10 waterfront destinations to ring in 2012

(CNN) -- In the lead up to every New Year's Eve the inevitable question of how to celebrate arises. For most, waterfronts become the focal point of the celebrations.

It's hard not to see why with the amazing firework displays looking even more dazzling reflected in the water.

So jump in a boat or head to the foreshore for our the top 10 places to countdown to 2012.

River Seine, Paris

See Paris, the 'City of Light', be lit with fireworks while cruising down the River Seine on the last day of the year. The Eiffel Tower is the centerpiece for the festivities and from some parts of the river you can get a magnificent uninterrupted view of the famous structure.

Sydney Harbor

Sydney prides itself on holding what it claims to be the most spectacular New Year's Eve celebrations in the world. Thousands of boats anchor in the harbor and millions of people hit the foreshore to witness the firework display with the 'Sydney Opera House' and Harbor Bridge used as the backdrop.

The shores of Kiribati, Pacific Ocean

Leave your worries and the rest of the world behind in 2011 in this tiny Pacific nation. Kiribati is the first place in the world to ring in 2012. Kiribati prides itself on being the first nation to celebrate the New Year, even changing the name of one of its islands before 2000 to Millennium Island to mark the fact it would be the first country to enter the third millennium.

Niagara Falls, Ontario

This is no ordinary waterfront, but with the spectacular backdrop of the Niagara Falls, it's hard to go past Queen Victoria Park in Ontario. The freezing weather does not deter the tens of thousands of people who hit the park to count down to the New Year. Revelers can listen to live music while watching an amazing fireworks display over the world famous waterfall.

Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janerio

Brazilians are renowned for their outstanding parties and New Year's Eve is no different. It is one of the greatest celebrations in the South American nation, second only to the Carnival. Millions hit the sands of the famous Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro to watch the firework display over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Bosporus, Istanbul

Celebrate 2012 across two continents on the Bosporus in Istanbul -- the strait that divides Europe and Asia. A fireworks display lights up the Bosporus Bridge while beautiful mosques and other ancient Turkish are illuminated, giving those on the water a stunning view.

Koh Phangan Beach, Thailand

If you want to escape the cold on New Year's Eve then there is no better place to do it than on the beach in Thailand. Koh Phangan is home to Thailand's famous moon parties and on New Year's Eve the celebrations continue. The beach is packed mostly with tourists keen to party well into New Year's Day.

Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

The vast harbor is lit up when the clock strikes 12 in Hong Kong. Fireworks are set off from the buildings which line the foreshore, using the high-rises as a part of the lighting show and giving the audience a dazzling display.

River Thames, London

If you're willing to brave the chilly winds, a cruise on the River Thames will provide spectacular views. Watch the fireworks with London's iconic new and old buildings in the background such as Big Ben, Westminster and the London Eye.

Victoria and Albert Waterfront, Cape Town

The fantastic sound of African drums beat out at this New Year's celebration in Cape Town. Revelers enjoy a warm summer's evening on the water here, with firework displays and street performers for those onshore.

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Professor questions Iowa's place in elections and creates a stir

(CNN) -- While the visiting national news media focuses on the latest utterances of Republican presidential hopefuls in advance of the January 3 caucuses, many Iowans have found a bone to pick with a journalism professor -- from the University of Iowa, no less -- who wrote: "Whether a schizophrenic, economically depressed, and some say, culturally challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president isn't at issue. ... In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. Iowa's not representative of much."

Iowans are wondering what they did to incur the wrath of Stephen G. Bloom, who for 20 years has taught journalism at the state's flagship university and shared his observations in an article for The Atlantic magazine titled "Observations from 20 Years of Iowa Life."

It may be a good thing that Bloom, a native of New Jersey, has been away teaching this semester at the University of Michigan because in trying to explain "in both a real and metaphysical way, what Iowa is," he has drawn the ire of Iowans literally from all corners of the state -- from Sibley and Keokuk (whose mayor has invited him to visit and explain the "a depressed, crime-infested slum town" remark) to Decorah to Shenandoah.

In the interest of full disclosure, many of my childhood vacations (including winter) were spent visiting my mother's parents in Iowa. I graduated from a college in Iowa, and my first full-time job in journalism was at a newspaper in Iowa, so I admit to a certain fondness for the state. And every four years, as the political spotlight shines on Iowa, I share with colleagues whatever helpful insights I can muster.

Blitzer's blog: Turbulence in Iowa

The state is not one large cornfield, but driving along Interstate 80, it can appear that way for long stretches. Visit northeast Iowa along the Mississippi River for proof that the state is not flat.

Iowa's farms not only help feed the United States, but also much of the world, connecting this piece of "flyover country" to a global view. Still, economists report that agriculture only accounts for roughly one in five jobs in the state.

Iowans may be older (the average age continues to increase), whiter and more rural than the United States in general, but its Latino population is increasing and more of its residents are moving to urban areas. Iowa boasts being among the most literate states in the union (though some years ago state officials abandoned a plan to make "Iowa: A State of Minds" its license plate slogan).

Politically, over the years Iowans have elected some of the most liberal and some of the most conservative members of Congress.

Critics cite numerous examples of a snide tone in Bloom's writing. Consider his assessment of employment prospects in rural Iowa: "Those who stay in rural Iowa are often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that the sun'll come out tomorrow."

What makes Iowa's GOP caucuses unique

And while they wait for that sun to come out, Bloom suggests, these Iowans spend their days stepping in manure from barnyard animals and stuffing their gullets with meat loaf, pork chops and Jell-O molds before heading out to a tractor pull or church.

Bloom makes nary a mention of the distinguished academics at the state's universities and colleges, its art museums and orchestras nor even the obvious upgrades to the capital city of Des Moines during the past 20 years.

Where he says that "Iowa is a throwback to yesteryear and, at the same time, a cautionary tale of what lies around the corner," critics find many of Bloom's observations to be throwbacks to an Iowa that no longer exists. Many also say there are factual inaccuracies in the article.

Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa, which employs Bloom, objected.

"I disagree strongly with and was offended by Professor Bloom's portrayal of Iowa and Iowans. Please know that he does not speak for the University of Iowa. As president of the university, I have the opportunity to travel far and wide across this great state frequently, and the Iowa I see is one of strong, hard-working and creative people. In this cynical world that can harden even the greatest optimist, the citizens of Iowa continue to believe," Mason responded to The Atlantic.

"What defines Iowans are their deeds and actions and not some caricature. When I travel the state, what I see is a land that is rich not only because of its soil but because of how its people are grounded. Iowans are pragmatic and balanced, and they live within their means. This lifestyle, while not glitzy, is humble and true and can weather the most difficult of times," Mason said.

Sports editor Pete Temple of the Monticello Express newspaper agreed with some parts of Bloom's article, but suggested that "rather than having some good-natured fun with the quirks and traditions that make rural Iowa life so unique, Bloom's tone is condescending, apparently designed to mock rural Iowa in front of the rest of the nation."

Bloom, he wrote, "fails to mention one of rural Iowa's greatest qualities, which is its ability to rise up and come together for someone in need. You have farmers completing a harvest for a neighbor, fund-raisers for families of ill or injured residents, and citizens filling sandbags to ward against an impending flood. Rural Iowans do these things willingly, immediately, and without question. If that's not representative of our nation as a whole, that's a shame."

Dean Klinkenberg, who writes about life along the Mississippi River, offered this scathing assessment: "Bloom wrote a poorly reasoned article plagued by factual errors and loaded with big-city stereotypes of country folk. His essay was, ultimately, a lazy piece of incendiary rubbish, which I guess is what passes for journalism today."

Bloom shared some of his "fan mail" with media commentator Jim Romanesko, including this excerpt: "First I want to apologize for Iowans who may have threatened you. I am a dental student here at the university and grew up in a small Iowa town my whole life (Palo) before coming here. I agree that we have our problems as Iowans but one thing we are is fiercely loyal. Your article is true (for the most part) about rural Iowans but anyone from here, esp us city folk, are going to be upset by that stereotype."

Bloom defended his work in a letter to the Press-Citizen newspaper in Iowa City.

"Perhaps my article gave some Iowans a moment to refocus their attention elsewhere -- from some of the real issues confronting the state -- Walmart taking over the retail-trade sector, empty storefronts, water pollution among the worst in the nation, factories shutting down, the state's brain drain, undocumented workers taking minimum-wage jobs in the state's under-regulated slaughterhouses, not to mention the tragedy that anyone can see walking into the state's casinos.

"I'm a proud journalist. I still believe in the adage, 'Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.' Today, much of the state is afflicted by a ravaged economy. Iowa's population growth has flat-lined. But I guess it's just more comforting to some Iowans to condemn me for pointing out these issues and others."

I'll give the last word to Lydia Waddington, a native Southerner who was editor of recently closed Iowa Independent.

Of her adopted home state, Waddington wrote, also in The Atlantic, "It's a way of life trying desperately to sustain itself and justify its own existence. It is battling against national stereotypes that no longer apply while facing newer and much more lethal challenges.

"It's picturesque scenes of idyllic farms and country roads glimpsed through a car window. It's everyone believing they know who and what you are before they go fishing with you and the shirt comes off. As Professor Bloom admits in his own writings, he never took up fishing. Bless his heart."

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Navarrette: Give us a reason to vote

San Diego (CNN) -- Some elections are fueled by passion. Others are guided by a sense of urgency. This one seems to be driven by ambivalence.

That is where we're at as we near Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, the kickoff to the voting portion of the 2012 election. According to the polls in the Hawkeye State, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are virtually tied for the lead, each with no more than a quarter of the vote.

A new CNN/Time/ORC poll finds that Romney has 25% and Paul has 22%, with Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry each in the teens.

GOP officials would like to convince Americans that they have an embarrassment of riches on their hands, but many of us can see that they're only half right. It's just an embarrassment.

A big part of the Republicans' problem is having a "front-runner" who can't seem to get out in front. Many voters feel as if the choice has already been made for them, and they're not having any of it.

On a recent trip to Washington, I was reminded again that the inside-the-Beltway media and the Republican establishment have ordained Romney the party's presidential nominee and all but declared that the voting is just a formality.

Yet, someone forgot to tell the voters, who elevate one candidate after another from the "anybody but Romney" pile while keeping the former Massachusetts governor trapped under a 25% ceiling in the polls. As recently noted by The Wall Street Journal, a recent Gallup poll of Republicans put support for Romney at 24%, and last month, his level of support floated between 22% and 25%.

It's hard to see how Romney could cobble together a string of second-place finishes, with a possible win in New Hampshire, and wind up as a credible contender for the general election. And even if he does somehow wind up being the nominee, it's even harder to imagine that the more than three-fourths of Republicans who were thoroughly uninspired by him just a few months earlier would suddenly get excited enough to turn out and vote.

In fact, even in this late hour, Republican thought leaders such as William Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard, are still suggesting that another Republican candidate could enter the race. That is not likely to happen, but the fact that some people would like it to tells us a lot about a level of dissatisfaction with the current crop of GOP prospects.

The grass isn't any greener for Democrats. While they have the advantage of knowing who their nominee will be, they also have to contend with the same difficult task that the Republicans face: energizing the base to support the candidate.

Many of those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 don't seem all that eager to give him an encore. He lost much of his support from independents early on, but he also has an enthusiasm gap developing with liberals who think the president lacks courage and caves in to Republicans too easily.

According to a new poll by the Salt Lake Tribune, while most Democrats want to re-elect Obama, one in five of them aren't so sure. Just 37% of those surveyed -- Republicans, Democrats and independents --- are certain they want to give Obama another term. And, despite all the campaigning up to this point, nearly 20% of voters are still undecided about whom to support.

To be re-elected, Obama needs to recapture the support of two groups of voters: young people and Latinos. Unfortunately for Democrats, he's not doing a good job of inspiring either.

Both groups still support Obama, and they certainly prefer him to every possible Republican alternative. The problem is the same kind of enthusiasm gap that Romney is facing with Republican voters. While 18-to-29 year-old Americans remain solidly in the Democratic camp, only 49% of them approve of Obama's job performance, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. That's a 23 point drop since February 2009.

Something similar is happening with Latino voters, many of whom are deeply disillusioned -- even wounded -- by Obama's broken promise to fix the immigration system combined with his heavy-handed deportation policies that have resulted in the removal of more than 1.2 million people in less than three years.

According to a new Ipsos-Telemundo poll, the president's support among Latinos continues to plummet. In April 2009, 86% of Latinos approved of Obama's job performance. Today, it's only about 56%. According to an analysis done by Ipsos, that drop suggests that, "the disillusion among Latinos is more pronounced than among the general public."

Add all this up, and this could be an election with one of the lowest turnouts in history -- for Republicans and Democrats. Voters are sending a message that both parties need to heed: "Don't just tell me I need to vote for your candidate. Give me something worth voting for."

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Unemployment claims climb in holiday week

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits took an upswing just before Christmas.

About 381,000 people filed initial jobless claims in the week ended Dec. 24, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was more than economists had expected and marked an increase of 15,000 from the prior week, when claims had fallen to their lowest level since April 2008.

The Labor Department adjusts the figures to account for seasonal trends, but still, the holidays can sometimes distort the numbers slightly. Economists look to the four-week average to smooth out volatility. In the latest report, that number decreased to 375,000, its lowest level since mid-2008.

"Around the holidays, initial claims tend to be volatile, so I think we don't have to read too much into the small rebound today," said Aichi Amemiya, an economist with Nomura. "We believe the labor market continues to improve."

Meanwhile, continuing claims -- which include Americans filing for their second week of claims or more -- increased 34,000 to 3,601,000 in the week ended Dec. 17, the most recent data available.

Investors seemed to shrug off the numbers, optimistic that next week's monthly jobs report will show employers ramped up their hiring slightly in December.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com predict the report will show employers added 150,000 jobs in December, up from 120,000 the month before. The unemployment rate, however, is expected to rise from 8.6% to 8.7%, as discouraged workers re-enter the labor force to look for jobs again.

Today's featured rates:

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Traveler returns $10K in lost gambling earnings

(CNN) -- Odds are a lot of people who find gambling winnings stuffed into two envelopes would pocket the cash and move on.

Not Mitch Gilbert.

"Some people thought I was crazy to give it back," the Greenwood Village, Colorado, real estate businessman, told CNN on Tuesday. "I had to give it back. It wasn't my money to start with."

"It" was $10,000 held in two sealed Caesars Palace envelopes and left December 6 by a passenger at the airport in Las Vegas.

Gilbert said he had an inkling the envelopes carried money, but he hesitated to give it to someone he saw a few feet away because he wasn't sure the person was the rightful owner.

Gilbert waited about 40 minutes for someone to come searching for the money. He flew home with the envelopes, and found they each held $5,000 in cash.

KUSA reports: Colorado man returns envelopes of cash

Gilbert said he called McCarran International Airport and was told it could not put third parties together. He vowed to follow up and about two weeks later was told an El Paso, Texas, man had reported losing the money.

KUSA reached Ignacio Marquez, who said he dropped the envelopes as he was running to catch a flight.

"Relief is an understatement. Cash money is very difficult to get back. I'm very appreciative to Mitch and his family. You do not find people like this," Marquez said.

McCarran International Airport released a statement to CNN thanking Gilbert, who got the cash to Marquez late last week.

"We appreciate Mr. Gilbert's honesty and willingness to set a great example for others, and we are pleased our Lost and Found staff was able to assist in his efforts to track down the money's owner," the statement said.

Gilbert, who won some money of his own at Vegas, told KUSA he would want someone to do the same thing for him, even if the cash could go toward a mountain of bills.

"I wanted to show my kids the right thing to do," he said.

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Police seek motive in Texas family deaths

Dallas (CNN) -- Autopsies were being conducted Monday on seven family members who were fatally shot by a man dressed as Santa Claus at a Christmas gathering, police said.

"The information we have is that this is a family, some of them related by marriage but mostly by blood," Grapevine, Texas, police Sgt. Robert Eberling said Monday. "They have lived in other areas in the (Dallas) metroplex and they came yesterday for a Christmas gathering."

Authorities said the shooter "was one of the individuals inside the apartment that was also deceased," Eberling said. "We know he is a family member ... we are working to find out why exactly this took place. We contacted other family members to piece this together."

The shooter is believed to have been related to the family by marriage, he said. Officers were investigating whether divorce was an aspect of the shooting, he said.

The identities of the victims were expected to be released Tuesday, along with autopsy results, Eberling said.

Police said the group apparently had just finished opening their gifts when the shootings occurred in the living room of the apartment in Grapevine, about 25 miles northwest of Dallas.

Authorities responded to the address Sunday after receiving a 911 call from the apartment, but hearing only an open line, police said in a statement.

The seven bodies -- four female adults and three adult males -- were found when officers entered the apartment. "All victims appear to have gunshot wounds," said the statement.

The victims range in age from 15 to 58 or 59 years old, Eberling said Monday.

"The biggest thing we want to stress is we don't believe this person had barged his way in," Eberling said. "It appears they had all gathered in the living room for your garden-variety Christmas celebration."

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Ron Paul: Codger, crank or more?

Washington (CNN) -- Texas congressman Ron Paul now leads among Iowa Republicans and has tied Newt Gingrich for second in New Hampshire. Republican conservatives have cycled through a series of "Not Mitts." Is it now Paul's turn?

Paul's core following has been small but fervid. However, Paul now is gaining a larger following, especially among younger voters attracted by his message of drug legalization and his comprehensive -- if utterly wrong-headed -- explanation of the country's economic crisis.

Unexpectedly, young voters seem also to appreciate Paul's grandfatherly anti-charisma: his self-presentation as a good-natured old codger, charmingly baffled by the modern world. The ill-fitting suits, the quavering voice and the slack-jawed laugh all support the image of an anti-politician, the lone voice of integrity in a sullied word.

There is however a flaw in this benign image of Paul: the now-notorious newsletters published under his name in the early 1990s. Paul collected nearly a million dollars in one year from newsletters suffused with paranoia, racial bigotry and support for the period's violent militia movements. Four years ago, Jamie Kirchick of the New Republic unearthed partial collections of the newsletters in the libraries of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. From Kirchick's subsequent report:

"Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. 'Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,' read one typical passage.

"According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with ' "civil rights," quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.' It also denounced 'the media' for believing that 'America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.' "

There's a lot more in this vein.

Paul now claims that he did not write the newsletters, was unaware of their contents at the time and now has no idea who did write them.

It's fair to say that almost no one who has followed the controversy believes that Paul is telling the truth about any of this. The authorship of the newsletters is an open secret in the libertarian world: they were produced by a community of writers led by Paul aides Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, who wrote a newsletter of their own at the same time that expressed similar ideas in similar language. The racism of the newsletters -- and the elaborate lying subsequently deployed to evade responsibility for the newsletters -- say much about the ethics of Paul himself and the circle around him.

Yet Ron Paul is something more (or less) than a racist crank. As Michael Brendan Dougherty aptly observed in the Atlantic last week:

"As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul's newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing -- it was abandoned by Paul's admirers."

A fellow libertarian offers more detail on Paul's racism-as-strategy. Paul and his circle aspired "to create a libertarian-conservative fusion ... [by] appealing to the worst instincts of working/middle class conservative whites by creating the only anti-left fusion possible with the demise of socialism: one built on cultural issues. ... [The strategy] apparently made some folks (such as Rockwell and Paul) pretty rich selling newsletters predicting the collapse of Western civilization at the hands of the blacks, gays, and multiculturalists. The explicit strategy was abandoned by around the turn of the century, but not after a lot of bad stuff had been written in all kinds of places."

Don't get the idea, however, that racism-as-strategy was some brief, futile dead-end for Paul. Paul exploited bigotry throughout his career, before as well as after the newsletter years. As Dave Weigel and Julian Sanchez reported in the libertarian magazine Reason, "Cato Institute President Ed Crane told Reason he recalls a conversation from some time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001."

Crane is the president of the premier institution in the libertarian world. If his recollection is correct, Paul was appealing to consumers of Holocaust denial for political purposes half a decade before the newsletters commenced.

Nor is it wholly accurate to describe Paul's strategy of appealing to the extremes as "abandoned." Ron Paul delivered the keynote address to the John Birch Society as recently as the summer of 2009. He is a frequent guest on the Alex Jones radio program, the central station for 9/11 Trutherism. As I can attest first-hand, anybody who writes negatively about Paul will see his email inbox fill rapidly with anti-Semitic diatribes.

Not all the "bad stuff" of Ron Paul's newsletter period was racist, exactly. Some of it was just general-purpose paranoia, designed to trick money out of the pockets of the fearful and gullible. Reuters has unearthed an example of a solicitation letter for the Ron Paul newsletters:

The solicitation warns of the coming danger of "new money":

"I uncovered the New Money plans in my last term in the US Congress, and I held the ugly new bills in my hands. I can tell you - they made my skin crawl!

"These totalitarian bills were tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms. It wasn't money for a free people. It was a portable inquisition, a paper 'third degree' to allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens."

[In an e-mail to CNN, Paul's campaign chairman Jesse Benton said, "Dr. Paul did not write that solicitation and the signature is an auto pen. It does not reflect his thoughts and is out of step with the message he has espoused for 40 years." He added, "He should have better policed it and... he has assumed responsibility and apologized."]

The daffy old coot side of Ron Paul's personality is genuine enough. The crank side is certainly genuine, as are at least some of the racial views. Even after Paul abandoned the crude race-baiting of his 1990s newsletters, he continued to engage in elaborate apologetics for the Confederate side of the Civil War.

Also genuine, however, is the huckster aspect of the Ron Paul persona. That's the persona that terrifies people who had never before heard of "diffraction grating" that the government might use this optical scanning technology, which can detect counterfeiting, to wiretap their wallets.

Ron Paul's admirers see him as a man of integrity. They are tragically mistaken about that. Despite his too-dotty-to-lie persona, Ron Paul is not in fact on the level. In evading responsibility for his newsletters, Paul has replied "I don't know" and "I don't remember" to queries whose answers he must know and surely remembers. The back story of the newsletters shows a man who, sufficiently saturated in racism and extremism himself, was ready to exploit the even greater racism and extremism of others for financial gain. Ron Paul is the Max Bialystock of monetary cranks -- and this latest presidential campaign represents the summit of his bunco artist career, his very own "Springtime for Hitler."

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Hackers target global think tank

(CNN) -- Hackers targeted Stratfor, a global intelligence company, but it was unclear Sunday evening whether the breach and apparent release of credit card information was the work of the group Anonymous.

In a posting on the website Pastebin, hackers said they released Stratfor subscriber data, including information on 4,000 credit cards as well as the company's "private client" list. The posting cited AntiSec, a Web-based collaboration with the activist hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec.

U.S.-based Stratfor, which provides independent analysis of international affairs and security threats, sent an e-mail to subscribers on Sunday:

"On December 24th an unauthorized party disclosed personally identifiable information and related credit card data of some of our members. We have reason to believe that your personal and credit card data could have been included in the information that was illegally obtained and disclosed."

But Stratfor also said the "private clients" disclosure was "merely a list of some of the members that have purchased our publications and does not comprise a list of individuals or entities that have a relationship with Stratfor beyond their purchase of our subscription-based publications."

The security think tank provides intelligence reports to subscribers. A recent e-mail discussed political prospects for Iraq.

Group says it hacked 70 law enforcement sites last summer

A press release on the information-sharing website Pastebin, which said it was by Anonymous, said the group had nothing to do with the cyberattack on Stratfor.

"Stratfor is an open source intelligence agency, publishing daily reports on data collected from the open internet," the purported posting by Anonymous said. "Hackers claiming to be Anonymous have distorted this truth in order to further their hidden agenda, and some Anons have taken the bait."

"The leaked client list represents subscribers to a daily publication which is the primary service of Stratfor," according to the writer. "Stratfor analysts are widely considered to be extremely unbiased. Anonymous does not attack media sources."

Stratfor CEO George Friedman said the company is working closely with law enforcement.

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," he wrote on the firm's Facebook page.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," the Austin, Texas, company said. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

Asked about the hacking, Pentagon spokesman George Little on Sunday said, "Initial indications suggest that there has been no impact to the DoD (Department of Defense) grid."

Stratfor's website was not functioning Sunday evening. A banner read, "Site is currently undergoing maintenance. Please check back soon."

Hackers in weekend online postings regarding the Stratfor situation mentioned Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. He faces 22 charges in connection to the leak of nearly 750,000 U.S. military and State Department documents. Most of them ended up on the WikiLeaks website.

Hearing provides clues to possible direction of court-martial

"While the rich and powerful are enjoying themselves with all their bourgeois gifts and lavish meals, our comrade Bradley Manning is not having that great of a time in federal custody," the hackers wrote in a Pastebin posting. "Instead of being heralded as a fighter for free information and government transparency, he is criminalized, marginalized, and incarcerated, threatened with life imprisonment."

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