Flood on Danube moves closer to Hungary's capital

June 09, 2013

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian officials say the crest of the flooded Danube River is expected to reach Budapest late Sunday but that defenses should keep the water out of most of the capital.

At least 20 people have been killed by a week of flooding in central Europe, as rivers such as the Danube, the Elbe and the Vlatava overflowed after heavy rains and caused great damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Sunday that no deaths, injuries or missing persons have been reported in his country, but that there are still several critical areas along the Danube where 7,000 soldiers and thousands of volunteers are packing sandbags to shore up flood walls.

How Google, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo and AOL are all blatantly lying to their own users in denying NSA spy grid scheme

Saturday, June 08, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) What do Google, AOL, Skype, Facebook, Apple, Hotmail and Yahoo all have in common? They have all been caught turning over private user data to the government's spy agency, the NSA. All these companies routinely turn over the emails, voice calls, text chats, photos, files and even logins and passwords of their users, including Americans.

"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal," journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Piers Morgan (who knows all about spying and hacking people's private data). "And that is to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the United States but around the world."

Tech companies rush to issue (false) denials

Immediately after these revelations surfaced over the past few days, all these companies began denying any involvement with the NSA. "Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg are denying reports that depict two of the Internet’s most influential companies as willing participants in a secret government program that gives the National Security Agency unfettered access to email and other personal information transmitted on various online services," reports the San Francisco branch of CBS News.

But what nobody is yet revealing is that all these companies are required by law to LIE to their own customers about secret government surveillance.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, you see, makes it a federal crime for any company participating in the surveillance to publicly acknowledge the existence of that surveillance. Thus, executives at Facebook, Google, Skype and others would all face arrest and federal prosecution as "terrorists" if they admitted the truth to their own users.

That's just how far down the rabbit hole this government surveillance program goes: Not only does the government spy on you and everything you do -- "they quite literally can watch your ideas as you type" -- the government can also force all the tech companies cooperating with the spying to publicly deny the existence of the program.

But the New York Times -- yes, the NYT which hardly ever engages is actual journalism -- has gone public with an article confirming that these tech companies did, indeed, concede to the NSA surveillance program. "They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so," says the NYT in an article titled Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program.

Except it wasn't just "foreign users," it turns out. The program quickly ballooned to encompass users in the United States, too. The NYT goes on to report:

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

This is how companies like Google and Facebook can claim, with a straight face, that the NSA doesn't have "backdoor access to our servers." They don't need it! What actually happens is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others simply deposit all user data at another location -- a "gateway" where the NSA copies it off.

Now you understand how to correctly parse this fake denial by Google's chief executive Larry Page, who says, "The U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers."

It doesn't need "direct access." It has INDIRECT access that was set up by Google!

Source: NaturalNews.
Link: http://www.naturalnews.com/040692_NSA_spying_tech_companies_FISA.html.

Swedish Princess Madeleine weds New York banker

June 08, 2013

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish Princess Madeleine fell in love in the Big Apple. Now she has said "yes" to New York banker Christopher O'Neill in a lavish and emotional wedding ceremony in Stockholm.

Madeleine, 30, was wearing a stunning silk organza dress with a lace top and four-meter (13-foot) trail, designed by Valentino Garavani, when she tied the knot with British-American O'Neill on Saturday. Around 470 European royals, top New York socialites and celebrities were in attendance.

The 38-year-old O'Neill fought back tears as the princess walked down the aisle with her father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, to a traditional Swedish wedding march performed by a children's choir. The bride and groom were visibly moved as the ceremony proceeded with hymns in both Swedish and English, and performances by Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson and Broadway's "Phantom of the Opera" star Peter Joback.

With a smile on her face, Madeleine read out the wedding vows in Swedish while O'Neill read his in English in the Royal Chapel, decorated with typical Swedish summer flowers. After the wedding, the couple kissed on the steps of the palace in front of a cheering crowd of several thousand who had gathered in the sunshine waving Swedish flags.

"We hope she will be very happy in the future, the princess Madeleine," Julia Huelsman, who had traveled from Munich, Germany, for the occasion, said. Later, the newlyweds travelled in a procession through the crowded streets of the capital in a special horse and carriage. They then sailed to the royal residence and UNESCO World Heritage site Drottningholm Palace, 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of the city center, where a private wedding reception will be held.

Madeleine is the youngest of Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia's three children and fourth in line to the throne. She became known as Sweden's party princess in her early 20s, when she was frequently spotted at Stockholm's high-end nightclubs, and has attracted widespread attention for her stylish clothes.

But her life hasn't always been a fairytale. Madeleine's extravagant lifestyle has often been criticized by Swedes, who prefer the down-to-earth attitude of her sister, Crown Princess Victoria, who married a commoner. And in 2010, she fled to New York after breaking off her first engagement to Swedish attorney Jonas Bergstrom amid media reports that he had cheated on her.

Since then, Madeleine has held a lower profile, working for the nonprofit World Childhood Foundation in New York, where she met O'Neill through mutual friends. The couple was first spotted together having lunch at the Central Park Boathouse in January 2011 and they announced their engagement in October 2012.

O'Neill was born into a wealthy family. His late father, Paul O'Neill, set up the European head office of Oppenheimer & Co. in London in the 1960s and his mother, Eva Maria O'Neill, is involved in several charities. He studied at a boarding school in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Boston University and a master's degree from Columbia Business School in New York.

O'Neill, who holds dual American and British citizenship, has declined a royal rank in Sweden, which would have required him to become a Swedish citizen. He has chosen to continue working and the newlyweds are expected to move back to their apartment in Manhattan.

Guests at the wedding included the U.K.'s Earl and Countess of Wessex, Prince Edward and Sophie; Princess Takamado of Japan and princes and princesses from Norway, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg and Monaco.

O'Neill had also invited many of his super-rich friends, such as Opel heir Georg von Opel, Cadbury chocolate heir Joel Cadbury, Colombian billionaire Alejandro Santo Domingo, and Aidan and Fizzy Barclay. Other well-known invitees were Duran Duran band member John Taylor, the CEO of fashion retailer H&M, Karl-Johan Persson, and golfer Jesper Parnevik.

The marriage is the latest in a series of glamorous royal weddings that have mesmerized Europe in the past few years. In June 2010, Madeleine's older sister Crown Princess Victoria wed her personal trainer Daniel Westling in a grand ceremony in Stockholm and the year after, Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot in extravagant fashion in front of an estimated 2 billion television viewers. Also in 2011, Prince Albert II of Monaco wed Charlene Lynette Wittstock and in 2012, Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg united with Belgian Countess Stephanie de Lannoy.

The Swedish royal family has only ceremonial duties, such as attending award ceremonies, promoting Swedish businesses abroad and supporting charities. As the head of state, the king also receives foreign dignitaries on formal visits to Sweden.

AP Television Producer Yesica Fisch contributed to this report.