Scientists Admit Polar Bear Numbers Were Made Up To ‘Satisfy Public Demand’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Heinz-Peter BaderThis may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers.

Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”

Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did not include them in their official estimate — but the polar bear group did include other subpopulation estimates.

PBSG has for years said that global polar bear populations were between 20,000 and 25,000, but these estimates are likely much lower than how many polar bears are actually living in the world.

“Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research reports, it appears there are probably at least another 6,000 or so bears living in these regions and perhaps as many as 9,000 (or more) that are not included in any PBSG ‘global population estimate,’” Crockford wrote on her blog.

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Shinseki Resigns Over Growing VA Scandal

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsPresident Obama announced Friday that embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would take the fall for the rapidly growing scandal over veterans’ health care, accepting his resignation under pressure from members of both parties.

The president announced that Shinseki would resign after they met at the White House and he received an update on an internal review of the problems at the VA. The review showed the problems were not limited to just a few facilities, Obama said, adding: “It’s totally unacceptable. Our veterans deserve the best.”

On the heels of those and other findings, Obama said, “Secretary Shinseki offered me his own resignation — with considerable regret, I accepted.”

He said Shinseki told him he did not want to be a distraction. “I agree,” Obama said. “We don’t have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem.”

The president had faced mounting calls from members of both parties to remove Shinseki; those calls accelerated after a damning inspector general report on Wednesday. Shinseki suffered another blow on Friday when Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former top VA official, called for her former boss’ resignation.

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New Federal Database Will Track Americans’ Credit Ratings, Other Financial Information

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockAs many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives — including their Social Security numbers — in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy.

FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning document for 2013-17 describes the bureau as monitoring 95 percent of all mortgage transactions.

FHFA officials claim the database is essential to conducting a monthly mortgage survey required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and to help it prepare an annual report for Congress.

Critics, however, question the need for such a “vast database” for simple reporting purposes.

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Trey Gowdy Brings ‘Zeal For the Truth’ as Head of House’s Benghazi Panel

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesRep. Trey Gowdy’s rise from obscure South Carolina backbencher to chairman of the House’s new special Benghazi committee took a quantum leap last October, when he stole the show at an otherwise mundane Republican news conference about the terrorist attacks.

While only in his second term, the conservative Gowdy rushed to the podium and — with the conviction of a preacher and the erudition of a prosecutor — launched into a passionate yet disciplined plea for “justice” that mesmerized those watching, including his GOP colleagues on the dais.

“No one has been arrested, no one has been prosecuted, no one has been brought to justice,” he said soberly. “I am not surprised the president of the United States called this a phony scandal, I’m not surprised [former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton asked what difference does it make?… I’m just surprised a lot of people bought it.”

His three-minute address skillfully summarized Republican frustration over the Obama administration’s response to the attacks like no one had before, and was a seminal moment in the party’s push to raise public awareness about the scandal. And it instantly transformed Gowdy into a cult hero in conservative America (a clip of his remarks has generated 3.4 million views on YouTube).

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Baby’s Bittersweet First Day: Mother Faces Hanging in Sudan

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Photo Credit: Justice Center Sudan The baby girl born to a woman sentenced to hang in Sudan for marrying a Christian American citizen met her father for the first time — a moment that was captured in a bittersweet photo.

Daniel Wani, an American citizen who lives in New Hampshire, held his daughter, Maya, in his arms as she rested peacefully days after being born at a Sudanese prison earlier this week.

The moment of joy was tempered by sorrow because her mother, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, has been sentenced to flogging and a death by hanging by a Sudanese court for marrying Wani. The flogging and the death penalty had been delayed until after she gave birth.

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Google Privacy Law ‘Means Total Rethink of Basic Freedoms’

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Photo Credit: dannysullivanHundreds of millions of people across Europe will be forced to change completely the way they use the internet, according to one of Google’s key advisers.

The era of freely available information is now over in Europe, warns Professor Luciano Floridi, who has been appointed by the £225bn search engine firm to find out how it should comply with a landmark ruling that allows people to ask for personal information to be taken down.

His warning comes as The Independent reveals that 12,000 requests were made on Friday, around 20 a minute, from people across Europe demanding to have their personal details removed from Google. More than 1,500 of these are believed to have come from people in the UK who were looking to take advantage of a service launched by Google to make it easier for people to apply for personal data to be removed.

The move follows a European court’s ruling earlier this month that gave people the “right to be forgotten”; convicted criminals are among those trying to hide links to stories from online search engines. An ex-MP who is seeking re-election is another of the thousands who have approached Google.

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North Korea Gives South Korean Missionary Life Sentence

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Photo Credit: APNorth Korea said Saturday it has sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to hard labor for life for allegedly spying and trying to set up underground churches, the latest in a string of missionaries to run into trouble in the rigidly controlled North.

North Korean state media said the missionary was tried Friday and admitted to anti-North Korean religious acts and “malignantly hurting the dignity” of the country’s supreme leadership, a reference to the ruling Kim family. The rival Koreas have different English spelling styles for Korean names, so the North called the missionary Kim Jong Uk, but Seoul has previously referred to him as Kim Jung Wook.

Christian missionaries have been drawn over the years to totalitarian North Korea, which tolerates only strictly sanctioned religious services. North Korean defectors have said that the distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean banishment to a labor camp or execution.

North Korea said in a dispatch dated Friday but released early Saturday that Kim had defense counsel, but the details of the trial could not be independently confirmed.

North Korea does not have an independent judiciary, does not provide fair trials and imposes rigid controls over many aspects of its citizens’ lives, including in religious matters, according to the U.S. State Department.

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5 Times The Obama Admin Leaked Crucial National Security Information

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Photo Credit: RedFlagNewsThis is not the first time the Obama administration has compromised national security with leaks, either purposeful or inadvertent.

SEAL Team Six. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to say which element of the US military had participated in the assault. Until Vice President Joe Biden decided to talk about it on national television, that is. Speaking at Washington’s Ritz Carlton Hotel in the days after the Bin Laden kill, Biden stated, “Admiral James Stavridis is the real deal. He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Saturday… I was in absolute awe of the capacity and the dedication of the entire team, both the intelligence community, the CIA, the SEALs.”

This put a target on the backs of the SEALs. That target came with consequences, when a SEAL team helicopter was downed in Afghanistan, killing 17.

Al Qaeda Tapes. On August 3, 2013, the Obama administration closed 22 embassies around the world based on intelligence supposedly received about potential al Qaeda attacks. That drew blowback thanks to the juxtaposition of the closings with news of the National Security Agency surveillance of Americans. Then, on August 7, 2013, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast reported that the Obama administration had taped a conference call with al Qaeda and revealed details of that call – details that CNN had not released after a “request from an Obama administration official not to publish or broadcast additional details because of the sensitivity of the information.”

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After IG Report Confirms VA Horrors, Carney Says There Will Be Accountability “If” Allegations Are True

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy Katie Pavlich.

Less than 24 hours after a preliminary Veterans Affairs Inspector General report showed that not only was there widespread misconduct and excruciatingly long wait times at hospitals for veterans, but that the problem is worse than first reported, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said President Obama will wait for a broader review before making any further personnel decisions about the VA, specifically when it comes to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. Shinseki has been asked to resign by Republicans, Democrats and a number of veterans groups, including the American Legion.

“I’m not going to speculate about personnel [at the VA],” Carney said.

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VFW Calls For Immediate Firings At VA

By Debra Heine.

Following Wednesday’s release of the preliminary report by the VA Office of the Inspector General, the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) called on General Shinseki to immediately fire everyone who “knowingly gamed the reporting system.” Included among those the VFW says should be held accountable are those “in senior leadership who should have known but didn’t, or knew but didn’t care.”

“We call on VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to immediately fire every employee and supervisor who knowingly gamed the reporting system,” demanded William A. Thien, national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. “The VA is entrusted with the care and treatment of our nation’s heroes, and there are people in Phoenix and possibly elsewhere who failed miserably, and quite possibly, criminally,” he said. “There are no second chances when you deal with people’s lives, and that includes everyone in senior leadership who should have known but didn’t, or knew but didn’t care.”

“Military veterans are used to waiting in lines, but no veteran should ever have to wait for timely access to care for their wounds, illnesses and injuries, said Thien. “In light of the interim report, I want to make it clear to Secretary Shinseki that he needs to move immediately to terminate the employment of those bearing any responsibility for this travesty. And if the final IG report confirms willful negligence, then those responsible need to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Anything less will not be tolerated by the VFW.”

This represents a change in stance from Saturday, when the leadership of the VFW torched Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) for writing an open letter that was critical of unnamed veterans groups because they had not yet called for new leadership at the VA.

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Emails Track How VA Officials Conspired to Manipulate Wait Times

By Melissa Clyne.

Despite years of repeated complaints and evidence showing patient wait-time fraud at the Central Texas VA, the inspector general never held anyone accountable and even bestowed the Robert W. Carey Performance Excellence Award on the facility, The Daily Beast reports.

A Texas whistleblower provided the publication with emails and internal memos detailing “how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system” by doing things like entering the next available appointment date instead of a patient’s desired appointment date into the computer system, according to The Daily Beast, which was often a difference of weeks and months.

Fifty percent of VA executives’ “field bonus” pay hinged on wait times, according to the whistleblower.

This “low-risk, high-reward form of cheating” was pervasive throughout the VA, the whistleblower said, yet the outcome of a 2011 inspector general investigation that found “significant delays” and “widespread manipulation” of appointments didn’t result in disciplinary action against any VA officials.

“Every doctor, nurse, and clerk in the hospital knows it’s true, but the VA’s investigative team wasn’t able to find any evidence,” the whistleblower said. “They didn’t interview any of us or really try to find out what was going on. This was reported in 2011 and it’s still not fixed today.”

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Excuses Excuses

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Photo Credit: NEWSCOMSince 2009, the world has been trying to make sense of America’s foreign and national security policies under Barack Obama. Allies and enemies, historians and scholars, the president’s critics and his supporters—all have struggled to define, or even discern, an Obama Doctrine. So last week, the man optimally positioned to elucidate the president’s vision sought to provide some clarity.

In a rambling, defensive, and disjointed commencement speech at West Point, the president attempted retroactively to impose a framework on his ad hoc and often incoherent foreign policy. He sought to convince his audience—and the world—that he has a vision for America’s role and that it’s working. What we’re seeing today, he argued, is all part of the plan.

That’s a tough sell. Our allies are confused and dispirited, our enemies are unquestionably emboldened. The Russian reset failed. The Asia pivot never happened. The Middle East peace process collapsed. The Syrian leader once embraced as a “reformer” has slaughtered more than 150,000 of his own people. Libya is a mess. Iraq is regressing. Obama’s own top intelligence officials acknowledge that al Qaeda is amassing territory and gaining strength.

Rather than defend or explain these policy failures, the president chose instead to attack critics, real and imaginary. He challenged “critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” though no one actually thinks this. He rejected as “naïve and unsustainable” any “strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” despite the fact that there are no advocates for such a strategy.

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