Personal email accounts of CIA director, DHS secretary reportedly hacked
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Personal email accounts of CIA director, DHS secretary reportedly hacked; FBI ...
wtkr.com The FBI and Secret Service are investigating reports that non-government email accounts associated with CIA Director John Brennan as well as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson were hacked, law enforcement officials told CNN. FBI investigating claim of hack on CIA director's emailCBS News Source: FBI looking into claims CIA director's AOL account hackedFox News #FBI and Secret Service investigating report email account linked to #CIA ...Diplomat News Network all 81 news articles » |
Budget cuts have forced U.S. military forces in Europe to borrow British helicopters and use equipment from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members during training exercises.
The cutbacks have adversely impacted U.S. forces in Europe even as Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and now in Syria have demanded U.S. attention there. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the Army’s commander in Europe, said that the British helicopters has been “essential,” according to the New York Times.
“I don’t have bridges, I don’t have the trucks that can carry tanks, we don’t have enough helicopters to do what we need to do,” Hodges stated. “Practicing with British helicopters here is an essential part of it. Using British and German bridges, using Hungarian air defense is part of it.”
The Army has endured significant budget cuts over the past several years, resulting in less resources and declining troop levels. The number of U.S. soldiers permanently stationed in Europe has been reduced from 40,000 in 2012 to 26,000 today.
According to Hodges, the military does not have the “intelligence capacity to do what we need to do” and Russian action in Ukraine and Syria therefore “surprised” him, the Telegraph reported.
“We don’t have that many Russian speakers anymore,” Hodges said. “I personally have been surprised by every single snap exercise and when they went into Syria. We just do not have the capability to see and track what they’re doing the way they used to.”
The current number of troops permanently stationed in Europe is about 12 percent of the 213,000 operating there at the end of the Cold War in 1990.
“The mission’s still the same,” Hodges said. “So we have to figure out how you make 30,000 feel like 300,000.”
The post US Army Borrows British Helicopters Amid Budget Cuts appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
The U.S.-led NATO alliance kicked off its largest exercise in more than a decade on Monday with thousands of troops fanning out across southern Europe, where allied rapid-response capabilities will be put to the test.
America’s top military officer met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging to work with Israel to meet a growing set of regional challenges.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An anonymous hacker claims to have breached CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account and has posted documents online, including a list of email addresses purportedly from Brennan’s contact file.
The CIA said it had referred the matter to the proper authorities, but would not comment further.
The hacker spoke to the New York Post, which described him in an article published Sunday as “a stoner high school student,” motivated by his opposition to US foreign policy and support for Palestinians.
The post Hacker claims to have breached CIA director’s personal email appeared first on In Homeland Security.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S. discusses President Obama’s decision to keep American troops in the country.
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Drone Close Calls Spur US Regulationby webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The U.S. government will soon require many drone aircraft to be registered, a move prompted by the growing number of reported close calls with planes flying into and out of some of the nation's biggest airports, federal officials announced Monday. Pilot sightings of drones have doubled since last year, including sightings near manned aircraft and major sporting events, and interference with wildfire-fighting operations, the government said. "These reports signal a troubling trend," Federal Aviation Administration chief Michel Huerta said at a news conference to announce the step. Registration will increase pressure on drone operators to fly responsibly, he said. The FAA now receives about 100 reports a month from pilots who say they've seen drones flying near planes and airports, compared with only a few sightings a month last year. In July, a drone came dangerously close to a passenger jet with 159 people aboard as it prepared to land at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, NBC News reported. Task force assembled To work out details, the FAA and the Transportation Department are setting up a 25- to 30-member task force including government and industry officials and hobbyists. They'll recommend which drones should be required to register and which should be exempted, and design a system that would be easy for commercial operators to comply with, the department said. Toys and small drones that don't present a safety threat are likely to be exempt. Drones that weigh less than a kilogram or that can't fly higher than a few dozen meters are considered less risky. Heavier ones and those that can fly much higher pose more of a problem. The FAA is scrambling to get registration rules in place before Christmas. There is no official count of how many drones have been sold in the United States, but industry officials say it is in the hundreds of thousands and will easily pass a million by the end of the year. The Consumer Electronics Association has forecast that 700,000 drones will be sold this holiday season.
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Pentagon Admits Mistaken Forced Entry at Bombed Afghan Hospital by webdesk@voanews.com (VOA News)
The Pentagon acknowledged Monday that U.S. and Afghan troops probing the deadly U.S. bombing of a trauma hospital in northern Afghanistan smashed through a locked gate at the facility nearly two weeks after the October 3 attack, which killed at least 24 people. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the U.S.-Afghan force arrived at the bombed hospital in Kunduz on Thursday to conduct "a structural integrity assessment" of the building. He said the force did not know that medical personnel from the charity organization Doctors Without Borders, known by the French acronym MSF, were on the site when the combined force broke through the facility's main gate. Referring to the medical personnel, Davis said "they were understandably not happy" about the incident. He also said the gate will be repaired, and said a formal report on the hospital bombing will be completed within weeks. An MSF spokeswoman confirmed the forced entry last week, telling reporters it occurred despite an agreement between MSF and the investigative team that called for the military to give notice before each step in the U.S. probe. Earlier this month, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, army General John Campbell, said the United States accepted full responsibility for the October 3 bombing, which, according to the Pentagon, came after Afghan forces called in U.S. airstrikes against Taliban fighters thought to be firing from inside the medical compound.
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Syria Sparks Cold War Deja Vu (Op-Ed) by By Alexander Golts
Those who today are so happy about Russian precision bombing in Syria should stop to consider the inevitable consequences of those actions, writes columnist Alexander Golts.
A month after news broke about the American Center sponsored by the U.S. Embassy being shut down in Moscow's Library of Foreign Literature, the embassy announced its resurrection - this time inside the embassy.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had foiled a terrorist attack in Krasnodar Territory, and arrested an engine-driver’s mate said to be planning to bomb a train.
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies.
The previous issue is here.
Recent Translations:
–The Non-Hybrid War
–Kashin Explains His ‘Letter to Leaders’ on ‘Fontanka Office’
–TV Rain Interviews Volunteer Fighter Back from Donbass
–‘I Was on Active Duty’: Interview with Captured GRU Officer Aleksandrov
–The Non-Hybrid War
–Kashin Explains His ‘Letter to Leaders’ on ‘Fontanka Office’
–TV Rain Interviews Volunteer Fighter Back from Donbass
–‘I Was on Active Duty’: Interview with Captured GRU Officer Aleksandrov
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Staunton, October 16 – Having already shown its contempt for the other Caspian littoral states bylaunching cruise missiles from its squadron on that sea, Moscow will be conducting joint naval exercises with Iran, again apparently without consulting Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.
Ahmad Reza Baqeri, an Iranian naval captain, said that as of yesterday, three Iranian ships were on their way to the Russian port of Astrakhan. The ships include the destroyer Damavand and two rocket carriers Joshan and Peikan. Interfax did not provide any additional details on the exercises.
In Soviet times, the USSR and Iran divided control over the Caspian; but since then, there have been unsuccessful negotiations to delimit the sea among the five littoral states and to agree to how they could use either the sea itself or its seabed. In the last two weeks, Moscow has shown that it will act unilaterally.
That almost certainly has infuriated the littoral states. (See the analysis by Arkady Dubnov as discussed here.) But it has far broader implications for both the states in the region and the international system.
Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan would like to build undersea pipelines, something the US and the EU support; and Kazakhstan has already begun to carry out plans to increase its merchant and naval presence in the Caspian. By its latest actions, Moscow has shown that is quite capable of blocking either.
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Staunton, October 19 – In an indication of Vladimir Putin’s isolation even in the former Soviet space and of the weakness of the CIS as an institution, not a single president of a member state publicly supported the Kremlin leader’s bombing campaign in Syria at the CIS summit in Kazakhstan, Arkady Dubnov notes.
The Russian commentator says that it is “obvious” Putin “did not receive support for his actions in Syria” at the Friday meeting. Even more, there are clear indications that he faced opposition: For the first time ever, all the sessions were closed to the public and even Putin’s speech was not broadcast live.
And he cites the words of Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka that the discussions about Syria at the meeting were “unexpectedly stormy” and notes that nothing was included in the joint statement issued at the end about involving the Moscow-dominated Organization of the Collective Security Treaty in the Syrian operation.
“There is sufficient basis to conclude that the three Caspian CIS member states – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan were, to put it mildly, not delighted by the Russian rocket attack launched against Syria from the Caspian Sea,” Dubnov continues, because “any military action [from that sea] should have been agreed among them.
The Kremlin leader thus must recognize that if he continues his current course in Syria, he may face something he certainly wants and hopes to avoid: open opposition to his policies by leaders of CIS member states, something that could become another step on the way to the demolition of that institution.
The refugees were clinging to a capsized rubber dinghy near the Greek island of Kastellorizo
The Nato exercise will involve 36,000 military personnel, 140 aircraft and more than 60 ships from at least 30 countries
 Yahoo News |
NATO Holds Exercises As Russia Flexes Muscles
Sky News A senior NATO official said: "We have to take into account that Russia is going to have a much more substantial presence...with the ability to impede our freedom of manoeuvre and our freedom of navigation." One of the things that will tested during the ... As Russia reasserts itself, NATO opens biggest exercises in yearsYahoo News Army Intel chief with Pittsburgh ties assesses Russia mightPittsburgh Post-Gazette As Russia becomes more dominant, NATO mobilizes 36000 troops in largest ...National Post International Business Times all 118 news articles » |
 Mintpress News (blog) |
Russia Blocked Israeli Military Fights Over Syria, Lebanon
Mintpress News (blog) Russian forces sent out a warning to the Israeli Air Force after Israeli jets were detected nearRussian controlled airspace near the Syrian–Lebanese border, Lebanese media outlet As Safir reported Friday. The warning was issued after a Russian radar ... Report: Russia Blocked Israeli Overflight of Syria, LebanonAntiwar.com all 8 news articles » |
 NavyTimes.com |
Navy 6th Fleet ramps up to face Russia, ISIS
NavyTimes.com The situation confronting the Naples, Italy-based 6th Fleet isn't pretty. Russian airplanes and warships are aggressively confronting U.S. and NATO forces after swallowing up a huge swath of eastern Ukraine a year ago. And Islamic State militants are ... |
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 Wall Street Journal |
Russian Economy Shows Signs of a Bottom
Wall Street Journal MOSCOW—Russia's economy contracted again in September but some data indicated a bottom may be near. While retail sales declined more than 10% in September, capital investment and industrial production fell but at a pace slower than previous months ... Russia says recession-hit economy shrank 4.3% in third quarterYahoo News UK Russia says crisis-hit economy slumped 4.3% in third quarterBangkok Post all 13 news articles » |
 Business Insider |
Kremlin officials admit Russia initially lied about its aims in Syria
Business Insider This flexibility means Russia can present its operation as being against ISIS and other terrorists, while really focusing on rebels in the northwest — such as the Syrian Army defector-led Free Syria Army — that pose a primary threat to the Assad regime. Russia Bombs, ISIS GainsDaily Beast The US may not like Russia's involvement in Syria, but Russians are good with itPRI Putin's Syria Adventure May Backfire at HomeNewsweek NBCNews.com -Wall Street Journal -Express.co.uk all 5,806 news articles » |
Museums around the globe are trying to harness the power of digital technology to make available collections that have long lay dormant.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain spoke on Monday as the government unveiled new measures intended to fight the spread of extremism among young Muslims.
The prince’s refusal to attend the banquet for China’s leader is just one example of Britain’s attempt to balance commercial interests while not appearing to “kowtow” on rights.
The Federal Security Service said the train’s driver, whom it detained, had received instructions on how to build a bomb from an Islamic State representative.
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After the Russian opposition’s discouraging performance in the Kostroma regional election in September, activists have been asking themselves the question: What is the way forward? Their focus has been primarily on how to increase their vote totals, but according to Reid Nelson, the opposition first needs to formulate a long-term development strategy and ancillary goals for elections, which will help it to establish a well-functioning organization—and, eventually, to gain power.
Крупнейшая амнистия в истории США by golosamerikius
Ко второму ноября досрочно освободят тысячи заключенных, осужденных по статьям, связанным с наркотиками
Originally published at - http://www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/video/us-largest-amnesty/3013806.html
Originally published at - http://www.golos-ameriki.ru/media/video/us-largest-amnesty/3013806.html
Дронам подрезают крылья by golosamerikius
Правительство США намерено ввести обязательную регистрацию всех беспилотников
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas listen to the Chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, during a tour around the Moscow Grand Mosque after an opening ceremony September 23. The new mosque, which was erected on the site of the city's original mosque built in 1904 and which has been under reconstruction since 2005, will be able to accommodate up to 10,000 people at a time. Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/Reuters
“Assad is a heartless killer!” rages Ruslan, a middle-aged worshipper at Moscow’s biggest mosque, just days after Russia’s dramatic entry into Syria’s civil war in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “It’s a disgrace that the Kremlin is supporting his bloody regime,” he adds, as an unseasonal snowstorm obscures the mosque’s golden domes. Another man arriving for evening prayers, a bearded 20-something named Arslan, thinks the opposite. “Russia is doing the right thing in backing the Syrian authorities against ISIS and other terrorists,” he says, adding that he has heard “nothing at all” about human rights abuses committed by Syrian government forces.
It’s hard to say what most of Russia’s estimated 20 million Muslims—around 14 percent of the country’s population—think about President Vladimir Putin’s decision to take military action against Islamic State militants (ISIS) and other opposition groups in Syria, but the move is fraught with dangers. The history of Islam in Russia is one of frequent confrontation, from the 19th-century uprising by Muslim rebels in the country’s North Caucasus region to the separatist and then Islamist wars that devastated Chechnya in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
Unlike Assad, who hails from the minority Alawite sect, Russia’s Muslims overwhelmingly belong to Islam's dominant Sunni branch. This is something they have in common with the myriad opposition forces battling for control of Syria’s war-torn cities. Putin may have been applauded by some for seizing the initiative in Syria, but by backing Assad’s mainly Alawite army, as well as its Shiite allies, who include Hezbollah and elite Iranian troops, he risks inflaming Sunni passions at home.
The Kremlin is deeply suspicious of independent Muslim organizations, and security services carried out a sweeping crackdown ahead of last year’s Winter Olympics in southern Russia. “They consider everything and everyone that they do not control to be an extremist,” says Harun Sidorov, head of the National Organization of Russian Muslims, an independent Islamic movement whose members have faced police pressure, including raids and arrests.
As many as 500,000 Muslims in Russia may indeed sympathize with ISIS, according to a cautious estimate by Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “These are people who want to build a state founded on the principles of Islam,” he says. “Many of them say ISIS is fighting for social justice and for fair government. Others like the fact that it is fighting against the West.”
ISIS has mounted a slick Russian-language recruitment campaign that includes a magazine, Istok,and a dedicated propaganda channel, Furat Media. According to Putin, 5,000 to 7,000 people from Russia and other former Soviet states, many of the Chechens, are fighting for ISIS in Syria. Earlier this year, Islamist militants in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus pledged their allegiance to ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In response, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, appealed to Putin to send Chechen fighters to Syria to “destroy” what he called ISIS “devils.”
Muslim criticism in Russia of Putin’s Syria adventure has been largely restricted to furious social media posts and online articles. So far, there has been little sign that Russia’s Muslims are about to take to the streets against the military campaign. Both experts and government critics say this reluctance to speak out is partly due to a fear of the possible consequences of dissent, rather than an indication of tacit approval. “Muslims in Russia have been frightened into silence by the repressive policies that have been methodically carried out throughout Putin’s rule,” says Airat Vakhitov, a former imam from Russia’s Tatarstan region, who was arrested in 2005 on what he says were trumped-up terrorism charges in Russia. He was later released for lack of evidence and now lives abroad.
Investigators examine the site of a bomb blast which ripped a trolleybus apart in Volgograd, December 30, 2013, killing 14 people. It was the the second deadly attack in the southern city in two days and raised fears of further violence as Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics. Reuters
Kremlin-loyal Muslim leaders have offered their unwavering support for Russia’s airstrikes in Syria. On October 2, the long-serving head of Russia’s Council of Muftis, Ravil Gainutdin, issued an urgent appeal for calm, calling on his fellow Muslims to not “politicize” the Kremlin’s involvement in the conflict. Sprinkling his statement with verses from the Islamic holy book, the Koran, Gainutdin also expressed the hope that Russia’s military action would not lead to interfaith strife among the global Islamic community, or ummah . Gainutdin’s comments were echoed by subordinate muftis across Russia.
The sole dissenting voice was that of Nafigulla Ashirov, a co-chairman of the Council of Muftis, who in early October told the BBC’s Russian-language service that there should be no foreign “interference” in Syria’s civil war. But Ashirov, a radical figure who in 2001 expressed his enthusiastic support for the Taliban, quickly backed down. In subsequent interviews, he refused to comment on Russia’s airstrikes, and he tells Newsweek he has “no opinion whatsoever” on the subject.
While the United States says the vast majority of Russia’s airstrikes in Syria have mainly targeted the “moderate” opposition to Assad, on October 6 the independent Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian jets hit ISIS fighters near the ancient city of Palmyra, where the jihadi movement destroyed a 2,000-year-old Roman arch of triumph earlier this month. Both ISIS and the Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria that has also been targeted by Russian missiles, have since urged Muslims to wage jihad against Russia.
“It is likely there will be a response from North Caucasus–based militants with links to ISIS,” says Gregory Shvedov, editor of Caucasian Knot, an independent online news service. “They certainly have the capacity to set up attacks in Moscow and other big cities.”
On October 11, shortly after Newsweek spoke with Shvedov, counterterrorism agents in Moscow detained 12 people they said were planning a bomb attack on the city’s public transport system. Security officials said at least one of the suspects, a Chechen, had received training at an ISIS camp in Syria. But the details of the alleged bomb plot were hazy and often contradictory. The timing of the arrests—they came shortly after Putin had spoken on national TV about the need to eliminate Russian ISIS fighters in Syria before they returned home—also sparked speculation that they may have been part of a propaganda operation to bolster public support for the Kremlin’s military campaign.
Whatever the truth, news of the arrests frayed nerves. Although Moscow has not had an attack since 2011, when over 30 people were killed in an Islamist suicide bombing, more than 3,000 Russians have lost their lives in attacks Russia considers terrorism since Putin came to power in 2000. But if a new wave of violence is coming to Russia, there is little that counterterrorism officials can do to prevent it, says Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and author who is an expert on the Russian security services. “Russia’s counterterrorism system was designed in the mid-2000s, and its main goal is to prevent groups of militants from getting control over regions or important facilities, not to prevent terrorist attacks,” he tells Newsweek. He also described security measures in place in Moscow and other Russian cities as “largely dysfunctional.”
Back at the mosque in Moscow, a middle-aged woman in a headscarf frowns when I ask her opinion of the Russian missiles raining down destruction on Assad’s Sunni opponents. “I have very strong views on that,” she says, “but I wouldn’t like to state them out loud.” Then she pauses. “But this is very dangerous,” she whispers. “Very dangerous, indeed.”
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Sunni and Shiite Muslims by AFP
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