In 2010, the Michigan DNR outlawed feral swine — pigs classified as non-native, invasive, and said to be carriers of disease and overall harmful to the environment. Though groups fought adamantly to overturn the ban, it went into effect April 1. The new ISO now defines all open-range pigs raised on small family farms as illegal “invasive species,” and all farmers who raise them as felons. The MDNR declared that it would “destroy” all such pigs beginning in April, even indicating they would raid local farms with government-issued rifles.

The Farm to Consumer Defense Fund said: For more than a decade, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has worked politically to drive private hunting preserves out of business. However, the Michigan state legislature repeatedly rebuffed their attempts. Elected officials recognize how important private property rights are, and they were unwilling to prohibit landowners to raise and harvest animals in open areas. Now, backed by large Agribusiness interests in the state, DNR has done an end run around participatory democracy and declared swine with certain characteristics “feral” which not only includes animals raised at hunting preserves but thousands of other small farms across the state.

The intimidating thuggery, harassment, and destruction of private property practiced by MDNR agents has compelled Natural News editor Mike Adams to issue a call to arms: I am hereby calling for the armed citizens' arrest of DNR officials who must be brought to justice for their crimes against Michigan farmers. Every agent of the DNR that participated in these raids must be brought to justice to answer for their crimes. If the use of force is necessary to make a lawful and legal arrest of these criminal Michigan government agents, then such use of force is fully authorized under the United States Constitution as well as the Constitution of the State of Michigan. In Texas, the state Constitution even says that farmers have the right to use lethal force to prevent someone from committing a felony crime against their property. This includes shooting horse thieves, for example, and being in the right to do so.

As the uprising in Syria drags on, there are signs that some Alawites are beginning to move away from the regime. But most continue to fight for Assad - largely out of fear that the Sunni community will seek revenge for past and present atrocities not only against him but also against Alawites as a group. This sense of vulnerability feeding Alawite loyalty is rooted in the sect’s history.

The Alawites split from Shia Islam in ninth-century Iraq over their belief in the divinity of the fourth Islamic caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib, a position branded as heresy by the Sunnis and extremist by most Shias. The community began as a small collection of believers, and over the following centuries it suffered almost constant discrimination and several massacres at the hands of Sunni Muslims. In 1305, for example, following a clerical fatwa, Sunni Mamluks wiped out the Alawite community of the Kisrawan (modern Lebanon). As late as the mid-nineteenth century, in retaliation for the rebellion of an Alawite sheikh, the Ottomans ruthlessly persecuted the Alawites, burning villages and farms across what little territory they held.

Despite this long-standing persecution, the Alawites fought to integrate into modern Syria. In 1936, as the French mandate waned, Alawite religious leaders convinced their anxious followers to incorporate themselves into the new, overwhelmingly Sunni, Syrian state. Over the next several decades, Alawites moved away from the mountains to pursue educational and employment opportunities in the cities. Between 1943 and 1957, Alawite migration tripled the population of Hama, and between 1957 and 1979 it quadrupled the size of Latakia.

Many Alawites also joined the military. Since Ottoman times, Sunni Arabs had largely spurned army careers, but Alawites welcomed the opportunity for stable income. By 1963, they made up 65 percent of noncommissioned officers in the Syrian army. The rise of Alawites in Syrian society throughout the 1960s was assisted by political infighting among the Sunnis and the Baath Party coup of 1963, which united working-class Alawites and Sunnis under one banner.

The Alawites have consolidated their control of the country. According to the Syria scholar Radwan Ziadeh, they comprise the vast majority of Syria’s roughly 700,000 security and intelligence personnel and military officer core. In fact, they constitute so much of the country’s security apparatus that Syrians are said to often put on an Alawite accent when apprehended by intelligence officers in the hope of receiving better treatment.

The Supporting Safe and Responsible Development of Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources Executive Order seeks to create what amounts to a Presidential super committee that will oversee the regulation and development of the ‘unconventional’ natural gas industry for the purpose of ensuring a long-term natural gas supply for the United States, as well as to do so in a safe and environmentally responsible manner...

Now that the President has given the go ahead, there’s nothing holding the government back. The fracking industry stands to be impacted almost immediately, with federal agencies prepared to tear into operations nationwide in short order...

According to opponents of the legislation, by Presidential decree the federal government can now coordinate action through thirteen core federal agencies against any domestic natural gas production facility and according to standards determined to be appropriate not by law, but because of political agenda.

The target of the legislation is what many believe is the unrestricted and out-of-control drilling practices of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process which blasts water, sand and chemicals underground to stimulate the release of natural gas. Fracking has led to health concerns from environmentalists and others for its potential to pollute the air and contaminate drinking water. Some theories also suggest that fracturing may raise the likelihood of earthquakes in areas like the central United States, an argument that many scientists agree is plausible.

In November, US President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced plans to expand the US military presence in Australia. The two leaders had agreed to increase bilateral military cooperation and training in this way. Despite the fact that the US’s final military presence in the country is to grow into a 2,500-person Marine Air Ground Task Force, Australia’s defense minister Stephen Smith insisted Wednesday morning that the marines and their entourage cannot be qualified as a military base.

''We don't have United States military bases in Australia and we're not proposing to,'' he told ABC radio from Darwin, where he greeted the marines together with the US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich. The first group of marines is scheduled to conduct joint military exercises with the Australian Defence Force as well as traveling to some neighboring nations for the same purpose. The US contingent in Australia is expected to be a rotational force. Its different units will be moving through for short periods of time and will not be based in Australia permanently.

Chinese officials have already questioned whether the US’s new military alliances in the region are aimed at encircling China in order to prevent it from becoming a global power. Barack Obama dismissed these fears when announcing the deployment. Back then, he stressed that it was not an attempt to isolate China, adding that Washington welcomes "a rising, peaceful China." However, Stephen Smith did mention the rise of China and India in his speech, saying that the world needs to “come to grips” with this fact and respond adequately. He also added that having the US marines in Australia would enhance such efforts.

4,500 US troops are participating in an annual military exercise in the Philippines, just a week after a diplomatic incident that provoked a standoff between Chinese and Filipino warships. Simultaneously, thousands of Taiwanese troops are repelling a simulated Chinese attack on the island, whose independence its bigger neighbor refuses to recognize.

At first glance, China is entangled in regional disputes that have little consequence for the rest of the world. The South China Sea is potentially rich in oil, and already provides valuable shipping lanes and fishing stocks. China says it is entitled to treat the sea almost in its entirety as its own on the basis of a sixty-year-old claim, and in apparent violation of standard international maritime treaties. The Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have counter-claims.

Last week a Filipino warship attempted to arrest two Chinese fishing boats operating in what it says is its segment of the sea. But two Chinese surveillance ships arrived and began to shield the fishing boats, preventing the arrests. Heated rhetoric followed from both Manila and Beijing. But this is essentially a commercial dispute, only slightly spiced up by nationalistic grandstanding.

Taiwan and Tibet’s sovereignty disputes are long-festering sores. But despite China’s insistence on reintegration, and the territories' drives for full independence, no sides are likely to take active steps to upset the status quo.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has spoken out against plans to increase the permanent euro bailout fund to €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion), saying that, "Giving out more and more money is not the solution." In doing so, Schäuble is signalling the German government's resistance to French calls for such a bolstering of the fund.

On Thursday, French Finance Minister François Baroin had echoed calls made by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday to boost the amount of available loan assistance to this level in order to shore up market confidence and prevent the possibility of contagion in the euro crisis. "The firewall, it's a little like the nuclear option in military planning, it's there for dissuasion, not to be used," Baroin said in a radio interview.

On Thursday evening, the day before euro-zone finance ministers will begin meeting in Copenhagen, Schäuble said the German government is willing to continue to operate the two bailout funds simultaneously - at least for a transition period. The original plan had been to replace the current European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) originally established to aid Greece, Ireland and Portugal with a permanent successor fund known as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would initially be funded with €500 billion and go into effect in mid-2012.

But now it appears that the two funds, with a combined total of roughly $800 billion, will be kept in operation alongside each other - at least initially. "That is convincing," Schäuble said of this figure. "That is enough." Likewise, the chorus of those speaking out against the expansion of the bailout fund has also been joined by Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble ultimately had to concede defeat. Last Friday, Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), voted in favor of the massive euro-zone bailout packages whose sheer size makes most people's heads spin. "The euro area is mobilizing an overall firewall of approximately €800 billion, more than $1 trillion," the Euro Group, which consists of the euro-zone finance ministers, proudly announced.

There was a palpable sense of relief among all those attending the meeting of European Union finance ministers at Copenhagen's Bella Center. After all, they had resolved a protracted dispute. For months, the Germans had resisted the high firewalls that have been urged by the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now, Berlin has relented - but this breakthrough could soon be reversed by further setbacks. There's a good chance that the beefed-up bailout fund won't work, despite its billions of euros in firepower.

This time the problem won't be the German government but rather the German parliament, the Bundestag. Since the Bundestag insists on having a say on every minute detail involving the rescue fund, it's making life more difficult for the would-be euro rescuers. A number of instruments that the euro-zone governments only agreed to after fierce wrangling will thus probably remain permanently toothless, and possibly never be implemented.

Until now, the Bundestag has enjoyed co-determination rights that exceed virtually every other national parliament in Europe. Representatives of all political parties decided last week that these rights should now be extended. In the future, the Bundestag will have to give its approval to nearly all measures taken within the scope of the temporary euro-zone rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, were able to get their pet project of a European fiscal pact accepted by most of the European Union's member states. Now Schäuble has come up with a new idea for improving the monitoring and coordination of fiscal policy within the EU in order to promote long-term budgetary discipline.

According to an internal Finance Ministry document obtained by Spiegel, Schäuble plans to propose creating independent panels of experts at both the national and EU level, who would monitor fiscal policies in the member states, the euro zone and the EU as a whole. They would be responsible for sounding a warning if they see governments' budgetary policies straying off course.

The panels, which would be composed mainly of academics, would also be charged with checking "the compatibility of national fiscal policies with European and national requirements" as well as the "implementation of national and European regulations," according to the Finance Ministry document. Those regulations would include the tougher EU stability pact, which was adopted at a summit in March 2011, as well as the new fiscal pact, which 25 EU countries have agreed to introduce.

Improving member states' budgetary discipline has been a recurring theme in Chancellor Merkel and Finance Minister Schäuble's efforts to fight the European debt crisis. Berlin put pressure on other countries to sign up to the fiscal pact, which will introduce tougher rules for budget offenders. The pact will oblige countries to incorporate a German-style "debt brake," which forces governments to more or less balance their budgets, into their national constitutions. The treaty now has to be approved by national parliaments, with Germany's Bundestag expected to vote on the issue in May.

The halting of the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race by a protester swimming in the River Thames this month highlighted the difficulty of ruling out a disturbance at the Games. Cyber-attacks, crowd trouble, riots, civil emergencies and even extreme weather are among the scenarios that British authorities are planning for, officials and analysts say. "It's impossible to totally guarantee that you can get rid of all risk. You can't," security analyst Margaret Gilmore of the Royal United Services Institute in London told AFP.

"But you can go a long way to deterring anyone who wants to disrupt or attack the Games, and mitigating any impact if, for example, a terrorist attack gets through." The shadow of a terror attack has hung over the London Games since the start. The day after London was named host city, four homegrown suicide bombers attacked three underground trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people.

It is also 40 years since Palestinian militants massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and 16 years after a bombing at the Atlanta games. British Prime Minister David Cameron said during a visit by International Olympic Committee Chief Jacques Rogge last month that the security operation would be sensitive to the spirit of the Games.

That may be, but the numbers are huge: 13,500 Ministry of Defence personnel, 12,000 police and more than 16,000 private security guards and unpaid volunteers will make up the Olympics security force. The operation involves warplanes, two navy ships including a helicopter carrier stationed in the River Thames and batteries of surface-to-air missiles. Britain has also ramped up its original security blueprint for the games, boosting the budget in December from £282 million to £553 million ($877 million, €662 million).

The quake struck 26 miles north-northeast of Valparaiso, and 69 miles northwest of the capital Santiago, but there were no reports of injuries. State emergency office ONEMI said a stretch of coastline was being evacuated as a precaution, but there was no tsunami alert. Rodrigo Ubilla, an Interior Ministry undersecretary, said there had been no reports of damage to public or private infrastructure, although state television said several thousand homes were without power outside Santiago.

Apartment buildings in Santiago shook heavily, and residents opened doors as a precaution to clear potential escape routes. Local television broadcast images of lamps swinging in homes in the capital.

Chile is prone to earthquakes, and was hammered by a massive 8.8 magnitude tremor in early 2010 which ravaged the south-center of the country, devastating industries and triggering tsunamis, in a disaster that killed about 500 people. The 2010 quake caused roughly $8 billion in insured losses and economic losses of at least twice that. In the past two years, earthquakes have been a scourge of the insurance industry. In addition to Chile, quakes in Japan and New Zealand in 2011 caused record-breaking losses in the tens of billions of dollars. Mexico has also been rattled by a series of strong quakes in recent weeks.

The report, screened on the main evening news of Channel 10, was remarkable both in terms of the access granted to the reporter, who said he had spent weeks with the pilots and other personnel he interviewed, and in the fact that his assessments on a strike were cleared by the military censor.

No order to strike is likely to be given before the P5+1 talks with Iran resume in May, the reporter, Alon Ben-David, said. “But the coming summer will not only be hot but tense.” In the event that negotiations fail and the order is given for Israel to carry out an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, “dozens if not more planes” will take part in the mission: attack and escort jets, tankers for mid-air refueling, electronic warfare planes and rescue helicopters, the report said.

Ben-David said that if negotiations break down, and Iran moves key parts of its nuclear program underground to its Qom facility, the IAF “is likely to get the order and to set out on the long journey to Iran. Years of preparations are likely to come to realization,” he said, adding that “the moment of truth is near.” According to the report, it’s the older versions of the F-15 that can fly further than any other plane in Israel’s arsenal, and this puts them on the front line of any potential attack. One pilot said in the report that the F-15 “is a plane with a very wide range of operation — a combination of relatively energy-efficient engines, and significant flightworthiness regarding weapons and fuel.”

The IAF has a full-sized unmanned plane, the “Eitan,” that is said to be able to fly to Iran, the report indicated. “This plane can do all that is required of it when the order is given,” a pilot said, without elaboration. The attack, the report said, would presumably trigger a war in northern Israel, with missile attacks (presumably from the Iranian-proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon). “There will be no tranquility and peace anywhere in Israel,” Ben-David said. This could be the first full-scale war the IAF has fought in nearly 30 years, the report stated.

The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry's attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

The 38-year-old billionaire, whose family fled anti-semitism in the Soviet Union, was widely regarded as having been the driving force behind Google's partial pullout from China in 2010 over concerns about censorship and cyber-attacks. He said five years ago he did not believe China or any country could effectively restrict the internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong. "I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he said.

He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

Yesterday in a panel on the "Future of Europe" at a conference organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Soros said: "The Euro has really broken down. It has sprung defects, some of which could have been anticipated and some were anticipated. But some actually couldn't. Effectively, heavily indebted countries in Europe have ended up in the position of a third world country that is heavily indebted in a foreign currency. And that is only one of the unanticipated results of how things worked out with the Euro."

Soros went on to say that Europe is simultaneously suffering from a Euro Crisis, a sovereign debt crisis, a balance of payments crisis, a banking crisis, a competitiveness crisis and suffering from other serious structural defects.

The list of the disqualified hopefuls include Omar Sulaiman, who became vice-president in Mubarak's last days; Khairat Al Shater, the deputy leader of the influential Muslim Brotherhood; and Salah Abu Esmail, a populist ultra-conservative Salafist. The commission was forced to close its offices over the weekend when an angry mob of Esmail's followers, anticipating his disqualification, began protesting outside its offices.

"The commission members saw there was a danger to the lives of all those working inside the office and decided to evacuate it from the staff because there was not enough protection," said Hatem Bagatu, the secretary-general of the panel. He added that documents related to the election process and candidacies are kept inside the office.

Earlier this month, the commission said it was officially notified by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry that Abu Esmail's late mother was a US citizen. Under the Egyptian constitution, presidential candidates, their parents and spouses must be only Egyptian citizens. However, a Cairo court said earlier this week there was no evidence that Abu Esmail's mother had a dual citizenship. His supporters have vowed to continue their strike outside the commission's office until it validates his presidential bid.

Yields on Germany's benchmark 10-year Bund, viewed as the euro zone's safest debt, hit a record low of 1.628 percent. The previous record was established in November 2011, at the height of the debt crisis before the ECB injected around €1 trillion of cheap three-year funds into the banking system.

"We're back in full crisis mode," Rabobank rate strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor said. "It is looking more and more likely that Spain is going to have some form of a bailout. Assuming there is not an (ECB) intervention you would not see a cap on Spanish yields, they would just keep increasing." The latest blow to Spanish markets followed data on Friday that showed record borrowing by its banks from the ECB. Investors' main fear is that banks parked most of the funds in domestic government debt, making them more vulnerable to sovereign stress.

Spain faces a test of investor confidence this week with an auction of two- and 10-year bonds on Thursday. Contagion fears pushed Italian 10-year yields about 12 base points higher on the day at 5.66 percent.