h/t Instapundit
South Korea’s arms procurement agency recently signed a contract to purchase 90 more Taurus long-range, air-launched, bunker-busting missiles, according to defense officials.
The Defence Acquisition Program Administration, or DAPA, however, had not issued a news release on the contract, an apparent move not to harm the warming atmosphere for dialogue with the nuclear-armed North.
Tension on the Korean Peninsula has eased in the wake of meetings between North Korea and South Korea, as well as ongoing negotiations about a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The contract for the missile system, made by German company Taurus Systems GmbH, was signed late February, said Kang Hwan-seok, spokesman for the DAPA.
The latest contract for the Taurus missile is the second of its kind since 2013, when the DAPA ordered 170 Taurus missiles to arm the fleet of F-15K fighter aircraft. Each missile costs about $1.8 million.
h/t Instapundit
Attorney General Jeff Sessions faces a dangerous decision with a deadline. Should he fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe within hours of his retirement Friday, and thereby likely deprive him of a lucrative lifetime federal pension ‐ or should he let McCabe’s week run out?
If only the decision were so straightforward. There’s much more to the back story on this one.
The dilemma was thrust upon Sessions earlier this week by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which recommended that McCabe be terminated before his pension begins. Federal law allows civil service pensions to be denied for serious offenses, but once the checks start flowing it’s illegal to stop them.
The OPR got involved after Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s investigators found that McCabe had lied to them about his actions in leaking information to the media about the FBI’s probe of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and address.
#2
The article makes a pretty fair case the Deep State?FBI wants him fired, to stir up more Trumpian controversy. He'd sue to get his pension, and the story would go on forever.
McCabe has already been disgraced - forced out early - so he'll have to live the rest of his life as a CNN Analyst.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/15/2018 18:26
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#3
I personally think the criminations about McCabe that are in the IG report and the incidents about McCabe behavior after the election are bit more than leaking information to the press to present an agenda.
#4
Dammit, g(r)omgoru! You know I adore you, but the rule is that after 2:00 p.m. ET the only things posted that day are active terror attacks. This should have been posted for tomorrow. All one need do is click on the Tomorrow button on the left side of the article box, or like in the news link box one can easily change the date to the next day and the time to 00:00.
h/t Instapundit
Chinese state firms now control about one-tenth of all European port capacity.
The port deals are one of the clearest manifestations of Beijing’s ambitious plans to physically link China to Europe by sea, road, rail, and pipeline. The ports are half of the Belt and Road Initiative, snaking from the South China Sea across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal and into the soft underbelly of Europe.
In 2016, China invested over $20 billion into seaports on foreign terrain.
China Merchants Port Holdings bought a 90% share of the Brazilian port operator TCP Participacões for nearly a billion dollars. Jiangsu province paid $300 million to build a free trade zone around Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi.
China is also building high-speed rail line between Hungary and Serbia.
Civil Liberties for Europe, spun off of Soros’ Open Society Foundation, tried to convince the German Foreign Ministry to intervene against a controversial Hungarian law targeting Soros’ NGO donations
[Dallas Morning News] With visions of a fall tidal wave spinning in their heads, Democrats spent Wednesday celebrating a win in a Pittsburgh-area congressional district that Donald Trump had carried by 20 points. However,
The White House also insisted that Trump's personal involvement kept the race closer than it would have been.
"The president's engagement in the race turned what was a deficit for the Republican candidate to what is essentially a tie," said principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah. "Also, the Democrat in the race really embraced the president's policies and his vision, whereas he didn't really embrace Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader."
Lamb himself did not frame the race as a referendum on Trump. Unlike many of the Democrats seeking to topple Texas incumbents, he wasn't urging voters to "send a message."
"I never really asked anyone who they voted for in November 2016. I thought that was a little impolite and kind of beside the point," he said Wednesday on MSNBC, emphasizing a willingness to work with Trump. "The president is still very popular in this district, and my guess is he did energize some voters." The Dems also 'sees what they want to see and disregard the rest'
Democrats insist that means Pennsylvania voters effectively repudiated the GOP tax bill, which, as Democratic national chairman Tom Perez put it, "gives massive giveaways to corporations and their wealthy shareholders at the expense of American workers."
"Last night's stunning upset was just the latest rebuke to the Trump-Republican agenda," Perez wrote in an open memo.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/15/2018
11:42 ||
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#1
That and the Dem candidate looked and sounded more conservative than his opponent.
I'm sure that will change shortly.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/15/2018 12:03
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#2
Yeah... he basically ran on Trump's platform in a historically Demoncrat area and was backed by unions.
This is not a referendum on Trump as the dems can't do this all over the nation.
#7
Conservative Democrat, riiight!?! He will 'wander off the reservation' from time to time if the Democrats get a Majority+5 and the rest of the time it will be 'lock-step Liberal clone'.
#10
Senator Paul had pleural effusion as a result of the attack, which might have caused his lungs to collapse and kill him. His attacker could have been charged with attempted manslaughter... or had he died, successful manslaughter.
Separately, the GOP is challenging the results of the special election, claiming multiple voting irregularities, so we’ll see if that goes anywhere. Link.
[Townhall] U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking an Ohio law, signed by Gov. Kasich in December, that would’ve banned abortions performed solely due to a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
The law, which would’ve taken effect March 23, makes performing abortions solely on the basis of Down Syndrome a fourth-degree felony. It also requires the state medical board to revoke a doctor's license if convicted but does not penalize the woman obtaining the procedure.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood sued in February arguing that the law unconstitutionally restricts abortion access.
Judge Black agreed with that argument, saying that the law violates Supreme Court precedent forbidding states from interfering with a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy before viability.
#1
Black is a Harvard Law School grad and Democrat appointed by Soetoro. The slaying of the Down Syndrome inconvenient citizens can now continue.
If it could be determined that some Down Syndrome infants may also be gay or lesbian Islamic Dreamers, perhaps Judge Black's decision could be overturned.
#2
prenatal screening can provide a risk factor in the first trimester
because the 1992 Supreme Court decision (Planned P vs Casey) since during the first trimester no undue burden may be placed on a pregnant woman (somehow this was because of the 14th amendment).
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2018 8:52
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#3
somehow this was because of the 14th amendment
Among the many annals of judicial fiction - 1) to get around Article 5 process and 2) to build the power of the judicial aristocracy, one unaccountable to the people.
#7
How do they know how serveire the Downe's syndrome is?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/15/2018 15:00
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#8
I have a child with Down Syndrome, and there seem to be some misconceptions here. Let me clear them up:
1) Something like 95% of DS births have nothing, genetically speaking, to do with either the mother or father. It's just something that happens to roughly one out of 900 pregnancies.
2) DS is never "severe" nor "mild." There is a list of serious to trivial physical and cognitive impairments which any given person with DS may - or may not - get. Most individuals fall within the middle: moderate cognitive impairment, some modest medical problems.
3) My own daughter is eight, very healthy (if a bit plump), and has an estimated IQ of 42. She loves princesses, YouTube Kids, dolls, and the color yellow. She can read about 80 words and grasps the basics of math. The other children in her school generally like her, and include her in play. Her life isn't - and probably won't be - unhealthy or unproductive. Under current statistics, her life expectancy is about 55 - longer than Alexander the Great lived.
4) Many questions about "mild" or "sever" DS miss the ethical point: namely, that these are human beings with souls. They have inherent rights. They are, on the whole, highly valued by their families and communities. If you don't believe me, go try to adopt an American baby with Down Syndrome of any race. You will find there is a waiting list.
5) I'm not a highly lovable man. I'm opinionated, pushy, and prone to anger. I don't have a vast number of close friends. My marriage isn't exactly a Hallmark Channel love story. But I know -know- my daughter with Down syndrome loves me. And that gives me a reason for getting up each morning, getting behind the mule, and plowing.
#9
I'm not a highly lovable man. I'm opinionated, pushy, and prone to anger. I don't have a vast number of close friends. My marriage isn't exactly a Hallmark Channel love story. But I know -know- my daughter with Down syndrome loves me. And that gives me a reason for getting up each morning, getting behind the mule, and plowing.
This old bastard would be mighty proud to know you Secret Master. Mighty proud. Thanks for sharing your insights. Something going on with my eyes......
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
03/15/2018 18:28
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#11
re #8 I was leaving a hardware store in my town and saw a man and his daughter across the street. She appeared to have downs and I thought 'poor man'. He waited for her and bent down when she approached him. She reached up and gave him a kiss. I thought 'lucky man'.
Look, IMO, if somebody chooses not to raise a Dawn Syndrome child - you gonna force them?
Huh. Almost as if there were no other option...
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/15/2018 21:49
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#13
Look, IMO, if somebody chooses not to raise a Dawn Syndrome child - you gonna force them?
Huh. Almost as if there were no other option...
Indeed. As I mentioned before: a lot of people want these children. Americans are going abroad as far as China and the Ukraine to adopt DS children. And thank you Besoeker. You are too kind.
#2
Yesterday you were saying the nerve gas attack was stupid.
Now you say "what goes around comes around," as if the UK had done something effective instead of just expelling some pencil-pushers.
Thought for the day: if they torpedoed Nord Stream 2 today noone would know who did it, and it would hurt the European Reich and Putin at the same time.
#3
Let do a thought experiment, Thing. Suppose, a week from now, some London Muzzi is whacked with an Uzi. Would you support La May if she decides to expel a bunch of Israeli diplomats?
#6
I dunno, Grom, would you support my expulsion if they were killed with a Mosin Nagant?
An Uzi is probably a lot easier to duplicate than an obscure nerve agent, and besides, it's been sold everywhere from Columbia to the Philipines.
My larger point: if May wanted to do something besides some worthless symbolic gesture, she probably could; the worthless symbolic gesture isn't worthy of Dire Revenge.
#7
There used to be certain norms of behavior between countries, Thing. Used to, you didn't make these kinds of accusations - even if you were sure. You just arranged a payback on QT.
Now about being sure.
(i) If Brits can identify the stuff, then they (and anybody else in industrialized world can produce it).
(ii) Former soviet republics (and anybody who bought it from them) have it. To recollect, one former soviet republic, Ukraine, is at war with Russia at present.
(iii) In all detective stories I've ever read - if something is too pat, it's suspicious.
p.s. What's your connection to Mosin Nagant?
The 3-line rifle M1891 (Russian: трёхлинейная винтовка образца 1891 года, tryokhlineynaya vintovka obraztsa 1891 goda), colloquially known as Mosin–Nagant (Russian: Винтовка Мосина, ISO 9: Vintovka Mosina) is a five-shot, bolt-action, internal magazine–fed, military rifle developed from 1882 to 1891, and used by the armed forces of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and various other nations. I pegged you as Remington Model 700
#9
Grom: they're making a lot of noise precisely because a) they aren't going to do anything significant, and b) they and everyone else in the world _knows_ they aren't going to do anything.
For that matter, has Brexit happened yet, or has it been brought 'relatively under control?'
#11
What a stupid comparison. Uzis were sold on the open market. If the Russians sold their unique nerve gas, they're still culpable for its use; it's a different class of weapon completely.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/15/2018 21:47
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#2
I really liked "Raid on Entebbe" (1977) with Charles Bronson. The last scene with the song Hine ma tov is beyond moving. The proud young Israeli girl clutching her flag and the three old ladies, who bear all the pain of the Jewish people in their winkled faces. Very powerful.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
03/15/2018 20:13
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[American Thinker] Please forgive me for using this crude but appropriate saying: "Don't urinate on my head and tell me it is raining." Leftists urinate lies, deceit, perversion, immorality, and sin on our heads while telling us it's the golden nectar of beauty, love, and compassion. In a nutshell, leftists are using government to make the weird and freaky mainstream while trampling traditional principles and values underfoot ‐ declaring them hateful, intolerant, and laughable.
For example: Everyday people think a movie in which an amphibian injects its sperm into a human is gross. And yet Hollywood deems it a beautiful love story, awarding The Shape of Water Best Picture of the Year. We commoners are too unsophisticated to appreciate the beauty of a woman copulating with a fish.
Back in 2015, Tom DeLay exposed an Obama DOJ memo spelling out 12 perversions it wanted to legalize, including pedophilia and bestiality. So don't call me crazy for saying the movie The Shape of Water is the leftists' step one in warming people up to legalizing bestiality.
[American Thinker] House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has always lived on a different planet. What's more, she's always pandering, and she will pander to anyone. So it was natural that she pandered in surreal terms to her favorite pet group, the DREAMers and their illegal parents and coevals, labeling the U.S. lawmen tasked with looking for criminal aliens among them as "terrorizing" their communities and calling their legitimate law enforcement actions "cowardly attacks."
Cowardly attacks? Scooping up the worst of the worst among illegals ‐ the cartel members, the killers, the kidnappers, the child-molesters, the drunk drivers ‐ and that's somehow a task that takes cowardice? Seriously, cartel members? What an insult. And this from a person who wants her party to run these agencies?
Fortunately, she got an impressive smack-down on Fox News from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, Thomas D. Homan, a big, beefy tough guy, who knows the score and communicates it well. Homan told Fox News's Stuart Varney:
[American Thinker] Waving the flag of the country they'd do anything to avoid being sent back to, DREAMers were out in force as President Trump's plane touched down in San Diego. The Mexican flags flew, and the hate-Trump chants pounded from the left.
Don't expect the rest of the media to notice any of this. Or the chants of "¡sí se puede!" or the Che banners and t-shirts, the foul language, or the scads of ethnic Mexican clothing to demonstrate the absence of assimilation. Nope, most of the press did its level best to keep such images out of the news and present only the most sanitized versions of the anti-Trump protesters to the public.
Fortunately, since there were a lot of them covering the rallies, the details leaked out here and there. Two news agencies, Fox News 5, the local station in San Diego, and Breitbart News, in Beverly Hills, reported without filters, as did the San Diego Free Press, a radical left-wing news agency that actually likes the foul language and Mexican flag-waving. The New York Times did note the Che t-shirts even as it snidely called the pro-Trump rallies "pep rallies." (Would they have called a pro-Obama rally a "pep" rally?) But if you wanted to see what the rallies were really like, most of the local press by and large blacked out the flags from the coverage.
Get a load of some of these screen grabs from Fox 5, the local affiliate of Fox News, or better yet, go see their video:
#3
It's nothing new. Their intent has been clear for quite some time now. They fly the flag of the country to which they bear loyalty. They don't care about becoming Americans. They want America to become Mexico.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/15/2018 12:31
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[Sacramento Bee via Victory Girls] Trump and his cabinet have been making headlines recently in terms of the pushback they’ve given to California for its sanctuary city policies. The president has been characteristically critical toward California’s own brand of liberalism, and he recently singled out Governor Jerry Brown in particular. In response to Trump’s activity involving California, a Tuesday editorial from the Sacramento Bee claimed that President Trump hasn’t seen the real California, and has, thus, vastly mischaracterized the state on the national stage.
Here’s a segment:
As Donald Trump visited California on Tuesday for the first time as president, he limited his view to what serves his agenda ‐ a border crossing in San Diego to inspect prototypes for his proposed wall, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to speak to service members, and a private home in Beverly Hills for a $35,000-per-person fundraiser.
If only the president and the nation could see the real California. They’d see a state that drives much of the U.S. economy, with diverse and dynamic people leading the way into America’s future.
Granted, I’m on board with the idea that Trump’s rhetorical style often relies on the use of "broad brushstrokes." The same can be said for many politicians. That, and it’s definitely true that California is a diverse state, it’s filled with dynamic people, it’s significantly impactful over the US economy, and Californians do develop tech that will launch us into the future.
But those on the editorial board at the Sacramento Bee are deluding themselves if they think Californians live in some idealistic liberal utopia.
I live in San Francisco. I cherish my city, but it has major problems, none of which the editorial addressed.
The worst problem of all‐ way worse than soaring rents, the high cost of living, unreliable police, ridiculous taxes, less-than-optimal public transit, and laws that hamstring businesses and individuals in the name of liberal ideology‐ is the trifecta of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction that affects people who live on the streets.
To give you an idea: this past Monday, I was walking down the entrance stairway to the Civic Center BART station, and on my way down, I walked in between two homeless men as one passed a crack pipe to the other. They made zero effort to conceal the pipe because it’s just normal in that area of town to do hard drugs out in the open. And several days ago, when my husband and I went to the public library downtown, we saw several plastic pieces that had come off of hypodermic needles laying around. My husband has seen people shooting up before. He once saw someone defecating in the street. I’ve seen someone smoking a pipe in the street. I’ve seen a pregnant woman smoking cigarettes on the street. One time, I saw someone pee on the side of a building downtown, and their bag was laying in the middle of their pee stream as it ran into the street, so when they finished doing their business and picked up their bag, it was dripping urine as they walked away.
#2
California has many beautiful places but they tend to elect some totally unhinged radical politicians. It's a shame these politicos have tried to turn it into a 3rd world sh-thole.
#3
Its in stage I of Third World Undevelopment. The rich at the top, the poor at the bottom and the middle class squeezed out of existence. Classical Latin America patronage.
[FOX] CANBERRA, Australia -Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has announced he plans to examine ways to fast-track a visa program for white South African farmers.
The decision comes in the wake of newly-elected South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's apparent plan to appropriate white-owned South African farms and redistribute the land to black South Africans. Ramaphosa's plan would exclude white South Africans from receiving any compensation for their appropriated land.
In addition, Sky News Australia reported that white South Africans are being murdered at a rate of more than one per week, according to News Corp Australia chief Paul Toohey, who travelled to South Africa to investigate. In the wake of such claims, Dutton suggested to the media that a humanitarian visa may be what is needed.
Australia's home affairs page states a total of 13,765 visas were granted under the annual Humanitarian Program from 2015 to 2016. Under the current system, a refugee would first need to be referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the Australian government.
[Breitbart] Wednesday on MSNBC’s "Live With Velshi and Ruhle," Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he was opposing President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, because she "loved the idea of someone being tortured."
Paul said, "One of the things I liked about President Trump is he consistently and loudly opposed regime change in Iraq, the Iraq war. He’s appointing people around him that not only support the Iraq war, never learned the lesson that regime change led to instability and chaos in the Middle East. These are people who he’s appointing Pompeo that have advocated for regime change next door. These are not people who support the notion that the Iraq war was misguided.
He continued, "On Mrs. Haspel, if you read her quotes, when she was present during waterboarding, she was gleeful at the waterboarding and sort of gloating at the fact that the guy is acting as he’s struggling to breathe and drowning in fluid. This is not what America stands for. Torture is not what America is about. I have family members in the armed service. I don’t want to send a message to the world that torture is fine. Our young men and women can be captured at some point too. If the whole world thinks America tortures prisoners, they’ll do the same to ours. This is a woman who is a poster child for what went wrong with waterboarding after 9/11. She should never ever be advanced to any position in the CIA."
He added, "There are many people, if you want a career person, someone who served in the CIA, there are dozens and dozens of people who weren’t involved with waterboarding, not directly involved with torture, that weren’t gleefully showing how much they loved the idea of someone being tortured. I think she’s absolutely disqualified. There are probably dozens of other people, I wouldn’t presume to know the individual names at the CIA, but I think we can find a career person that hasn’t tortured anybody."
#7
Seems to me that when you are a participant in war, actively engaging in operations against a nation and its people, and you are a member of another nation, or affiliated and allied with them in such activities, and you wear a uniform or some form of identifying markings, you should be treated as a legitimate prisoner of war and afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. When you are not such a person, you should not expect due process or anything except the wraith of the nation for your use of deception to gain advantage. I for one, think this is a reasonable policy.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/15/2018 19:18
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#13
If the world knew that we put our special forces through the same thing they might start to think our Special Forces have magic powers like Mossad. That would be ok in my book.
We could have fed al'Qaeda members through wood chippers a half inch at a time and it wouldn't have violated the laws of war. I'm not even sure it would have been immoral, because those fuckers took the evil choice on every decision set before them.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/15/2018 21:52
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#15
Every time we capture a high value target from ISiS or AQ, I personally believe the ticking bomb scenario is in place.
[Hot Air] "People close to the White House say they expect more major personnel shifts this week," tweeted Maggie Haberman yesterday. Attorney General and National Security Advisor sound pretty major.
Cycling out Jeff Sessions and cycling in John Bolton would be even weirder than bringing in Larry Kudlow to run economic policy in a protectionist White House. Until Trump jumped into politics, Sessions was the most prominent nationalist in the Republican Party, certainly in elected office. Bolton, meanwhile, has been one of the GOP’s most outspoken hawks for decades. Somehow, a little more than a year into his term, a guy who got elected president running as an anti-interventionist "America First" populist is prepared to cashier the former and hire the latter. On what planet does that make sense?
#5
As long as McCabe gets shitcanned in the next four days, I'm cool with it. Sessions has been twiddling his thumbs since he's been AG, and that's as charitable as I'm gonna say it.
#7
If true I'd caution Trump on churning through to many folks to fast. He's got another 7 years to go and might find fewer and fewer people wanting to take up jobs if they know they're likely to be fired at a whim
[LI] President Donald Trump will be spending the day in Southern California, inspecting the border wall prototypes constructed near San Diego and drawing out the #Resistance in the form of organized protests.
It will be interesting to see if Trump gives US Senator Kamala Harris a fun nickname, especially after her tweet touting the Golden State as the future of the nation.
If California is the future, then I feel it is my duty as a resident to give everyone fair warning of what is in store! New regulations approved by the California State Water Resources Control Board allow treated recycled water that comes from city sewers to be added to reservoirs, the source of California municipal drinking water.
The regulations specify the percentage of recycled water that can be added and how long it must reside there before being treated again at a surface water treatment facility and provided as drinking water, according to the Water Board.
"This is a type of indirect potable use ‐ it’s not treated recycle water that goes directly to someone’s house," said Miryam Barajas at the Water Board. "It’s highly treated.
In fact, San Diego is leading the state in carrying out a sewer-to-reservoir operation. I will simply point out that it is only a matter of time before the system fails, and untreated sewer water ends up in the tap to create a public health crisis.
It is a good thing that Trump prefers golfing to biking. The clean-up of the Santa Ana River Bike Trail (after the homeless encampment was officially closed) generated tons of hazardous waste, needles, and other debris.
More than 400 tons of debris, 13,950 needles and 5,279 pounds of hazardous waste were discovered in Santa Ana River Trail in California between January 22 and March 3.
The waste was from a more than two-mile stretch of bike trail from around the I-5 in Orange to Ball Road in Anaheim, the OCR reported. Hazardous waste includes human waste, propane and pesticides.
The Santa Ana River Trail was once populated by homeless people, but the encampments were dismantled in late February.
Here is what it looked like prior the the clean-up:
#3
The homeless camp cleanup offers a few economic insights: The amount of trash indicates that the dwellers are feverish consumers, and we all know consumption is what lefty economists believe keeps the economy afloat. The needles show these camp dwellers are not so much poor as they are "concerned with different recreational modalities..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2018 9:05
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#4
California, leading the way to 3rd world status for the United States.
#6
It's called toilet-to-tap. Our politicians from Brown on down keep telling us that we must conserve water. Then they tell us we need more affordable housing. After getting bribes from developers these politicians issue the developers water hookup permits for vast housing tracts in which the average house will cost half a million bucks. How is that conserving water? How is that affordable, especially after the county levies the property tax?
Well, the truth is, they lie.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/15/2018 10:53
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#7
I will simply point out that it is only a matter of time before the system fails, and untreated sewer water ends up in the tap to create a public health crisis.
Love LI, and usually Leslie Eastman, another San Diego resident, but she's an ignorant idiot on this. Not all sewage is going to the Pure Water recycling program, it will never supply all SD's needs and it gets blended with Colorado River water at San Vicente reservoir to dilute/diffuse and further expose to UV. By the way - any idea what all the cities and towns upstream of SD on the Colorado River do with their treated water? She's already been drinking treated and diluted waste water
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2018 10:59
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#8
by the way, the primary treatment plant at Pt. Loma remains in service, even with Pure Water in operation
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2018 11:19
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#9
I couldn't find a ballpark number in a quick search, but it would be interesting to know the breakdown WRT river / reservoir water vs ground water in the fresh water drinking supply of the US.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2018 11:28
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#10
Git yerself one of them new-fangled nuklear reactors and you can distill all the fresh water you want.
#11
Distilled water is a drag to drink, unless the alternative is dysentery or dehydration. Gimme my dissolved oxygen and touch of mineral salts, please...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2018 11:32
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#12
twist of lemon would be nice also and none of that crappy slushy ice either! I want clear cubes no cloudy ice please :)
#16
Yeah, well, San Diego has some excellent breweries too.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/15/2018 12:20
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#17
Here in Carlsbad we have a desalinization plant that could provide 10% of our water needs (or something like that). Suddenly half of San Diego was thinking they could share as if it was an endless supply.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/15/2018 13:11
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#19
Recycled waste water works on the ISS. It'll be interesting to see if some tech genius could make a toilet that does the same for household use.
It'd have to be unique in appearance to allow for proper virtue signaling in order to succeed though, unless they can get the California government to mandate the things.
#26
Hah, you know i’m 70. Ish. How old is old. Is that what the white speckles on my chin are? And the water recycling system on ISS is mine. Partly, the part that makes it work anyway.
[The Hill] High school students in Tennessee reportedly jumped on a police car and tore down an American flag during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest for gun control.
The Lexington Herald Leader reported Wednesday that students disrupted a planned national walkout event at Antioch High School, which included 17 minutes of silence to honor the victims of the Parkland, Fla. school shooting.
Videos posted online by Meylin Zavala show students tearing down an American flag hanging from a flagpole. Police said some students jumped onto one of their patrol cars as well.
Police have not been able to identify who was responsible.
Michelle Michaud with Metro Nashville Public Schools said in a statement that while they respected students advocating for important causes, students disruptions on Wednesday were not safe.
"We understand that our students may be feeling lots of emotions, including anxiety, fear and even anger about today’s events," Michaud said.
"Unfortunately, some students on our Antioch campus today chose to protest in ways that significantly disrupted school operations and threatened the safety and order for other students and staff within our school. Swift action was taken by school security and MNPD to address the situation. No students or staff members were injured during the walkout."
Students across the nation walked out of class on Wednesday in solidarity with the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting and to push lawmakers to take action on gun violence.
#5
The ignorant students of Metro Nash disgraced our great State. The mayor disgraced the city and the owner of the Titans disgraced us too... my list of reasons to avoid the cesspool that is Nashville.
[Breitbart] Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department, gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with former British spy Christopher Steele regarding his infamous, largely discredited dossier alleging wild claims about Donald Trump and Russia, according to a book released this week.
It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.
The dossier was reportedly utilized by the FBI to launch its probe into Trump. According to House Republicans, the questionable document was used by Obama administration officials to obtain a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, who briefly served as a volunteer foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign.
The book, "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump," is authored by reporters by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.
The controversial Fusion GPS firm hired Steele to do the anti-Trump work that resulted in the compilation of the dossier. Fusion GPS was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee via the Perkins Coie law firm.
#1
When will the Dems begin to get the idea that just maybe their jury-rigged investigations, FISA kangaroo courts, obstruction of justice, fake dossiers, false narratives, scheming, pay-offs, and lying were not such good ideas?
#4
That's why Mueller has gone off on a hunt for vague violations of tax law and expired tax ID numbers...most of which occurred on previous administrations starting with a D...but presented in the media as if these are new violations.
[DAWN] A suspected Lion of Islam, who was among the four killed by Rangers personnel in Lyari's Ali Mohammad Mohalla early Wednesday morning, was "mentally challenged and had nothing to do with criminal activities", the dear departed's relative told Dawn.com.
On Tuesday night, a Rangers vehicle on routine patrol in Lyari ...one of the eighteen constituent towns of the city of Karachi. It is the smallest town by area in the city but also the most densely populated. Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads. It is a stronghold of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Ubiquitous gang activity and a thriving narcotics industry make Lyari one of the most disturbed places in Karachi, which is really saying a lot.... had come under a grenade attack in which one official was martyred and four others injured. One alleged Lion of Islam was also killed, the Rangers had said.
Following the grenade attack, Rangers launched a search operation in the vicinity in the early hours of Wednesday, during which the paramilitary force personnel reportedly came under gunfire by suspected Lion of Islams.
"After an exchange of fire, four more bad boyz were potted," the Rangers spokesperson had said.
Among those killed in the Ranger's retaliatory fire was Chakar Ali; while the Rangers claim he was wanted by law enforcement agencies in connection with various crimes, Ali's uncle, Rasool Bux, insists that the dear departed was an "emotionally disturbed, mentally challenged person" and was undergoing treatment at the Lyari General Hospital.
Bux pleaded that justice be served for Chakar Ali's "violent death" and demanded a proper investigation into the incident so that the "truth can be revealed".
According to Bux, Ali had left his home in Ali Mohammed Mohalla at around 7pm on Tuesday and was later killed.
Some people on Twitter also highlighted Ali's "unstable" mental state, raising questions on the veracity of the encounter.
Another alleged terrorist killed in the gunfire, Mehar Ali, according to users on social media had been missing for three months. Dawn.com is verifying if a petition regarding his disappearance has been filed in the Sindh High Court.
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03/15/2018
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[ARABNEWS] Pakistain’s National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) signed an agreement with the Pakistain Center for Philanthropy (PCP) on Wednesday as the country strives to meet global standards in the fight against terrorism funding and money laundering.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international watchdog, has said it will place Pakistain on its "grey list" of countries with strategic weaknesses on terrorism financing and money laundering in June.
FATF extended a three-month reprieve to correct irregularities before strict financial restrictions were imposed.
Regulation of non-government and non-profit organizations is a key part of the watchdog’s demands.
Organizations that comply with PCP will be accepted on NACTA’s white list of legally compliant entities. "It (PCP) certifies and verifies NGOs/NPOs and ensures the entities use banking channels for funding and that credible third parties conduct audits of those organizations," NACTA official Qaiser Ashfaq told Arab News.
He said the move would promote genuine charity and humanitarian assistance organizations in Pakistain and discourage public donations to dubious unregistered entities or individuals.
A delegation of FATF’s Asian Pacific Group is due to visit Pakistain in April to deliver a list of requirements for an action plan to counter money laundering and terror financing.
NACTA officials said that the financial watchdog has yet to provide recommendations or list weaknesses in Pakistain’s financial monitoring system. Most of FATF’s standards were met before the regulator held its plenary meeting in February, they said.
Last week, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal lashed out at the US over criticism of Pakistain’s alleged weaknesses. "Recent FATF action 2 put us in grey is in violation of process & politically motivated 2 pressurize Pakistain (to) follow Trump admin policies. Our successes against terrorism are recognized internationally," he tweeted on Saturday.
Defense analyst and former air vice-marshal Shahzad Chaudhry told Arab News that Pakistain should think strategically before confronting the US on its demands.
"Political manipulation will always take place if there is cleavage available to exploit that weakness," he said.
However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... Pak officials said that FATF’s decision would have no impact on the country’s $300 billion economy.
NACTA is working with departments to monitor and regulate the flow of funds and to close loopholes exploited to launder money, including terror financing.
The watchdog’s national coordinator, Lt. Cdr. Ihsan Ghani, said a task force formed last July would improve coordination between 27 agencies in Pakistain.
As part of the global measures, travelers will have to complete financial declaration forms on departure and arrival in the country. Up to $10,000 is allowed per person on departure, with a yearly limit of $60,000.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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#1
Non-ISI Approved?
*wink wink*
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2018 12:51
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Anbar (Iraqinews.com) – Iraqi troops killed on Wednesday seven Islamic State (IS) terrorists and seized a large cache of explosives and weapons in different parts in western Iraq.
In a statement, a copy of which was obtained by Alghad Press, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said, “Troops of the Anbar Operations Command’s first brigade, in cooperation with federal police, paramilitary troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi and the U.S.-led international coalition, carried out a military operation to hunt for Islamic State militants hiding in western desert areas.”
“The troops killed seven IS militants and seized two of their vehicles, in addition to a large cache of explosives and weapons,” the statement read.
“Furthermore, the U.S.-led international coalition warplanes destroyed a tunnel that was used by IS militants in western Iraq,” the statement concluded.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Two civilians were wounded as a hand grenade, hurled by unidentified gunmen, exploded in west of Ramadi, a police source was quoted saying on Wednesday.
“Gunmen hurled a hand grenade targeting one of the houses in al-Doulab region in Hit town, leaving two civilians wounded. They were taken to hospital for treatment,” the source told BasNews.
“Security services headed to the blast scene in search for perpetrators, who ran away to unknown destination,” the source said adding that preliminary information indicated that the attack was ignited by a tribal conflict.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/15/2018
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[Hurriyet Daily News] A Ottoman Turkish court on March 13 handed down two life sentences to a Syrian man who murdered a Syrian opposition activist and her Syrian-American journalist daughter in Istanbul in 2017.
The bodies of Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla were found in September in their apartment on Istanbul’s Asian side.
Barakat, a prominent political opponent of the Syrian leader, Bashir al-Assad, had been investigating reports of torture in prisons run by the Syrian government, Ottoman Turkish media said at the time.
Her daughter, who was born in the U.S., was an editor at Orient Net, a pro-Syrian opposition website, and had also worked as a freelancer for the U.S. TV network ABC.
Days after the killings, Ottoman Turkish police detained a distant relative of the women, Ahmet Barakat, in the city of Bursa. The motive for the murders remains unknown, the media have reported.
Police identified Ahmet Barakat by security footage and detained him after a three-day operation.
Orient Net described Halla Barakat as an editor and investigator, and her mother as a prominent opponent of Assad.
The U.S. state department said last year it was deeply saddened by their deaths and called Orouba’s work "courageous."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Army and its allies have successfully reversed all gains made by Lion of Islam groups during a surprise offensive in the northern countryside of Hama province earlier today (Wednesday).
As mentioned earlier, rebel forces initially managed to make some gains during the early phase of the assault, capturing the frontier town of al-Hamamiyat as well as the government stronghold of Kernaz.
Within hours however, the Syrian Army regrouped and launched a powerful counter-blow with the support of armor and artillery as well as Arclight airstrikes from Russian and Syrian warplanes (about 50 strikes were delivered).
Moments ago, military-affiliated sources reported that government troops retook the stronghold of Kernaz ‐ this coming about an hour after sources stated that al-Hamamiyat was seized back.
Effectively, all Islamist gains have now been reversed.
For rebel forces, not only has their offensive completely failed within about eight hours of its undertaking but also many dozens of hard boyz from various factions have been killed along with several top Lion of Islam commanders.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) Five Iraqi security personnel were killed and maimed in an armed attack launched by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... members, in Salahuddin province, a security source said on Wednesday.
Speaking to AlSumaria News, the source said, "IS members attacked, this evening, security troops in Tal al-Zahab region, south of Balad, which left two personnel killed and three others maimed."
"Troops cordoned off the blast spot and transferred the maimed to hospital for treatment, while the victims were taken to forensic medicine department," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/15/2018
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[HERALD.CO.ZW] Three armed robbers stormed a construction site in Umwisdale, which is believed to belong to Bona Mugabe, and manhandled a police officer on duty before fleeing with items worth $4 800.
Robson Kandenga(45), Peter Mangwiro(40) and Brighton Chisiko(30) yesterday appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Tilda Mazhande and pleaded guilty to armed robbery charges.
The trio was remanded to today for sentencing.
It is the State’s case that on December 31 last year, Kandenga, Mangwiro and Chisiko approached the complainant asking for directions to an unnamed place.
The complainant then left his guard room to assist them.
He was however disarmed of his AK47 service rifle before being assaulted with iron rods, booted feet and open hands.
His arms and legs were subsequently tied up using a wire that had been retrieved from the site.
The trio proceeded to take the complainant’s personal items, including two phones and 80 wooden construction boards, which were on the site.
They then further used a hired truck, which was driven by Shadrek Chivambe, to load and transport the goods to Siyaso, Magaba, Mbare, where they disposed of the stolen goods.
The items were then sold to Stephen Chimhungwe.
However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... the only recovered construction board was identified by Howard Karima of Hualong Construction as one of the stolen boards.
Investigations led police to the trio.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
The cake quit coming! What else did she expect?
[KCNAWATCH.CO] The imperialists' "human rights ...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you... " racket should no longer be overlooked in order to build an independent new world in which the illusory sovereignty and equality are ensured for all the countries and nations free from domination, subjugation, aggression and interference.
The imperialists are the kingpin of human rights abuses and human rights criminals who have to face stern punishment by the international community.
The politicization of human rights and application of double standards have to be rejected at international organizations including the UN Human Rights Council. No specified nation can be a judge. But the imperialists, claiming as if they are "human rights judges", are politicizing human rights and attacking and pressurizing progressive countries after singling them out. This strains confrontation and has an adverse impact on the worldwide efforts for protecting human rights.
Human rights can never come true as long as the imperialists remain on the earth. In order to ensure genuine human rights, one has to build one's own strength. Without strength one cannot fight against those standing against human rights and safeguard genuine human rights, falling victim to the strong.
The imperialists are resorting to all sorts of sleights of hands under the signboard of "guarantee of human rights", but with nothing can they cover up the deceptive and aggressive nature of their racket for "human rights".
Posted by: Fred ||
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[AlAhram] The European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... on Wednesday said it would chip in another three billion euros ($3.7 bln) for Syrian refugees in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund.... , and restrict travel for countries refusing to take back their citizens who fail to obtain asylum in Europe.
The latest measures to curb immigration from the Middle East and Africa, which overwhelmed the bloc when it surged in 2015-16, were announced by the EU's top migration official, Dimitris Avramopoulos.
Some 1.8 million refugees and migrants colonists have reached Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... across the Mediterranean since 2014, according to U.N. figures, causing friction among member states at odds over how to handle them and lifting support for nationalist and populist parties.
The EU has since been tightening its external borders and asylum laws, as well as offering money and other help to third countries in exchange for preventing people from trekking north.
A 2016 deal with Turkey, though criticised by rights groups for restricting the chance to claim asylum by those in need, has cut to a trickle arrivals through its soil to EU member Greece.
The EU on Wednesday announced a second tranche of three billion euros for projects benefiting Syrian refugees in Turkey, though the bloc's executive European Commission and the member states must yet agree on the exact financing.
"Our cooperation with Turkey is key to address common challenges," Avramopoulos told a news conference, referring to the many rifts between Ankara and the EU, which sees President Tayyip Erdogan as increasingly autocratic.
"Unnecessary escalations can and should be avoided," he said, hoping for a swift return of two Greek soldiers held in detention in Turkey.
Despite heavy criticism of Erdogan's track record on human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... , the bloc's brass hats will host him for high-level talks next week, a reminder that many in the EU may dread Ankara but cannot do without it.
Deportations
Though the number of people who reached Europe on smugglers' boats since 2014 is small compared to the bloc's population of 500 million, higher immigration caught the EU by surprise and caused political chaos.
It still reverberates, as last seen in the resounding defeat of Italia's centre-left in elections this month.
As EU states struggle to become more effective in deporting failed asylum seekers or people who overstay the time allowed, the bloc agreed last June to restrict visas for foreign countries that refuse to take back their nationals.
The Commission proposed on Wednesday to regularly monitor how third countries cooperate on returns and, if it deemed it poor, could recommend the bloc gets tougher on visas for that country in the hope of encouraging a change in policy.
Currently, citizens of 105 countries in the world - from Russia to Congo to Bolivia - need a visa to get into Europe's Schengen zone of free travel and Avramopoulos said 15 million such entry permits had been issued in 2016.
With some African and Asian countries topping the EU's list of problematic returns, the Commission said the bloc was still short of one billion euros for projects to improve life for people in Africa. The bloc hopes such projects would weaken people's resolve to try get to Europe.
[AlAhram] The EU warned African and other countries on Wednesday that their citizens will find it harder to get visas to Europe if they refuse to readmit economic migrants under the bloc's efforts to curb migration. Brussels has been seeking greater cooperation from such countries to take back irregular migrants since Europe was hit in 2015 with its worst migration crisis since World War II.
"We will introduce stricter conditions for processing visas when a partner country does not cooperate sufficiently on the readmission of irregular migrants," EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a press conference in Brussels.
Under international law, European countries do not have to admit migrants seeking jobs but are required to take in those people fleeing war and persecution.
EU officials say the vast majority of people from sub-Saharan Africa are economic migrants and they have stepped up efforts to return them to their home countries. But EU sources and analysts said African countries have dragged their feet on readmitting them, mainly because the money they send home from abroad boosts their economies.
"Countries like Mali, Senegal or Ivory Coast cooperate very little," a diplomat told AFP.
"We must fight to obtain the famous consular pass (to return a migrant to his country) and that undermines the ties of trust we must have with these countries."
Under the proposal, if the commission and member countries find other countries are uncooperative on returns, they can toughen rules on granting visas. These include the processing time of applications, the length of validity of visas issued, the cost of visa fees and the exemption of such fees for certain travellers such as diplomats.
The commission, the EU executive, said 14 million tourist and business visas for short stays, up to 90 days maximum every six months, were granted in 2016. These visas are required for citizens of around 100 countries and allow them to travel freely in 26 European countries in the so-called Schengen zone.
[Hurriyet Daily News] Global powers will gather in Rome on March 15 to discuss the future of the U.N. agency for Paleostinian refugees, which faces an unprecedented crisis after the U.S. froze tens of millions of dollars in funding.
The United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) only has enough funds to keep schools and medical services open until May, its commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl told AFP.
U.S. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s administration has so far committed only $60 million to the agency this year, down from $360 million in 2017. He has frozen two planned payments worth more than $100 million - one for UNRWA’s central budget and one for food aid.
Trump continues to pressure the Paleostinians to end their boycott of his administration sparked by his December recognition of the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
A major funding drive launched by UNRWA after the U.S. freeze has raised little new money and diplomats are not optimistic about getting major pledges in the Italian capital.
Guess the Palestinians aren’t nearly as important as the fussing makes them seem.
U.N. officials want European countries to step in to fill part of the gap but are especially looking at Gulf Arab countries.
Fear is rife about the future of the organization that employs more than 20,000 people across the Middle East, the vast majority Paleostinians.
UNRWA was established after the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948 when around 700,000 Paleostinians were expelled or fled.It offers vital support for these refugees and their descendants in Syria, Leb, Jordan and the West Bank and Gazoo, providing services for more than three million people.
This includes education for around half a million students, with nearly 30 percent of its funding coming from the United States.
In January, Trump tweeted "we pay the Paleostinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect," accusing them of walking away from peace negotiations.
Two weeks later his administration confirmed it would hold back tens of millions in aid to UNRWA, saying it wanted the rest of the world to pay more.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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#1
Here's my agura (1/4 cent) - though I'd rather contribute to you in bullets (the part of cartridge that goes through the barrel of a gun)
[AnNahar] For the first time since its meteoric rise in 2012 amid the chaos of war, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria is in retreat, battling rival turban groups in the north and fighting for survival in a key foothold near the capital, Damascus.
Over the past three weeks, the Death Eater group has been driven from nearly all of the northern province of Aleppo, losing dozens of fighters in battles there and in nearby Idlib province.
The fighting poses a major challenge to the turban group, already beset by infighting and a string of liquidations that have taken out some of its top leaders. Unlike previous battles in which al-Qaeda-linked fighters were able to quickly crush their opponents, the fighting has been particularly fierce, with the gunnies losing dozens of villages.
Continued on Page 49
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#1
doesn't mention that al nusra has some elements supporting Turkey's offensive in NW Syria
didn't fit their narrative
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2018 8:40
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[DAWN] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... should immediately investigate the claims that authorities physically mistreated or coerced prominent people detained in November 2017 and hold those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday in a statement on its website.
According to a New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... report, published on Monday, prominent Saudis held in what Riyadh dubbed an anti-corruption campaign were subjected to coercion and physical abuse, describing fear and uncertainty even after their release.
The newspaper had revealed that at least 17 detainees were hospitalised after facing abuse, while a Saudi general later died in jug with what witnesses said appeared to be a broken neck.
Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but NYT quoted the government rejecting the abuse claims as "completely untrue".
"The alleged mistreatment at the Ritz Carlton [where the detained people were held] is a serious blow to Mohammad bin Salman’s claims to be a modernising reformist," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, on Wednesday. "While MBS jaunts across Western capitals to gin up foreign investments, investors should think twice about the Saudis’ cavalier dismissal of the rule of law and fundamental rights."
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Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
[BREITBART] According to the Daily Mail, “Hotelscan.com reported that the number of people landing on its Wisconsin Wakanda Water Park page is up by 620 percent and Hotels.com reported that searches for neighbouring Wakanda Park are up by 55 percent year on year.”
“Hotels.com, meanwhile, said it had spotted spikes in searches to other Wakanda namesakes around the world. It said searches for Wauconda, Illinois (pronounced identically to Wakanda), are up more than 25 percent and Makanda, also in Illinois, are up over 40 percent year on year,” they continued. “Further afield, Wakaya, in Fiji, are up over 235 percent and Wakkanai in Japan is enjoying a more than 55 percent year-on-year uplift.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Hotelscan.com claimed, “The fact we’ve seen such an increase in the number of site visits to the Wakanda Water Park destination page on our website since the launch of Black Panther suggests that, until people visit our website searching for trips, they’re not aware it’s a fictional destination… Either that, or people are more interested than ever in attending the Water Park, but we think that the movie has something to do with it!”
Isabelle Pinson, the vice president of Hotels.com parent EMEA also commented on the increased popularity of Wakanda searches, declaring, “Our hotel portfolio spans more than 200 counties and territories around the world but not yet Wakanda. We’re looking into it.”
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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#1
Anyone wants to emigrate, I say we give 'em a plane ticket and even a little walking around money. As long as they leave permanently.
#2
Menomonie, Wisconsin is sometimes beautiful at this time of the year. Unfortunately, the Water Park is closed for a couple of months yet due to icing.
The area is not exactly what the geographically and politically ignorant moron might expect.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/15/2018 12:00
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#3
Lake Woebegone is also nice in the Spring.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/15/2018 14:57
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#4
It's lovely like Rwanda; only without the State Department warnings.
[DailyMail] Elizabeth Holmes, the chief executive of the blood-testing company Theranos, has been charged by US securities regulators with an 'elaborate, years-long fraud.'
The SEC charged Holmes, 34, and former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani Wednesday with raising more than $700million by exaggerating or lying about the business and its technology.
The pair made a deal to settle the case against them, with the penalty including her surrendering majority voting control of the company, according to a statement by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Holmes will pay $500,000 as per the terms of her deal with the government. Much more at the link
[Hurriyet Daily News] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund.... ’s leading defense firms have announced significant agreements with Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... i officials on the sidelines of a sector exhibition in Doha, pledging to deliver key products, including drones and armored vehicles.
Ottoman Turkish unmanned aircraft producer Baykar Makina signed an agreement on March 14 to export six armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to Qatar’s armed forces.
Under the agreement, six Bayraktar TB2 armed UAV Platforms, three ground control station systems and equipment, and a UAV training simulator will be delivered within a year, as reported by Anadolu Agency.
Baykar will also set up a UAV operation center and network-based data tracing and archiving software for Qatar’s Armed Forces.
The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Doha International Maritime Defense Exhibition and Conference (DIMDEX 2018), which lasts through March 14.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Qatar (MB)
Hawija (IraqiNews.com) The pro-government paramilitary troops have run into a mass grave containing human remains of six people, southwest of Kirkuk.
A statement by the media service of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) said on Wednesday, “troops of the second and 56 brigades ran into a mass grave containing remains of six bodies in al-Bakara base in Hawija, Kirkuk.”
The victims, according to the statement, “had been executed by Islamic State members.”
Kirkuk (Iraqinews.com) – Ten Islamic State (IS) militants were killed Wednesday in a security operation to eliminate terrorism in the oil-rich Kirkuk province, a pro-government force said.
In a statement, released by Baghdad Today, the media service of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) said, “troops of the PMF’s 11th brigade and intelligence officers carried out a security operation to hunt for Islamic State militants at Khirbet Aziz village in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.”
“The troops killed 10 IS militants in the operation,” according to the statement, adding that the manhunt operation will go on as scheduled to eliminate the remaining IS cells across Kirkuk.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/15/2018
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[FoxNews] In a new ruling, a federal appeals court has upheld most of Texas law targeting sanctuary cities in what some are calling the toughest state-level immigration measure in the country.
Tuesday’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans allows police officers in Texas to ask people their immigration status during routine stops.
It also threatens officials with jail time for not cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
#1
...When the sanctuary crap works its way up the chain - and gets swatted down - the sanctuary morons will have a choice: back down or 'resist', and I truly fear we're going to see resistance.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/15/2018 5:52
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#2
It also threatens officials with jail time for not cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
This is the key. Until the Jerry Browns are locked in the slammer this is all blather. You want to resist now?
[ARABNEWS] Libya has issued arrest warrants for more than 200 Libyans and foreigners suspected of involvement in a smuggling network for Europe-bound migrants colonists, the attorney general’s office said on Thursday.
"We have 205 arrest warrants for people (involved in) organizing immigration operations, human trafficking, (cases) of torture, murder and rape," said Seddik al-Sour, the director of the attorney general’s investigations office.
The trafficking ring is alleged to include members of security services, leaders of migrant detention camps, and embassy officials from African countries based in Libya, Sour said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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[All Africa] The parliament of Somaliland administration has on Tuesday voted to approve the second time the deal between the state and the UAE's DP World over Berbera port investment.
During the session, Somaliland MPs unanimously denounced Somali parliament's decision to nullify port agreement with DP World, which Æthiopia holds 19% of the share.
Somaliland parliament said the move is "belligerent and illegal", reiterates support for the tripartite deal. The house of the representatives warn the d move could destabilise region.
The is the 2nd time that the parliament approved the controversial port agreement.
On Monday, Somalia's Lower House Chamber of the Federal Parliament Declared that Berbera port deal is "null and void" and called for the Ban on UAE's DP World from Somalia.
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[Hurriyet Daily News] Ottoman Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on March 14 said the foreign ministers of The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran will meet in Baku to evaluate regional developments and discuss "regional cooperation."
"The foreign ministers of these four countries will have the opportunity to discuss and revive the historic Silk Road," said Yildirim, speaking Ankara's Esenboga Airport ahead of his visit to the Azerbaijani capital to attend the 6th Global Baku Forum.
Ottoman Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, Georgian Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif are expected to meet.
Known as "One Belt One Road," plans to revive Silk Road would see gleaming new road and rail networks built through China, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan and Georgia, extending to Europe ...also known as Moslem Lebensraum... via Turkey.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A delightful time was had by all, though nothing at all was achieved.
[ARABNEWS] A European Parliament delegation said Wednesday it has been conducting secret talks with North Korea over the last three years to try to persuade Pyongyang to negotiate an end to its nuclear program.
The group led by British MEP Nirj Deva has met senior North Korean officials, including ministers, 14 times and plans another meeting in Brussels in the near future.
News of the below-the-radar diplomacy effort comes after the surprise announcement that US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... plans a summit with North Korean leader Kim Pudge Jong-un ...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished... , part of fast-paced developments following an Olympic detente
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[SABANEWS.NET] The US-backed Saudi-led aggression coalition warplanes waged on Wednesday 12 raids on the capital Sana'a, a security official told Saba. The aggressive airstrikes targeted Sana'a International Airport.
The US-Saudi aggression coalition waged two airstrikes on a citizens’ farms in Serwah district of Marib province, an official told Saba on Tuesday . Meanwhile, mercenary's artillery randomly attacked citizens' houses in the district.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ARABNEWS] Facebook has removed the official home page of the UK far-right group Britannia First along with the pages of its two leaders because they violate the company’s standards, a statement said.
The group, who often polarise public opinion in the UK, gained prominence in November when US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... retweeted some of its anti-Moslem videos, angering British leaders on both sides of the House of Commons.
Facebook said on Wednesday that content posted by the group and party leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen "has repeatedly broken our community standards" despite written warnings, and incites hatred against minority groups.
The two Britannia First leaders were recently convicted of religiously-aggravated harassment.
The group opposes what it calls the "Islamization" of Britannia.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
What about the Nation of Islam™ Facebook page, hmmm? Oh, right, that's different.
[Libya Observer] The convoy of the Head of the High Council of State (HCS) Abdelrahman al-Sweihli was ambushed and came under fire in Guwalish district while en route to visit Yefren town after visiting the city of Gharyan on Wednesday.
The HCS media office said the ambush was done by gangs, in Thaher al-Jabal area, loyal to the self-styled army led by Khalifa Haftar ...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all... "Our security personnel in cooperation with the Gharyan security department staffers as well as those of the western military zone helped thwart the attack. The attackers bravely ran away, while two of our security personnel were maimed and four Gharyan coppers were kidnapped." The HCS media office said in a statement.
The HCS Head and delegation went on with their visit destination despite the ambush and thanked the Gharyan, Yefren and western mountain areas' elders councils for their reception.
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[IsraelTimes] As arrests reported, terror group deputy minister refuses to reveal identities of suspects in bombing of Hamdallah's convoy, asserts Israel to blame.
A Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, official said Wednesday that the terror group knows the identities of perpetrators of the attempted liquidation of Paleostinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Gazoo a day prior.
"The interior ministry in Gazoo has the names and other information of those linked to the bombing of the prime minister’s convoy," Gazoo’s deputy interior minister Tawfiq Abu Naim told Paleostinian local media outlets.
Continued on Page 49
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Two forces of Evil were killed as Iraqi troops launched an Arclight airstrike, north of Baghdad on Wednesday.
A statement by Baghdad Operations Command said, "depending on accurate information gathered by the intelligence, security troops managed to follow three button men in al-Baghdadi region, north of Baghdad."
"An airstrike was then launched killing two forces of Evil and leaving the third, who bravely ran away, maimed," the statement added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/15/2018
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[FOXNEWS] An Alabama sheriff who pocketed $750,000 from funds meant to feed inmates is coming under fresh scrutiny for the purchase of a beach house that cost nearly the same amount of money.
AL.com reported Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin received $750,000 of "compensation" from a source he called "food provisions" during a three-year period. When AL.com contacted Entrekin about the money he did not deny he received it despite the money being "allocated by federal, state and municipal governments to feed inmates in the Etowah County Jail."
Entrekin like other Alabama sheriffs believe a pre-World War II state law allows them to keep any "excess inmate-feeding funds" for themselves. However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... in counties such as Jefferson and Montgomery, any excess money is supposed to be given to the county government.
In forms filed with the Alabama Ethics Commission, Entrekin reported he made "more than $250,000 each of the past three years via the inmate-feeding funds."
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#6
after he's incarcerated, I wonder what the other inmates will allow him to eat? $hit sandwich but with the crusts trimmed...after all..we're not lacking the social graces!
[IsraelTimes] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... is turning up the heat on Syria’s Afrin, launching deadly strikes on Damascus loyalists deployed around the Kurdish enclave and closing in on its main city.
The development could redraw the map of northern Syria.
The violence came as the foreign ministers of Turkey and Russia, the two major foreign players in a conflict entering its eighth year tomorrow, met in Moscow.
A Ottoman Turkish presidency source said Afrin’s encirclement "will have been completed by the evening," retracting an earlier statement by President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... predicting its fall last night.
Before the retraction, Erdogan had told supporters in Ankara Wednesday he hoped "Afrin will, God willing, have completely fallen by the evening."
[ALMASDARNEWS] Footage filmed on Tuesday allegedly showed the Free Syrian Army ... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund... (FSA), allied with the Ottoman Turkish army, engaging in combat in the village of al-Qarah (Kojuk Qariqin) on the outskirts of Afrin city, as Ottoman Turkish Armed Forces recently claimed they have surrounded the city with the aid of the FSA.
This marks a significant advance in the Ottoman Turkish government’s ’Olive Branch’ offensive on the north-western Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin.
"As of March 12, the centre of Afrin has been surrounded and areas of critical importance for further operations have been captured," the Ottoman Turkish military said in a statement on Tuesday, March 13.
The Ottoman Turkish-led ’Olive Branch’ military operation against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) Kurdish snuffies in Afrin was launched in January.
The offensive is ongoing despite a UN-brokered ceasefire in the country and the international community’s warnings of an urgent humanitarian crisis in the region.
[AlAhram] Turkish bombing raids killed 10 fighters loyal to the Syrian government on Wednesday at a checkpoint they were manning near the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, a monitor said.
"The air strikes targeted a checkpoint on the only road leading from Afrin to regime-controlled territory to the southeast," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Of the 10 fighters killed, eight were from the nearby regime-held town of Nubul, the Observatory said.
The road that was bombed on Wednesday is the only official way out of the town, and while it has not been fully captured by pro-Turkish assault, it is within firing range.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said some civilians were trying to escape from Afrin along smuggling routes avoiding the main road.
Turkey has killed dozens of pro-Damascus fighters backing the YPG in Afrin.
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[ARABNEWS] US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... is seeking to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports and will target the technology and telecommunications sectors, two people who had discussed the issue with the Trump administration said on Tuesday.
A third source who had direct knowledge of the administration’s thinking said the tariffs, associated with a "Section 301" intellectual property investigation, under the 1974 US Trade Act begun in August last year, could come "in the very near future."
While the tariffs would be chiefly targeted at information technology, consumer electronics and telecoms, they could be much broader and the list could eventually run to 100 products, the source said
The White House declined to comment on the size or timing of any move.
In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry front man Lu Kang said Sino-US trade relations should not be a zero-sum game, and that the two countries should use "constructive" means to manage tension.
"We have said many times that China resolutely opposes any kind of unilateral protectionist trade measures," Lu told news hounds.
"If the United States takes actions that harm China’s interests, China will have to take measures to firmly protect our legitimate rights."
Trump is targeting Chinese high technology companies to punish China for its investment policies that effectively force US companies to give up their technology secrets in exchange for being allowed to operate in the country, as well as for other IP practices Washington considers unfair.
The Trump administration is also considering imposing investment restrictions on Chinese companies over and above the heightened national security restrictions, but details on these were not immediately known. A US Treasury spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But lobbyists in Washington expressed concern that Trump’s ambitious tariff plan would also include other labor-intensive consumer goods sectors such as apparel, footwear and toys.
Higher tariffs on these products would "hurt American families," said Hun Quach, a trade lobbyist for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
"We’re not talking about fancy cashmere sweaters, we’re talking about cotton T-shirts and jeans and shoes that kids wear for back-to-school," she added. "Alarm bells are ringing."
China runs a $375 billion trade surplus with the US and when President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser visited Washington recently, the administration pressed him to come up with a way of reducing that number.
Trump came to office on a promise to shield American workers from imports and his first action as president was to pull the US out of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#2
The relabeling business just went up in Central America.
Of course the Chinese could reduce the trade imbalance by removing the barriers they erect against imports. Nah, just scream 'Smoot-Hawley' to scare those the knee jerk globalists.
Japanese and Chinese shipping companies charge US firms more to ship a particular good to Japan or China than they charge one of their compatriots to ship a comparable good to the US.
And then there is the massive scam of the import and customs paperwork and holding warehouses and facilitators that charge our companies huge sums of money to quarantine, hold the paper and then facilitate the inspections by the customs...
[Hurriyet Daily News] Moscow and Ankara have agreed to speed up delivery of S-400 anti-ballistic missile systems to The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... despite growing concerns in NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... over the Ottoman Turkish government’s purchase of a non-interoperable system.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told news hounds that Moscow will speed up initial deliveries of S-400 missile batteries to Turkey at a presser with visiting Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu after lengthy talks in the Russian capital on March 13.
"The sooner Turkey receives [the S-400 missile system] the better. Works are continuing to this end," Cavusoglu said upon a question at the presser.
Turkey signed an agreement to buy the multibillion dollar S-400 missile system from Russia in late December, in a move which raised concern in the West because they cannot be integrated into NATO’s military architecture. Moscow is scheduled to begin supplying the missile systems in the first quarter of 2020.
The Ottoman Turkish foreign minister paid a two-day visit to Moscow to hold talks with his counterpart as part of Turkey-Russia 6th Joint Strategic Planning Group. Describing Russia as "one of Turkey’s most important partners" in the economy and politics, Cavusoglu said their priority was to develop bilateral ties in a stable way under the leadership of both countries’ presidents, Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... and Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey... .
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[DalkasNews] A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Irving ISD, the city of Irving and several individuals by the father of a teen who was arrested after bringing to school a homemade clock that was mistaken for a bomb.
The federal lawsuit had alleged that Ahmed Mohamed's civil rights were violated in September 2015 when Irving police officers took him into custody at MacArthur High School and charged him with making a "hoax bomb." The then-14-year-old was also suspended from school for three days.
The charge against Ahmed was later dropped. The boy and his family have since moved to Qatar. The suit, filed by Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed on behalf of his son, had asked for unspecified damages. It had been amended twice since it was initially filed in August 2016. He's been hit with Atty's fees in all his losing suits. Hope he posted bond before fleeing.
Posted by: Frank G ||
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#1
The president[Obama] joined an international outpouring of support for the science-loving pupil, tweeting: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
#3
It's a great pity we drove this budding genius to Qatar. If he had stayed in on Texas, he might have invented a fundamental human technology, such as the wheel.
[Hurriyet Daily News] German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom. Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslems .. , bruised by half a year of post-election coalition haggling, was narrowly confirmed by parliament on March 14 to her fourth and likely final term at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy.
Lawmakers in Berlin’s glass-domed Reichstag voted 364-315 with nine abstentions for Merkel, who was then formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before taking the oath of office.
The outcome of the secret ballot suggested 35 politicians of her new right-left coalition bloc voted against Merkel, giving her a thin nine-vote margin that opposition parties were quick to label a "rocky start" for a spent and joyless governing alliance.
Merkel, wearing a necklace in the national colours black-red-gold, nevertheless beamed with joy and relief as applause filled the Bundestag chamber, where her scientist husband Joachim Sauer and her 89-year-old mother Herlind Kasner were among the well-wishers.
For the veteran leader, the ceremony marked the end of a painful stretch of post-election paralysis, the deepest crisis of her 12-year career.
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[Rooters] A dual citizen of Iran and the United States was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of trying to buy surface-to-air missiles and aircraft components for the government of Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Reza Olangian, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan. The sentence is the minimum allowed under federal law.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to impose a sentence that was longer than the minimum, although short of the life sentence suggested by federal guidelines. Preska said she did not believe a longer sentence was necessary.
"I think Judge Preska saw that 25 years is an extraordinarily long time and that Mr. Olangian did not rise to the level of something as egregious as that," Gregory Morvillo, Olangian’s lawyer, said after the sentencing.
Olangian was convicted by a jury in November 2016 of crimes that included conspiring to acquire and transfer anti-aircraft missiles.
His lawyers have said in court filings that Olangian will appeal his conviction. At his trial, they said Olangian was an opponent of the government of Iran, and that his efforts to broker weapons sales were actually meant as a sting operation to expose Iran’s efforts to evade U.S. sanctions.
Olangian was born in Iran, came to the United States as a student in 1979, became a U.S. citizen in 1999 and moved back to Iran in 2004, according to court filings.
He was placed in durance vile Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! in Estonia in October 2012 and extradited to the United States following a sting operation orchestrated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Prosecutors said that in 2012, Olangian met in Ukraine with a DEA informant posing as a Russian weapons broker to arrange for the purchase of surface-to-air missiles and various military aircraft components.
Prosecutors said Olangian negotiated a deal involving 10 missiles and dozens of aircraft parts, and stated during a video conference with the informant that he ultimately wanted to acquire at least 200 missiles. They said he aimed to make a substantial profit selling the weapons.
#2
"met in Ukraine with a DEA informant posing as a Russian weapons broker"
There's a couple of gaps in this story that evidently didn't trouble the court.
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03/15/2018 19:09
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[DAWN] At least eight persons, including five coppers, bit the dust and 20 others were maimed in a suicide kaboom which targeted a police check post in Raiwind on the outskirts of Lahore, Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Health Minister Salman Rafique told DawnNewsTV.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Operations Dr Haider Ashraf confirmed that it was a suicide kaboom which destroyed a police check post located on Raiwind Road leading towards the ground where ijtima (congregation) of Tableeghi Jamaat is held.
The police camp was set up for the security of an ongoing congregation of Tableeghi Jamaat.
The senior police official said initial reports suggest that a cycle of violence was used to carry out the suicide attack, adding that investigations were underway out to identify and locate the accomplices of the alleged suicide attacker.
Moreover, evidence was collected by the Bomb Disposal Squad from the site of the blast for further investigation.
DIG Ashraf said body parts of the jacket wallah were recovered from the kaboom site and sent to the forensic lab for further examination.
The senior police official stressed that if the suicide attacker had managed to enter the congregation site, the corpse count could have been much higher.
#1
Some visits but not much chatter on this one so I'll add my own.
Recently, late one evening (or early one morning, I forget) I ran across this while self-medicating.
I thought, "Interesting, in selected zones, the light of stars dims when partially occluded by something assumed to be a planet." The span of data time must of course include some orbital interval of the possible planet.
#2
Sometime during this period of pharmaceutical enlightenment the thought condensed to "when dark things happen in the light there is an active agent of interest."
Later I remembered "descriptive, prescriptive, predictive" and thought "well hey, if there is a discernible event agent it was there before and likely will be in the area again."
#3
Free software and large datasets are like jam on toast for me. While I was downloading I started asking myself "crime and acts of terror, terror and acts of crime, given a big enough data sampling of events how are they different from a presumed planet blocking otherwise shining moments?"
#4
So I'm starting to design tensors from Rantburg's rogue's gallery (et. al.) of reported events using the POLE model.
It will be an interesting long term project. My hypothesis is the 'AI' should predict, something.
If any readers think the project is too bizarre, techno or just pseudo-intellectual solo sex, please advise, critically as you choose. As you may see from some of the references there is open interest in the topic.
I'm a little removed from the closed door studies. Perhaps some of you are not.
[DAWN] A man in Badin surrendered himself to police on Wednesday after killing his 38-year-old wife for 'honour' by repeatedly hitting her with an axe. Nothing like an axe to restore the old honor. Bet it wasn't a fair fight; they never give the woman an axe in an honor killing.
The suspect told police that he suspected that the victim ‐ who was the mother of eight children, including three differently-abled daughters ‐ had illicit relations with another man who lived in the same area. With three "differently abled" daughters, my guess is that the dear departed and the guy with the axe were closely related.
Eyewitnesses said that after being attacked, the woman ran out on the street crying for help but the suspect continued to attack her, eventually killing her. "Help! Help! He's murdering me!"
"Is it an honor killing?"
"Yes! Hellllp!"
"Yer on yer own, lady."
The incident was confirmed by Assistant Sub-Inspector Mohammad Salim Khoso of Badin cop shoppe, who said that the body had been sent to Indus Hospital for post-mortem examination. A first information report (FIR) is yet be to registered. "What do you think, Doctor Quincy?"
"Looks like an axe murder to me, Sam!"
In a separate incident, a man killed his 25-year-old wife and a mother of one, along with another man for the sake of "honour" in the Dilawar Marfani village of Shikarpur. "Aaar! Me honor! It's been offended!"
"Help! Help! He's murdering me!"
The Station House Officer of Dilawar Marfani cop shoppe Shahzado Dasti told Dawn.com that the accused suspected that his wife had an extra-marital affair with his second victim, who hailed from Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and worked as a peasant in the village. "Hi! I'm here from Balochistan to work as a peasant... Hubba hubba! What a babe!"
"Yew brazen hussy! Where's me axe?"
The bodies of the victims were returned to their families after a post-mortem examination was conducted at Garhi Yasin Taluka Hospital.
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[DAWN] Chief Justice of Pakistain (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar on Wednesday revealed that he has received another letter from absconding Sindh police officer Rao Anwar, this time asking the court to unfreeze his bank accounts.
The Supreme Court was hearing the case regarding extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... allegedly by a police party led by the former Malir Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Rao Anwar.
"I do not know whether the letter is real or fake," the CJP said about the letter, which is now the second message received directly by Justice Nisar allegedly written by the absconding police official. "The letter has been kept in a file."
In his first letter, sent last month, the officer had claimed that he was innocent and that he was not present at the site of the encounter when Mehsud was killed. The officer had also requested for a free and fair joint investigation team to look into the controversy.
The court in response had asked Anwar to appear before the bench; however, on his failure to do so, the SC had issued a show-cause notice to the police official for committing contempt of court by not surrendering before it despite being given a fair chance. The law enforcement agencies were also ordered by the court to locate his whereabouts and arrest him.
The CJP on Wednesday expressed dissatisfaction with the progress in the murder case. Naqeebullah's killing had sparked protests on social media as well as rallies across the country. The arrest of Rao Anwar was one of the major demands of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement's long march which eventually culminated into a sit-in outside the Islamabad Press Club.
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[All Africa] In Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... , the election for president in October will take place against the background of a crisis that could break up the country.
English-speaking Cameroon -- to the Northwest and Southwest -- threatens to break away to form the Republic of Ambazonia protesting decades of exclusion. The crisis runs deep.
Cameroon, a Germany colony before the First World War, was split into two mandate territories and given to La Belle France and Britannia after the defeat of Germany. The mandataries soon moulded the country to their different cultures, producing French-speaking and English-speaking regions.
In 1961 one part of English-speaking Cameroon joined Nigeria. The other part agreed terms for a federation with French-speakers under a hurriedly drafted independence constitution. In 1972, president Amadou Ahidjo, in total disregard of the terms agreed in 1961, unilaterally abrogated the federation.
Since then, the Anglophone grievances have grown and festered. At the national level, the government is no longer committed to biculturalism.
Examinations are usually set by the French part of the education system, to the detriment of the Anglophones. The rights of western Cameroon have been eviscerated. Senior government officials are drawn mainly from French speaking areas.
When the crisis first broke out, the Anglophones tried to force issues by protests, boycotts and strikes. However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... the government's brutal response radicalised even moderates.
President Paul Biya initiated half-hearted talks in 2016 and then undermined them by detaining and exiling the English-speaking leadership.
In 2017 a separatist group declared the breakaway Republic of Ambazonia. The International Crisis Group notes in a 2017 report, "Cameroon's Anglophone Crisis: Dialogue Remains the Only Viable Solution," that though not everyone wants secession, the separatists now have the upper hand.
President Biya's tokenist solutions -- creating a common law department at the Supreme Court and promising to decentralise power under the terms of the 1996 constitution -- incense everyone.
Thousands have fled to Nigeria creating a refugee problem. That -- and Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... 's sporadic incursions into Cameroon -- has shrunk the space for a credible election.
Whether the election will be peaceful depends on the Ambazonia crisis abating. President Biya, 84 this year, recently said that it already has, a clear delusion.
The silver lining is that Biya's main opponent, so far, is Akere Muna, a lawyer from the Anglophone region. Muna, a former vice-chair of Transparency International and president of the Cameroon Bar Association, could douse the separatist flames. That, however, depends on the opposition -- especially French-speaking candidates -- rallying behind him.
The Ambazonia crisis has ramifications beyond Cameroon. Separatist groups have become increasingly visible -- among the Catalans in Spain, the Kurds in Iraq and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , the Scots in the United Kingdom and, surprisingly, the Igbos in Biafra. Secession in Cameroon would recharge separatists elsewhere.
All in all, Cameroon is headed into a difficult election and an even longer political crisis thereafter.
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[BLOOMBERG] New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy proposed taxing online-room booking, ride-sharing, marijuana, e-cigarettes and Internet transactions along with raising taxes on millionaires and retail sales to fund a record $37.4 billion budget that would boost spending on schools, pensions and mass transit.
The proposal, 4.2 percent higher than the current fiscal year’s, relies on a tax for the wealthiest that has yet to be approved and lacks support from key Democrats in the legislature. It also reverses pledges from Murphy’s predecessor, Republican Chris Christie, to lower taxes in a state where living costs are among the nation’s highest.
Murphy, a Democrat who replaced term-limited Christie on Jan. 16, said his goal is to give New Jerseyans more value for their tax dollars. He has promised additional spending on underfunded schools and transportation in a credit-battered state with an estimated $8.7 billion structural deficit for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
"If we enact another budget like the one our administration inherited, our middle class will continue to be the ones shouldering the burden, while seeing little in return," Murphy said Tuesday in his budget address to politicians. "A millionaire’s tax is the right thing to do ‐- and now is the time to do it."
No mention of converting current existing gov employee pension plans into 401Ks or IRAs and eliminating further government pensions to save the citizens of the state?
They’ll get there eventually. But first they have to drive out the most productive portion of their population.
Sorry, we're full up. Georgia simply cannot take anymore folks from New Jersey, New York, California, Illinois, or Massachusetts.
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#1
Sorry, we're full up.
After these last three winter storms perhaps they will turn their gaze towards warmer climes, like Mexico.
#4
All those Yanks will move south and just mess everything up. See Virginia and North Carolina. (The NC court system is jammed up with PC critters and feminists on the bench).
#5
The problem is that millionaires in that part of the world are just working stiffs like the rest of us. With Connecticut and New York already high tax, where are the Jersey folk going to go? They still have to commute to the office.
#6
...cash in. Move on (to use a phrase). Got to cut your losses sometime.
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
[IsraelTimes] Israelis in the south have been reporting widespread disruptions to cell service amid Egyptian crackdown in Sinai.
The Egyptian army suspects that fighters in the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... terror group are using Israeli SIM cards to communicate with each other in the Sinai Peninsula, and is jamming cellular networks in southern Israel in its battle against the jihadists, causing disruptions for some 300,000 Israeli cellular users, the Globes financial daily reported Wednesday.
In February, Gadi Yarkoni, the head of the Eshkol Regional Council, sent out a text message saying residents had been subject to "intolerable disruptions" in their cellular communication networks, and were unable to send or receive calls or messages. The disruptions were a result of security activities in Egypt, he said, for which Israeli residents were paying a steep price. He called for the immediate intervention of the Israeli Defense Ministry and the army.
Wednesday’s report said that the reason for the disruptions was Egypt’s battle against Islamic State fighters. The Egyptian army was deliberately jamming the Israeli networks, and Israel was not intervening even though Egypt was in effect infringing on Israeli illusory sovereignty, the report said, citing unnamed Israeli officials.
The Egyptian army suspects that the fighters were using Israeli SIM cards to make it harder for local forces to locate them, and is concerned Islamic State will use the cellphones to detonate bombs remotely, the report said.
A source familiar with the operations of the cellular companies in Israel said the disruptions, apparently from Egypt, have been affecting all of the cellular networks in the south and have been ongoing for a number of weeks. There is not much these firms can do about it, the source said.
Bezeq’s Pelephone, a mobile network provider, said in a text message: "There is an external interference to all the Israeli cellular networks. We are currently working with the authorized official bodies that are relevant to bringing the matter to an end." A spokeswoman for Cellcom Israel Ltd., the nation’s largest cellular provider, referred questions to the Communications Ministry.
There was no immediate response by the IDF, the Communications Ministry or the Defense Ministry to a request for comment.
In an emailed comment to The Times of Israel, the IDF said that the disruptions were caused by the Egyptian army in Egyptian territory. "The issue is being dealt with," the military said.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Israel is holding talks with Russia and other parties about the situation around a disputed gas field that has been put up for tender by Leb and is expected to be developed by an international consortium of energy companies, including Russia’s Novatek, Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Gary Koren told Sputnik.
"I can only confirm that we hold talks with Russia and other parties, and we hope that they will be successful. The Russian side is fully aware of the details," the ambassador said when asked about the possible risks for Russian companies that plan to develop the gas field.
In February, Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz said that Israel was ready to resolve differences with Leb by diplomatic means.
At the same time, Total said that the exploration work of the consortium at Block 9 would not affect the disputed territories with Israel.
Leb’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... has him bumped off, too. emphasized during talks with outgoing US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February that his country has the right to explore and develop potential oil and gas reserves in its territorial waters.
In December 2017, the Lebanese government approved provisions for the right to explore two energy blocks ‐ Block 4 and Block 9 ‐ in Leb to the consortium of natural gas producer Novatek with La Belle France’s Total and Italia’s Eni.
In February, the companies signed relevant agreements; the Russian share amounted to 20 percent, while Total and Eni each got 40 percent.
However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... in late January, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Block 9 belonged to Israel and that the companies participating in the tender were making a big mistake.
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[Libya Observer] The Head of the Investigations Bureau of the Attorney General Office in Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... , al-Siddiq al-Sour, revealed in a presser on Wednesday that they had tossed in the clink Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! persons in Tunisia linked to the murder of the Misrata mayor, Mohammed Eshtiwi last December.
"There's cooperation between Libyan and Tunisia Attorneys General offices as well as the Interpol regarding the murder case so the arrested persons can be handed over to Libya." He pointed out, saying there are other binding arrest warrants for persons involved in this case.
He also said that they are still investigating into the terrorist incidents, adding that any family that wishes to recollect the body of an IS myrmidon can do so as "we are doing DNA analyses and they are taking lots of efforts and time," he stressed.
He also touched upon Saif Qadaffy's case, saying that he is sentenced in absentia and his case lies in the files of the Appeals Court not the Attorney General's Office (AG).
"Regarding Osama Jodran, investigations are underway over terror charges and shutdown of oil ports. His brother Ibrahim Jodran is wanted by the AG Office for several charges and despite the fact that he was detained by a Nalut-based gang, he managed to escape and the calls for his surrender to the AG did not pay off. He went then to Wershiffana and afterwards, we have no records of his whereabouts." al-Sour explained.
Ibrahim Jodran was Head of the Petroleum Facilities Guard at the oil crescent region.
Al-Sour said there are many officials and diplomats involved in corruption and illegal immigration as well as smuggling cases, signaling out an employee at the Libyan embassy in Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... , whom he said is involved in illegal immigration.
"We have opened a bank account and deposited in it the money confiscated from corruption cases - 409 million dinars." The Head of the AG Office's investigations bureau added.
He said they had issued arrest warrants for 13 employees of Libya Africa Investment Portfolio (LAIP) and others, shedding light as well on the CNN report about selling African slaves in Libya, saying they contacted the CNN and the AG investigations showed that there are human trade in Libya but not a slaves market.
"There is the procedure of selling the immigrants colonists from one smuggler to another." al-Sour confirmed, denying the existence of a slaves market.
"Libya lost 27 million dinars a year in fuel smuggling and there is a group controlling Zuwara port and it is accused of smuggling fuel." He further explained.
Al-Sour elaborated that fuel smuggling networks in Libya are broadly linked with others in Malta, Italia, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Leb, and Greece, saying Libya had cooperated with southern European countries for the exchange of information regarding fuel smuggling operations coming out of al-Zawiya and Zuwara.
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[DAWN] Three members of the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... Military Observers Mission for India and Pakistain (UNMOGIP) had a close call along the restive Line of Control (LoC) in Azad Jammu and Kashmire on Wednesday after Indian troops shot at and injured two locals who were briefing them on the situation prevailing in the wake of ceasefire violations, officials and residents said.
The incident occurred at noon in Abbaspur sector of Poonch district where the UN observers had reached in two white vehicles hoisting blue UN flags, Qazi Arslan, a police official in Abbaspur, told Dawn by phone.
"The UN observers were interacting with local people in Polas village when suddenly Indian troops resorted to burst firing from across the dividing line located hardly one kilometre away from there," the official said.
The firing left two people ‐ identified as Sardar Saghir and Muhammad Azam Qureshi of Polas and its neighbouring Taroti village, respectively ‐ critically injured.
"It was yet another incident of targeted firing which has become a hallmark of Indian troops manning the bloody dividing line," said Chaudhry Saqib Mushtaq, a civil society activist in the area.
Arslan said the UN observers barely saved their lives and rushed to Abbaspur to inquire about the condition of the firing victims who had been evacuated to a health facility by other people.
As the news spread in Abbaspur, people took to streets to condemn the incident.
Some of the demonstrators took strong exception to the UN observers "abandoning the firing victims" instead of removing them to the health facility in their vehicles.
However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... police official Arslan said the UN observers themselves were in a state of shock, as they did not expect firing from the Indian side in their presence.
He quoted them as saying that they had already passed a ’hotline message’ to the Indian authorities regarding their visit to the LoC in this sector.
Arslan said as the injured persons were shifted to Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahayan Hospital Rawalakot, the UN observers also left for the district headquarters of Poonch to record their statements.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media affairs wing of the Pakistain Army, has yet to issue any statement on the incident.
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[ARABNEWS] Russian defense ministry annouced this afternoon that it was ready to renew a humanitarian truce ..The purposes of a truce are twofold: 1.) bring up more arms, ammunition, and reinforcements; and 2.) get the enemy to relax his vigilance. A truce is not the same thing as a ceasefire, and a ceasefire doesn't mean you have to stop shooting... for eastern Ghouta for two more days. Previous calls for a cease fire in the suburb of Damascus never materialised with casualty numbers rising daily.
Bombardment by the Syrian regime and its Russian ally killed 25 civilians, among them three children, in the embattled rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday, a monitor said.
"At least 25 civilians including three children were killed on Wednesday, most of them in regime air strikes and others in Russian raids on an area controlled by Faylaq al-Rahman," a rebel group, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Syrian opposition activists say the town of Hamouria, in the southern pocket of eastern Ghouta, was the worst hit, with at least 10 killed there and a rescue center bombed and destroyed.
A doctor in Hamouria says he was overwhelmed and that for four hours, no vehicle was able to move the injured to a medical facility. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity fearing for his own safety.
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Ghouta Media Center say the towns of Arbeen, Jesreen and Saqba were also targeted. Recent government advances have cleaved eastern Ghouta into a northern and southern pocket. The bombing Wednesday focused on the southern pocket.
A senior UN adviser said on Wednesday Syria could see "tremendous battles" for two remaining rebel enclaves even once a government onslaught on the last murderous Moslem pocket near Damascus is over.
International attention has focused on the battle for besieged eastern Ghouta outside the capital and for Afrin in the far north where The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... sent in forces to combat Kurdish militia it sees as a threat to its security.
But they are not the last flashpoints as Syria’s war enters its eighth year, three years after the tide began turning in the government’s favor, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a senior UN adviser on Syria.
"Our fear is that after eastern Ghouta we may see tremendous battles now in and around Idlib (in the far northwest)and, in the south, Daraa," he said.
Those would be just the latest in a string of increasingly bitter and cruel "end battles" following fighting for Homs, Aleppo, Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, Egeland said.
He said that in each battle, civilians were caught between warring sides who justified their ruthlessness by claiming to be fighting terrorism or dictatorship.
"It’s really not too late to have talks around Idlib, to have talks around Daraa, and to have talks around Afrin," he said. "Idlib would be a tremendous concern because Idlib is in many ways a gigantic refugee camp."
To stem one of the worst effects of the fighting ‐ air strikes on medical facilities ‐ Egeland said a new notification system for the coordinates of more than a dozen hospitals had gone into effect in the last few days.
"We have delivered coordinates on hospitals both in eastern Ghouta and in Idlib to the United States and to Russia, and Russia will not only guarantee that they will not attack, we’re asking them also to make sure that Syrian armed forces, the air force, is not targeting the hospitals," Egeland said.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) continued their large-scale offensive inside the East Ghouta, Wednesday, seizing the last farms under Lion of Islam control in the eastern part of this region.
Led by their elite Tiger Forces and 4th Division, the Syrian Arab Army scored advances at two different axes in this rural region outside of Damascus, giving them access to the eastern suburbs of the East Ghouta.
According to a military source in Damascus, the Syrian Army captured the eastern farms of Jisreen in the southern part of the East Ghouta, while also making new advances inside the town of al-Rayhan.
As a result of the aforementioned advance, the Syrian Army has managed to reach the eastern outskirts of Jaish al-Islam ...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful... ’s largest stronghold in the East Ghouta, Douma.
The Syrian Army is now working to capture all of al-Rayhan, along with Jisreen and nearby al-Hamouriyah.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army claimed that it uncovered a plant used by snuffies to produce toxic chemicals, in the area between Douma and al-Shefounieh in Eastern Ghouta, on Tuesday.
The footage shows the interior of the alleged plant, with various pipes and storage tanks reportedly used for mixing and heating chemicals and for creating explosives.
Traces of chlorine gas were also reportedly discovered there.
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Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attended on Wednesday the funeral ceremony of one of his top bodyguards, who was killed in festivities with the Shiite militia of Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades) earlier on Tuesday.
In a statement, a copy of which was obtained by Alghad Press, the Iraqi defense ministry said, "Brig. Gen. Sherif Ismail el-Morshedy, the commander of the 57th brigade of Abadi’s protection service, breathed his last while on duty after undisciplined personnel shot him dead near a central checkpoint in Samarra."
Abadi offered condolences to the martyr’s family and ordered a probe to be opened into his death.
He also praised sacrifices made by the late commander in the fight against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group.
According to the statement, the funeral ceremony was held at the defense ministry’s headquarters in the presence of Defense Minister Erfan al-Hiyali.
Commenting on the incident, Saraya al-Salam blamed Abadi’s guards for the death of Morshedy after they attacked its personnel deployed at a security checkpoint between Samarra and Tikrit in Salahuddin.
In December, Moqtada Tater al-Sadr ... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah... , the head of the Sadrist Movement, announced disbanding Saraya al-Salam brigade, urging the members to evacuate its headquarters and turn in their weapons to the government.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] New York City could be the next site of a chemical liquidation attempt if world leaders fail to punish Russia for its alleged role in poising of a former spy in the United Kingdom, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... Nikki Haley ...Trump administration's ambassador to the UN. First woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley was the youngest governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems... warned Wednesday.
"If we don't take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used," Haley told the United Nations Security Council. "They could be used here in New York, or in cities of any country that sits on this Council. This is a defining moment."
Haley raised the specter of new attacks during an emergency council meeting, held at the request of British officials who have accused Russia of using "a military-grade nerve agent" to target a former military intelligence officer who committed treason. Russian diplomats have denied responsibility for the incident, but British Sherlocks say they have identified the poison as a chemical weapon produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
"Time and time again, member-states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance," Haley said. "Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable."
Russia has denied responsibility Nope. Nope. Wudn't us. for the March 4 incident, which left former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia hospitalized, and warned British Prime Minister Theresa May against considering a cyber-attack or other aggressive retaliation.
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[DAWN] The Kremlin on Wednesday said ties with the US could not get any worse under next Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after the sacking of Rex Tillerson.
“It's hardly possible to fall below the floor, so it is unlikely things will get any worse in this regard,” President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a response to a question about the high-level staff changes in the US administration announced on Tuesday.
“In any case, there of course remains the hope of a constructive and sober approach to bilateral ties. There is always this hope,” Peskov said at a regular press briefing.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
IMO, Russia & USA need each other as allies against China (20 million superfluous males).
#7
You know, I'm beginning to think that I got this "collision probe" thing completely wrong. I mean, we think of it as Mandarinate trying to overthrow Trump. But, what happens if they succeed? They don't get Hillary, they get Pence.
Meanwhile, though, Trump cannot negotiate mutually beneficent deals with Russia - so, who benefits?
[FoxNews] A Florida teenager -- who had previously been investigated for "alleged violent tendencies" -- watched jihadist videos and read the Koran "to give him courage" before stabbing a 13-year-old boy to death and seriously injuring two others at a birthday sleepover Monday, cops said.
Corey Johnson, 17, was charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder after police said he confessed to the assault at the 13th birthday sleepover party at a BallenIsles Country Club home, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Jupiter Police, Palm Beach County School District police and the FBI previously received “intelligence gathering” on Johnson that prompted an investigation into his “alleged violent tendencies,” the Palm Beach Post reported.
Johnson reportedly told police he woke up at 4 a.m. Monday at Kyle Bancroft’s home and had an urge to kill Kyle’s mother, Elaine Simon; Kyle’s brother, 13-year-old Dane Bancroft; and Dane’s friend, 13-year-old Jovanni Sierra. The three victims were each asleep at the time, the Post reported.
"In his statement, Johnson advised he stabbed the victims because of his Muslim faith," the affidavit stated.
Johnson and Kyle Bancroft allegedly watched violent jihadist videos the night before the 17-year-old carried out the deadly stabbing. Using a knife he brought to the home, Johnson stabbed Sierra multiple times before slitting his throat.
Simon, apparently hearing Sierra moaning in pain, began walking upstairs around 6 a.m. when Johnson allegedly lunged at her. Police say he stabbed her at least a dozen times before she fell down the stairs. Dane was stabbed 32 times while attempting to help his mother, according to the Palm Beach Post.
“He’s a hero," the boy's father said during a phone interview with the Post. “He saved his mom."
Sierra was pronounced dead at the scene. Simon and Dane were taken to the hospital, where Simon remains in good condition as of Tuesday.
Kyle Bancroft and Johnson were not harmed in the incident.
Police were alerted after Simon ran to a neighbor begging to call 911.
"She rang my bell, she’s bleeding," the neighbor said later. "Corey Johnson is out there with a knife. He’s a murderer. That’s all I know. They're trying to help the kid the kids filled with blood."
Johnson was taken into custody about 8 a.m. after briefly barricading himself in a room.
He later told authorities he was upset Sierra, who turned 13 on Monday, called celebrities “gods” because it went against his Muslim faith. Johnson also said Dane made fun of his Islamic faith.
The teen told police he read the Koran before going to the sleepover "to give him courage to carry out his intentions,” according to an affidavit.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office received information prior to the stabbings that Johnson reached out to ISIS online and expressed his desire to join the terror group.
Law enforcement officials at the time investigated Johnson by tracking his social media accounts and movements and interviewing his family. The teen was also being investigated for several threats that prompted evacuations at a British school in October 2016.
Authorities had planned to file charges against Johnson for international school threats a week before the sleepover rampage, according to the report.
Johnson went to William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens, but recently withdrew, according to the report. Dane Bancroft and Jovanni Sierra were attending Watson B. Duncan Middle School.
WPTV has more about what our miscreant had been doing for years to garner the attention of the FBI. It seems to me that in this case Islam was a result, not a cause.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
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#1
May his faith grant him much courage in the FSP Death House...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2018 9:42
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#2
Why is a 17 year old at a 13 year old's sleepover?
Posted by: Caesar Crert7041 ||
03/15/2018 19:10
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#3
Diversity gone wild.
Posted by: jack salami ||
03/15/2018 21:10
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#4
The 17 year old was friends with Kyle, the 15 year old brother of the birthday boy. They ran into him at the restaurant, and invited him to join their party.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Army has reportedly bombed the Ottoman Turkish military in northern Aleppo in response to a deadly Arclight airstrike conducted by Ottoman Turkish jets against pro-government troops.
According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Ottoman Turkish military positions in the town of Mare’ came under rocket attack fire by the Syrian Army. No casualties reported.
The attack comes in retaliation for a Ottoman Turkish airstrike on troops loyal to the Syrian government at al-Zyara crossing which killed 8 fighters and maimed 10 others.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), alongside their allies from the National Defense Forces (NDF), attacked a the positions of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in the western part of Aleppo city on Wednesday.
According to the Facebook page of the National Defense Forces (NDF), the SAA and NDF specifically struck Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s positions in the western part of the al-Zahra’a Associations Quarter; this area has been a hotbed for holy warrior activity in the past.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2018
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#4
the "Turkish Forces" in W. Aleppo are, I think, not actual Turkish military but are proxies and various militia from ethnic groups allied with Turkey
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2018 8:42
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1-Afrin city: the Turkish invasion army is still brutally bombing Afrin’s neighborhood, where the Turkish jets are targeting the public facilities and the populated areas, including the pediatrics in Avrin Hospital yesterday.
2-Jinderes: all of the villages in Jinderes axis are areas of engagements between our forces and the Turkish invasion army and its backed terrorists factions (ISIS- Al Nusra). The clashes accompanied by heavy artillery shelling and airstrikes, where the fiercest clashes were in Satiya village.
3-Belbeleh: all of the villages in this axis were arenas of heavy clashes between our forces and the invaders. These clashes accompanied by brutal aerial and artillery shelling, where the clashes were concentrated in Bileh village. according to our fighters from the battlefield, 19 terrorists were killed.
4-Shieheh: there are heavy clashes in the villages of Meshki, Mekhara and Chaqmaqa villages since yesterday until writing this report. According to our fighters, 11 terrorists were killed. It is worth noting that these clashes are accompanied by heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling.
SDF Media Center
13 March 2018
Video of fierce defensive combat by the men and women of the Kurdish YPG/YPJ.
After YPG/YPJ strategically retreated to consolidate their forces, allowing various villages to be taken by Turks, it took 3 days for the Turk invasion forces to take one town south of the city of Afrin.
YPG/YPJ fired a guided missile into a suspicious car surrounded by 60 terrorists in which a massive explosion occurred killing all 60 terrorists as it was apparently a car bomb being prepared by the terrorists.
Up-close video of Turks shelling the city of Afrin where the YPG says 800,000 civilians are taking refuge.
Additional videos show YPG/YPJ inflicting ATGM strikes against Turk Tanks behind Turk lines.
Posted by: Ulaigum Ebbineng7056 ||
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#1
EuroNews and much of the other mindless European media outlets are parroting what ever their Islamic Overlords such as Erdogan tells them to say. They are embedded with Turkey's Al Qaeda near Afrin and had images of thousands of cars stacked bumper to bumper on the highways leading out of Afrin and claiming the YPG are not letting people leave.
In reality, hundreds of thousands of Kurds have chosen to stay in Afrin and as a defensive measure they have lined hundreds of cars up along the highways coming into Afrin to prevent access to the city by the Turks and Al Qaeda while the YPG eliminate those cowards who get enough courage to come in via the ditches along the highways.
The embedded Euro Winnie Media shows Al Qaeda "fighters" who the media are instructed to say are near Afrin, cowering and hiding every time they hear a shot fired.
#2
I saw those pictures of cars lined up, with that caption. Thank you for explaining what is really going on, Ulaigum Ebbineng7056. Fred mentioned recently that Rantburg is a raw intel stream for several War on Terror websites. I have no doubt they are paying close attention to these reports of yours.
#3
Thank you TW. Everything I post comes from as close to the atomic level (eye witness level) as I can find from the battle fields. Soldier videos are almost required to be approved by their press offices before public domain access but that is for intelligence reasons.
#4
I seldom link to a news source. The first atomic level (as I like to call it) video has you standing behind the soldier firing the AK47. The second video has you on a roof top while missiles are dropping all around you. After a while of being in the shoes of the witness (which is impossible but close, there is much, much more fear inside you if are actually there wearing those shoes) you can tell what is really going on after viewing a potentially biased media outlet report of the same battle field.
#5
Somewhere around 95% of all intelligence reporting is derived form unclassified (UNCLAS) or so-called 'open sources' such as UE's reports and vids. These UNCLAS pieces then become the foundation or supporting documentation for classified intelligence assessments, reports, and updates. I am confident these videos and reports are not being overlooked....by either side of the conflict.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[American Thinker] House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has always lived on a different planet. What's more, she's always pandering, and she will pander to anyone. So it was natural that she pandered in surreal terms to her favorite pet group, the DREAMers and their illegal parents and coevals, labeling the U.S. lawmen tasked with looking for criminal aliens among them as "terrorizing" their communities and calling their legitimate law enforcement actions "cowardly attacks."
[Breitbart] Wednesday on MSNBC’s "Live With Velshi and Ruhle," Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he was opposing President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, because she "loved the idea of someone being tortured."
[Hot Air] "People close to the White House say they expect more major personnel shifts this week," tweeted Maggie Haberman yesterday. Attorney General and National Security Advisor sound pretty major.
[LI] President Donald Trump will be spending the day in Southern California, inspecting the border wall prototypes constructed near San Diego and drawing out the #Resistance in the form of organized protests.
[The Hill] High school students in Tennessee reportedly jumped on a police car and tore down an American flag during what was supposed to be a peaceful protest for gun control. 
[Breitbart] Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry’s State Department, gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with former British spy Christopher Steele regarding his infamous, largely discredited dossier alleging wild claims about Donald Trump and Russia, according to a book released this week.
[KCNAWATCH.CO] The imperialists' "
...also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Hurriyet Daily News] Global powers will gather in Rome on March 15 to discuss the future of the U.N. agency for Paleostinian refugees, which faces an unprecedented crisis after the U.S. froze tens of millions of dollars in funding.
[AnNahar] For the first time since its meteoric rise in 2012 amid the chaos of war, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria is in retreat, battling rival
According to the Daily Mail, “Hotelscan.com reported that the number of people landing on its Wisconsin Wakanda Water Park page is up by 620 percent and Hotels.com reported that searches for neighbouring Wakanda Park are up by 55 percent year on year.”
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
[ARABNEWS] A European Parliament delegation said Wednesday it has been conducting secret talks with 
[SABANEWS.NET] The US-backed Saudi-led aggression coalition warplanes waged on Wednesday 12 raids on the capital Sana'a, a security official told Saba. The aggressive airstrikes targeted Sana'a International Airport.
...Self-proclaimed Field Marshal, served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all...
... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey...
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
[DalkasNews] A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Irving ISD, the city of Irving and several individuals by the father of a teen who was arrested after bringing to school a homemade clock that was mistaken for a bomb. 
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as 
[DAWN] A man in Badin surrendered himself to police on Wednesday after killing his 38-year-old wife for 'honour' by repeatedly hitting her with an axe.
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
[BLOOMBERG] New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy proposed taxing online-room booking, ride-sharing, marijuana, e-cigarettes and Internet transactions along with raising taxes on millionaires and retail sales to fund a record $37.4 billion budget that would boost spending on schools, pensions and mass transit.
Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if 
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
Moqtada 
...Trump administration's ambassador to the UN. First woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley was the youngest governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems...
1-Afrin city: the Turkish invasion army is still brutally bombing Afrin’s neighborhood, where the Turkish jets are targeting the public facilities and the populated areas, including the pediatrics in Avrin Hospital yesterday.
