North Korea Says It is in “State Of War” With South Korea

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea in a continuing escalation of tough rhetoric against Seoul and Washington after coming under international sanctions for its nuclear test.

“From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering the state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly,” a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

KCNA said the statement was issued jointly by the North’s government, ruling party and other organizations.

North Korea has been threatening to attack the South and U.S. military bases almost on a daily basis since the beginning of March, when U.S. and South Korean militaries started routine drills, and has ordered its armed forces on the highest alert.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S., China Cyber Battle Intensifies

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

The United States and China appear locked in a cybersecurity war — of mostly words — that’s beginning to escalate.

Both the White House and Capitol Hill now explicitly criticize Beijing for failing to subdue the hackers and spies thought to reside within the country’s borders. And there are real punishments on the horizon, as the U.S. government eyes trade penalties and other restrictions on China and its top technology firms.

There needs to be “a little pain and pinch,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in an interview this week with POLITICO. The lawmaker, a longtime China critic on cybersecurity, was referring to both Beijing and the growing slate of other countries accused of spying or stealing from U.S. businesses.

The consensus in Washington is that China has become a hub for cyberhackers, who have targeted top U.S. businesses for trade secrets and other corporate or political intelligence. A controversial report from cybersecurity firm Mandiant even pegged some of the most significant attacks to an arm of the Chinese military, though the country’s top representatives have denied the accusations.

The political tensions, though, are reaching an unprecedented level.

Read more from this story HERE.

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

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

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.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: EPA

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

Watch video here:

Saudi Arabia Beheads Man For Sodomy, Murder

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Stock Image

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Francis Washes Feet Of Incarcerated Juveniles

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

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

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Ahn Young-Joon

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.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Francis Shuns Grand Apartment For Two Rooms

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: BBC

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…

Read more from this story HERE.

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

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: infomatique

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.

Read more from this story HERE.

New, International Scandal Threatens Obama, Hillary

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

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.

Read more from this story HERE.