Iran and the United States have secretly made significant progress toward an agreement that would aim to keep Iran “two or three years away” from a nuclear weapons capability, and would see an easing of economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic, an Israeli TV report said on Wednesday.

By Linda Feldman, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 7, 2013

[....] In the debate before the ACA passed, there was plenty of focus on people who lacked insurance, either because they couldn’t afford it or had a preexisting condition. Now, newspapers around the country are chronicling the stories of the other category of consumer – people who make too much money to be eligible for federal subsidies and are being charged double and triple their old rates.

"The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that's true across the country,” Jonathan Wu, cofounder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website, tells the San Jose Mercury News.

Michael Yount of Charlotte, N.C., is one such unhappy customer. He and his wife, retired and in their late 50s, have been buying their own health insurance from Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) in North Carolina, paying about $380 a month with an $11,000 deductible. BCBS is offering them a new plan for three times the cost, $1,124.50 a month, still with an $11,000 deductible [....]

Also see:

4 tips for buying insurance without subsidies
By Tom Murphy, AP Business Writer, Oct. 9, 2013

[....] Individuals who do not have the option to obtain insurance from their employer, and who make more than about $46,000 -- or a family of four bringing in more than $94,200 -- will not be eligible for income-based tax credits under the new health care law. [....] Here are some shopping tips to consider if you make too much to land a helping hand from the overhaul with next year's insurance bill [....]

PPP asked people if what they thought of Congress.  LOL...People think more of dog poop than Congress.  Even hemorrhoids are more popular then Congress.  They were on a roll the day that they did this polling.  The full report link is at the bottom of the cover page. 

By Sami Nader, Al-Monitor Lebanon Pulse, October 8, 2013

[....] The fundamental backstory to this conflict revolves around natural gas and gas-related dilemmas, which extend well-beyond the Syrian arena and directly encompass the other countries in the eastern Arab world such as Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and even Cyprus [....]

Russia is a major player in these gas wars. Its tight reins over the Syrian card and staunch support of the Syrian regime conceal its overriding desire to defend its strategic interests. Foremost among these interests is the preservation of its privileged position as Europe's main supplier of natural gas and, conversely, denying any attempt at establishing alternative pipelines outside Russian control. For this reason, Moscow has opposed Turkey's growing role in this respect, particularly following the construction of the pipeline known as Nabucco.

The Nabucco pipeline skirts those regions under Russian influence [....]

Levison believes that when the government was faced with the choice between getting information that might lead it to its target in a constrained manner or expanding the reach of its surveillance, it chose the latter. The documents, and Levison’s comments to us, suggest that although he is a skeptic, he was willing to work with the government: he offered to write intercept code himself to capture their target’s metadata, and acknowledged that the government might have a right to the person’s information. He was willing to turn that information over, as he did in a case involving child pornography; Lavabit’s archived site in fact explicitly states that one of the reasons its most secure services are available to paying customers only is so that if an account “is used for illegal purposes that money trail can be used to track down the account owner.” But the government refused Levison’s offer. It wanted the keys to everything, so he gave it nothing.

By William Neuman, New York Times, Oct. 6/7, 2013

CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela — Rival union groups squared off outside this country’s biggest steel mill last week, arguing over whether to continue a lengthy strike at the government-run plant. Each faction blasted its message at top volume over loudspeakers, trying to drown the other out. Pushing and shoving ensued, along with dueling renditions of the national anthem.

And then the region’s chief government official, a former general, showed up with another set of loudspeakers to tell everyone that they should all just go back to work. The workers shouted him down, too.

President Nicolás Maduro has insinuated that the strike at the company with about 14,000 workers is part of an American plot to destabilize the country, and last week he expelled the top American diplomat in Venezuela and two other embassy officials amid dark warnings of a conspiracy. As evidence Mr. Maduro pointed to a visit the diplomats made to this industrial city last month, when they met with labor leaders and members of the political opposition.

But he offered no proof that the diplomats’ visit had anything to do with the strike, which was already under way. Union leaders adamantly denied any link to the embassy.[....]

Photo credit & caption:  Meridith Kohut for The New York Times; Workers voting last week to continue a strike at the steel plant, while a rival union group was calling for the strike to end.

By Barbara Starr, CNN, Oct. 5, 2013, 7:36mpm

Targets: al Qaeda operative and Al-Shabaab leader

U.S. special operations forces captured a terrorist operative sought in U.S. embassy bombings and participated in a raid targeting an Al-Shabaab leader, U.S. officials say. (Developing; link is the headline story & I imagine that it will be updated.)

Also see:

Officials: Al Qaeda leader captured in Libya
By Evan Perez and Barbara Starr, CNN, Oct. 5, 2013, 7:31 pm

A key al Qaeda operative wanted for his role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 has been captured in a U.S. special operations forces raid in Tripoli, Libya, U.S. officials tell CNN.

Abu Anas al Libi was grabbed from the Libyan capital in what one of the officials described as a "capture" operation from the Libyan capital. The U.S. operation was conducted with the knowledge of the Libyan government, a U.S. official said [....]

I love my wife Abby for about a million and one reasons, and that's only because I can't count much higher than that.  But I'm so proud of her for helping to lead a charge on behalf of a bunch of parents with special needs kids in NYC and the absolutely horrible school bus situation our kids have been facing this year.  Abby makes a cameo right in the beginning, where she says something like "it's been one disaster after another."  And then my little Noa comes in at around 2:25 of the video and although I'm a bit biased I think she's gonna be a star :).

Excuse the kvelling, but as many of you know, that's what we parents do!  Of course, it's a serious issue, as you will see with some of the other kids who are featured on this video--but for the grace of . .

This is really sad news.  We will miss him.

Greeks stunned not only by revelations about country's far right group but also by strength of clampdown
By Helena Smith in Athens, theguardian.com, 1 Oct., 2013

[....] Tuesday's scenes were the second act of a drama that started in the early hours of Saturday when counter-terrorism officials, in an unprecedented operation, arrested the most prominent figures of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn movement on charges of operating a criminal organisation masked as a political group.

Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the extremists' enigmatic leader, was said to be in his pyjamas when police surrounded his home and knocked at the door. Like his second-in-command, Christos Pappas, who subsequently surrendered, and the four MPs who were hauled before a public prosecutor on Tuesday, he stands accused of murder, money-laundering, blackmail and illegal possession of arms [....]