On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog but advertisers may infer that you own one. The flow of information from users of the internet both to social networks such as Facebook and to advertisers and advertising networks has turned into a flood.

There is nothing wrong in principle with advertisers using data about people based on their browsing habits. Such information enables them to place more relevant adverts – ones that are more likely to be of interest – on the sites that people visit. If executed correctly, that can benefit not only publishers but their customers.

Two privacy safeguards are vital, however. One is that these data are anonymised, so that a network knows a user’s age and sex, and perhaps that he or she is interested in buying a car, but not the user’s identity. The second is that people know what is going on and grant their consent.

Read more at FT.Com

The unusually cool summer continued in Southern California, where several new record-low temperatures were recorded on Wednesday.

The 68-degree low at Los Angeles International Airport broke the old record low for the day, which was 70 degrees in 1991. Santa Barbara (68) and San Luis Obispo (69) broke records as well.

The temperature at USC, 75, tied the record low set in 1999. UCLA also set a record, 56 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Read more at LA Times

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

Read more at wired

It is not often a reporter publicly thanks a former terrorist for helping him to give his life completely to Jesus Christ. But it happened this week. That’s why I commend to you this week’s edition of “Stakelbeck on Terror.” CBN reporter Erick Stakelbeck profiles Tass Saada, a “former Palestinian Muslim sniper who used to work for terror master Yasser Arafat-but now works for Jesus.” Stakelbeck interviews Saada and explains how this one-time radical Muslim “put down his gun and learned to love his greatest enemy: Israel.” Then he publicly thanks Saada for his book, Once An Arafat Man, and shares how reading that book and interviewing Saada led Stakelbeck to a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Later in the program, Stackelbeck examines “a disturbing trend that is spreading throughout the Muslim world: ‘kiddie jihad’ in the form of child suicide bombers.” He covers a few other issues, and then at the end of the program (24:52), he includes an interview with me on Israel, the Iranian nuclear threat, and “the gathering storm.”

Read more by Joel Rosenberg

“Iran expects the United States to launch a military strike on ‘at least two countries” in the Middle East in the next three months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state-run Press TV,” reports Reuters. “In an interview recorded on Monday, Ahmadinejad did not specify whether he thought Iran itself would be attacked nor did he say what intelligence led him to expect such a move. The United States and Israel have refused to rule out military action against Iran’s nuclear program which they fear could lead to it making a bomb, something Iran denies. ‘They have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months,’ Ahmadinejad said in excerpts broadcast on the rolling news channel on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad’s warning comes amidst several interesting developments in the region — surprisingly tough new economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union and Canada, as well a curious rift developing between Russia and Iran. Moscow and Tehran have been increasingly close allies in recent years. But in recent weeks Russia voted for new U.N. sanctions on Iran, criticized Iran for moving towards nuclear weapons, and now says it will not deliver S-300 missiles to Iran (after saying just a few weeks agothat it would). Furthermore, the BBC reports that “an additional factor that may further influence the decision-making in Moscow is Saudi Arabia’s offer to buy more than $2bn worth of Russian weapons (helicopters, armour, anti-aircraft missiles) on condition that Russia does not sell Iran S-300 missiles, and stops supporting it [Iran] in the UN.”

Read more by Joel Rosenberg

A south Dakota town is recognized as having hail 18.5 inches around and weighing almost 2 lbs.

Read more at KEOLAND

Under fire from civil liberties groups, the FBI is defending domestic surveillance guidelines that critics fear could unfairly target innocent Muslims in terrorism and other criminal investigations.

Read more at apNews

Iran expects the United States to launch a military strike on "at least two countries" in the Middle East in the next three months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state-run Press TV.

Read more at Yahoo News

Moscow sweltered on Monday through its hottest day since records began 130 years ago, as temperatures hit 37.4 degrees Celsius (99.3 degrees Farenheit) sparking peat fires that blanketed the city in smog.

A heatwave has engulfed central parts of European Russia, and Siberia since June, destroying crops covering an area the size of Portugal. Green groups, including Greenpeace, say the temperatures are evidence of global warming.

Read more at Reuters

It appears as if Solicitor General Elena Kagan will become the next Supreme Court Justice.  There are three cases that might provide insight into her beliefs.

Read more at USA Today