House Republicans Ask Why Saudi Arabia Was Added To Trusted Traveler Program

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House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and the panel’s subcommittee chairmen are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to explain why DHS has extended a trusted traveler program to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In a letter to Napolitano released Thursday, the seven GOP lawmakers voiced their concerns about “potential risks” associated with opening the Global Entry trusted traveler program — which “allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States” — to Saudi Arabia

“Of the 19 individuals who hijacked American planes on September 11, 2001 — 15 were from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the committee members wrote in the letter dated March 27 but released the following day. “More recently, following the plot to blow up an international flight over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, the Department saw fit to increase the scrutiny of passengers from countries like Saudi Arabia. This must be a factor in determining who to admit into the Global Entry Program.”

Napolitano and Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef announced the agreement to expand the trusted traveler program to Saudi Arabia and begin plans for a similar program for American travelers to Saudi Arabia in January.

“In effort to reaffirm the extraordinary bond between them and advance this partnership, [Ministry of Interior] and DHS have signed an arrangement to begin implementation for each nation’s trusted traveler programs,” the pair said in a joint statement. “The trusted traveler programs will facilitate trade and travel between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America and will help authorities from MOI and DHS more effectively identify potential threats to keep their borders and countries secure.”

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US Sends B-2 Bombers Over Korean Skies, North Korea Orders Rocket Units To “Prepare To Strike US And South Korea” (+video)

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By Kerry McDermott and Daily Mail Reporter. Thousands of North Koreans have turned out for a mass rally at the main square in Pyongyang in support of their leader’s call to arms.

Chanting ‘Death to the U.S. imperialists’ and ‘Sweep away the U.S. aggressors,’ soldiers and students marched through Kim Il Sung Square in downtown Pyongyang during a 90-minute rally.

State media reported early today that leader Kim Jong Un called an emergency military meeting to order the army’s rocket unit to prepare to strike the U.S. and South Korea in case of a ‘reckless provocation’ by Washington or Seoul.

A full-blown North Korean attack is unlikely, though there are fears of a more localized conflict. Pyongyang has railed against the U.S. decision to send B-2 bombers for military drills with South Korea.

The country’s official KCNA news agency reports that Kim Jong Un has signed off on orders to train sights on bases in South Korea and the Pacific following a meeting with top generals. The news comes just hours after U.S. stealth bombers with nuclear-capability took to the skies over South Korea on Thursday.

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North Korea readying rockets to aim at U.S. targets, state media says

By Jethro Mullen and Catherine E. Shoichet. North Korea’s leader has approved a plan to prepare rockets to be on standby for firing at U.S. targets, including the U.S. mainland and military bases in the Pacific and in South Korea, state media reported.

In a meeting with military leaders early Friday, Kim Jong Un “said he has judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation,” the state-run KCNA news agency reported.

“If they make a reckless provocation with huge strategic forces, [we] should mercilessly strike the U.S. mainland, their stronghold, their military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea,” KCNA reported.

Analysis: Just what is Kim Jong Un up to?

Kim’s regime has unleashed a torrent of threats in the past few weeks, and U.S. officials have said they’re concerned about the recent rhetoric.

“North Korea is not a paper tiger, so it wouldn’t be smart to dismiss its provocative behavior as pure bluster,” a U.S. official said Wednesday.

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Saudi Arabia Beheads Man For Sodomy, Murder

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Saudi authorities have beheaded a murderer and crucified his body after he killed and raped a Pakistani national. The kingdom’s interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death.

‘The Yemeni citizen Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain killed a Pakistani, Pashteh Sayed Khan, after he committed sodomy with him,’ said a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Hussain was also convicted of robbery and carrying out a series of attacks. The execution, in the southern city of Jizan, was followed by crucifixion, a punishment used by the ultra-conservative country for serious crimes.

Saudi Arabia have been criticised in the international community for their harsh punishments, including executions by beheading and firing squad. There have been 28 people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year.

In 2012, they executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, while the US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69. The oil-rich kingdom follows a strict implementation of Islamic law, or Shariah, under which people convicted of murder, rape or armed robbery can be executed, usually by sword.

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Pope Francis Washes Feet Of Incarcerated Juveniles

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Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of a dozen inmates at a juvenile detention center in a Holy Thursday ritual that he celebrated for years as archbishop and is continuing now that he is pope. Two of the 12 were young women, a remarkable choice given that the rite re-enacts Jesus’ washing of the feet of his male disciples.

The Mass was held in the Casal del Marmo facility in Rome, where 46 young men and women currently are detained. Many of them are Gypsies or North African migrants, and the 12 selected for the foot-washing rite included Orthodox and Muslim detainees as well, news reports said.

Because the inmates were mostly minors — the facility houses inmates aged 14-to-21 — the Vatican and Italian Justice Ministry limited media access inside. But Vatican Radio carried the Mass live, and Francis told the detainees that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion in a gesture of love and service.

“This is a symbol, it is a sign — washing your feet means I am at your service,” Francis told the youngsters. “Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us. This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty, as a priest and bishop I must be at your service.”

Later, the Vatican released a limited video of the ritual, showing Francis washing black feet, white feet, male feet, female feet and even a foot with tattoos. Kneeling on the stone floor as the 12 youngsters sat above him, the 76-year-old Francis poured water from a silver chalice over each foot, dried it with a simple cotton towel and then bent over to kiss each one.

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North Korea To Cut All Channels With South As “War May Break Out Any Time”

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Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at “any moment”, it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack.

The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.

“Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep north-south military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

“There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the north and the south.”

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Pope Francis Shuns Grand Apartment For Two Rooms

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Pope Francis has decided to shun a grand papal apartment on the top floor of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace in favour of a modest two-room residence.

His spokesman said he was “trying out this type of simple living” in a communal building with other priests. In doing so he has broken a tradition which is more than a century old.

The decision reinforces the newly-elected Pope’s austere reputation. As archbishop of Buenos Aires he refused to move into the Bishop’s Palace.

Preferring more modest accommodation, he also often cooked his own meals.

Communal meals

Since the reign of Pope Pius X at the beginning of the 20th Century every pope has occupied the palatial penthouse apartment with more than a dozen rooms, staff quarters, a terrace and extensive views over the city of Rome…

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IMF Agrees With Obama: End Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Tax Carbon

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The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday promoted ending fossil fuel subsidies and taxing carbon emissions to discourage excessive energy consumption and combat climate change.

“The link between subsidies, consumption of energy and climate change has added a new dimension to the debate on energy subsides,” David Lipton, IMF first deputy managing director, said in prepared remarks at a Washington event hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

President Obama’s political goals include stripping back those subsidies. The White House and congressional Democrats want to remove about $4 billion in annual tax provisions awarded to the oil-and-gas industry.

Oil-and-gas interests, and their Republican allies, say the provisions are cost-recovery mechanisms and business deductions that other industries also claim.

In 2011, nations doled out roughly $480 billion of “pre-tax” incentives, which are “when consumers pay less than supply cost of energy,” Lipton explained. They are generally found in emerging economies, according to an IMF report released Wednesday.

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New, International Scandal Threatens Obama, Hillary

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Has the White House been misleading the public by repeatedly denying it was coordinating arms shipments to the rebels in Syria, insurgents known to consist in large part of al-Qaida and other jihadist groups?

Other top U.S. officials and former officials, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have implied in congressional testimony that they didn’t know about any U.S. involvement in procuring weapons for the rebels. Now, a starkly different picture is emerging, one that threatens the longstanding White House narrative that claims the Obama administration has only supplied nonlethal aid to the rebels.

Confirming WND’s exclusive reporting for over a year, the New York Times two days ago reported that since early 2012, the CIA has been aiding Arab governments and Turkey in obtaining and shipping weapons to the Syrian rebels. While the Times report claims most of the weapons shipments facilitated by the CIA began after the latest presidential election, Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND have said U.S.-aided weapons shipments go back more than a year, escalating before the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi.

Aaron Klein’s New York Times bestseller, “Fool Me Twice,” is more relevant than ever. In fact, the Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND since last year describe the U.S. mission in Benghazi and nearby CIA annex attacked last September as an intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to the rebels in the Middle East, particularly those fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The aid, the sources stated, included weapons shipments and was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

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Seal Team 6 Member Says Account of Osama Bin Laden’s Killing, “Complete B.S.”

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In February, Esquire magazine published a lengthy profile of “The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden.” The story did not identify the killer by his real name, referring to him only as “the Shooter.”

The Shooter told Esquire that the night bin Laden was killed he had encountered al Qaeda’s leader face-to-face in the top-floor bedroom of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years.

The Shooter explained that when he found bin Laden in his bedroom the al Qaeda leader was standing up and had a gun “within reach” and it was only then that the Shooter fired the two shots into bin Laden’s forehead that killed him. That account was in conflict with the account from another raid participant in a wildly successful book “No Easy Day.”

Now, another member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed the bin Laden raid, tells CNN the story of the Shooter as presented in Esquire is false. According to this serving SEAL Team 6 operator, the story is “complete B-S.”

SEAL Team 6 operators are now in “serious lockdown” when it comes to “talking to anybody” about the bin Laden raid and say they have been frustrated to see what they consider to be the inaccurate story in Esquire receive considerable play without a response. Phil Bronstein, who wrote the 15,000-word piece about the Shooter for Esquire, was booked on CNN, Fox and many other TV networks after his story came out.

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Egyptian Mosque Turned Into House Of Torture For Christians After Muslim Brotherhood Protest

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Photo Credit: MidEast Christian News

Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

“They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a hospital bed.

Ayad said he was beaten for hours with sticks before being left for dead on a roadside. Amir’s brother, Ezzat Ayad, said he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. Saturday, with the caller saying his brother had been found near death and had been taken to the ambulance.

“He underwent radiation treatment that proved that he suffered a fracture in the bottom of his skull, a fracture in his left arm, a bleeding in the right eye, and birdshot injuries,” Ezzat Ayad said.

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