A ‘Nightmare Becoming Reality’? Iran Unveils American Drone Replica

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Photo Credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader / AP

Photo Credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader / AP

Iran has unveiled its own copy of an American stealth drone it captured in late 2011, claiming to have cracked the “secrets” of the bat-wing craft and added weapons capabilities.

Today, Fars News Agency reported that while Iran’s duplicate of the US RQ-170 Sentinel drone was smaller, it also had a “bombing capability to attack the US warships in any possible battle.” The story in Persian was headlined: “America’s nightmare has become reality.” State television showed footage on Sunday it said was of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf filmed by an Iranian drone.

The drone replica was unveiled at an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) exhibition on Sunday, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was briefed on how the drone, its systems, and structure had been reverse-engineered. He called it a “sweet day.”

The stealth replica would “soon take a test flight,” an IRGC officer said on Sunday. Aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajijadeh said today that they are working on two more models of the replica drone.

Proving its prowess

Engineers with the IRGC were ordered to reverse engineer the captured US drone, which was on a CIA mission to spy on nuclear and military sites in Iran when it was brought down in Iran largely intact. Iran reacted with euphoria, trumpeting the capture in an “electronic ambush” showed Iran’s technical prowess.

Read more from this story HERE.

Author Who Made Up Holocaust Memoir Told to Repay $22.5 MN

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Photo Credit: AFP / Olivier Laban-Mattei

Photo Credit: AFP / Olivier Laban-Mattei

The author of a global best-selling Holocaust memoir who later admitted it was pure fantasy has been ordered by a US court to repay $22.5 million to her publisher.

US-based Belgian writer Misha Defonseca’s “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” told the supposedly true tale of a Jewish girl who was cared for by a pack of wolves and killed a Nazi soldier during World War II.

Published in 1997, it became an instant hit in Europe, was translated into 20 languages and made into the 2007 movie “Surviving With Wolves.”

But in February 2008 Defonseca, whose real name is Monique de Wael, admitted that most of the events were false, including that she was not Jewish, but Catholic, and that she was never forced to leave her home in Belgium during the war.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mexico to Legalize Vigilantes Fighting Drug Cartel

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Photo Credit: AP / Eduardo Verdugo

Photo Credit: AP / Eduardo Verdugo

Mexico’s government plans on Saturday to begin demobilizing a vigilante movement of assault rifle-wielding ranchers and farmers that formed in the western state of Michoacan and succeeded in largely expelling the Knights Templar cartel when state and local authorities couldn’t.

The ceremony in the town of Tepalcatepec, where the movement began in February 2013, will involve the registration of thousands of guns by the federal government and an agreement that the so-called “self-defense” groups will either join a new official rural police force or return to their normal lives and acts as voluntary reserves when called on.

The government will go town by town to organize and recruit the new rural forces.

“This is a process of giving legal standing to the self-defense forces,” said vigilante leader Estanislao Beltran.

But tension remained on Friday in the coastal part of the state outside the port of Lazaro Cardenas, where other “self-defense” groups plan to continue as they are, defending their territory without registering their arms. Vigilantes against the demobilization have set up roadblocks in the coastal town of Caleta.

Read more from this story HERE.

In High Seas, China Moves Unilaterally

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Photo Credit: Storm Crypt / Flickr

Photo Credit: Storm Crypt / Flickr

It is the pride of China’s state-run oil industry and the nation’s first deepwater drilling rig, a vessel as big as a football field and as tall as a 40-story building, with a $1 billion price tag. Last week, it crawled through the South China Sea, pulled by heavy-duty tugs, and parked in one of the most sensitive spots possible, about 17 miles off a speck of an island claimed by both China and Vietnam.

The Vietnamese, at times embraced in brotherly Communist Party fealty by China, were taken by surprise. Hanoi assumed the rig, known as HD-981, was just passing through, people close to the government said.

At least twice in recent years, China has sought to explore these waters and backed down after protests by Vietnam. Just six months ago, during a visit of the Chinese prime minister to Hanoi, the two sides announced that they would try to find ways to jointly develop oil and gas fields.

That good will evaporated this week when Beijing made clear the drilling rig was staying put. It set off four days of confrontation, with dozens of Chinese and Vietnamese naval vessels ramming one another and China using water cannons in a standoff that threatens to push a region known for its economic development toward military conflict.

Read more from this story HERE.

American Officials in Nigeria to Help Find Kidnapped Girls as Report Says Government Had Warning of Attack

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News.

American and British security experts are in northeastern Nigeria to help search for at least 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamic militants more than three weeks ago, as a new report suggests the Nigerian government did not respond to warnings of the impending attack.

At the same time, senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the search told Fox News the U.S. believes the schoolgirls have been broken up into smaller groups and may — or may not — still be in Nigeria.

A senior U.S. official also said there was some discussion about whether to send drones to help in the search, although they would need to be requested by the Nigerian government.

The kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls on April 15 in the town of Chibok has sparked accusations that the Nigerian government is not doing enough to stop the militants. While at least 53 of the girls—ranging in age from 16 to 18—escaped, the Nigerian government says 276 are still being held captive by the terrorists.

The American team was joined by six additional military officers and more are expected soon, said Pentagon spokesman Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby. The U.S. officers will do a “gap analysis,” an assessment to identify what the Nigerian military needs that the U.S. could provide in the search for the girls, he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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MILLION WOMAN MARCH IN ABUJA, NIGERIAReport: US Unwilling to List Boko Haram as a Terror Group

By Drew MacKenzie.

The Obama administration was afraid to label Boko Haram a terrorist organization in 2012 because of concerns that it would result in the Islamic extremists becoming more powerful and more dangerous, U.S. officials told The Washington Times.

Sources told the newspaper that the government was reluctant to add the Nigerian-based group to its terror list over fears that it would enhance its reputation internationally, and therefore be able to recruit more members and carry out even more inhumane acts.

Now Boko Haram has exploded onto the world stage by kidnapping more than 300 Nigerian schoolgirls — 276 are still missing — with plans to possibly sell them off as slaves in the name of Islam – and even al-Qaida appears to be horrified by the abductions.

However, in June 2012 the State Department was only willing to designate just three of the group’s leaders as “global terrorists” with “close links” to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrab (AQIM).

Read more from this story HERE.

North Korea Unleashes Racist Slurs Against Obama

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / KCNA

Photo Credit: REUTERS / KCNA

After bombarding South Korea’s female president with sexist invectives, North Korea’s state news agency has fired off racist insults against President Barack Obama that U.S. officials condemn as “disgusting.”

North Korea is notorious for inflammatory, warlike rhetoric against its rivals South Korea and the U.S. but had rarely used racial slurs in its verbal attacks. Pyongyang’s tone has grown angrier in recent weeks as it threatens to conduct a fourth nuclear test.

In a lengthy May 2 dispatch released only in Korean, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency published comments from a factory worker who said Obama has the “shape of a monkey” and made many other crude insults.

“It would be better for him to live with other monkeys at a wild animal park in Africa … and licking bread crumbs thrown by onlookers,” worker Kang Hyok at Chollima Steel Complex was quoted as saying.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: White House Aide Linked to Al-Qaida Funder

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

There is a troubling common thread that links Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff to the current special assistant to the National Security Council chief of staff of the military’s Islamic chaplain program.

The thread is more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the Muslim World League, a group accused of financing al-Qaida fronts. The organization’s offshoots have been declared official terrorist organizations by both the State Department and the United Nations.

Yet despite the troubling facts, Muslim World League-linked individuals have been in key national security positions and are currently helping to run the military’s chaplain program.

The case of Mehdi K. Alhassani, special assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, drew attention last week in the blogosphere after former PLO operative Walid Shoebat reported on Alhassani’s ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups.

Alhassani’s name emerged in an administration email made public last week as part of a Judicial Watch lawsuit. The email was sent three days after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack to Alhassani and other officials from Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication.

Read more from this story HERE.

Raw Video: Terrorist Leader Who Kidnapped Nigerian Girls Declares War On America, Christianity

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By Emily Hulsey.

Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, a terrorist group whose name literally means “Western education is a sin,” released an hour-long video on Monday where he pretty much waged war against anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

In this video excerpt, Shekau talked of war with Christians and a desire to “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” current and recent U.S. presidents, the leader of China and their supporters. And of course, Abraham Lincoln.

Additionally, he confirmed that his group was responsible for kidnapping 200+ Nigerian schoolgirls and announced plans to “sell them in the market by Allah.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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US poised to join hunt for shadowy Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau

By Fox News.

The U.S. put a price on the head of the ruthless leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram long before he masterminded the kidnappings of hundreds of schoolgirls, but American forces are now poised to help hunt the shadowy warlord said to have a photographic memory.

Abubakar Shekau, who drew international ire and scorn after vowing to sell young Christian girls “in the marketplace,” could soon be the subject of a multi-national manhunt involving U.S. military and law enforcement agents. But the hunt for the leader of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, which loosely means “Western education is forbidden,” will be complicated by Shekau’s well-documented resourcefulness – and low profile.

Believed to be as young as 36 or as old as 45 — Shekau was Boko Haram’s second in command until founder Mohammed Yusuf was killed in a 2009 crackdown. Shekau was initially thought to have also been killed during those attacks, but he later surfaced in a video claiming to be the terror group’s new director.

The U.S. Department of State is offering a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to Shekau’s location. In 2012, he was declared as a “specially designated global terrorist” for numerous bombings, including the August 2011 attack on the UN office complex in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, that killed 23 people and injured dozens more.

In February, Boko Haram gunmen stormed a secondary school in northeast Nigeria, locked a boys’ dormitory and set it on fire, killing those who tried to flee and burning the rest alive. The humanitarian group Open Doors International said the attack killed more than 40 young boys.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ukrainian Jews Consider Evacuations

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Ukrainian JewOdessa’s Jews are prepared to evacuate should the violence in the western Ukrainian city get significantly worse, several community leaders told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

Odessa’s Jewish community numbers some 30,000, down from nearly 40 percent of the city’s population before the Holocaust.

Running street battles between pro-Russian and nationalist forces claimed dozens of lives in the Black Sea port this weekend, culminating in the burning of dozens of pro-Russian protesters in the city’s trade union building on Friday evening.

The Odessa bloodshed came on the same day that Kiev launched its biggest push yet to reassert its control over separatist areas in the east, hundreds of kilometers away, where armed pro-Russian rebels have proclaimed a “People’s Republic of Donetsk.”

While Jewish community leaders are unanimous in asserting that the violence is unconnected to the Jewish community and that they do not feel specially targeted, they agreed that, should the situation deteriorate, it would be easy for the spillover to affect their constituents. Read more from this story HERE.
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Why Ukraine Should Matter to All of Us

DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA. Next March was set to be the time to elect a new leader for Ukraine.

Since the corrupt presidency of Viktor Yanukovych was brought to an end by the Ukrainian people and Russia responded by forcibly reintegrating Crimea, the election had to be brought forward to three weeks from now. The success of these elections will have reverberations that echo not through just the rest of Europe but anywhere where democracy is prized over sheer might.

The 20th century was shaped by America’s response to two totalitarian ideologies that came from Europe and which saw democracy as their sworn enemy. First there came Adolf Hitler who took authoritarianism to new heights with his Nazi party ideology of racial purity, Lebensraum – “living space” for his Third Reich, and the systematic extermination of target groups, Jews, Catholics, homosexuals or the disabled.

Then there came the very similar, albeit class-based, ideological threat of the Soviet Union and her satraps. With an ideology that saw the perfection of mankind as occurring through creation of the Communist state, the USSR was at its core committed to the direct or indirect destruction and subversion of all democratic systems.

But then, after forty years of ‘Cold War’ on November 9th 1989 came the breach of the Berlin Wall and on Christmas Day two years later, the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union. Thus was declared the End of History and the victory of the West. Read more from this story HERE.

US Air Force Rescuing Chinese Sailors

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US Airforce ParachutistA parachuting medical team and other U.S. Air Force rescuers are working to bring two badly burned Chinese sailors from a boat in the Pacific Ocean to a California hospital. . .

Maj. Sarah Schwennesen, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, said Sunday that a Venezuelan fishing boat reported finding 11 sailors floating in a raft Friday afternoon.

She said the Venezuelan crew said four sailors were badly burned. Two later died of their injuries.

Airmen from the 563rd Rescue Group parachuted into the water Saturday afternoon and used inflatable boats to reach the Venezuelan vessel, which is 1,100 nautical miles west of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Schwennesen said. They treated the injured sailors Saturday and Sunday.

Read more about the US Air Force rescuing Chinese sailors HERE.