Snake Escaped from Pet Shop ‘Strangles’ Two Young Boys to Death in Canada

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Photo Credit: ALAMYThe two young boys, aged five and seven, were sleeping at a friend’s apartment late on Sunday in the small town of Campbellton when they were surprised by the snake.

It had escaped from a pet store that specialised in exotic animals located on the floor below the apartment.

“The preliminary investigation has led police to believe that a large exotic snake had escaped its enclosure at the store sometime overnight, and got into the ventilation system, then into the upstairs apartment,” police said in a statement.

“It’s believed the two boys were strangled by the snake.”

A New Brunswick police spokesman declined to give further details on the size of the snake or whether signs of strangulation were apparent on the boys.

Read more from this story HERE.

Japan Nuclear Body says Radioactive Water at Fukushima an ‘Emergency’

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Photo Credit: ReutersHighly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters…

“Right now, we have an emergency,” he said…

It was not immediately clear how much of a threat the contaminated groundwater could pose. In the early weeks of the disaster, the Japanese government allowed Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Co] to dump tens of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water into the Pacific in an emergency move…

“Until we know the exact density and volume of the water that’s flowing out, I honestly can’t speculate on the impact on the sea,” said Mitsuo Uematsu from the Center for International Collaboration, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo.

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Egyptian Anti-Obama Video Goes Viral, Blames Him for Siding with Muslim Brotherhood (+video)

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US President Barack Obama appears to have angered supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, as well as supporters of the army coup that toppled him on July 3.

Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is at the vanguard of the street protests against Morsi’s ouster, claim the US supported the coup. Those opposed to the Brotherhood claim Washington has been and still is supporting the Islamists.

An example of the vitriol in the country can be seen in a new video clip featuring a song by Egyptian performer Sama Elmasry. Titled “You Obama, Your Father, Mother,” it attacks the US president for allegedly preferring Islamic radicals over the army. It has gone viral, with over 160,000 views since last week.

The clip features Obama in traditional Islamic dress. Elmasry curses him while mentioning that he had called for former president Hosni Mubarak to leave immediately, seeming to imply that this proved he was pro-Brotherhood.

The song also mentions Obama’s support for Islamistled Turkey as well as Israel. It is highly nationalistic in tone…

[WARNING: VULGAR LANGUAGE]

Read more from this story HERE.

Wealthy British Families with Two Working Parents To Be Offered Government Help with Childcare

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Photo Credit: LNPMinisters will disclose that they are pressing ahead with a [$1.5+ billion] online voucher system that, they say, will benefit about 2.5 million households, but that has been described as an “insult” to single-earner families.

Even families with two parents earning as much as [$230,000] each will get the payments, intended to make it easier for mothers in particular to return to work.

However, about 1.2 million parents — mostly mothers — who choose to stay at home to look after their children will not be eligible for the help. The benefit will eventually apply to each child under the age of 12.

When it was first floated the proposal came under heavy fire from stay-at-home mothers, many of whom had already lost child benefit under separate welfare reforms.

One mother challenged Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, over the scheme on his LBC radio phone-in.

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Syrian Christian Towns Emptied by Sectarian Violence

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESTens of thousands Syriac Christians – members of the oldest Christian community in the world – have fled their ancestral provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah in northeastern Syria, residents have said.

“It breaks my heart to think how our long history is being uprooted,” said Ishow Goriye, the head of a Syriac Christian political Hasakah.

Mr Goriye, told The Daily Telegraph how, over the past two years he has watched as Christian families from Hasakah pack their possessions on the rooftops of their vehicles and flee their homes “with little plan to come back”.

Conflict in the area, desperate economic conditions, lawlessness, and persecution by rebel groups born from the perception that Christians support the regime, remain the main reasons for why Christian families are fleeing the area.

The growing presence of radical jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, has also seen Christians targeted.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Issues Global Travel Alert Amid Threat of Al Qaeda Terror Attack

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Photo Credit: Vox EfxThe State Department issued a worldwide travel alert on Friday and ordered the temporary closure of nearly 20 diplomatic outposts worldwide amid the threat of a potential al Qaeda terrorist attack.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said her staff and other congressional leaders have been briefed by the administration on the situation, but declined to offer details on the nature of the terror threat.

“Now that it’s in the public domain that the embassies will be closed and there’s a travel alert for Americans traveling abroad, there’s some understanding of the seriousness of the threat,” Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Friday said Vice President Biden informed him and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), about the threat earlier this week.

“It’s my understanding that it is al Qaeda-linked, alright? And the threat emanates in the Middle East and in Central Asia,” Royce said on CNN.

Read more from this story HERE.

Explosive Revelation: DOZENS of CIA Operatives on the Ground DURING Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: Breitbart By Restoring Liberty. CNN is reporting this evening that, at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephen, the Central Intelligence Agency had literally dozens of agents on the ground inside of Benghazi.

This explosive revelation was apparently leaked by a source who has also reported the CIA has undertaken an unprecedented effort to keep all knowledge of its actions on the ground secret. The Agency has even gone as a far as to require monthly polygraph tests of all agents with knowledge of the Benghazi operation.

CNN reports that the CIA has been using “pure intimidation” against its agents to ensure that none of them are talking to the press or Congress about what was happening on the ground in Libya. One agent reported, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

Another source reportedly claimed that the CIA is threatening agents’ families, stating, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

Representative Frank Wolf, a Republican from the district that includes the CIA’s Langley headquarters, said that immediately after the Benghazi attack a number of CIA employees approached his office to give information about what happened the night in question. Apparently, the CIA’s intimidation has worked because they aren’t talking at all, now.

Whatever the CIA Benghazi operation was remains a mystery, as CNN’s sources provide no information on why dozens of US operatives would be in Benghazi at the same time the Ambassador was murdered. The sources also fail to explain why the dozens of CIA operatives on the ground apparently did not render direct assistance to the Ambassador’s compound when it came under attack.

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Photo Credit: ReutersRep. Wolf: sources say CIA was moving guns in Benghazi

By Kerry Picket. “We’re getting calls from people who are close to people who were [in Benghazi at the time] that they were moving guns. So where are the guns?” asked Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Wolf also wonders what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi on that night. Stevens and three others were killed over the course of the attacks.

“Are they in a warehouse somewhere? Some people say they moved on to Turkey and then from Turkey to Syria,” Wolf told Breitbart News on Thursday. “Did they fall into the hands of some of the Jihadis?”

“Nobody knows, so I think there are so many questions from the failure to respond to where the guns went,” he stated.

Wolf is currently attempting to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack by launching a discharge petition from committee. He needs 218 signatures to take the issue to a vote on the floor. Read more from this story HERE.

Hacker Publishes “Very Personal” Emails, Bikini Photos, Forces Colin Powell To Deny Affair with Foreign Diplomat

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As a notorious hacker seeks to distribute “very personal” e-mails sent to Colin Powell by a female Romanian diplomat, the retired general is denying that he engaged in an extramarital affair with the woman while he served as Secretary of State, though he recently advised her to delete all their online exchanges, The Smoking Gun has learned.

In a statement addressing his relationship with Corina Cretu, a member of the European Parliament who previously held a series of senior posts in the Romanian government, Powell, 76, wrote that he has known Cretu for about 10 years, having first met her “when I was the Secretary of State and she was an assistant to the President of Romania. We occasionally attended the same diplomatic and international meetings.”

Powell, who served in President George W. Bush’s cabinet for four years, said that he kept in touch with Cretu, 45, by e-mail after leaving the State Department in January 2005. “Over time the emails became of a very personal nature, but did not result in an affair. Those type of emails ended a few years ago. There was no affair then and there is not one now,” Powell added…

In the “very personal” correspondence cited by Powell, Cretu calls him the love of her life and describes a relationship that spanned more than a decade. The 2010-2011 e-mails would leave most readers with the clear impression that the forlorn Cretu is writing about the twilight of a lengthy romance…

Early this morning, “Guccifer” added a second update to the general’s Facebook page. It contained a new Google Drive link that led to e-mails and photos–some dating back eight years–that were lifted from Cretu’s newly hacked Yahoo e-mail account.

Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Arabia Confirms More Deadly MERS Cases

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThree more confirmed cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus infections in the Kingdom have been recorded, the Ministry of Health said on Thursday…

The new cases bring to 92 the total number of people who have contracted the virus worldwide, including 71 in Saudi Arabia.

Of the 92 cases registered with the World Health Organization since last year, 46 have died, including 39 in Saudi Arabia…

Saudi and UK scientists studying MERS said the coronavirus is more deadly, unpredictable and has significant differences from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Ziad Memish, Saudi deputy minister for public health, earlier said: “MERS coronavirus appears to be more deadly, with 60 percent of patients with co-existing chronic illnesses dying, compared with the one-percent toll of SARS.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Kerry Screws Up, Mistakenly Promises Pakistan to End Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundThe Obama administration was forced into damage control on Thursday as officials attempted to walk back Secretary of State John Kerry’s pledge to end armed drone operations in Pakistan.

During a diplomatic visit to Pakistan on Thursday, Kerry told Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that Washington plans to severely curtail and eventually end armed drone operations in the country.

The move was geared toward an overall effort by the Obama administration to forge “a real partnership” between the White House and Islamabad, Kerry told reporters after his meeting with Sharif.

“I think the [drone] program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Kerry said in an interview with Pakistani television…

The Obama administration reacted quickly to Kerry’s comments, saying his statements did not reflect a coming change in the use of armed drones against terrorist targets or overall U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Read more from this story HERE.