‘We’re Here to Kill Americans,’ Benghazi Attackers Declared: Witness (+video)

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Photo Credit: GettyThe attackers on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, said they were there “to kill Americans,” a Westerner who witnessed the terrorist strike tells CBS News.

The full interview with the British security expert hired to train Libyan guards will air at 7 p.m. EDT Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

The man called himself “Morgan Jones” to protect his identity, although his face is shown on camera.

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Pakistani PM Pleads with Obama to Put an End to Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APPakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif added to growing international pressure over US drone killings on Wednesday by calling on Barack Obama to end all strikes in his country.

At the end of a long-awaited US trip designed to smooth growing tensions between the US and Pakistan, Sharif told reporters that he had “emphasised the need to end such strikes”, which are estimated to have killed between 2,525 and 3,613 people in Pakistan since 2004.

But a 2,500-word joint statement issued by the White House after the one-on-one meeting in Washington and attributed to the two leaders did not mention drone attacks, referring only to a need to respect “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

It said President Obama also “conveyed appreciation for Pakistan’s internal and regional security challenges”. Both leaders refused to take questions at the end of their two-hour meeting in the Oval Office.

In prepared remarks, Obama acknowledged that there will “inevitably be some tensions … and some misunderstandings between our two countries” but insisted the US-Pakistan relationship will continue to be a “source of strength”.

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Pope Expels German ‘Luxury Bishop’ from Diocese (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Pope Francis expelled a German bishop from his diocese on Wednesday pending the outcome of a church inquiry into his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex.

The Vatican didn’t say how long Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 53, would spend away from the diocese of Limburg but it refused calls to remove him permanently. It gave no information on where he would go or what he would do.

The Vatican said the bishop was leaving pending the outcome of a German church investigation into the expenditures and his role in the affair. Fellow bishops and lay Catholics in the diocese, however, expressed doubt that he would ever be able to return.

“This is a crisis of confidence that will be hard to overcome,” said the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guenther Geis.

Limburg’s vicar general, the Rev. Wolfgang Roesch, who had been due to start Jan. 1, will instead begin work immediately and will run the diocese during Tebartz-van Elst’s absence, the Vatican said.

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Merkel’s Call to Obama: Are You Bugging my Phone?

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Photo Credit: Yves Herman/ReutersThe furor over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.

Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be “livid” over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.

The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel’s mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.

The outrage in Berlin came days after President François Hollande of France also called the White House to confront Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.

While European leaders have generally been keen to play down the impact of the whistleblowing disclosures in recent months, events in the EU’s two biggest countries this week threatened an upward spiral of lack of trust in transatlantic relations.

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Russian Spy Agency Seeks To Expand NSA-Style Internet Surveillance

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Photo Credit: The Guardian Russian authorities are moving to expand surveillance of the Internet by requiring service providers to store all traffic temporarily and make it available to the top domestic intelligence agency.

Under an order drafted by the Communications Ministry, providers would have to install equipment that would record and save all Internet traffic for at least 12 hours and grant the security services exclusive access to the data.

President Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip over Russia since his election to a third term in March 2012 amid a wave of opposition protests, and security is being stepped up further before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The draft order, made public on Monday, is likely to deepen concerns over tighter surveillance of the Internet, where debate is much freer than in Russia’s conventional media and which security officials have said should be better controlled.

Russia drew global attention concerning a similar spying program in the United States and Britain after granting former U.S. intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

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CIA Drone Strikes Could Encourage Use by Hostile States, Lawyer Warns

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Photo Credit: Mike Theiler/EPAHuman rights lawyers have warned that alleged illegal drone attacks by the US in Pakistan and Yemen risk encouraging their use by other states in the region.

Andrea Prasow, a counter-terrorism lawyer with Human Rights Watch, said a new report with Amnesty International into evidence of strikes against civilians showed breaches of international conventions that could be exploited by hostile countries using similar technology.

“The failure to abide by international law sets a dangerous precedent for other countries,” Prasow told reporters at the launch of the report.

On Monday, Iranian media reported that authorities in Tehran had reverse-engineered a captured US drone and made a series of copies.

Naureen Shah of Amnesty echoed the growing concern in legal circles that indiscriminate US strikes will make it harder to restrain such countries in future.

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Obama Dumps Green Energy Billions on “Moderate Muslim” Country that Stones Adulterers

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagWhen Obama invited the tyrannical Sultan of Brunei to sit beneath the portrait of George Washington, it’s a wonder the painting didn’t fall off the wall.

Obama laughingly said that the Sultan had gone through “nine presidents”, which is what happens when you don’t do elections and praised the “160 years of friendship between the United States and Brunei.”

Meanwhile Obama’s pivot to Asia consisted of dumping billions on “moderate” Muslim countries like genocidal Indonesia and tyrannical Brunei for… what else… Green Energy.

Obama, in partnership with Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei and President of the Republic of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, today proposed the U.S.-Asia Pacific Comprehensive Partnership for a Sustainable Energy Future.

The United States will provide up to $6 billion to support the Partnership.

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French President Hollande Berates US Over Spying Claims

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Photo Credit: BBCFrench President Francois Hollande has expressed “deep disapproval” over claims the US National Security Agency secretly tapped phone calls in France.

In a phone conversation with US President Barack Obama, he said this was “unacceptable between friends and allies”, demanding an explanation.

The White House said the claims “raise legitimate questions”, seeking to ease French concerns.

The NSA has recently spied on 70.3m phone calls in France, it is claimed.

Officials, businesses and terror suspects are believed to have been tracked in just 30 days between 10 December last year and 8 January 2013.

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Scientists Issue Safety Warning over GM Food as Government Pushes for Public Acceptance of Controversial Crop

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Photo Credit: PAEighty-five scientists have joined forces to challenge the claims of biotech giants and the UK government that GM food is safe for humans.

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who has responsibility for food and farming, and the industry have embarked on a huge public relations exercise to win over a sceptical public to genetically modified food.

The campaign is built on an assurance that the food is safe to eat and could defeat a host of ills from malnutrition in the Third World to blindness in children.

GM supporters also insist crops are safe for the environment and to be used as animal feed.

However, these assurances have been questioned by the scientists, who warn there is a serious lack of independent research into the health effects of GM food.

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Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President’s Email

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Photo Credit: SpiegelThe NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president’s public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called “Tailored Access Operations” (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets.

That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as “top secret” said: “TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon’s public email account.”

According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.” The president’s office, the NSA reported, was now “a lucrative source.”

This operation, dubbed “Flatliquid,” is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which SPIEGEL has now had the opportunity to analyze. The case is likely to cause further strain on relations between Mexico and the United States, which have been tense since Brazilian television network TV Globo revealed in September that the NSA monitored then-presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and others around him in the summer of 2012. Peña Nieto, now Mexico’s president, summoned the US ambassador in the wake of that news, but confined his reaction to demanding an investigation into the matter.

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