A new video of Hamas is giving case-closed evidence that they use civilians as human shields.
On Monday, Hamas was caught on tape by Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV (an Indian news network) assembling what appears to be a site to launch a rocket from a densely populated civilian area. The “alleged” launch site is surrounded by hotels and apartment buildings.
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Photo Credit: Brian A. Jackson, Getty / iStockphoto
The cyber gang injected malicious code to steal databases from at least 420,000 websites, says Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer for Hold Security in Milwaukee, Wisc.
“It is absolutely the largest breach we’ve ever encountered,” Holden said late Tuesday.
Most unsettling, he said, was finding his own credentials among the compromised data.
Hold Security cyber sleuths have been monitoring the cyber gang for about seven months, but only recently realized the magnitude of the gang’s operation, Holden said.
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Photo Credit: Fox News
The Israeli military has said that all of its ground forces have been removed from Gaza as a 72-hour cease-fire went into effect Tuesday.
The truce, agreed upon Monday by Israel and Hamas, took effect at 8 a.m. local time Tuesday (1 a.m. Eastern Time). The Times of Israel reported that a barrage of rockets were fired from Gaza minutes before the cease-fire was due to take effect. The paper also reported that Israeli’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted two rockets over central Israel, while two other rockets fell into open areas in southern Israel near the Gaza border, causing no damage or injuries.
There were also signs of tensions created by the Gaza fighting spreading to Jerusalem and the West Bank, including two attacks police say were carried out by Palestinian militants.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told The Associated Press that the withdrawal would go forward after forces completed the destruction of the last of the 32 known tunnels used by Hamas militants to cross between Gaza and Israel to carry out attacks on soldiers and civilians.
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Why Jon Voight is speaking out on Gaza and Hollywood activism
By Max Schindler.
Hollywood celebrities on both sides of the political aisle are alternately supporting – and condemning – Israel’s month-long military operation in the Gaza Strip as the death toll climbs to more than 1,700 Palestinian and 67 Israeli casualties.
Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight is the latest to jump into the verbal fray. But the Middle East conflict has already heard from movie actors, radio jockeys, musicians and music producers. If there were a scorecard, it would be tilted toward public sympathy with the Palestinians.
Last week, Spanish actors Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, along with Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, denounced Israel’s aerial campaign in an open letter to a Spanish newspaper, calling for the European Union “to condemn the bombing by land, sea and air against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” adding:
“Gaza is living through horror these days, besieged and attacked by land, sea and air. Palestinians’ homes are being destroyed, they are being denied water, electricity [and] free movement to their hospitals, schools and fields while the international community does nothing.”
Their letter was “one of the most strident messages from any global cultural figure regarding the current conflict,” reported The Guardian, and their comments provoked a fierce backlash from a number of other celebrities.
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Photo Credit: Mirror.co.uk
Workers said they were terrified the virus could spread globally through the busy international hub from the West African country which is in the grip of the deadly epidemic.
The woman, said to be 72, became ill on the gangway after she left a Gambia Bird jet with 128 passengers on board.
She died in hospital on Saturday.
Ebola has killed 256 people in Sierra Leone.
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Photo Credit: Ilia Yefimovich / Getty
In a release sent to the news media on Sunday by the Deal for Governor Communications office, the state of Georgia, which buys millions in Israeli bonds annually, is currently engaged in cooperation with Israel on the front lines from anti-terrorism and cyber-security to trade and investment policy.
The write-up by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton also appeared in the Washington Times said that as the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship deteriorates at the national level, our states, local institutions and businesses are actually forging ever-closer relations with key Israeli institutions.
Relations between President Obama and his administration and the government of Israel has reached an all-time low to the point where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Obama and his administration to back off and to stop second-guessing him on how he is dealing with Hamas.
Part of the fostering anger stems from Secretary of State, John Kerry’s proposal in calling for negotiations on Hamas demands, including opening border crossings into Gaza and relaxed boating restrictions off the Gaza coast. In addition, its language reportedly upgraded Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, to an equal plane with Israel, something that is annoying Netanyahu.
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Israel Strikes Gaza as Troops Start Redeploying
By Associated Press.
Israel struck several targets in Gaza on Sunday as ground troops began a gradual redeployment in some locations along the border area, a day after the government signaled it would scale back its 27-day-old offensive.
Israel had earlier said that a soldier it had feared captured by Hamas militants was instead killed alongside two other soldiers Friday near the southern town of Rafah in an ambush that shattered a cease-fire and ignited heavy shelling, leaving dozens of Palestinians dead.
On Sunday artillery shells slammed into two high-rise office buildings in downtown Gaza City and large explosions could be heard seconds apart, police and witnesses said. Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said 30 Palestinians were killed Sunday, including nine in a single strike in the southern Gaza Strip. Israel said it carried out 180 strikes Sunday.
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Photo Credit: Twitter
According to Lebanon’s Daily Star, the campaign began this week with anchor Dima Sadeq appearing on television wearing a shirt with the Arabic N on it and giving a monologue explaining the network’s support for Iraqi Christians (below, the only version of the remarks uploaded to YouTube, unfortunately without subtitles):
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Today, Joe Miller denounced President Obama’s plan to “Act alone” to address the nation’s border crisis, as yet another lawless act by a lawless administration. He also called out the President for using taxpayer dollars to fly illegals from the U.S.-Mexican border to Alaska and destinations throughout the United States.
“We are a nation of laws, and once again President Obama somehow believes he is above the law. He must be held to account,” said Miller. “The fact that this President finds it inconvenient to work with Congress, as the Constitution provides, does not mean that he has the authority to rule like a dictator. Now the media is reporting the Administration is flying illegal immigrants from Texas to Alaska on the taxpayer dime. Outrageous!”
Miller concluded, “The President swore an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the land and to protect and to defend the Constitution. He is not keeping his oath. The only remedy left to the people is to impeach him.”
Photo Credit: AP
“Lieutenant Hadar Goldin … was killed in battle in the Gaza Strip on Friday, August 1,” the Israel Defense Forces announced early Sunday.
It’s not clear whether Goldin, 23, was captured as the IDF had previously said, or whether he died alongside two other soldiers in an armed clash in Gaza. Military spokesman Peter Lerner said Goldin was promoted to lieutenant posthumously.
Speculation about his fate was already up in the air after the armed wing of Hamas, the al Qassam Brigades, announced it had lost contact with a group of its fighters in the Rafah area — the same area where Goldin was reportedly taken.
In a statement posted on its website, the militant group says it assumes all the fighters died in an Israeli airstrike, including possibly an Israeli soldier. The group — which denied having info on Goldin — stopped short of saying the soldier was captured, using the phrasing “assuming he was captured by the fighters.”
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It was the start of a three-day truce, the best hope yet to end a 25-day-old war that has taken an enormous toll on both Palestinians and Israelis.
On Friday morning, Israeli troops were in the southern Gaza Strip preparing to destroy a Hamas tunnel, said Israeli military officials. Suddenly, Palestinian militants emerged from a shaft. They included a suicide bomber, who detonated his explosive device. In the chaos, two Israeli soldiers were killed. The militants grabbed 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, and pushed him back through the tunnel, according to the Israeli account.
Within minutes, the war was back.
“The cease-fire is over,” declared Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a senior spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. Ground operations will continue, he said, “and our aircraft are in the sky as we speak.”
By Friday afternoon, Israel was heavily shelling areas near the border city of Rafah, where the soldier’s capture occurred. Hamas officials were disputing the timeline of the clashes, accusing Israel of breaking the cease-fire. And the United States and the United Nations, the architects of the truce, were condemning the killing of the two soldiers and Goldin’s abduction while seeking ways to save the peace talks scheduled to take place in Cairo over the weekend.
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Photo Credit: Ahmad al-Rubaye, AFP / Getty
Since capturing the country’s second largest city of Mosul in early June, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ordered Christians to convert to Islam, pay jizya taxes levied on non-Muslims, or die. The extremist Sunni group is also persecuting and murdering Turkmen and Shabaks, both Muslim religious minorities.
Human rights lawyer Nina Shea described the horror in Mosul to me: “(ISIS) took the Christians’ houses, took the cars they were driving to leave. They took all their money. One old woman had her life savings of $40,000, and she said, ‘Can I please have 100 dollars?’, and they said no. They took wedding rings off fingers, chopping off fingers if they couldn’t get the ring off.”
“We now have 5,000 destitute, homeless people with no future,” Shea said. “This is a crime against humanity.”
For the first time in 2,000 years, Mosul is devoid of Christians. “This is ancient Nineveh we are talking about,” Shea explained. “They took down all the crosses. They blew up the tomb of the prophet Jonah. An orthodox Cathedral has been turned into a mosque. … They are uprooting every vestige of Christianity.” University of Mosul professor Mahmoud Al ‘Asali, a Muslim, bravely spoke out against ISIS’ purging of Christians and was executed.
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