And The Country Posing The Greatest Threat to Peace as 2013 Ends is …

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Shakil Adil

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Shakil Adil

The past year witnessed bloodshed in Syria and Iraq, turmoil in Egypt, anarchy in Central Africa, threats by a nuclear-armed North Korea and Chinese military posturing, but as 2013 ends a global poll finds that the country seen as representing the greatest threat to peace today is … the United States.

Not only did the U.S. top the list with an aggregate of 24 percent, but the runner-up threat country, Pakistan, was way behind at eight percent. China was third at six percent, followed by North Korea, Iran and Israel at five percent each.

The survey of opinions across 65 countries by pollster Win/Gallup International recorded some of the strongest anti-American sentiment, predictably, in countries widely regarded as rivals, led by Russia (where 54 percent of respondents said the U.S. was the greatest threat to peace) and China (49 percent).

But the view that the U.S. poses the greatest threat to peace was also strongly held in some purported U.S. allies – such as NATO partners Greece and Turkey (45 percent each), and Pakistan (44 percent), which is also a top recipient of U.S. aid.

Two other countries where strongly negative opinion of the U.S. was found were Bosnia, a candidate for European Union membership (49 percent), and, closer to home, Argentina (46 percent).

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Pope ‘Shocked’ By Gay Adoption, Urges Bishop to Speak Out Against Legislation Permitting It

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Photo Credit: Sunday Times of Malta

Photo Credit: Sunday Times of Malta

Pope Francis is “shocked” about legislation in Malta that would allow homosexual couples to adopt children and encouraged the auxiliary bishop of that island nation, Charles J. Scicluna, to “speak out” against the proposal, the bishop told the Sunday Times of Malta on Dec. 29.

In his Christmas Day sermon, Bishop Scicluna had defended the Catholic Church’s teaching against same-sex “marriage” and gay adoption. When asked why he would discuss such a topic as part of a Christmas homily, Bishop Scicluna said he had met with Pope Francis on Dec. 12 and the pope advised him to speak boldly on the subject.

“We discussed many aspects,” said Bishop Scicluna. “And when I raised the issue that’s worrying me as a bishop [gay adoption], he encouraged me to speak out.”

“[T]hat is exactly what I did in my Christmas sermon,” said Bishop Scicluna. “My sermon was not about the rights of gay people but about children’s rights.”

In his Christmas Day homily, the bishop had said, “The message of Christmas remains always a current message. It beckons and invites us to seek and recognize the true Wisdom that the manger of our Lord Jesus embraces ….

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German Magazine Claims NSA Hacking Unit Uses ‘James Bond-style Spy Gear to Obtain Data

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A German magazine, citing internal documents, claims the NSA’s hacking unit uses James Bond-style spy gear to obtain data, including intercepting computer deliveries and outfitting them with espionage software.

Der Spiegel’s revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.

Citing the internal documents, the magazine said Sunday that TAO’s mission was “Getting the ungettable,” and quoted an unnamed intelligence official as saying that TAO had gathered “some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen.”

“During the middle part of the last decade, the special unit succeeded in gaining access to 258 targets in 89 countries — nearly everywhere in the world,” the report said. “In 2010, it conducted 279 operations worldwide.”

Der Spiegel said TAO had a catalog of high-tech gadgets for particularly hard-to-crack cases, including computer monitor cables specially modified to record what is being typed across the screen, USB sticks secretly fitted with radio transmitters to broadcast stolen data over the airwaves, and fake base stations intended to intercept mobile phone signals on the go.

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‘Completely False’: Sources on Ground in Benghazi Challenge NYT Report

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press.

But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks.

“It was a coordinated attack. It is completely false to say anything else. … It is completely a lie,” one witness to the attack told Fox News.

The controversial Times report has stirred a community that normally remains out of sight and wrestles with how to reveal the truth, without revealing classified information.

Fox News has learned that the attack on the consulate started with fighters assembling to conduct an assault.

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Suicide Bomber Strikes Russia. Another ‘Black Widow?’

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Photo Credit: Sergei Karpov/Reuters

Photo Credit: Sergei Karpov/Reuters

A suicide bomber detonated the equivalent of over 20 pounds of TNT near the entrance to a railway station in the central Russian city of Volgograd Sunday, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens.

The blast, which blew out the front windows of the huge Stalin-era structure, was recorded by CCTV and rebroadcast by the state-funded RT network.

In a statement the Kremlin’s Investigative Committee, Russia’s top police body, said that the bombing was “according to available evidence” the work of a female suicide bomber who triggered the device, which was loaded with shrapnel, as she approached the metal detectors near the station’s entrance and became nervous when she spotted a police officer. According to the statement, the casualties might have been far greater if she had succeeded in penetrating into the inner waiting area, which was crammed with New Year’s travelers preparing to board trains.

No one has claimed responsibility.

A similar bombing barely two months ago, which demolished a Volgograd city bus and killed six people, was revealed to be the work of a female suicide bomber from Russia’s insurgency-wracked southern province of Dagestan. Such women have been dubbed “black widows” because they often turn out to be family members of Islamist rebels killed by Russian security forces, recruited to stage revenge attacks on “soft” Russian targets.

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It’s Ironic that Some Really Thick Ice has Stonewalled this Ship – Here’s Why (+video)

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Photo Credit: 23am.com/flickr

Photo Credit: 23am.com/flickr

A Chinese icebreaker ship sent to Antarctica for the purpose of rescuing a trapped expedition vessel caught in ice was forced to call off the mission Friday — because it got stuck in ice.

According to Fox News, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the Chinese “Snow Dragon” came within six nautical miles from the Russian vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy Friday, but could not go any further because the ice was too thick.

Zhao Yanping, second captain of the Snow Dragon, told CNN the ship was not technically stuck, just not advancing forward because of ice up to ten feet thick.

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Russian-Led Alliance to Spend $1 Billion on Weapons in 2014

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Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AP

Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/AP

As Russia prepares to assume the rotating presidency of a military alliance of former Soviet states in 2014, a senior official announced plans Thursday to spend $1 billion on weapons for the bloc’s rapid-reaction force.

Headquartered in Moscow, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) currently comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and is often described as a Russia-led rival to NATO – and a bulwark against the Western alliance’s eastward expansion.

Evolving out of a Commonwealth of Independent States’ security treaty, it was established in its current form in 2002, during President Vladimir Putin’s earlier term at the Kremlin, a period that saw Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania join NATO in 2004, and Georgia and Ukraine explore the possibility to doing so too, to Moscow’s ire.

Under its charter, member-states are committed to defend each other if attacked and may also not join other military alliances.

A major CSTO development was a 2009 agreement to establish a joint rapid-reaction force, “to repulse military aggression, conduct anti-terrorist operations, fight transnational crime and drug trafficking, and neutralize the effects of natural disasters,” according to the RIA Novosti state news agency.

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Ice Foils Rescue Attempt of Russian Ship Stranded in Antarctica

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Photo Credit: John "Pathfinder" Lester

Photo Credit: John “Pathfinder” Lester

A Chinese icebreaker trying to reach a Russian ship trapped in Antarctica has been halted by thick ice within sight of the stricken vessel, a passenger and Australian rescue officials said on Saturday.

The Snow Dragon was one of three icebreakers dispatched to free the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which became stranded far south of Tasmania on Tuesday in ice driven by strong winds.

“Unfortunately Snow Dragon can’t get through. It’s standing by and waiting on another vessel to help. Everyone (is) well,” Chris Turney, an Australian professor who helped organize the voyage on the Russian ship, said via Twitter on Saturday

Earlier, Turney posted a photograph apparently showing the Chinese vessel, a speck on the horizon beyond an expanse of ice.

“It has encountered heavy ice and it’s not safe for them to continue to the Russian vessel for their own safety,” Andrea Hayward-Maher from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the rescue effort, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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Report: Terrorists Freed in Deal Try to Kill Jews

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Recent terrorist events in Israel were orchestrated in part by jihadists freed by the Jewish state in the prisoner exchange that saw the release of captured Israeli solider Gilad Shalit, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The officials did not specify which jihadists were involved, but they said there is information Hamas terrorists released in the 2011 deal helped to plan last Sunday’s thwarted bus bombing in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam.

The same terrorist apparatus was behind the planning of several other recent attacks, including attempts this week to plant bombs near the Gaza-Israel border and the stabbing of an Israeli police officer in the West Bank.

The deal between Israel and Hamas that saw the release of Shalit called for the freedom of 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners, including terrorists directly responsible for the murder of Jews.

The first phase of the swap deal was executed in October 2011, when Israel released 450 prisoners, transferring some to the West Bank and Gaza while others were exiled abroad.

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Report: Islamists’ Slaughter of Syrian Christians Ignored by Obama, Major Media

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The West has ignored the killing of Christians in Syria, a report said.

The Middle East Forum asserted that the United States and other NATO countries were overlooking reports of the killing of Christians by Islamist rebels. In a report, the forum cited the raid of Islamist units supported by the United States of the Christian town of Sadad in late October.

“One of the worst Christian massacres — complete with mass graves, tortured-to-death women and children, and destroyed churches — recently took place in Syria, at the hands of the U.S.-supported jihadi rebels; and

the U.S. government and its mainstream media mouthpiece are, as usual, silent — that is, when not actively trying to minimize matters,” the report said.

Author Raymond Ibrahim said the Islamist rebels held Sadad for more than a week and killed 45 Christians. The town’s 14 churches were said to have been destroyed in what could be seen in the videos released by the militias.

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