Surrender: Obama Admin. Accepts China’s New Controversial Air Zone

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Photo Credit: Foreign PolicyTop Obama administration and Pentagon officials signaled a willingness to temporarily accept China’s new, controversial air defense identification zone on Wednesday. Those officials expressed disapproval for the way in which the Asian power has flexed its muscles, and cautioned China not to implement the zone. But they also carved out wiggle room in which the United States and China ultimately could find common ground on the issue, indicating that they may be willing to live with the zone for now — as long as China backs off its demand that all aircraft traveling through it check in first.

“It wasn’t the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing,” said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s highest-ranking military officer. “It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing.”

That’s a change from just a few days ago, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden demanded that China take back its declaration of the zone. And it’s another demonstration that China’s recent decisions have forced the United States to tread carefully. On Wednesday, Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing for more than five hours, according to a senior administration official. In brief public remarks midway through the marathon session, Biden didn’t mention the air defense zone at all.

Japan, a vital American ally, has expressed fury over the Chinese move and ordered its commercial airliners not to provide information about their flight paths to the Chinese military. By contrast, the United States made a point of flying a pair of B-52s through it last week, but seems to have accepted that China will keep the zone in place indefinitely. U.S. officials have shifted their focus instead on preventing a potential military clash between Japan and China.

In meetings in Beijing on Wednesday, Biden laid out the U.S. position in detail, reiterating that the United States does not recognize the new zone and has deep concerns about it, a senior administration official said. Biden told Xi that the United States wants China to take steps to lower tensions in the region, avoid enforcement actions that could lead to crisis, and to establish communication with Japan and other countries in the region to avoid altercations, the administration official added. Privately, Biden did not call for the air defense identification zone it to be rolled back — something administration officials had done Monday while Biden was visiting Japan. Instead, the vice president asked the Chinese leader to be careful about how his country operated the zone going forward.

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CIA Witnesses Offer More Evidence Benghazi Attack Planned

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCIA personnel who testified Tuesday on the Benghazi attack provided new evidence that it was premeditated, telling lawmakers that the deadly mortar strike on the CIA annex began within minutes of a rescue team’s arrival, Fox News has learned.

According to the closed-door testimony on the Hill by two CIA personnel, a small team was sent on the night of the attack from Tripoli and got held up at the Benghazi airport. After they were eventually cleared, they arrived at the annex. Witnesses testified that it did not seem coincidental that the mortar attack began soon after.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., told Fox News after the closed, classified session that all of the witnesses (eight total witnesses have now testified in these sessions) were on the same page about the nature of the mortar attack, which killed former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty on the annex roof.

“These were trained people and … it was an attack. It wasn’t over any type of film or propaganda,” Westmoreland emphasized, referring to the administration’s initial claims that an anti-Islam film triggered protests that led to the attack.

“We don’t know why the administration would have ever thought any differently,” Westmoreland said. “Other than that them and the State Department were trying to make sure that they were covered because of the unpreparedness they were in.”

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Highly Radioactive Cargo Stolen in Mexico, Could be Used for Dirty Bomb (+video)

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A truck carrying “extremely dangerous” material used in medical treatment has been stolen in Mexico, officials said.

The truck was transporting cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage facility when it was stolen in Tepojaco near Mexico City Monday, the International Atomic

Energy Agency said in a statement. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope and was being used in radiotherapy.

Mexican authorities are conducting a search for the material and have issued a statement to alert the public, the IAEA said.

Read more about this dirty bomb risk HERE.

The Guardian Newspaper Could Face Terrorism Charges for Publishing Snowden Docs

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Luke MacGregorBy Giuseppe Macri.

Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism head told parliament Tuesday that the UK-based Guardian newspaper could face terrorism charges for publishing secret surveillance material leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick testified before Parliament about the investigation shortly after Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s hearing, where he stated the newspaper had only released one percent of the Snowden documents so far.

“It appears possible that some people may have committed offenses. We need to establish whether they have or haven’t. That involves scoping a huge amount of material,” Dick said according to The Guardian.

Dick told British lawmakers the newspaper might have violated laws for moving and writing about secret documents that could have the potential to endanger the lives of British spies.

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images Guardian editor defends publication of Snowden files

By Anthony Faiola.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on Tuesday vigorously defended his decision to publish a series of articles based on the secret files leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, telling a parliamentary committee that the right to continue pursuing the story goes to the heart of press freedoms and democracy in Britain.

Rusbridger also told lawmakers that the Guardian had published only 1 percent of the 58,000 files it had received from Snowden.

“I would not expect us to be publishing a huge amount more,” he said.

The hearing on the Guardian’s handling of intelligence data leaked by Snowden, who is living in self-imposed exile in Moscow, drew the attention of free-speech advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. Rusbridger faced more than an hour of questioning during the Home Affairs Select Committee’s counterterrorism hearing, testifying in an occasionally combative public grilling of both the Guardian and its editor.

Along with The Washington Post, the Guardian — a London-based news outlet with a print circulation under 200,000 but online readers numbering in the many millions — was the first to publish reports based on the Snowden leaks. In response, British authorities have acted far more aggressively than U.S. or other European officials, launching what Rusbridger and international free-speech advocates have decried as a campaign of “intimidation” against the paper. Actions taken include the coerced destruction of Snowden data being held at the Guardian’s London headquarters and public denunciations by Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as the decision to summon Rusbridger for questioning by lawmakers on Tuesday.

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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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