Obama Deploying Drones Around U.S.

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Steve Peacock. The deployment of federal drones in and around U.S. shores represents one of the Obama administration’s next steps in the nation’s expanded use of unmanned aircraft systems for surveillance purposes.

The Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, or ONMS, recently acquired Puma UAS – a type of drone that the U.S. Navy also uses – for operations off the coast of Los Angeles.

ONMS now is enlisting contractor support in expanding UAS use in California, Hawaii, Florida, and Washington state. Vendors experienced in working with law enforcement and military personnel are needed for this endeavor, according to a solicitation that WND located through routine database research.

The Puma drones – which are small enough to launch by hand – will be used by ONMS to enforce federal regulations, the document says.

The ONMS drone project will focus on Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary located northwest of LA. However, the contractor also will assist Puma UAS operations at Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument Midway in Hawaii, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary in Washington. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: LA TimesJudge torn over lawsuit in drone strike that killed Americans

By Michael Doyle. Courts cannot second-guess drone strikes that kill U.S. citizens overseas, an Obama administration lawyer argued Friday.

A Republican-appointed judge sounded dubious about the expansive claim, saying she was “really troubled” by assertions that courts are completely shut out of the drone strike debate. But for other legal reasons, the judge also sounded hesitant about a lawsuit targeted at top military and intelligence officials for violating the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens blown up in foreign lands.

“There are instances where wrongs are done, but for one reason or another they cannot be remedied in a civil suit,” U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing a family member, have sued former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other former officials over the two separate drone strikes that killed three U.S. citizens in Yemen. The Obama administration wants the lawsuit dismissed.

The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the administration’s secretive war-fighting practices that have mobilized skeptics on both the right and the left. ERad more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: U.S. Air ForceU.S. military drone surveillance is expanding to hot spots beyond declared combat zones

By Craig Whitlock. The steel-gray U.S. Air Force Predator drone plunged from the sky, shattering on mountainous terrain near the Iraq-Turkey border. For Kurdish guerrillas hiding nearby, it was an unexpected gift from the propaganda gods.

Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, filmed the charred wreckage on Sept. 18 and posted a video on YouTube. A narrator bragged unconvincingly that the group had shot down the drone. But for anyone who might doubt that the flying robot was really American, the video zoomed in on mangled parts stamped in English and bearing the label of the manufacturer, San Diego-based General Atomics.

For a brief moment, the crash drew back the curtain on Operation Nomad Shadow, a secretive U.S. military surveillance program. Since November 2011, the U.S. Air Force has been flying unarmed drones from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey in an attempt to suppress a long-simmering regional conflict. The camera-equipped Predators hover above the rugged border with Iraq and beam high-resolution imagery to the Turkish armed forces, helping them pursue PKK rebels as they slip back and forth across the mountains.

As the Obama administration dials back the number of drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. military is shifting its huge fleet of unmanned aircraft to other hot spots around the world. This next phase of drone warfare is focused more on spying than killing and will extend the Pentagon’s robust surveillance networks far beyond traditional, declared combat zones.

Over the past decade, the Pentagon has amassed more than 400 Predators, Reapers, Hunters, Gray Eagles and other high-altitude drones that have revolutionized counterterrorism operations. Some of the unmanned aircraft will return home with U.S. troops when they leave Afghanistan. But many of the drones will redeploy to fresh frontiers, where they will spy on a melange of armed groups, drug runners, pirates and other targets that worry U.S. officials. Read more from this story HERE.

Food Stamp Recipients are Shipping Welfare-Funded Groceries to Relatives Overseas

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Photo Credit: J.C. RiceFood stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Obama Plan Forfeits Temple Mount to Palestinians

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Aaron Klein. The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.

The proposed plan is part of the basis for U.S.-brokered talks that are set to resume in Washington next week after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to open negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.

Israel has not agreed to the U.S. plan over the Temple Mount, with details still open for discussion, stated the PA negotiator.

The negotiator, who is one of the main Palestinian figures leading the Arab side of the talks, further divulged Kerry’s proposed outline for a Palestinian state as presented orally to Israel and the PA. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Uriel Sinai/APIsraeli-Palestinian peace talks’ resumption put in doubt by both sides

By Harriet Sherwood. Moves towards a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were mired in rumours, rebuttals, criticism and confusion on Sunday in an indication of the political and diplomatic swamp facing key negotiators and their mediator, the US secretary of state, John Kerry.

In a high-profile dismissal of the embryonic process, Israel’s former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, wrote on Facebook that there was “no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at least not in the coming years, and what’s possible and important to do is conflict-management”.

Naftali Bennett, economics minister, insisted construction on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would continue, regardless of talks.

The comments by two crucial partners in the Israeli coalition are a sign of deep hostility within the government over the agreement for preliminary talks forged by Kerry on Friday.

Meanwhile, a veteran Palestinian negotiator, Yasser Abed Rabbo, denied that a firm decision had been taken to enter talks, saying further clarification was needed on a framework and the Palestinians were still discussing terms with Kerry. According to a Palestinian source, Kerry had written a letter giving a US assurance that the basis of territorial talks would be the pre-1967 border, but it was not clear whether the letter had been delivered. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Arab Spring Continues: Now the Kurds Fighting Al Qaeda-linked Rebels in Syria, Receiving Fire from the Turks, Too

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Photo Credit: ReutersIslamist-Kurdish fighting spreads in rebel-held Syria

By Erika Solomon. The local commander of a Syrian rebel group affiliated to al Qaeda was freed on Sunday after being held by Kurdish forces in a power struggle between rival organizations fighting President Bashar al-Assad, activists said…

Sporadic fighting over the past five days in towns near the frontier with Turkey has pitted Islamists trying to cement their control of rebel zones against Kurds trying to assert their autonomy in mostly Kurdish areas…

To the north, activists reported Turkish troops reinforcing their side of the frontier near Tel Abyad, but the army could not be reached for comment. Turkish forces exchanged fire with Syrian Kurdish fighters in another border region earlier in the week…

The ethnic Kurdish minority has been alternately battling both Assad’s forces and the Islamist-dominated rebels. Kurds argue they support the revolt but rebels accuse them of making deals with the government in order to ensure their security and autonomy during the conflict.

The Kurdish people, scattered over the territories of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, are often described as the world’s largest ethnic community without a state of their own. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: BBC/GettySyria’s Assad is stronger now, says David Cameron

By Nicholas Watt. David Cameron has admitted that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has strengthened his position in recent months, and warned that the country faces a “depressing trajectory”.

In an interview on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, the prime minister gave his clearest indication to date that Britain will not be supplying arms to the Syrian rebels despite pressing for the lifting of the EU arms embargo.

Cameron insisted he was still committed to helping the Syrian opposition, but admitted its numbers included “a lot of bad guys”. He also acknowledged that Assad had strengthened his position.

The prime minister said: “I think he may be stronger than he was a few months ago, but I’d still describe the situation as a stalemate. And yes, you do have problems with part of the opposition that is extreme, that we should have nothing to do with.”

But Cameron said it would be wrong to abandon the opposition, although he indicated Britain would provide only non-lethal equipment. Read more from this story HERE.

Defense Secretary Hagel to DoD: Furloughs to Last Through At Least Next Year, Will Likely Get Worse

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Photo Credit: APThe audience gasped in surprise and gave a few low whistles as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the news that furloughs, which have forced a 20 percent pay cut on most of the military’s civilian workforce, probably will continue next year, and it might get worse.

“Those are the facts of life,” Hagel told about 300 Defense Department employees, most of them middle-aged civilians, last week at an Air Force reception hall on a military base in Charleston.

Future layoffs also are possible for the department’s civilian workforce of more than 800,000 employees, Hagel said, if Congress fails to stem the cuts in the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1.

On the heels of the department’s first furlough day, and in three days of visits with members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Hagel played the unenviable role of messenger to a frustrated and fearful workforce coping with the inevitability of a spending squeeze at the end of more than a decade of constant and costly war.

The fiscal crunch also lays bare the politically unpopular, if perhaps necessary, need to bring runaway military costs in line with most of the rest of the American public that has struggled economically for years.

Read more from this story HERE.

Potential Primary Challenger to McConnell Courting Conservative Groups

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Photo Credit: APKentucky investment executive Matt Bevin has met with some of the nation’s top conservative groups ahead of an expected GOP primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sources told POLITICO.

Bevin, a partner in the Louisville-based hedge fund Waycross Partners, has not publicly confirmed that he will run against McConnell. But an entity dubbed “Matt Bevin for Senate” has reserved airtime in multiple Kentucky TV markets starting this week, and spokespeople for Bevin and McConnell traded on-record barbs last Friday.

In the run-up to his anticipated campaign, Bevin has spoken with leaders of at least three national right-leaning advocacy groups: the widely feared Club for Growth, the Jim DeMint-founded Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project, a small-government group chaired by former Kansas Rep. Jim Ryun.

Those organizations aren’t yet commenting on Bevin, given that he hasn’t declared his campaign.

While the all-but-announced McConnell challenger is believed to be wealthy enough to commit some personal resources to the race, it’s not clear whether he can – or will – fully self-fund a campaign. A key test of his viability may be whether conservative outside groups are willing to give him back-up on the airwaves.

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain Says ‘Controversial’ Stand Your Ground State Laws Need Review (+video)

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday urged states to review their “stand your ground” laws amid a widening debate over the Trayvon Martin verdict and racial profiling.

About two dozen states have laws that allow individuals to act in self defense during a conflict without attempting to retreat, including Arizona. A Florida jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in Martin’s killing has renewed debate over those statutes.

McCain said he “trusts the judgment” of the jury that acquitted Zimmerman, but said that “stand your ground” rules need a second look.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope’s Judgment Called into Question After Appointing Priest Linked to Sordid Homosexual Scandal to Vatican Bank

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Photo Credit: Max Rossi/ReutersBy John Hooper. Pope Francis will fly out of Rome on Monday, leaving behind the latest controversy to engulf the Holy See – a slew of gay sex claims, denied by the pope’s spokesman, against the man Francis chose to be his representative at the Vatican bank.

On 15 June, the pope appointed Monsignor Battista Ricca, an Italian cleric and former Vatican diplomat, to be “prelate” of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). As such, Ricca is entitled to attend meetings of both the bodies that oversee the scandal-ridden IOR’s operations – its board and a five-strong commission of cardinals. The prelate can also demand to see any document he cares to inspect.

According to the latest edition of the weekly news magazine L’Espresso, Ricca has a past punctuated with scandal. Its report, which the pope’s spokesman branded as “not trustworthy”, claimed Ricca lived more or less openly with a Swiss army officer while at the Holy See’s nunciature (embassy) in Uruguay. It said he arrived with his lover and, while running the post between nuncios, provided him with both accommodation and a job.

The weekly magazine said Ricca was once beaten up in a gay bar in Montevideo and that, when the lift at the nunciature broke down in the night, firefighters called to deal with the emergency found him inside with a local rent boy known to police. It said that, after he was transferred to Trinidad and Tobago, that his alleged lover left trunks behind in Uruguay containing his effects. When they were opened later, they were found to contain a pistol, large numbers of prophylactics and sizeable quantities of pornography, the magazine said. Ricca has not made any comment on the allegations. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesPope Visits Brazil During Pivotal Time for Country

By John Lyons and Loretta Chao. Thousands of young Catholics streamed into this seaside city anticipating the expected arrival on Monday of Pope Francis, who is making his first major overseas trip as pontiff to a country convulsed lately by mass student protests and seen as crucial to the future of the church.

Born in neighboring Argentina, the 76-year-old Jesuit is the first Latin American pope and many here are treating the trip as his triumphant homecoming to a region that now accounts for some 39% of Catholics world-wide. Hawkers along Copacabana beach, where an enormous stage was going up, sold bright yellow Brazil soccer jerseys with “Francis” on the back.

“A lot of people decided to come because the pope is Latin American,” said Cesar Jaya, a 20-year-old Ecuadorean Catholic who had just arrived in Brazil, and was posing for photos with friends and an Ecuadorean flag on Copacabana beach. “It’s our continent, he’s our pope.”

The enthusiasm inspired by Pope Francis was easy to see along Copacabana on Sunday. But this Brazilian city famous for its giant statue of Jesus looking down from a cliff-top also underscores the challenges facing the church in Latin America, and specifically Brazil—long known as the world’s biggest Catholic country.

Evangelical Protestant groups have made big inroads, and the country has become more secular amid economic growth. A Datafolha poll released Sunday showed that 57% of Brazilians call themselves Catholic today, compared with 75% in 1994. Read more from this story HERE.

Marshals Lose Track of Encrypted Radios Worth Millions, Endanger Security of Federal Judges, Witnesses, Others

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe U.S. Marshals Service has lost track of at least 2,000 encrypted two-way radios and other communication devices valued at millions of dollars, according to internal agency documents, creating what some within the agency view as a security risk for federal judges, endangered witnesses and others.

The problem, which stretches back years, was laid out in detail to agency officials at least as early as 2011, when the Marshals were deploying new versions of the radios they use to securely communicate in the field. Agency leaders continued to have difficulty tracking their equipment even after they were warned about the problems by an internal technology office, according to the documents, which were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Some Marshals officials told The Wall Street Journal that besides the wasted money and resources, the inventory problems raise the possibility that criminals could get their hands on radios and listen to them to learn details of security or law-enforcement operations. Such radios are a key communications tool of U.S. Marshals.

USMS spokesman Drew Wade said the agency believes “this issue is in large part attributable to poor record keeping as a result of an older property-management system, as opposed to equipment being lost.”

The Marshals Service guards judges and federal courthouses, and it runs the Witness Security Program, which provides new identities and security to witnesses or their families at risk of being killed. The Marshals also seek to apprehend fugitives.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cassini Takes First-Ever Pictures of Earth from Spacecraft Orbiting Saturn

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Thousands of astronomy fans looked to the heavens and posed for a unique picture on Friday afternoon – a shot of planet Earth from Saturn.

The first photos are are just being transmitted back now – but anyone who participated in the ‘Day the Earth Smiled’ shouldn’t hope to see their face. This was, after all, a 898million-mile photo op.


The photos, some of which have been enhanced by astronomers, show Earth as a tiny dot – only a little bigger than the North Star appears in our sky – illuminating the skies beyond Saturn.

The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the ringed giant since its arrival in the Saturn system in 2004.


The Earth has only been pictured in images from outer space on two other occasions. The first was in 1990, when Voyager 1 captured an image from 3.7 billion miles away. The second occasion was when Cassini took a photo in 2006 from 926 million miles away.

Read more from this story HERE.