Britain’s Credit Rating Downgraded by Moody’s

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Moody’s announced on Friday night that it had cut the Government’s bond rating one notch from ‘Aaa’ – the highest possible level – to ‘Aa1’.

The move is a significant setback for Chancellor George Osborne, who has faced criticism that his strategy for dealing with UK’s huge debt burden is failing to deliver.

Moody’s pointed to “continuing weakness in the UK’s medium-term growth outlook, with a period of sluggish growth which [it] now expects will extend into the second half of the decade”.

The credit ratings agency also noted that the Government’s debt reduction programme faced significant “challenges” and that the UK’s huge debts are unlikely to “reverse before 2016”.

Moody’s said that despite considerable structural economic strengths, growth is expected to be sluggish due to a combination of weaker global economic activity and the drag on the UK economy “from the ongoing domestic public- and private-sector deleveraging process.”

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Kerry To Push For Relations With This U.S. FOE?

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Photo Credit: WNDWill John Kerry use his position as secretary of state to push for dialogue with Hamas?

As a senator, Kerry has a questionable history when it comes to the Islamic terrorist group in power in the Gaza Strip. In 2009, Kerry became the most senior U.S. politician to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza, although at the time he did not meet with Hamas leaders, instead using his time in the coastal territory to tour United Nations camps there.

During his trip, there were reports that Kerry accepted a letter for President Obama from Hamas leaders. U.N. relief agency chief Karen Abu Zayd told the BBC the letter had been received by his agency and passed on to an unnamed American official.

Fox News confirmed with U.N. representatives in Gaza that the Hamas letter was passed to Kerry. During a tour of Israel the same week, Kerry announced his trip to Gaza did not signal any change in U.S. policy toward Hamas.

Hamas’ official charter calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel. The Islamist group is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks aimed at Jewish civilians.

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US Denied Access To Benghazi Suspect Held In Egypt (+video)

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Photo Credit: FreedomHouseThe U.S. has been denied direct access to the only publicly known suspect in custody in connection with the Benghazi terror attack, Fox News has learned, with U.S. interrogators still unable to sit in the same room as the Egypt-held prisoner to ask questions.

Abu Ahmed, also known as Mohammed Jamal, is suspected of establishing Islamist training camps in Eastern Libya where militants who took part in the Sept. 11 Benghazi terrorist attack were able to train.

Ahmed is not suspected of directly taking part in the attack which left four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. But this is at least the second time U.S. interrogators have been denied access to a suspect held by a foreign government.

In January, Tunisian authorities released Ali Ani al-Harzi, who is suspected of taking part in the attack, citing a lack of evidence. FBI agents finally got access to al-Harzi after the personal intervention of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Thomas Joscelyn, with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said some of the militants Ahmed helped train “directly took part” in the Benghazi attack.

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Revealed: Al-Qaeda’s 22 Tips for Dodging Drones

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The document includes advice such as “hide under thick trees” (believed to be bin Laden’s contribution), and instructions for setting up a “fake gathering” using dolls to “mislead the enemy”.

Found by the Associated Press in a building in Timbuktu, the ancient city occupied by Islamists last year, the document is believed to have been abandoned as extremists fled a French military intervention last month. It is a Xeroxed copy of a tipsheet authored by a Yemeni extremist that has been published on some jihadi forums, but that has made little appearance in English.

The list reflects how al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghbreb anticipated a military intervention that would make use of drones, as the war on terror shifts from the ground to the air.

The document also shows the coordination between al-Qaeda chapters, which security experts have called a source of increasing concern.

“This new document… shows we are no longer dealing with an isolated local problem, but with an enemy which is reaching across continents to share advice,” said Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, now the director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institute.

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Israel: Iran Closer Than Ever To Nuclear Bomb

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Photo Credit: France24Iran is “closer than ever” to the ability to build a nuclear bomb, Israel said on Thursday, as a new UN report said Tehran has begun installing next-generation equipment at one of its main nuclear plants.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report said Iran started installing new and advanced centrifuges at Natanz, which would enable it to speed up the enrichment of uranium.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the report was “severe,” and “proves Iran is continuing to rapidly advance to the red line that the prime minister drew at his speech in the United Nations.”

“Iran is closer than ever today to obtaining enriched material for a nuclear bomb,” the statement read.

In a September address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu called for a “clear red line” to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb.

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Found! Iran’s Secret Ballistic Missile Base

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Photo Credit: DigitalGlobe WND has learned of the existence of a secret ballistic missile base in Iran’s Semnan Province to which the Islamic regime has moved missiles armed with microbial warheads.

The Badr base, a center for air defense which has about 50 underground missile silos housing Iran’s Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, serves as Iran’s second-largest missile-launching site, and is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards.

The base, in the deserts of Semnan far from any city, has many underground tunnels connecting to the silo launching pads, according to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit.

The base’s command and control are connected to other bases in Noje, Hamdan, Shahid Doran in Shiraz and the country’s air traffic control centers in Tehran, Birjand and Bandar Abass. Last year, the Revolutionary Guards aired footage on Iranian TV showing commanders along with a reporter travel via private jet to the base to observe a test launch of a Shahab 3 from an underground silo.

At that time, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, claimed that by placing the ballistic missiles in underground silos, the country is preparing for asymmetrical warfare, which will allow the country to stand up to more powerful enemies. Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

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Senators Raise Alarm Over Another Possible Sale Of Taxpayer-Backed Firm To Chinese

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Photo Credit: ReutersRepublican senators complained Wednesday that U.S. taxpayer dollars could end up boosting the Chinese economy, following reports that a Chinese firm is leading the pack of companies bidding for a majority stake in government-backed Fisker Automotive.

The troubled California-based electric car maker, which was backed by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of nearly $530 million, for months has been looking for a financial partner. Reuters reported earlier this week that China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is favored to take over, though Fisker is also reportedly weighing a bid from another Chinese auto maker.

The development comes after Fisker’s main battery supplier — U.S. government-backed A123 Systems — was recently purchased by a separate Chinese firm.

Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, voiced concern Wednesday that Chinese companies are benefiting from U.S. taxpayers’ investment.

“Obama’s green energy investments appear to be nothing more than venture capital for eventual Chinese acquisitions,” Thune said in a statement. “After stimulus-funded A123 was just acquired by a Chinese-based company, it’s troubling to see that yet another struggling taxpayer-backed company might be purchased under duress by a Chinese company.”

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Lawyer: Cyprus Attack Plan Suspect Admits Hezbollah Ties, Denies Plotting Attacks on Israelis

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Photo Credit: acrollNICOSIA, Cyprus — A man being tried on allegations he planned attacks on Israeli tourists in Cyprus has admitted being a member of the militant group Hezbollah and staking out locations that such visitors frequent, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Hossam Taleb Yaacoub’s admissions follow accusations that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah was behind a bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists. Authorities here have been reluctant to link the Cyprus case to the attack in Bulgaria, but both have fed concerns about militant activity in Europe.

Lawyer Antonis Georgiades noted that Yaacoub, who is Swedish and Lebanese, told a Cyprus court that he came to this country on business with no plan to harm anyone. But Yaacoub, 24, also admitted that an unidentified man in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, gave him the “mission” of recording flight arrivals and bus routes of Israeli tourists and checking out a hospital parking lot.

Georgiades said Yaacoub acted alone in Cyprus and that instructions where given to him “in complete secrecy” by a man whose face he couldn’t see. The lawyer said that while his client’s actions may raise suspicions, there is no hard proof that Yaacoub was planning an attack.

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8 Arrested In Murder Of Russian Councilman Found In Cement Barrel

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Photo Credit: josef.stuefer Zooming around in a Rolls Royce and boasting of ties to Chechnya’s strongman ruler, Mikhail Pakhomov didn’t live the life of the average provincial Russian lawmaker. He didn’t die the death of one either.

Pakhomov, 37, a councilman from the industrial city of Lipetsk, 215 miles south of Moscow, was found beaten to a pulp at the bottom of a barrel of cement Monday after what investigators say was a business deal gone wrong — and a kidnapping that went even worse.

Evgeny Kharitonov, a former senior official in the Moscow regional government, was arrested at a Moscow airport Monday and charged with organizing Pakhomov’s kidnapping over an $80 million debt. A warrant was issued Tuesday for his business partner, Sergei Krasovsky. Four other men are charged with the murder-kidnapping, and another three with a related theft.

The case has gathered wide public attention. Some Russians have referred to it as a “postcard from the 1990s,” when business, political and criminal interests mixed together and often exploded into violence.

The son of a well-known Lipetsk theatrical couple, Pakhomov ran Liter, a construction and transport company. A former Lipetsk police official was quoted by local media as saying he had been arrested for robbing a shop with a well-known mafia gang in 1995 and on suspicion of kidnapping in 2010, but never charged. After a failed attempt in 2011 to win election to Russia’s parliament as a candidate of the Kremlin-backed United Russia, he became a city councilman last October.

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Anti-Austerity Strike To Bring Greece To A Standstill

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Photo Credit: John Kolesidis Greek workers walk off the job on Wednesday in a nationwide anti-austerity strike that will disrupt transport, shut public schools and tax offices and leave hospitals working with emergency staff.

Greece’s two biggest labor unions plan to bring much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill during a 24-hour strike over the cuts, which they say only deepen the plight of a people struggling to get through the country’s worst peacetime downturn.

Representing about 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since Europe’s debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government’s will to implement necessary reforms in the face of growing public anger.

“The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis,” said the private sector union GSEE, which is organizing the walkout with its public sector sister union ADEDY.

“Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented,” it said. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s eight-month-old coalition government has been eager to show it will implement reforms it promised the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.

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