"Justice has been done," President Obama says in a televised speech to the nation. Bin Laden, mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks and Al Qaeda leader, was killed by a CIA-led team at a compound inside Pakistan

A CIA-led team killed Osama Bin Laden at a compound inside Pakistan Sunday and recovered his body, bringing a close to the world's highest-profile manhunt after a decade-long search, President Obama announced to the world Sunday night.

"Justice has been done," the President said solemnly in a hastily-arranged late night TV address from the East Room of the White House. Bin Laden, he said, "murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children" and his death was "the most significant achievement to date" in the U.S. war against the al Qaeda, terrorist network that bin Laden founded, led and inspired.
As described by the President and top administration officials, the successful effort to track down bin Laden centered on a man whom the officials described as a trusted courier for al Qaeda, a protégé of Khalid Sheik Muhammed, the operational mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Obama said that after he entered the White House in 2009, he had ordered CIA director Leon Panetta to make the killing or capture of Bin Laden the "top priority of our war against al Qaeda." Then, in August, he was briefed on "a possible lead" to the elusive terrorist's hiding place. "It took many months to run this thread to ground," he said.

By Friday, a senior White House official said, the evidence had become sufficiently certain that Obama was able to give the go-ahead for the operation.

After years of rumors that the world's most-wanted man was hiding in the caves and rugged redoubts of the Pakistan- Afghanistan border region, the CIA ultimately found him hiding in what officials described as a comfortable mansion surrounded by a high wall in a small town near Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.

On Sunday, a "small team" of Americans raided the compound. After a firefight, the president said, they killed Bin Laden. No Americans were injured in the raid.

Other officials said DNA tests had confirmed Bin Laden's identity.

Obama praised the joint efforts of U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, and appealed to Muslims around the globe to support the U.S. action.

"Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader," he said. "He was a mass murderer of Muslims."

Vice President Biden and CIA director Leon Panetta had called members of Congress and leaders around the world earlier Sunday night to break the long-awaited news.

As the first word of Bin Laden's death leaked out, a jubilant and fast-growing crowd gathered outside the White House. The throng waved flags, chanted "USA! USA!," and sang the "Star Spangled Banner."

The news came months before the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which were orchestrated by Al Qaeda. More than 3,000 people were killed

The horrifying attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq. As the nation girded for more attacks, America's entire intelligence system was overhauled to counter the threat of terrorist bombs or other attacks at home.

Al Qaeda also was blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled. It has generated local organizations in hot spots from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Panetta, the CIA director, said as recently as last summer that the United States had not obtained reliable intelligence about bin Laden's location for almost a decade.

Bin Laden first drew attention in the 1980s, when he drew on his family's vast fortune to build hospitals, mosques and other facilities to help support Afghans then fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The CIA considered him a financier, not a terrorist leader.

In 1991, Bin Laden bitterly opposed the introduction of U.S. troops onto bases in Saudi Arabia during the run-up to the first Persian Gulf War, which ousted Saddam Hussein's Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

His fiery sermons demonized the Saudi rulers, and infidel Westerners, and soon attracted like-minded extremists to Al Qaeda.

The CIA has been on bin Laden's trail since the mid-1990s, when it set up a separate intelligence unit to penetrate his organization and track his whereabouts.

After the embassy bombings in 1998, the Clinton administration undertook several intelligence and military operations aimed at killing him, including one in which cruise missile attacks were ordered against al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. All failed.

Al Qaeda's ranks have been badly depleted in recent years and Bin Laden's death deprives the organization of its most charismatic and important leader. It leaves Ayman al Zawahri, an Egyptian physician and Islamist ideologue, as the putative leader.

Analysts said the result is likely to accelerate the fracturing of militant groups loosely associated with al Qaeda, especially in the Middle East, that have taken their inspiration from bin Laden's call for attacks on the U.S. and its allies for the more than a decade.

It was Bin Laden's fervent call for attacks on the U.S.--which he referred to as the "far enemy"--and al Qaeda's ability to recruit and train operatives from its sanctuary in Afghanistan that led to some of the world's deadliest terrorist attacks.

Though the U.S. had made plans to hold and interrogate bin Laden if he was captured, most U.S. officials assumed that he would never be taken alive.

"You're talking about a hypothetical that will never occur," said Attorney General Eric H. Holder when asked in early 2010 if bin Laden would enjoy constitutional protections. "The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom."
Source:Latimes

Shocking study reveals UK has one CCTV for every 32 people

It's an astonishing statistic that is sure to send chills down the spines of freedom campaigners.
In Big Brother Britain there is an incredible one CCTV camera for every 32 citizens, a study has revealed.
The revelation that 1.85 million cameras are watching our every move confirms the shocking extent of surveillance in 21st century Britain.
Coming a day after it emerged tiny drones could be used to spy on Britons, the CCTV study is sure to add fuel to the debate that we have become a Big Brother state.The research involved police community support officers counting every camera in Cheshire and extrapolating the results nationwide to provide a reliable estimate of the level of CCTV surveillance in the UK.
Officers counted 12,333 cameras in the area, according to a study published in CCTV Image magazine, the majority of which were inside premises, rather than facing public street.
The research also found that most CCTV cameras in the UK are likely to be privately owned, with only 504 of Cheshire’s cameras run by public bodies.
After the Cheshire results were extrapolated nationwide, taking into account urban and rural areas and transport networks, the number of cameras was adjudged to be 1,853,681 – enough for one camera for every 32 citizens in the UK.Despite the proliferation of CCTV cameras, police admit that just one crime is solved for every 1,000 cameras.
Deputy Chief Constable Graeme Gerrard, the lead on CCTV for the Association of Chief Police Officers said the latest numbers, based on a map of CCTV systems in Cheshire, were intended to ‘inject more rigorous figures into the debate’ over Britain as a surveillance state.
A widely quoted estimate of 4.2 million cameras in the UK was based on a 1.5km road in a busy shopping district and extrapolated out for the entire UK, he explained.
And the previous estimate that the ‘average Briton is caught on security cameras some 300 times a day was based on a fictional tour of CCTV hot-spots.
However, he admitted: ‘The figure of 1.85m is still a significant number of CCTV cameras.
‘I'm not saying for a minute that this doesn't mean that we don't have a lot of cameras.’
Mr Gerrard confirmed he was surprised to learn of other research which suggested the London underground network houses as many as 11,000 cameras.
Writing in CCTV Image, Mr Gerrard added: ‘Eight years after the 4.2 million figure was first published, we now have research that indicates that the figure is less than half this guesstimate.
‘We also know that unless you make a particular point of visiting as many CCTV hotspot areas as you can, you are unlikely to be captured on CCTV 300 times a day.'
He admitted the latest figures were still estimates, but said they showed the number of CCTV cameras in the UK to be around 1.85 million.
‘And the real figure for the number of times the average person is likely to be 'caught' on CCTV in a day is less than 70 - and most of these will be at your workplace or fleeting glimpses by cameras located in shops’.
However, Isabella Sankey, director of policy at the campaign group Liberty, said the figures would do little to allay concerns about surveillance in Britain.
‘Who cares if there is one camera or 10 on their street if that one camera is pointing into your living room?’ she asked the Guardian.
‘Concerns about CCTV are not a simple numbers game; what's required is proper legal regulation and proportionate use.’
Read More: Dailymail

MANAMA, Bahrain – Troops and tanks locked down the capital of this tiny Gulf kingdom after riot police swinging clubs and firing tear gas smashed into demonstrators, many of them sleeping, in a pre-dawn assault Thursday that uprooted their protest camp demanding political change. Medical officials said four people were killed.

Hours after the attack on Manama's main Pearl Square, the military announced a ban on gatherings, saying on state TV that it had "key parts" of the capital under its control.

After several days of holding back, the island nation's Sunni rulers unleashed a heavy crackdown, trying to stamp out the first anti-government upheaval to reach the Arab states of the Gulf since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. In the surprise assault, police tore down protesters' tents, beating men and women inside and blasting some with shotgun sprays of birdshot.

It was a sign of how deeply the Sunni monarchy — and other Arab regimes in the Gulf — fear the repercussions of a prolonged wave of protests, led by members of the country's Shiite majority but also joined by growing numbers of discontented Sunnis.

Tiny Bahrain is a pillar of Washington's military framework in the region. It hosts the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which is a critical counterbalance to Iran. Bahrain's rulers and their Arab allies depict any sign of unrest among their Shiite populations as a move by neighboring Shiite-majority Iran to expand its clout in the region.

But the assault may only further enrage protesters, who before the attack had called for large rallies Friday. In the wake of the bloodshed, angry demonstrators chanted "the regime must go" and burned pictures of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa outside the emergency ward at Salmaniyah hospital, the main state medical facility.

"We are even angrier now. They think they can clamp down on us, but they have made us angrier," Makki Abu Taki, whose son was killed in the assault, shouted in the hospital morgue. "We will take to the streets in larger numbers and honor our martyrs. The time for Al Khalifa has ended."

The Obama administration expressed alarm over the violent crackdown. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain's foreign minister to register Washington's "deep concern" and urge restraint. Similar criticism came from Britain and the European Union.
Read More: Yahoo