North Korean Men Ordered to Get Kim Jong Un’s Haircut

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Photo Credit: Reuters; Getty Images

Photo Credit: Reuters; Getty Images

By Bob Fredericks.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — and in Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, that’s now an order!

All North Korean men are now required to get the same haircut as their nutjob leader — shaved close on the back and sides, with longer hair on top brushed back off the forehead.

The state-ordered guidelines were introduced in the capital, Pyongyang, roughly two weeks ago, according to South Korean media.

And the rule is now being enforced nationwide.

But not all of the dictator’s subjects are impressed with the strongman’s inverted bowl-style ’do.

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Putin reinstitutes a Soviet-era fitness program while Kim Jong Un forces everyone to get his haircut

By Erika Johnsen.

I happened across both of these stories today out of Everybody’s Favorite Saber-Rattling Gulag State and America’s Bestest Frenemy, and I don’t even… obviously, “palate cleanser” is not the right term here. Whatever the antonym of “palate cleanser” is, this is that.

Until now, everyone in North Korea had to choose their haircuts from a list of state-approved styles. But now, all men in the hermit kingdom will be required to sport the same hairstyle as supreme leader Kim Jong Un, the BBC reports.

Pyongyang introduced the new law two weeks ago but is now rolling it out across the country. Unfortunately, some North Koreans may not be thrilled about the new look. According to a former Pyongyang resident now living in China, the Kim Jong Un cut is unpopular because it apparently resembles the style of Chinese smugglers. “Until the mid-2000s, we called it the ‘Chinese smuggler haircut,” the source told the Korea Times.

Women, however, will still be able to choose from a small variety of state-sanctioned hairstyles. So, there’s that. You’re welcome?

And over in Russia, via Charles Recknagel:

If you could turn back the hands of time, what would you wish for? For Russian President Vladimir Putin, it seems to be to return to the days of mass physical fitness. Not just of physical-education training in schools—which already exists in Russia—but of mass calisthenics in stadiums, mass parades of athletes through Moscow’s Red Square, and fluttering banners with slogans urging ‘Everyone to the Starting Line!’

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Rumsfeld: U.S. Ties with Karzai ‘Gone Downhill Like a Toboggan’ Under Obama (+video)

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Photo Credit: DOD / Helene C. StikkelDonald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush, blames poor diplomacy by the Obama administration for the current strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“Our relationship with Karzai and with Afghanistan was absolutely first-rate in the Bush administration,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren on Monday. “It has gone down hill like a toboggan ever since the Obama administration came in.”

Rumsfeld pointed to the fact that the Obama administration has failed to get Karzai to sign an agreement that would allow some U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014, when combat ends.

The U.S. has status of forces agreements with more than a hundred countries, Rumsfeld noted. “A trained ape can get a status of forces agreement,” he said. “It does not take a genius. And we have so mismanaged that relationship.”

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Malaysian Airlines Missing Plane Gave Off Unexplained Final ‘Ping’

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Photo Credit: Andrew Winning/ReutersThe crashed Malaysia Airlines flight gave one last unexplained signal eight minutes after its final “ping”, possibly the result of the plane entering its “catastrophic phase” as it plunged into the Indian Ocean, investigators have said.

As families of its 239 passengers demanded “proof” of the plane’s demise, Malaysian authorities presented analysis by Inmarsat, the British telecommunications company, of satellite data to explain its conclusion that the plane crashed into remote waters 18 days ago and left no survivors.

No confirmed wreckage from the plane has been found during a multinational air and sea search in waters about 1,500 miles south-west of Perth, Western Australia. The search was temporarily called off on Tuesday due to adverse weather.

In unprecedented scenes, up to 100 angry relations of flight MH370’s Chinese passengers descended on the Malaysian embassy in Beijing, hurling water bottles and chanting for two hours until a diplomat emerged to accept a letter of protest at the lack of information.

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DHS Giving Illegal Immigrant ‘Petty’ Criminals Second Chance in Waiver Application Process

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eric ThayerAre you an illegal immigrant whose waiver to stay in the country was denied because of your criminal past? Well, you’re in luck, because the Obama Administration may let you stay in the country anyway.

In a guidance distributed to congressional offices and obtained by The Daily Caller, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it is reopening cases in which applications for provisional unlawful presence waivers were denied to criminals.

According to the notice, USCIS had determined that applicants should not be denied an I-601A waiver due to a past criminal offense so long as it “falls under the petty offense or youthful offender exceptions or is not considered a crime involving moral turpitude.”Last week, USCIS began reopening waiver applications denied due ‘solely’ to a prior criminal offense before January 24, 2014, “in order to determine whether there is reason to believe the prior criminal offense might render the applicant inadmissible.”

The notice does not specify what types of crimes constitute a “petty offense,” and defines neither “youthful offender” nor “a crime involving moral turpitude.” Neither DHS nor USCIS responded to TheDC’s requests for comment.

The provisional unlawful presence waiver process allows illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens to overcome their inadmissibility due to their illegal status so long as they meet all the eligibility requirements outside of being in the country illegally. Prior to 2013, people had to return to their home countries to apply for these waivers.

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Flight 370: Storm of Emotions Over Lives ‘Lost’ as Storm at Sea Delays Search (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP / Andy WongFor families whose loved ones were aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, the past day has been full of news they were dreading.

First, a grim-faced Malaysian Prime Minister confirmed their worst fears, announcing Flight 370 went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

Then, even as investigators seemed closer than ever to finding the plane, stormy weather forced Australian authorities to call off a day of searching for the Boeing 777.

“It’s almost felt like a miniature roller coaster within the day,” said James Wood, whose brother Philip was one of three American passengers on the plane.

Families are stuck in a “holding pattern,” he told CNN’s “AC360.”

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529 Morsi Supporters Sentenced to Death in Egypt

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Photo Credit: AFPAn Egyptian court sentenced 529 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to death on Monday after just two hearings, in the largest mass sentencing in the country’s modern history.

The shock verdict, which came amid a sweeping crackdown on Morsi’s supporters since his overthrow by the army last July, is likely to be overturned on appeal, legal experts said.

The defendants in the southern province of Minya are part of a larger group of more than 1,200 alleged Islamists accused of killing policemen and rioting on August 14, after police killed hundreds of protesters while dispersing two Cairo protest camps.

Of the 529 defendants sentenced to death, only 153 are in custody.

The rest were tried in their absence and have the right to a retrial if they turn themselves in.

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Canadian Man in Hospital with Ebola-Like Virus

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Photo Credit: AFPThe man had recently returned from Liberia in the west African region, currently suffering a deadly outbreak of an unidentified haemorrhagic fever.

He is in isolation in critical condition in Saskatoon, the largest city in Saskatchewan province.

A provincial medical official said there was no risk to the public.

Dr Denise Werker, the province’s deputy chief medical officer, declined to say how long the man had been in Africa but said he only fell ill after returning to Canada.

She said that was in line with the profile of common deadly haemorrhagic fever viruses Lassa fever and Ebola, which have an incubation period of up to 21 days.

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Biden Blames Putin Homophobia for Crimea Invasion

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Photo Credit: CNNBiden links Russia’s anti-gay laws to incursion into Ukraine

By Kevin Liptak.

Russia’s “gay propaganda” law that makes it illegal to tell children about gay rights is linked to the nation’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea, Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday night.

Speaking at a gala in Los Angeles for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, Biden suggested countries that don’t respect the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people also disregard borders.

“As the great Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov said, ‘A country that does not respect the rights of its citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbors,’ and we’re seeing that today, we’re seeing that today in Ukraine,” the vice president said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Vladi­mir Putin, Russia’s spy in chief

By Jim Hoagland.

Shake hands with Vladimir Putin, as I have three times, and you do not feel you are in the presence of a master strategist or a visionary ready to change history with his ideas. Putin comes across in conversation as vain and petulant, with a taste for cruelly needling others.

This is key to understanding where the Crimea crisis goes next. The Russian Supreme Spy will probe for weaknesses and exploit them by buying, bullying or backstabbing his adversaries. Like all spies, he assumes there is a little treachery, and a lot of larceny, in us all. Proving that is what makes him tick.

Russia’s move to slice Crimea from Ukraine was an example of “black ops,” as Tom Donilon, President Obama’s astute former national security adviser, put it over the weekend. The White House may be going to school on the espionage novels of John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum rather than the memoirs of Dean Acheson and George Kennan.

The available evidence suggests that the former KGB colonel did not set out to restart the Cold War. He is not operating from a grand design to dismember Ukraine, though he would greedily pocket that outcome if it happens.

For now, he intends to extend his invasion deep into Ukraine’s east only if events encourage or, in his view, force him to do so. He acts out of opportunism and an obsession with inflicting payback on his professional rivals. He is, however, containable if confronted with consistency and clarity.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Sergei GritsUkraine fears Russia ‘ready to attack’

By Dmitry ZAKS.

Ukraine’s Western-backed leaders voiced fears on Sunday of an imminent Russian invasion of the eastern industrial heartland following the fall of their last airbase in Crimea to defiant Kremlin troops.

Saturday’s takeover involving armoured personnel carriers and stun grenades provided the most spectacular show of force since the Kremlin sent troops into the heavily Russified peninsula three weeks ago before sealing its annexation Friday.

Alarm about a push outside Crimea by Moscow’s overwhelming forces — now conducting drills at Ukraine’s eastern gate — were fanned further Sunday by a call by its self-declared premier for Russians across the ex-Soviet country to rise up against Kiev’s rule.

The interim leaders in Kiev fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin — flushed with expansionist fervour — is developing a sense of impunity after being hit by only limited EU and US sanctions for taking the Black Sea cape.

“The aim of Putin is not Crimea but all of Ukraine… His troops massed at the border are ready to attack at any moment,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief Andriy Parubiy told a mass unity rally in Kiev.

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How Sanctions Against Russia Could Signal the Beginning of ‘World War III’

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Photo Credit; AP Photo/Alexander ZemlianichenkoRussia is preparing to fight World War III against the United States, not with conventional weapons but with the American dollar, a financial analyst told TheBlaze.

Kevin Freeman, a global financial analyst with expertise in financial warfare and terrorism, warned that Russia, along with allies like China, could cripple the U.S. financial system.

It’s not a theory but a “very real reality” that should not be ignored, he said.

“The real risk is if we go after them with economic weapons, they come back after us and this creates World War III,” said Freeman, who has consulted for the Pentagon, CIA and FBI. “This is a very tough game of chicken that we’re playing, and Putin is serious.”

On Wednesday, The Blaze TV’s For The Record investigative news magazine show will examine the global impact of the Ukraine crisis in “Resistance” (8 p.m. ET). For The Record will take viewers into Ukraine and reveal firsthand accounts of the deadly violence that has gripped the country, and explain how the international tug of war over Crimea could change the world.

Read more from this story HERE.

Physicist: To Deny Creation is To Deny Scientific Fact

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Photo Credit: WNDAn Israeli physicist says the breakthrough scientific discovery of further evidence of the Big Bang theory, which some are calling “cosmology’s missing link,” confirms the universe was created.

“One thing the announcement does do is make it clear that the universe had a definite starting point – a creation – as described in the book of Genesis,” Bar Ilan University physics Professor Nathan Aviezer told the Times of Israel.

“To deny this now is to deny scientific fact.”

A team of scientists headed by astronomer John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced Monday it had found the evidence it was seeking to support the theory that the universe had a beginning.

The New York Times’ headlined it story “Space ripples reveal Big Bang’s smoking gun.”

Read more from this story HERE.