After 12 Yrs of U.S. Occupation, Afghanistan Sets Record for Growing Opium

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Photo Credit: AP/Abdul KhaleqAfter 12 years of occupation by U.S. military forces, Afghanistan set a record for growing opium poppies in 2013, according to newly released data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached a sobering record high in 2013,” said the UNODC. “According to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey, cultivation amounted to some 209,000 hectares, outstripping the earlier record in 2007 of 193,000 hectares, and representing a 36 per cent increase over 2012.”

In fact, according to the latest worldwide data on opium-poppy cultivation, Afghanistan dedicates more land to the cultivation of opium poppies than all of the rest of the world combined.

According to the UNODC’s “World Drug Report,” published in May–which included data for the world’s primary opium producing regions through 2011–the 131,000 hectares that was devoted to opium cultivation in Afghanistan that year was more than the combined 76,500 hectares used to cultivate opium poppies in other places. This included the 43,600 hectares in Myanmar, the 12,000 hectares in Mexico, the 4,100 hectares in Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the 362 hectares in Pakistan, the 338 hectares in Columbia, and the combined 16,100 hectares under in various other countries.

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Iran: Quran has Marked Israelis as ‘Rabid Dogs and Pigs’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller In the wake of news that Israel will send a delegation to Washington, D.C. to influence the Obama administration’s international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, the Islamic Republic is stepping up its attacks on the Jewish state.

“This vicious temperament of dogs and pigs is you (Israel),” said Ayatollah Mohammad Imami Kashani, a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that appoints the supreme leader, at Tehran’s interim Friday prayer. “The Quran has marked on your foreheads that you will be humiliated. The Zionist officials are like animals, and truly as rogue thugs they do whatever they want, killing people, creating bloodshed and destroying whatever they want.”

Kashani said at this week’s Friday prayers sermon in Tehran that whenever Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears on television, “all of the world hates you. You are hated, humiliated and despicable and,” the ayatollah added in a putrid insult to make to a Jew, “have been immersed in the flesh of rabid dogs and pigs.”

Kashani also had harsh words for the Obama administration: “Nations of the world are the enemies of the Zionists and (America’s support of Israel) will have you share the misery of the Zionists.”

Kashani stated that uranium enrichment is Iran’s right and that America, Britain and Israel lie when they say Iran wants the nuclear bomb.

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Study Finds Increased Risk of Breast Cancer after Abortion in Chinese Women

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Photo Credit: LifeSiteNewsPro-abortion advocates have relentlessly denied a link between abortion and breast cancer, but a new study has emerged from China that seems to show that such a link not only exists, but that the risk rises with each abortion a woman has.

Dr. Joel Brind, professor of endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York and a director at the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, called the findings a “real game changer” for deniers of the so-called ABC link.

The study, titled “A meta-analysis of the association between induced abortion and breast cancer risk among Chinese females” was published this week in Cancer Causes and Control, a peer-reviewed international cancer journal.

The research was conducted by Yubei Huang et al. from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Tianjin Medical University Cancer Hospital.

The researchers say they were initially puzzled by their findings, stating that Chinese women “historically” have had lower rates of breast cancer compared to women from western countries such as the US.

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U.S. Airlines Complying with China’s New Airspace Demands

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Photo Credit: AP via Kyodo NewsU.S. airline officials say they are complying with new State Department guidance urging carriers to alert China before any flights pass through that country’s new self-declared air-defense zone.

Airline officials said Saturday that compliance would not disrupt travel to Asia, since they already communicate with any government when crossing through or over foreign territory.

“U.S. airlines’ flights are operating normally,” said Katie Connell, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, an industry trade group. “We are in communication with both U.S. and Chinese civil aviation authorities and continue to follow standard international flight notification protocol and procedures.”

Although the U.S. has not recognized China’s new claim, the State Department on Friday said it had advised U.S. airlines to comply with China’s demand for advance notification of any flights through a new “air defense identification zone,” which Chinese officials first declared on Nov. 23.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said U.S. air carriers were being advised to take all steps they consider necessary to operate safely in the East China Sea region.

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U.S. Government Urges North Korea to Release 85-year-old American War Vet

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Photo Credit: CNN The U.S. government pleaded Saturday for North Korean authorities to release 85-year-old Merrill Newman, with a spokeswoman saying officials are “deeply concerned” about him and another American being held in the isolated East Asian nation.

“Given Mr. Newman’s advanced age and health conditions, we urge (North Korea) to release Mr. Newman so he may return home and reunite with his family,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

Washington’s plea came on the day North Korean state media released print stories and video showing what they called Newman’s “apology.” University of California, Berkeley professor Steven Weber characterized it as “highly scripted political theater.”

So how did an elderly retired financial consultant and Korean War veteran become the central figure in an international dispute? Why is there such animosity still tied to a conflict, the Korean War, that ended six decades ago? And why is this all unfolding now?

Weber, a former consultant to the U.S. Commission on National Security, has a theory: “They are trying to get the Western media to pay attention.”

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US: American Fighters in Syria a Security Risk

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Photo Credit: AP/Wake County Sheriff’s Office via The News & Observer Federal officials say Americans are joining the bloody civil war in Syria, raising the chances they could become radicalized by al-Qaida-linked militant groups and return to the U.S. as battle-hardened security risks.

The State Department says it has no estimates of how many Americans have taken up weapons to fight military units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad in the conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people over 2 ½ years. Other estimates — from an arm of the British defense consultant IHS Jane’s and from experts at a nonprofit think tank in London — put the number of Americans at a couple dozen. The IHS group says al-Qaida-linked fighters number about 15,000, with total anti-Assad force at 100,000 or more.

This year, at least three Americans have been charged with planning to fight beside Jabhat al-Nusrah — a radical Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist group — against Assad. The most recent case involves a Pakistan-born North Carolina man arrested on his way to Lebanon.

At a Senate homeland security committee hearing this month, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., said: “We know that American citizens as well as Canadian and European nationals have taken up arms in Syria, in Yemen and in Somalia. The threat that these individuals could return home to carry out attacks is real and troubling.”

The hearing came about two weeks after the FBI and other officers arrested Basit Sheikh, 29, at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport on charges he was on his way to join Jabhat al-Nusrah. Sheikh, a legal resident of the United States, had lived quietly, without a criminal record, in a Raleigh suburb for five years before his Nov. 2 arrest. A similar arrest came in April in Chicago. And in September, authorities in Virginia released an Army veteran accused of fighting alongside the group after a secret plea deal.

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Despite Changes to One-Child Policy, Chinese Parents Say Having Two Kids is Too Expensive

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Photo Credit: Stringer Shanghai / ReutersDespite China announcing changes to its strict one-child policy, many young parents say they will not choose to have a second child due to the high cost of living in modern-day China.

“Giving birth to a second child is not difficult, but we do not have the energy anymore,” said Wang Tao, a 35-year-old native of Beijing, who is married and has a 5-year-old daughter.

“We lack a safe social net to support a family with two children,” Wang added. “China doesn’t provide a pension or free education,” he said while ticking off a list of things that make having a larger family a financial burden.

After more than 30 years of the strict policy aimed at controlling population growth, the new policy will allow couples to have two children if one of them is an only child.

But Wang is not alone in his views, according to a survey conducted by the Communist Party controlled “People’s Daily” newspaper.

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North Korea and Iran Move Forward with Missile Technology Designed to Strike US

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Photo Credit: APIranian collaboration with North Korea on a new rocket booster for long-range missiles undermines the deal with Tehran on its nuclear program, key Senate and House Republicans said on Tuesday.

“While the president was undertaking his secret negotiations—which Congress wasn’t informed of—he had to know Iran and North Korea were testing new engines for ballistic missiles to target the United States,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.

Rogers said in a statement that despite sharp budget cuts, U.S. space monitoring systems would not miss the development of the new booster engine.

“Every day the president’s deal looks worse and worse,” Rogers said when asked about the Tehran-Pyongyang missile collaboration.

The chairman, whose subcommittee is in charge of overseeing U.S. strategic weapons, ballistic missile defenses, and space programs, made the comments in response to a report Tuesday revealing that Iran is covertly working with North Korea on a new 80-ton rocket booster that can be used in both nations’ long-range missile programs.

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Ayatollah: Do Not Include Israel in Negotiations, ‘Must be wiped off face of the earth’

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Photo Credit: WND An influential Iranian cleric has warned President Obama not to include Israel in any nuclear negotiations because the Jewish state must be destroyed.

“What is visible is that Obama has agreed to include the fake Zionist regime (Israel) in future negotiations,” said Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts.

“However, we firmly believe [Israel] must be wiped off the face of the earth and we don’t recognize [its existence].” Khatami said according to IRNA, the official news agency of the Islamic Republic.

The Assembly of Experts is responsible for appointing the regime’s supreme leader.

After the six-month interim deal was reached last weekend, Obama asked in a telephone call to Benjamin Netanyahu that the Israeli prime minister “take a breather” in his vocal denunciation of the agreement. In return, the two agreed that Israel would send a delegation, headed by Israeli National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen, to Washington to discuss strategy for a permanent agreement.

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Dutch King Declares Welfare State ‘Dead’! (+video)

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In an address to the people of the Netherlands earlier this year, the Dutch King Willem-Alexander declared the welfare state ‘dead,’ and said that the people of the Netherlands needed to look more after themselves in a ‘participatory society’ without depending so much on government.

Apparently, the Dutch are, well, going Dutch.

Commenting on the remarkable turn of events in European politics was the website “Libertarian Republic, “…the progressive, post-World War II welfare state has failed and its continuation is not financially possible.”

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