Report: Al-Qaeda Planned to Blow Up US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Convention Center

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Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency cracked open an al-Qaeda plot, directed from the Gaza Strip, to carry out mega terror attacks in Israel against both US and Israeli targets, according to information the Shin Bet made available Wednesday.

Israel is holding three suspects in the plot, it added, but the key plotter is still at large. The trio were arrested three weeks ago, shortly before one or more of them were to travel to Syria for final planning of the operations, which were reportedly initiated on the direct orders of al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The planned attacks included twin suicide bombings, against the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and the main Israeli convention center in Jerusalem, where President Barack Obama gave the centerpiece speech of his Israel visit last March. Other planned attacks included targeting an Israeli bus and Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.

Iyad Abu-Sara, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem, was to be sent to Syria to gain expertise in the nuts and bolts of terror attacks. He would then facilitate the twin attacks, which were to be carried out by al-Qaeda operatives entering Israel with Russian paperwork, according to the Shin Bet. Abu-Sara is one of the trio now under arrest.

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Iranian Official on Nuke Deal: ‘We Did Not Agree to Dismantle Anything’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that “we did not agree to dismantle anything.”

Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

“The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments” under the agreement that took effect Monday, Zarif said in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum.

As part of the accord, Iran was required to dilute its stockpile of uranium that had been enriched to 20%, well above the 5% level needed for power generation but still below the level for developing a nuclear weapon.

In addition, the deal mandated that Iran halt all enrichment above 5% and “dismantle the technical connections required to enrich above 5%,” according to a White House fact sheet issued in November after the initial agreement was reached.

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The Real Scandal: Why are the Benghazi Killers Still at Large?

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Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Months and months ago, when Barack Obama could be bothered to say anything at all about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, the president promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. That was before White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the attacks as something that “happened a long time ago.”

It’s been 16 months. The U.S. government has neither captured nor killed a single participant in those attacks, which left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Why? A new report on the attacks from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, along with more than 400 pages of newly declassified congressional testimony from senior military officials, provides fresh insight. The explanation for this failure—a lack of will, combined with a shameless mischaracterization of intelligence—is almost as outrageous as the failure itself.

Since the attack in Benghazi, the Obama administration has refused to publicly identify the parties responsible. But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report confirms that the U.S. government’s investigation has turned up more and more ties to al Qaeda.

“Individuals affiliated with terrorist groups, including AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], Ansar al-Sharia, AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], and the Mohammad Jamal Network, participated in the September 11, 2012, attacks,” according to the Senate Benghazi report, prepared under the supervision of Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and signed by every Democrat on the panel.

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Benghazi Guards Refused to Protect Fleeing Americans

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The Senate’s 88-page report on the Benghazi assault provides a new detail about the role of an al-Qaida-linked organization that provided external security to the fated U.S. special mission.

According to the report, the Libyan 17th of February Brigade militia refused to “provide cover” for the U.S. security team that was trapped inside the compound.

The detail was not mentioned in the State Department-sanctioned Accountability Review Board, or ARB, investigating the Benghazi attack. The ARB paints a picture of the 17th of February Brigade as largely aiding in the evacuation of the U.S. personnel at the mission.

The 17th of February Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. facility in Benghazi, operates under the Ansar-Al-Sharia banner.

Ansar al-Sharia, tied to al-Qaida, has been implicated in carrying out the attack.

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UN: Global Prosperity is Causing Global Warming

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Growing global economies through expanded trade between rich and poor countries is driving global warming, according to a draft report from the United Nation’s climate bureaucracy. The international agency said that rich countries are “outsourcing” carbon dioxide emissions to poor countries through increasing international trade.

The draft report, obtained by the U.K.’s Guardian, argues that these “outsourced” emissions come “in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the U.S. and Europe.”

Much of those increased emissions came from coal plants in China and other developing economies that are used to power factories that produce goods for U.S. and European consumers, the U.N. report says.

“A growing share of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in developing countries is released in the production of goods and services exported, notably from upper-middle-income countries to high-income countries,” the draft report reads. “A growing share of global emissions is released in the manufacture of products that are traded across international borders.”

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Ex-Vatican Accountant Hit with New Money Laundering Charge

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

A former Vatican accountant already under house arrest and on trial for alleged corruption and attempted money laundering has been notified of fresh charges against him, Italy’s financial police said on Tuesday.

The police said in a statement that they had seized Monsignor Nunzio Scarano’s luxury 17-room apartment and blocked nearly 9.0 million euros ($12 million) on current accounts linked to the senior Italian cleric.

The Vatican in July last year said it had already frozen assets belonging to Scarano and the police on Tuesday said these funds amounted to 2.2 million euros.

“This is very significant,” the police said in a statement, a reference to unprecedented levels of cooperation between Vatican and Italian judicial authorities on a high-profile financial crime case.

Vatican bank spokesman Max Hohenberg told AFP: “All activity on his accounts over the past 10 years has been extracted, analysed and submitted to authorities.

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Poll: Two Thirds of Israelis Think Obama Will Let Iran Go Nuclear

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Photo Credit: Truth Revolt

Photo Credit: Truth Revolt

According to new poll, a huge majority of Israelis do not trust President Obama with regard to Iran, and believe Obama will allow Iran to go nuclear. Only 22 percent of Israeli voters believed that Obama would “ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon.”

Almost two-thirds of Israelis thought that statement was untrue, and 15 percent gave no answer. President Obama has just a 33 percent favorable rating in Israel, as opposed to a 50 percent disapproval rating. Even those who favor Obama are split evenly on whether or not he will prevent Iran from going nuclear.

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Russian Security Forces Searching Sochi for Suspected Terrorist

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Photo Credit: Telegraph

Photo Credit: Telegraph

Russian security forces are searching Sochi for a suspected terrorist who is feared to be planning to target the Olympic Games, according to a notice distributed throughout the city.

A description distributed to hotels in the area says that the FSB, Russia’s internal security service, has received information that Ruzanna Ibragimova, the widow of an insurgent “neutralised” by security forces, may have travelled from Dagestan to the Sochi area on January 11 or 12.

“According to our information Ms Ibragimova may be used by the ring leaders of illegal armed groups for the organisation of terrorist acts in the zone of the 2014 Olympics,” the notice says.

While the notice does not mention the term, the widows of fighters killed in the on-going conflict between Islamist separatists and Russian forces in the North Caucasus have been used in the past as suicide bombers.

Russia has deployed 40,000 police and security personnel in a “ring of steel” around Sochi to deter attacks by Islamist militants from the nearby North Caucasus republics.

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Iran ‘2 to 3 Weeks’ from Nuclear Bomb (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

If Iran breaks its deal with the West tomorrow, the country would be only two to three weeks away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Heinonen directed the safeguards division of the United Nations body charged with enforcing the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was asked Sunday on Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show about the timeframe in response to statements from Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, who boasted last week that Tehran can nix its deal with the West and resume enriching uranium to 20-percent levels within one day if it so desires.

Heinonen responded that if Iran wanted it would currently take the country “two, three weeks to have enough uranium hexafluoride high-enriched for one single weapon.”

He told Klein: “If [Iran] in reality [abrogates the deal] tomorrow, they still have quite a substantial stock of uranium hexafluoride, which is enriched to 20 percent. … And then technically, when Iran has committed to this month to certain parts of the processes in such a way these tandem cascades are not anymore connected with each other, you can indeed put them back in one day’s time.

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Iraqi Government Announces Offensive Against Al Qaeda

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Iraqi government forces and allied tribal militias launched an all-out offensive Sunday to push Al Qaeda militants from a provincial capital, an assault that killed or wounded some 20 police officers and government-allied tribesmen, officials said.

Since late December, members of Iraq’s Al Qaeda branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni western province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah, along with other non-Al Qaeda groups that also oppose the Shiite-led government.

A military officer and two local officials said fierce clashes raged through Sunday night in parts of Ramadi, but gave no details.

The two Anbar officials said 20 police officers and allied tribesmen were either killed or wounded during the assault. The officials were unable to provide a breakdown of the casualties.

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