoshenko is being left without legal assistance.

“The next hearing is scheduled for Monday at 10 am,” Sukhov said.

Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Batkivschyna” (Fatherland) party has decided to organize an open-ended picketing of the Pechersk district court in Kiev where the ex-prime minister is being tried.

Parliament deputy and former Tymoshenko lawyer Sergey Vlasenko told the Unian news agency that the decision to start the rally was unanimous.

The Ukrainian president’s press secretary has already officially announced that the head of the state, Viktor Yanukovich, has nothing to do with Tymoshenko’s arrest.

“The president has repeatedly said that neither he nor his administration has been meddling in the Tymoshenko’s trial,” said Yanukovich’s press secretary. “The president cannot interfere with judicial affairs. This is stipulated by the constitution.”

­Tymoshenko’s arrest worries Europe

­The European Parliament’s president, Jerzy Buzek, expressed concern over the arrest of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in a statement which was forwarded to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

“The context and conditions raise concern regarding the political motivation of this decision and the application of the rule of law in Ukraine,” the statement reads.

“Recently, I expressed my concern to Ukraine’s political leadership about the apparent selectivity in the opening of criminal case against Tymoshenko and other former ministers of the previous government.”

Buzek called on Ukraine to “observe the principles and general values that define the relationship between Kiev and Brussels and that are the core of the Eastern Partnership.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement declaring that the 2009 gas deals between Moscow and Kiev were backed by all the necessary instructions from the presidents of Russia and Ukraine and signed in strict accordance with the laws of both countries as well as international law.

The statement added that the criminal proceedings against Tymoshenko “should be fair and impartial, meet all the requirements of Ukrainian legislation in providing opportunities for protection and respect for basic humanitarian rules and regulations.”

The 50-year-old politician has been in court since June over allegations that she exceeded her powers when she made gas deals with Russia in 2009, during her term as Ukraine’s prime minister.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Fokus.ua website claimed that the outcome of the “gas case” against Tymoshenko has already been decided.

Fokus.ua cites an unnamed source “close to the investigation in the High Council of Justice of Ukraine” as saying that the ex-PM will be sentenced to up to five years in prison before September 6.

Yulia Tymoshenko was one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution which started in November 2004 and later plunged Ukraine into political chaos when her alliance with Yushchenko broke down.

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