The unit best known for killing Osama bin Laden has been converted into a global manhunting machine with limited outside oversight.

'Poison pill' strategy ties hands of future governments.

In the good old days only God had access to everything everyone does.

These days pretty well everyone has access to what everyone does.

The good old days were better.  God is a myth.

If God is  not a myth,  then he was must have been so bored with what he had wrought that he caused Nietzsche to put himself out of our misery.

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The US says it faces a "dedicated adversary" and an "ever evolving threat" to the nation's cyber security, after a major data breach.

Ambient wi-fi signals have been used by US researchers to power a small surveillance camera.

A charming viral video shows chimps, gorillas, leopards and other wild animals reacting to their own reflections in a giant jungle mirror.

A graphic mobile phone video obtained by the BBC appears to show militants from Islamic State torturing a 14-year-old Syrian boy.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus tells the BBC that Islamic State militants can only be defeated through a dual military and political approach.

Enforcer, adviser and conduit to the Conservative grassroots, Jenni Byrne is Stephen Harper’s most powerful political operative, but few Canadians even know her name

How do you go about dismantling a 24,000-tonne steel structure in the middle of a hostile environment like the North Sea?

I was pleased to see  that Sepp Blatter  was re-elected to head up Fifa, even though several of his subordinates had just been arrested with corruption charges .  If these charges prevail, they mean that Mr. Blatter is either corrupt or incompetent.

In either case,  he is an excellent choice to continue heading up Fifa.

Why so?

Consider the options:

• The best possible Fifa outcome is that  BIatter  et al will be found corrupt and not incompetent.
• If  Mr. Blatter is incompetent he could be replaced by someone more competent.

Why so?  Fifa can be thought of as a metaphor for professional sports activities .

The professional sports establishment corrupts billions of people every day.

• Professional sports encourages pornographic obsessions among fans.
• By finding and promoting supernatural athletes, professional sports reminds the rest of us that we might as well remain on our couches.
• More ominously, professional sports depends upon perceiving  us vs. them competitions as noble undertakings.
• This easily  shades into xenophobia, bigotry and militaristic solutions to problems.  (If you only own a hammer, everything looks like a nail!)

So there you have it! Professional sports provides a recipe for a vacuous and  possibly dangerous  life:

• Watch as much stuff as possible!
• Imagine what it feels like to do stuff!

Finally, if  you find yourself a loser after living this way,  the professional sports establishment has a solution for  that problem as well.

Take a look at the athletes who lose competitions every day.  They are almost always remarkable people.

You are also a loser.  Therefore you must also be remarkable.

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Fifa re-elects Sepp Blatter president as his rival withdraws after the first round of a vote dominated by allegations of corruption in football.