Daily Mail UK:
"A former Icelandic minister has claimed that the FBI attempted to frame Julian Assange during a mission to Iceland.
Ögmundur Jonasson, who currently serves as a member of the Icelandic Parliament, said US authorities told him in June 2011 that hackers were trying to destroy software systems in the country. The authorities said there was an 'imminent attack' on Iceland's government databases and that the FBI would send agents to investigate...
Jonasson said it was only when a 'planeload' of FBI agents arrived in August that he realized the true reason for their visit. The former minister claims the FBI was seeking Iceland's 'cooperation in what I understood as an operation set up to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks'. Jonasson said he immediately told the FBI agents to leave the country."
-- >There is plenty of news in the US about Russia hacking the US election, but none about the CIA attempting to frame Julian Assange. The framing was subsequently done in Sweden.
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Guardian UK:
"The US military in Afghanistan is increasingly trying to control public information about the war, resulting in strained relations with western organisations offering different versions of events to official military accounts, the Guardian has learned.
In a recent incident, the most senior US commander in Afghanistan, Gen John W Nicholson, considered banning or restricting the UN’s access to a military base in Kabul, according to informed sources in both organisations. The dispute followed a UN report in late September claiming that a US drone had killed 15 civilians. Washington insists it only killed members of Islamic State.
UN and US military officials declined to speak to the Guardian, but various sources confirmed that working relations were 'a nightmare', as a UN staff member put it." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/04/us-military-un-relations-strained-afghanistan-war-reports-disagreements
-- >This story did not appear in the NYT. American war crimes and attempts to cover them up are never judged to be "fit to print" by our newspaper of record.
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Guardian UK:
"Pipeline rupture spews oil into creek 150 miles from Standing Rock.
Electronic monitoring equipment failed to detect a pipeline rupture that spewed more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil into a North Dakota creek, according to the pipeline’s operator, about 150 miles from the site of the Standing Rock protests. The potential for a pipeline leak that might taint drinking water is at the core of the months-long standoff at the Dakota Access pipeline, where thousands of people have been protesting against its construction. That pipeline would cross the Missouri river.
It’s not yet clear why the monitoring equipment didn’t detect the leak, Wendy Owen, a spokeswoman for Casper, Wyoming-based True Cos, which operates the Belle Fourche pipeline, said." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/12/oil-spill-pipeline-north-dakota-standing-rock-belle-fourche
-- >Always protective of big oil pipelines, the NYT did not run this story.
