Hurriyet Daily News in Ankara, Sept. 18, 2013

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has strongly criticized environmental activists opposing the construction of a road through Ankara's Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) forested campus, advising them to go and live in forests if they did not want roads to be built. 

“I noticed a placard today. ‘We want forests, not roads.’ Can something like that be? There are so many forests. You can’t get to your university if you have no roads. But if you want, we can send you to the forest. Go and live in forests,” Erdoğan said, in an address to his Justice and Development Party (AKP) provincial mayors on Sept. 18 [....]

United Nations News Centre, 18 September 2013

Experts from the United Nations cultural agency have confirmed that nearly all the collections of the Malawi National Museum in Upper Egypt have been looted following last month’s unrest.

“While the buildings were not badly damaged, 600 of the Museum’s collection of 1080 artefacts were missing,” the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in a statement following a visit of its experts to Minya.

The mission, organized with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and local authorities, follows the 18 August statement of UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova on the museum’s looting [....]

During the visit, from 11 to 16 September, the International Expert and UNESCO Consultant, Architect Pierre-André Lablaude, and a UNESCO expert also visited other cultural sites damaged during recent unrest, among them, the Evangelical Church in Minya, Amir Tadros Monastery in Fayoum and the Franciscan Sisters School in Beni Suef.

Some other significant churches could not be visited for security reasons [....]

By John Reed,  ForeignPolicy.com, Sept. 18, 2013

The mysterious "conference call" of al Qaeda leaders that led the United States to close its embassies around the Middle East in August was deciphered by a low-ranking enlisted man in the Air Force, who alerted his senior officers after finding clues about the ominous communication in the course of his regular duties.

"The warning that prompted that action [the embassy closures] came from the 70^th ISR Wing, and specifically from a senior airman," Lt. Gen. Robert Otto, the Air Force chief of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, said at the Air Force's annual conference in Washington.

The individual analyst being credited with the key discovery that alerted officials to a possible terrorist attack is a "cryptologic linguist" with the rank of senior airman who leads a team of electronic data analysts in one of the Air Force's premier signals intelligence units [.....]

The wing breaks into other countries' electronic communications networks to eavesdrop on whether they are adhering to treaties, steal information on their weapons, and scramble their command and control data.

That mission is consistent with story that U.S. intelligence agencies cracked some form of encrypted electronic communications that al-Qaeda leaders had previously thought safe to use.

The question needs to be asked, because this is part of a pattern. The surveillance state has one basic credo: all your information belongs to us, and none of our information belongs to you.

The Hindu, Sept. 17, 2013

Dubai -- Turkey has shot down a Syrian helicopter raising border tensions, buffered by Russia which has stepped in to prevent a possible UN-sanctioned military attack on Syria in the future.

Turkey scrambled its F-16 fighter jets on Monday to shoot down Syria’s Russian-built Mi-17 helicopter, claiming that it was forced to take the decision after the helicopter intruded two km inside Turkish airspace.

"It (the helicopter) was continuously warned by our air defence but as the violation continued, it fell on Syrian soil at 2.25 p.m. having been hit by missiles from our planes," said Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc in Ankara.

Syria has responded angrily to the shooting, slamming Turkey for deliberately escalating border tensions between the two countries, which are already steeped in hostility because of Ankara’s active and open support to the Opposition that wants to topple the Government of President Bashar Al Assad. The Syrians claim that the chopper was “heading back” after it had mistakenly entered Turkish airspace [....]

By Alasdair Blaverstock, The Atlantic, Sept. 16, 2013

Astrid de la Rosa was left bedridden for two years after her liquid silicone buttock injections migrated into her spine, paralyzing the supporting muscles.

“We are trying to educate Venezuelan girls about the dangers of these procedures before they are 12 years old,” she said. “We have to get to them early, as parents tend to offer these injections as 15th birthday presents”.

In Venezuela, 17 women have died in the past 12 months as a result of liquid silicone buttock injections. The procedure, which according to Jesus Pereira, the president of the Veneuzelan Plastic Surgeons Association, an estimated 30 percent of Venezuelan women aged 18 to 50 have undergone, attempts to achieve a figure thought to be more attractive to Venezuelan men [.....]

Because the practice is banned, women seeking the procedure must find a fitness or beauty-related business that offers the injections in secret (most commonly a beauty salon or gym). 

The injections cost, on average, just $8.

The average Venezuelan woman spends 20 percent of her annual salary on beauty products, while 4,000 people go under the knife every month in the name of self-improvement. Indeed, most banks in Venezuela offer long-term loan packages specifically tailored towards plastic surgery procedures [....]

By Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch/Dispatches, Sept. 16, 2013

[....] The experts’ mandate does not allow them to say who was responsible for the deadly barrage.  But if you read between the lines, it isn’t difficult to figure it out.

The rocket systems identified by the UN as used in the attack – truck-launched 330mm rockets with around 50 to 60 liters of Sarin, as well as 140mm Soviet-produced rockets carrying a smaller Sarin-filled warhead – are both known to be in the arsenal of the Syrian armed forces. They have never been seen in rebel hands. The amount of Sarin used in the attack – hundreds of kilograms, according to Human Rights Watch’s calculations – also indicates government responsibility for the attack, as opposition forces have never been known to be in possession of such significant amounts of Sarin.

The various theories claiming to have “evidence” that opposition forces were responsible for the attack lack credibility. This was not an accidental explosion caused by opposition fighters who mishandled chemical weapons, as claimed by some commentators online. The attacks took place at two sites 16 kilometres apart, and involved incoming rockets, not on-the-ground explosions. This was not a chemical attack cooked up by opposition forces in some underground kitchen. It was a sophisticated attack involving military-grade Sarin [....]

Meet the New Boss..Assange run for Aussie Senate flops: ..In leaked e-mails....Assange’s deputies had overridden the party’s governing body, the national council, to allow for preference deals that place right-wing anti-abortion or fringe parties.....ahead of leftist parties like the Greens...Ms. Cannold, an ethicist, has not spoken to Mr. Assange since. “This internal corruption revealed him to be no different,” she said, than the politicians he was claiming he’d be keeping accountable..

Assange won less votes than:

"Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party. Mr. Muir, who won just 0.5 percent of the vote...famous for a YouTube of himself having a kangaroo feces fight with friends...

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy, Sept. 13, 2013

MEXICO CITY — Squads of riot police backed by water cannon Friday swept into the historic heart of Mexico’s capital, scurrying between bonfires to flush out striking teachers, some of whom swung pipes and threw rocks at security forces.

As helicopters hovered overhead, masked protesters fleeing the square tore up pavement, installed impromptu barricades and tossed rocks.

By late afternoon, police had cleared the vast plaza of a sprawling tent camp that striking teachers installed in August, but were still battling protesters on nearby streets, using tear gas. Acrid smoke wafted through the streets [....]

By Uri Friedman & Katelyn Fossett, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, Sept. 12, 2013

Fars News Agency, the state-run Iranian news outlet famous for picking up an Onion story and presenting it as news, has apparently decided that plagiarizing satirical articles isn't brazen enough. On Thursday, the news agency's editors reprinted a Foreign Policy article on the debate over chemical weapons in Syria. And by "reprinted" we mean they lopped off entire paragraphs, changed key words, and added others to turn the argument into a case for why the U.S. shouldn't take military action in Syria -- and why the rebels, not Syrian President and Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad, have committed unspeakable atrocities (oh, and Iran comes off looking pretty good too). "This article originally appeared on the US Foreign Policy magazine," the Fars article notes at the end of the story. We beg to differ.

The article -- "Questioning Credibility," by Shibley Telhami -- examined Arab attitudes on chemical weapons and U.S. intervention in Syria [.....]