Jewish & World News

Computer hacking collective Anonymous says it has attacked government websites in retaliation for the UK's handling of the Julian Assange case. It claimed responsibility on Twitter for the denial-of-service attacks. Websites affected include the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is keeping busy inside Ecuador's London embassy by working on his computer, exercising on a treadmill and cooking food in his microwave, according to friends. Vaughan Smith, a former army officer who hosted 41-year-old Assange at his English mansion for more than a year while the Australian was under house arrest, said conditions in the embassy were basic, but comfortable enough.

You've read his leaks. Now watch his show. Cyber-transparency activist Julian Assange says he's launching a career in television, hosting what he's billing as a new brand of talk show built around the theme of "the world tomorrow." The show's guests haven't been disclosed, but Assange has promised to give viewers more of what he's been supplying for years: Controversy.

Iran has been building up connections with over 30 countries in an attempt to acquire technology and raw materials needed to build a nuclear bomb, a US diplomatic cable said that was leaked to a Norwegian newspaper on Sunday. Aftenposten said that according cables revealed by WikiLeaks, between 2006 and 2010 over 350 Iranian companies and organizations were involved in pursuing nuclear and missile technology.

You can bet the Twittersphere will be abuzz about this one: The U.S. government is reportedly subpoenaing WikiLeaks' Twitter account. The U.S. District Court in Virginia said it wanted the whistleblower website's personal information, including user names, addresses,  connection records, payment details and telephone numbers.

Iranian statesmen tend to call the US the "great devil", but WikiLeaks cables reveal that the citizens of the Islamic Republic actually like Americans, especially their leader – President Barack Obama. An Iranian scholar who met with an American source in Azerbaijan said that Iranians love President Obama and value his efforts to reach out to Tehran. "He's the only politician I've ever liked," he admitted. In the cable from the embassy in Baku the scholar also claimed that "in general, the US was and is very popular among Iranians."

Legal fees and the cost of running the Wikileaks web site have forced Julian Assange to do the predictable: write a book. The Wikileaks founder inked a $1.5 million book deal with American Publisher Alfred A. Knopf and British publisher Canongate, Britain's Sunday Times reported.

Apple on Tuesday confirmed that it had removed from its online store an iPhone and iPad app that let users view the content on the WikiLeaks site and follow WikiLeaks Twitter account. Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said the company had removed the app “because it violated our developer guidelines.” Ms. Muller added: “Apps must comply with all local laws and may not put an individual or group in harm’s way.”

It was late in the evening of 1 August 2008 in the Syrian coastal city of Tartous when the sniper fired the fatal shot. The target was General Muhammad Suleiman, President Bashar al-Assad's top security aide. Israelis, the US embassy in Damascus reported, were "the most obvious suspects" in the assassination.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted Israel's unprecedented help to attack Hamas after the militant group overthrew his Fatah movement in a bloody coup, according to a classified cable just released by WikiLeaks. In the June 2007 cable, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones wrote that Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin had told him in a meeting that Fatah was in complete despair over the situation in the Gaza Strip.

It was only a matter of time before conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork to suggest that Israel is behind the publication of the WikiLeaks trove - and is manipulating the information coming out to help Israeli interests. "Where is the real dirt on Israel?" these conspiracy theorists - messaging back and forth in the blogosphere - are asking one another.

Washington - Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

The U.S. Air Force is blocking its personnel from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other major publications that have posted secret material obtained by WikiLeaks, people familiar with the matter say.

Few have neutral views about the actions of Anonymous, the group of hacktivists that has allegedly turned the Web sites of such large brands as PayPal and MasterCard into hobbling dodderers. Many are fascinated by the idea that a very loose grouping of random individuals across the world can, in such a sprightly manner, disrupt the working of large organizations. And yet the question arises as to how anonymous these folks really are. Already, one 16-year-old Dutch hacktivist has already been arrested for his alleged part in money-moving disruptions. And, speaking of Holland, the University of Twente there has just performed a piece of research that revealed to them that Anonymous members are readily identifiable. The researchers took a close look at the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) software used by Anonymous and concluded that, if an Anonymous member uses this software from his or her own machine, their identity becomes knowable. "The current attack technique can therefore ...

Brooklyn has its own “victim” of the WikiLeaks dump — Rabbi David Niederman! Buried in the 251,287 just-revealed diplomatic cables and no-longer-secret documents was a message from the United States embassy in Madrid detailing an effort by Niederman and his Williamsburg-based United Jewish Organizations to protect 15th-century Jewish gravesites discovered during construction projects in the Iberian peninsula, one of the cradles of modern Jewish civilization.

Amid calls from some politicians to press treason charges -- which could carry the death penalty -- against whoever leaked secret cables to WikiLeaks, the Berkeley, Calif., City Council is entertaining a resolution to declare that an Army private accused of leaking some classified information to the website is an American hero.

In February 2008, Lebanese authorities were surprised to find a secret communication network that Iran had set up all over Lebanon for Hezbollah's benefit, US cables released by the WikiLeaks website suggest.

The State Department has a message for students. Tweeting WikiLeaks links could be dangerous to your job search. As reported by Mashable , a State Department official recently gave that advice to students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He said that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger future employment prospects.

Further deterioration in ties: The Israeli government initiated the massive WikiLeaks disclosure this week in the aims of pushing Turkey into a corner, a senior official in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan charged Wednesday.

Interpol, at the request of a Swedish court looking into alleged sex crimes from earlier this year, has put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on its most-wanted listed.