In Waltham, an algorithm developed by a startup company called Affectiva performed what is known as facial coding: it tracked the panelists’ raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, smirks, half-smirks, frowns, and smiles. When this face data was later merged with real-world sales data, it turned out that the facial measurements could be used to predict with 75 percent accuracy whether sales of the advertised products would increase, decrease, or stay the same after the commercials aired.

By comparison, surveys of panelists’ feelings about the ads could predict the products’ sales with 70 percent accuracy. Although this was an incremental improvement statistically, it reflected a milestone in the field of affective computing. While people notoriously have a hard time articulating how they feel, now it is clear that machines can not only read some of their feelings but also go a step farther and predict the statistical likelihood of later behavior.

Critics say the measure - which seeks to force the national governments of all 28 EU member states to establish "special administrative units" to monitor any individual or group expressing views that the self-appointed guardians of European multiculturalism deem to be "intolerant" - represents an unparalleled threat to free speech in a Europe where citizens are already regularly punished for expressing the "wrong" opinions, especially about Islam.

The proposed European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance was recently presented to members of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, the only directly-elected body of the European Union.

According to European Dignity Watch, a civil rights watchdog based in Brussels, “the principles of freedom of contract and the freedom to live according to one's personal moral views are in danger of being superseded by a newly developed concept of 'equality.' It would undermine freedom and self-determination for all Europeans and subject the private life of citizens to legal uncertainty and the control of bureaucrats. It is about governmental control of social behavior of citizens. These tendencies begin to give the impression of long-passed totalitarian ideas and constitute an unprecedented attack on citizens' rights.”

Plans changed over the last week. A steady stream of news reports on how the Americans had been spying on the German political class, including now three-term Chancellor Angela Merkel, pinpointed the top floor of the embassy. “We knew the spy news this summer, but it’s reached a new magnitude when you learn they’ve been spying on the chancellor,” he said. “It’s clear now that something has to be done, and so you want to see where it’s based.”

When the new American embassy opened here five years ago, there was more than a little grousing. The building was boring, critics argued, and looked to be more about keeping the rest of the world away than projecting an image. But there was little talk about the top floor of the embassy, and the antennas atop it. Until now. This weekend, the latest issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel has a cover photo with a creepy Cold War feel to it of what’s atop the embassy, under the headline “Das Nest.”

The magazine analyzes the top floor of the building. It focuses on the gray box-like rooms on the top that appear to have stone-colored windows. The magazine found experts and journalists who postulated that such an appearance is likely hiding highly sensitive spy equipment. They note that documents indicate the embassy’s top floors are home to a joint National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency spy program.

The United States is considered such a staunch and worthy ally. But then the spy scandal erupted with the release by former NSA worker Edward Snowden of records that indicated the United States was sweeping up hundreds of millions of electronic communications. The documents he released indicated the NSA was studying emails with key words or phrases and recording so-called “metadata” from smart phones, information tracking the movement and actions of phone owners. The embassy became the focus of an occasional protest, the slogan “United Stasi of America” projected from across the street onto its walls.

The 1998 agreement has come under criticism time and again because of the lax data privacy laws in the US. Although the Safe Harbor agreement provides for a level of protection for the transferred data according to EU standards, data protection advocates often voiced doubts about how seriously it was being implemented.

The concerns grew in Brussels by the time former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the secret monitoring program of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US, and it became known that companies like Facebook and Google had provided data to the NSA. EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding has called the Safe Harbor agreement a "loophole," rather than a "protection of our citizens." For years, audits have revealed serious breaches of the Safe Harbor rules by US companies.

So far, the German government has not pushed at the EU level for the agreement to be renegotiated or cancelled. But that is now changing. Manfred Weber, a member of the European Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel's sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is now calling for a radical restructuring of the relationship between the EU and the US as it relates to data.

"The US and US companies must, with respect to EU citizens and the European market, finally play by our rules," Weber told Spiegel Online. A member of the executive board and steering committee of the CSU and vice-chairman of the conservative European People's Party (EPP) faction in the European Parliament, Weber said he favors an end to the agreement. "The Europeans should terminate the Safe Harbor agreement," he said.

Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon.com that the expiration of stimulus funds, which will see the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reduced by $5 billion dollars, will have an “immediate impact” and represent a recipe for civil unrest.

“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” said Purvis, adding that families face the “daunting” prospect of losing a whole week’s worth of food every month.

The nationwide cut will take 76 million meals off the table of poverty-stricken New Yorkers alone, equating to about 16 meals a month for a family of three. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has labeled the cut to the SNAP program “unprecedented” in “depth and breadth.”

As we previously highlighted, even the mainstream media is invoking the threat of riots that could ensue as a result of the food stamp cut, with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto linking the issue to the Department of Homeland Security’s recent $80 million dollar outlay on armed guards to protect government buildings in upstate New York. “November 1st could be a very very iffy kind of a day… this could be all hell breaks loose day,” warned Cavuto.

“I believe the European Council in December will express its position on the future of EU Battlegroups. I expect strong political message that will echo the current level of ambition in committing to use EU Battlegroups,” the Lithuanian Minister of National Defence said.

The Minister underscored that Lithuania had always attached great importance to the Battlegroups issue.“We are taking part in the Battlegroup programme with less than two year intervals. While one of our contingent is on standby within the current UK-led Battlegroup, the other one is already starting its preparations for the next rotation in 2015 within the Nordic Battlegroup,” Olekas said.

As the presiding EU country, Lithuania seeks to increase the flexibility of EU Battlegroups, facilitate conditions for their deployment and enhance training of the Battlegroups.

CIA drone strikes are killing scores of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. The National Security Agency is eavesdropping on tens of millions of phone calls worldwide - including those of 35 foreign leaders - in the name of US security.

And the Department of Homeland Security is using algorithms to “pre-screen” travelers before they board domestic flights, reviewing government and private databases that include Americans’ tax identification numbers, car registrations and property records. Will we create a Minority Report-style Department of Pre-crime next?

Obama administration officials have a duty to protect Americans from terrorism. But out-of-control NSA surveillance, an ever-expanding culture of secrecy and still-classified rules for how and when foreigners and even Americans can be killed by drone strikes are excessive, unnecessary and destructive.

Twelve years after September 11, 2001, the United States’ obsession with al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist group itself.

David Cameron will say in a speech on Tuesday at the World Islamic Economic Forum in London that the Treasury is drawing up plans to issue a £200 million Sukuk, a form of debt that complies with Islamic financial law. The new sharia-compliant gilt will enable Britain to become the first non-Muslim country to tap the growing pool of Islamic investments that is forecast to top £1.3 trillion by next year.

The Prime Minister will say that it would be a “mistake” to miss the opportunity to encourage more Islamic investment in the UK and that the City of London should rival Dubai as a centre for sharia-compliant finance.

“When Islamic finance is growing 50 percent faster than traditional banking and when global Islamic investments are set to grow to £1.3 trillion by 2014, we want to make sure a big proportion of that new investment is made here in Britain,” Mr Cameron will tell an audience of senior officials from Islamic countries.

This is the conclusion drawn by a year-long project to work out the basic features of future German foreign policy, with the participation of the head of the foreign ministry's Policy Planning Staff. The document contends that, because the United States is showing signs of weakening, Germany, currently a "policy shaping power in waiting," should develop stronger global activities to become a leading power.

This does not merely mean taking on "troublemaker" countries - such as Iran and Venezuela - but also finding the appropriate means for handling emerging countries, not unconditionally prepared to surrender to the Western leadership. This could also be achieved with the assistance of cooperative techniques - patterned along the lines of Bonn's Ostpolitik during the 1970s ("transformation through convergence").

The members of the project take it for granted that German global policy must also [include] military means - "including combat missions." These results are included in a paper jointly published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).

The analysis is based on the assessment that today's Germany is "more powerful and influential" than "any democratic Germany in history." In fact, for some time Germany has openly laid claim to the "role of leader" of the EU - a hegemonic claim, which both friends and foes of Berlin's hegemony currently more or less openly acknowledge. "Germany's growth in power opens new opportunities for influence," according to the strategy paper, "That is cause for a re-evaluation of its international relations."

The proposal came after allegations arose that the United States government had monitored German chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone since 2002, while eavesdropping activities are also said to have been run out of the US Embassy in Berlin as well as in about 80 other embassies and consulates around the world.

State-backed communications firm Deutsche Telekom is said to be behind the national Internet proposal and has urged other local firms to join in. “If the Americans eavesdropped on cellphones in Germany, they broke German law on German soil,” said German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, as quoted by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

Telecom and Internet experts Reuters spoke to however believed that Deutsche Telekom and the German state would face an uphill challenge in creating its own Internet. "It is internationally without precedent that the internet traffic of a developed country bypasses the servers of another country," said Torsten Gerpott, a professor of business and telecoms at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

According to Reuters, an alternative solution would be for European leaders to beef up a new data-privacy law, which has been in the works for almost two years. A new, greatly toughened version of the law, was backed by the European Parliament on Monday, but it will still require agreement by member states. Deutsche Telekom's executive in charge of data privacy and legal affairs, Thomas Kremer, said the new law could help: "Of course customers need to be able to use any web services they like, anywhere in the world. But we need to make this safer."

The Federal Reserve liquidity coverage ratio proposal, approved unanimously at a meeting in Washington, goes further than the Basel III measure adopted in January and calls for earlier implementation than the EU.

The US plan, most stringent for the biggest banks, is looking at implementation by 2017 – two years ahead of Basel's deadline. "The proposed rule would, for the first time in the United States, put in place a quantitative liquidity requirement that would foster a more resilient and safer financial system," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said before the vote.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in January agreed on a liquidity coverage ratio, meant to ensure banks can survive a 30-day credit squeeze without the kind of government aid that was required after the 2008 crisis.

The financial storm clouds are gathering, ominously darkening the horizon. Though the financial media and the organs of state propaganda continue forecasting blue skies of recovery and rising corporate profits, the factual evidence belies this rosy forecast: internal measures of financial and economic activity are weakening across the globe as the state-central bank solutions to all ills - massive increases in credit creation, leverage and deficit spending - have failed to address any of the structural causes of the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown.

This failure to address the causes of 2008 Global Financial Meltdown is disastrous in and of itself - but the status quo has magnified the coming disaster by scaling up the very causes of the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown: excessive credit expansion, misallocation of capital on a grand scale, an opaque shadow banking system constructed of excessive leverage and a dependence on phantom collateral, ie risks and assets that are systemically mispriced to skim stupendous profits for financiers, bankers and their political enablers.

This is what I have called doing more of what has failed spectacularly.

The next global financial storm is already gathering on the horizon. Doing more of what failed spectacularly will not save the day a second time, as the scale required to create yet more phantom collateral and more asset bubbles will collapse the system. Intellectual, moral and financial bankruptcy all go hand in hand. There isn't just one storm gathering on the horizon - there are three, each adding force and fury to the other two.

These leaks have merely confirmed what many of us already knew about the NSA’s widespread spying and surveillance activities. Snowden’s role like other high profile whistleblowers is certainly questionable considering his bizarre past with the CIA and other government entities but what is not questionable is the fact that the NSA is nothing more than the real life version of 1984’s Big Brother.

The NSA is literally collecting information on everyone be they inside of America or outside of America and new reports suggest that this even includes allied leaders. This has sparked an increasing amount of anger both domestically in America but in many places around the world.

The United States already lost an unbelievable amount of credibility following the Obama regime’s debacle with Syria but now they have little to no credibility due to the sheer breadth and scope of the NSA's spying operations.

For all we know these NSA revelations might have been staged as a way to ruin America’s credibility before it is destroyed either economically or militarily much like how Germany was brought down during World War 2. After all, wealth is rapidly flowing out of America and into Asian countries as America’s usefulness as a global power rapidly wanes. But either way, there is no place for an unethical institution like the NSA to exist anywhere in the world.

Is it really better for us to think that things have gone so far with the post-9/11 idea that any spying that can be done should be done and that nobody thought to inform President Obama about tapping the phone of one of the most important American allies?

The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, kept repeating that Mr Obama ordered a review of surveillance policy a few months ago, but he would not confirm whether that includes the tapping of the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, or the collection of data on tens of millions of calls in France, Spain and elsewhere.

It’s unlikely that Mr Obama would have ordered any review if Edward Snowden’s leaks had not revealed the vacuum-cleaner approach to electronic spying. Mr Carney left no expectation that the internal reviews will produce any significant public accounting — only that the White House might have “a little more detail” when they are completed.

Yu’s comments, made in a speech at a forum to promote relations with Taiwan, were reported by the official Xinhua News Agency on October 26. Yu is ranked fourth in the seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee headed by party chief and President Xi Jinping.

Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to cut the state’s role in the economy, change the financial and fiscal systems, and overhaul land and household registration rules to sustain growth. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News this month said policies flowing from the meeting, called the third plenum, will reduce the odds of a severe slowdown and help China become a high-income country by 2030.

The meeting “will focus on studying comprehensive and deep reform,” Yu was quoted as saying in Xinhua’s report. “The depth and strength of the reforms will be unprecedented and will promote profound changes in every area of the economy and society.” The report didn’t refer to any policies or measures.