FBI Still Doesn't Know Who's Cutting California's Fiber-Optic Cables, Or Why - The Consumerist
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The new Google CEO Sundar Pichai will not be the lone Indian-origin CEO at the helm of CorporateAmerican. He will be joining corporate heavyweights like Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, PepsiCo's Chairperson & CEO ...
August 13, 2015, 7:29 PM (IDT)
Despite his warm relations with Netanyahu and close cooperation with Israel in fighting terror, El Sisi is desperate enough to throw Israel as a bone to ISIS to get the terrorists off the backs of Egyptian troops in Sinai.
August 13, 2015, 7:30 PM (IDT)
ISIS-Sinai disclosed its first beheading atrocity of a western hostage the day after Washington announced the disbanding of the Multinational Force and Observers after serving in Sinai for decades.
August 13, 2015, 7:30 PM (IDT)
A year into the US-led coalition war on ISIS in Iraq and Syria, finds the jihadis holding onto most of the territorial gains against an almost-stalled offensive, while keeping their manpower stocks replenished with volunteers and expanding their terror fronts.
August 13, 2015, 7:30 PM (IDT)
The US, Russia and Iran combine to launch a new Middle East venture for resolving current conflicts in ways that are expedient to all three. The Saudis prefer their own path and choices.
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Three intelligence agencies help Sindh police find 1000 ‘criminal policemen’ KARACHI: In an ongoing process, the Sindh police with the help of the country’s three intelligence agencies have identified some 1,000 policemen, including some senior officers, allegedly involved in criminal acts, according to local media authorities. An official privy to the process initiated months ago […]
The Consumerist |
FBI Still Doesn't Know Who's Cutting California's Fiber-Optic Cables, Or Why
The Consumerist There's a bad problem hitting the internet out west: someone's been deliberately slicing through the cables that carry data between providers. And after looking into it for months, the FBI still has basically no idea who's doing the damage or why. and more » |
August 13, 2015, 8:16 PM (IDT)
A 200-truck convoy rolled out of the Hizballah-Syrian positions around the strategic town of Zabadani, early Thursday, Aug. 13. debkafile: Their exit, after failing to break the Syrian rebels’ grip on the town, marked the Hizballah’s first retreat from a major Syrian battleground in the three years of its intervention in the Syrian war alongside Assad’s army. The withdrawal followed visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s talks in Beirut Tuesday with Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah and with President Bashar Assad in Damascus the next day.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office condemned Thursday outgoing US army chief General Raymond Odierno's "irresponsible" statement on the possibility that Iraq might be partitioned.
By John Ubaldi
Contributor, In Homeland Security
Contributor, In Homeland Security
After last week’s address at American University, President Obama is now facing opposition from his own party as New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer came out against the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Other Democrats have joined Schumer in his opposition to this agreement, including the ranking House Democrat on the foreign affairs committee, Rep.
The post President Obama has Difficult Time Selling Iran Agreement appeared first on In Homeland Security.
 Politico |
CIA Accidentally Releases Apology Letter It Wrote, But Never Sent To The ...
Techdirt On July 28, 2014, the CIA director wrote a letter to senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss — the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and the panel's ranking Republican, respectively. In it, he admitted that the CIA's ... Report: John Brennan drafted apology to senators for CIA hackingPolitico CIA boss John Brennan drafted this never-sent apology letter to senators over ...Boing Boing How potent can a citizen journalist be? Ask the CIA about a certain MIT ...Boston Business Journal (blog) all 8 news articles » |
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WASHINGTON (AP) - Pilot reports of drone sightings so far this year are more than double last year, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, raising concern about the potential for a deadly collision.
There have been more than 650 reports this year by pilots of unmanned aircraft flying near manned ...
Ex-IRS Official Lois Lerner last year accused Republican congressional investigators probing the IRS targeting scandal of being “evil and dishonest,” insisting later that she was “never a political person.”
First reported by Politico, emails unearthed by the Senate Finance Committee report published last week suggest that Lerner pled the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee multiple times in 2014 out of spite.
“They called me back to testify on the IRS ‘scandal,’ and I too[k] the 5th again because they had been so evil and dishonest in my lawyer’s dealings with them,” Lerner wrote to a friend in March 2014.
About three months later, Lerner claimed to the same individual that a physically unflattering picture of her testifying before the congressional committee had emerged because “it serves their purposes of hate mongering to continue to use those images.”
“I was never a political person—this whole fiasco has only made me lose all respect [for] politics and politicians. I am merely a pawn in their game to take over the Senate,” Lerner added in the June 2014 message.
The Senate report found that Lerner, who headed the IRS’ Exempt Organizations Unit during the time of the conservative group targeting, “failed to adequately manage” members of her staff processing conservative and Tea Party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status.
As a result of her “deliquent” handling of the applications, only one conservative advocacy group wasawarded tax-exempt status by the IRS between February 2009 and May 2012.
“Lerner’s bias against these applicants unquestionably led to these delays, and is particularly evident when compared to the IRS’s treatment of other applications, discussed immediately below,” the bipartisan report concluded.
In an earlier email brought to light by the congressional report, Lerner suggested that the country might need to “split in two” because of disagreements between Democrats and Republicans regarding government spending.
“We’re in Ohio for the holiday and waiting to go over the fiscal cliff!” she wrote in December 2012. “I truly believe this country is out of its head with ridiculousness! We really need to split in two—we are so polarized that we can’t do anything constructive.”
Lerner assumed her top position at the IRS in 2006. Four months after admitting that the IRS targeted conservative and Tea Party groups in May 2013, Lerner was forced to resign from her post at the government agency.
In the wake of the Senate Finance Committee report’s release last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) slammed the Obama administration for misleading Congress and hiding evidence in order to conceal the targeting scandal.
“The report makes clear that civic groups were harassed specifically because they identified as conservative,” McConnell declared. “It underlines the seething contempt partisan officials like Lois Lerner had for them.”
Multiple lawmakers have demanded that President Obama fire current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for hindering the congressional investigation into the IRS scandal.
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Days before his retirement, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno is emphasizing the need for the United States to continue its campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East, describing the current U.S. position against the terrorist organization as a “stalemate.”
AFP reported that Odierno said Wednesday that though the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIL or ISIS) “has been blunted somewhat” in Iraq by U.S. airstrikes coupled with Kurdish and Iraqi ground forces, the military must make defeating the terrorist group its top priority.
“I think right now we are kind of at a stalemate and continue to make some progress,” explained Odierno, who spent more time in Iraq than any other U.S. Army general. He also stressed the need for the U.S. to continue to rebuild the Iraqi forces.
He echoed comments made by the veteran general nominated to lead the Marine Corps earlier this month. While undergoing questioning from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R., Ariz.), Lt. Gen. Robert Neller likewise characterized the U.S. campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria as a “stalemate.”
However, Obama administration officials–including the president himself–have touted the “progress” the United States has witnessed against IS.
At the end of July, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the Obama administration bomb campaign launched last year against IS has yielded no perceivable degradation of the terrorist organization’s forces.
Odierno, who retires Friday, also spoke of the escalating difficulty of reaching reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, supposing that ultimately partitioning the country “might be the only solution.”
“I think that is for the region and politicians to figure out, diplomats to figure out how to work this, but that is something that could happen,” Odierno elaborated.
The focus, Odierno said, should first remain on defeating the Islamic State before attention can be turned to the relations between Sunnis and Shiites.
“We have to deal with ISIL first and decide what it will look like afterwards,” the Army general explained.
Odierno has been critical of the Obama administration’s actions in the Middle East, especially when it comes to the Islamic State.
During an interview with Fox News last month, the outgoing Army general contended that the U.S. military could have thwarted the rise of IS had the Obama administration left troops in Iraq beyond 2011.
The Islamic State has recently been exhibiting signs of transforming into an actual functioning state, issuing identification cards and dispersing fishing guidelines in areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls.
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President Obama and his family are currently residing in a $22.5 million vacation home complete with six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
The Huffington Post reported that the nearly 7000-square-foot Chilmark mansion, positioned on nine-and-a-half-acres, houses a sunken living room with double-height windowed walls that allow the first family a view of the heated infinity pool.
It also features an oversized wood-burning fireplace, though temperatures on the island currently reach up to 80 degrees.
Despite the estate’s amenities, Obama has been spending plenty of time on the golf course. On Wednesday, the president played a game of golf with NBA stars Alonzo Mourning and Ray Allen.
The group played through the course at the Farm Neck Golf Club in Martha’s Vineyard. Days earlier, Obama was spotted on the same course playing a round with comedian Larry David and others.
President Obama and his family departed the White House for the Massachusetts getaway on August 7, a day earlier than their scheduled departure date. Their 17-day vacation is more than four times the length of the average American vacation.
Obama has spent each of his summer vacations while president on the island, with the exception of 2012 when he was running for reelection.
Obama has planned no public events during his vacation.
JERUSALEM—Palestinian terror has declined this year in Israel and the West Bank but not for lack of trying.
Israel’s Shin Bet (Security Service) has reported foiling 111 planned terror attacks in the first seven months of the year through pre-emptive arrests. In addition, the security services of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank have made a substantial number of similar arrests, although it has issued no figures.
Israel’s security forces have prevented 17 suicide attacks since the beginning of the year, according to statistics released by the Shin Bet. It also foiled eight plots to kidnap Israelis in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners. The PA likewise prevented an unknown number of suicide bombings and kidnappings.
Israeli officials say that there is close cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces despite ongoing tension at the political level. The PA is interested in suppressing terror activity because it undermines its own authority in the West Bank and promotes the interests of Hamas, which competes with the Fatah-led PA for Palestinian leadership.
Three Israelis have been killed in terror attacks so far this year compared to 15 killed in 1914. More than a score have been wounded in knife attacks and in a relatively new kind of attack—vehicles driven deliberately into groups of Israelis waiting at bus stops or standing at roadsides. The road that divides Jerusalem between east and west has been the site of several such attacks.
In the most recent incident, an Israeli who stopped at a gas station on the West Bank last week was stabbed in the back by an assailant who was shot dead by soldiers on duty nearby. The Israeli’s condition was described as light. A few days before, three Israeli soldiers walking along a West Bank road were struck by a car that had turned around in order to hit them. Another soldier shot the driver who was seriously injured when his car turned over.
Israeli officials say the type of terror prevailing today is very different from the terror that marked the second intifada, which began in 2000. (The first intifada, or uprising, broke out in 1987 and was less violent than the second.) The second intifada was an uprising directed by hierarchical organizations—not just Hamas—operating in quasi-military fashion. A central feature was suicide bombings on buses in the heart of Israel. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed before the Israeli security services, operating in tandem with the army, suppressed the uprising in what was virtually a house-to-house campaign in the West Bank. Some 3,000 Palestinians were killed and thousands imprisoned before the violence ended, by some reckonings in 2005. The memory of those difficult days is what has dissuaded many Palestinians since from welcoming another uprising despite their hostility to Israel.
The current acts of terror are described by Israeli officials as being in good part “lone wolf” attacks—that is, acts by individuals, often on the spur of the moment, to seek revenge for personal or nationalistic reasons by attacking chance targets. Where the leaders of the Second Intifada made a point at striking targets inside Israel, the great bulk of attacks in recent years are in the West Bank. The targets are either settlers, soldiers or residents of Israel who happen to be visiting. A fire bomb tossed last month by Israeli extremists into a house in a Palestinian village, killing an infant and its father and seriously injuring two other members of the family, was followed by a spate of revenge attacks in the West Bank.
Although Hamas is said by the Shin Bet to be responsible for 55 percent of the planned attacks that were foiled, Hamas cells are generally small and consist of persons from the same village who know each other well. During the Second Intifada, Hamas was a much more structured and complex organization, which also made it easier for the Israeli security service to penetrate them.
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An interview Wednesday with a Russian army major, arrested in Ukraine on charges of terrorism, fueled allegations that Russian soldiers are serving alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian authorities arrested Major Vladimir Starkov on July 25 at the Beryozovo checkpoint. Starkov was inside of a Russian KamAZ truck filled with Russian-made weapons. The truck was on its way from Donetsk to Yasne, a town controlled by separatists.
According to EuroNews, Starkov said that he was transferred to the Rostov oblast of Russia, a region on the Russian-Ukrainian border, in 2014. That March, he was told that he would serve in Ukraine.
Starkov said that 2,000 Russian soldiers currently serve in eastern Ukraine, the majority of whom are not volunteers.
“They gathered us in the auditorium and announced that we will serve in the same positions, but that we will continue our service in Ukraine. In Donetsk and Luhansk. We were not allowed to inform our relatives,” he said.
According to RBK News, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Vasily Gritsak, said that a “well-established” mechanism exists to transfer Russian soldiers to Ukraine.
RBK News reports:
Referring to the testimony of Starkov […] The head said that Russian soldiers are promised three times the money if they accept the offer to transfer to serve in the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic]. They then allegedly take away their passport, military ID, and badge, which can identify them as an active serviceman of the Russian Armed Forces. The soldiers, in turn, sign a non-disclosure agreement about the fact that they are serving on the territory of Ukraine, and are instructed about the ban on wearing insignia that indicate membership in the Russian Armed Forces.
Deputy Defense Minister of the DPR, Eduard Basurin, denied the credibility of Starkov’s arrest, dubbing the detention of the KamAZ truck “staged.” He also denied allegations that active Russian soldiers were fighting alongside separatists.
“We never said that there are no Russians here. There are those people that came here voluntarily, including former soldiers whose contract has ended. Active Russian military personnel have never been here and are not here,” he said.
Russian Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Starkov’s detention. “We have repeatedly made comments on this subject,” he said. Russian soldiers have been identified in eastern Ukraine on numerous occasions in the past.
The Security Service of Ukraine uploaded a video Wednesday of Starkov pleading Russian President Vladimir Putin to help him out of Ukraine. “I served in the Russian army for 12 years, and now they will not acknowledge me. They say that there is no one by that name. That he did not serve,” he said. “I’m not a terrorist. I didn’t come here to kill anyone.”
“I am asking someone to recognize that I am really in the army, and to help me get out of here, to transfer to Russia,” he said.
Starkov’s plea follows the bloodiest day of fighting in eastern Ukraine since February, when the Minsk cease-fire agreement was signed.
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Islamic State militants are accused of using chemical weapons in an attack on Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq that wounded four.
According to the Associated Press, both the German Defense Ministry and the Kurdish fighters said Thursday that the Islamic State possibly used chemical weapons during an attack late Wednesday near the town of Makhmour.
The defense ministry in a statement claimed that approximately 60 Kurdish fighters endured breathing difficulties in the aftermath of the attack, though added that no German troops training Kurdish forces in the area were harmed.
According to Kurdish security official Hiwa Qaraji, Islamic State fighters waged an attack on the Kurdish forces Wednesday, injuring four.
Kurdish and German officials did not offer specific information regarding the type of chemical weapons believed to have been used in the attack.
The former Cuban president says "irrefutable arguments" have proven the island's claim for damages.
 New York Times |
Colorado Court Rules Against Baker Who Refused to Serve Same-Sex Couples
New York Times A state appeals court in Colorado ruled Thursday that a baker could not cite religious beliefs in refusing to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples. The decision is the latest in a series of similar rulings across the country that have been cheered ... 'The Ruling Is Wrong' Says Baker After Losing Appeal Of Wedding Cake Case To ...CBS Local Colorado Court Agrees: Refusing to Bake a Cake for Gays Is Discrimination, Not ...Slate Magazine (blog) Judge Rules Baker Who Refused to Make Gay Wedding Cake Can't Cite Beliefs as...TheBlaze.com The Denver Post -ABC News all 134 news articles » |
 The Australian |
US, allies target Islamic State in Syria, Iraq with 24 air strikes: US military
Reuters WASHINGTON U.S.-led forces conducted 12 air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria on Wednesday and also targeted the group with 12 strikes in Iraq, the U.S. military said on Thursday. Strikes in Syria were concentrated near Al Hasakah, where five ... Australia can achieve nothing in Iraq or SyriaThe Australian Financial Review Iran, Ready for a Political Solution in SyriaHuffington Post Syria conflict: As Turks turn on the Kurds, President Assad is no longer the ...The Independent The Daily Star -The Australian all 216 news articles » |
Amateur footage shows a large oil fire on the surface of the Moscow river after an underwater pipeline reportedly burst on Wednesday. The Moscow oil refinery, owned by Gazprom Neft, told Reuters it was unaffected by the fire, and did not own the pipeline where the incident occurred. Local news agencies reported that one child and two adults suffered burns from the incident
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MARACAIBO (Reuters) - As dawn breaks over the scorching Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, smugglers, young mothers and a handful of kids stir outside a supermarket where they spent the night, hoping to be first in line for scarce rice, milk or whatever may be available.
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Ukraine reports intense battles with pro-Russian insurgents near the last major government stronghold in the former Soviet country's separatist east.
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US general says Islamic State gaining in Afghanistan but not yet a serious military threat
Developments are rapidly taking place, some behind the scenes, which will have a significant impact on the Syrian conflict and the broader war against Isis.
There wer minor scuffles between police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators trying to stage a sit-in in Paris today. Report by Conor Mcnally.
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