Boston Marathon Bomber Tsarnaev Convicted, May Face Death Sentence

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BomberDzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty on Wednesday of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured 264 others, and the jury will now decide whether to sentence him to death.

Tsarnaev, 21, is the surviving member of pair of ethnic Chechen brothers who planted the homemade pressure-cooker bombs that tore through the crowd at the famed race’s finish line in one of the most shocking attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. He left a note behind describing the attack as an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in Muslim-dominated countries.

His lawyers opened Tsarnaev’s federal trial in Boston a month ago by bluntly admitting “it was him” who planted one of the bombs on April 15, 2013 and three days later shot dead a police officer, kicking off a day of chaos in Boston. After 11 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury found him guilty of all 30 criminal counts he faced.

The slightly built, lightly goateed defendant stood silently, shifting uncomfortably as a U.S. District court official read out each guilty finding, a process that took 25 minutes. The courtroom was packed with survivors of the attack including the parents of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest fatality, and law enforcement officials, including former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

After the verdict was read, Karen Brassard, whose left leg was badly injured by one of the bombs, said she was glad that Tsarnaev had shown no emotion. “Personally I wouldn’t have bought it if he had,” Brassard said, as an early-spring sleet fell over Boston’s waterfront. “He has been, to use my word, arrogant walking in and out of the courtroom.” (Read more from “Boston Marathon Bomber Tsarnaev Convicted, May Face Death Sentence” HERE)

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Kansas Wants to Ban Welfare Recipients from Seeing Movies, Going Swimming on Government’s Dime

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pooolIf House Bill 2258 is signed into law by Gov. Sam Brownback (R) this week, Kansas families receiving government assistance will no longer be able to use those funds to visit swimming pools, see movies, go gambling or get tattoos on the state’s dime.

Those are just a few of the restrictions contained within the measure that promises to tighten regulations on how poor families spend their government aid.

State Sen. Michael O’Donnell, a Wichita Republican who has advocated for the bill, said the legislation is designed to pressure those receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to spend “more responsibly.”

“We’re trying to make sure those benefits are used the way they were intended,” O’Donnell, vice chair of the state senate’s standing committee on public health and welfare, told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “This is about prosperity. This is about having a great life” . . .

“I just think we are simply saying to people, ‘If you are asking for assistance in this state, you’re sort of less than other people and we’re going to tell you how and where to spend your money,’” Rep. Carolyn Bridges, a Wichita Democrat, said during the House’s debate, according to the Associated Press. (Read more from “Kansas Wants to Ban Welfare Recipients from Seeing Movies, Going Swimming on Government’s Dime” HERE)

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Historic Poll: Obama Is Nearly Twice as Popular in Cuba as He Is in the U.S.

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ObamaBarack Obama is a pretty popular guy in Cuba these days. So much so that nearly nine out of 10 Cubans hope he’ll be the first U.S. president to visit their island since Calvin Coolidge did in 1928.

A new Bendixen & Amandi Poll for Univision Noticias – Fusion in collaboration with The Washington Post shows that 89 percent of Cubans think the U.S. leader should swing by for a visit now that the two countries are trying to make nice. Obama also enjoys an 80 percent favorability rating on the communist-led island. The poll suggests that Obama is nearly twice as popular in Cuba as he is in the United States. Back home, where the U.S. president’s favorability rating is around 47 percent — the same as President Castro’s in Cuba.

According to the poll, an independent survey of 1,200 Cubans living across the island, 34 percent of Cubans have a “very positive” opinion of Obama, while 46 percent say they have a “somewhat positive” opinion of the U.S. president. That puts Obama’s overall favorability rating well above that of Fidel Castro, whose “very positives” and “somewhat positives” add up to 44 percent. Cuban President Raul Castro’s favorability rating is at 47 percent, nudging him slightly ahead of his older brother in the popularity category, according to the survey results.

The door-to-door poll, considered the most comprehensive and largest independent survey in Cuba in more than 50 years, was conducted by a team of local Cuban interviewers led by Miami-based research firm Bendixen & Amandi. The poll was carried out without the authorization of the Cuban government between March 17-27 in all 13 provinces of the island, including the capital city of Havana. The data offers a unique insight into public opinion on an island where reliable polling is notoriously difficult and where 75 percent of Cubans claim they have to be careful what they say in public. The opinion poll claims a margin of error of 2.8 percent, with a 95 percent confidence level. (Read more from “Historic Poll: Obama Is Nearly Twice as Popular in Cuba as He Is in the U.S.” HERE)

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Obama Makes Another Anti-Christian Statement, This Time at Yesterday’s Easter Prayer Breakfast

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mrBy Matt Wilstein. Towards the end of his speech at Tuesday morning’s Easter Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama appeared to veer off script to make some comments that implicitly referenced the fierce debate that has been raging over the last week about “religious freedom” laws in Indiana, Arkansas and elsewhere.

“On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love,” Obama said. “And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.” As the crowd began to murmur, the president backed off, saying, “But that’s a topic for another day.”

“I was about to veer off,” he explained. “I’m pulling it back.” (Read more from “Obama Denounces ‘Less-than-Loving’ Christians at Easter Prayer Breakfast” HERE)

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Rush: Left Has ‘Fear and Hatred of Christianity’

By Ian Hanchett. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh stated that the left has a “fear and hatred of Christianity” on Monday.

Rush said that he thought it was odd that people on the left seem to believe Pope Francis I agrees with them on many issues, “even though they hate religion, even though they’re frightened of it, even though they’re scared to death of it, which is the real truth of it all, they so desperately want the pope to be one of them. It’s one of the most amazing psychological things, I think. Modern leftists, particularly modern really extreme leftists — I mean, most of the culture war that is occurring in this country and has been going on for 30 years, if the truth be known, at the root of it is a fear and hatred of Christianity and religion in general, Christianity specifically, but religion in general.”

He continued, “that is what people on the left just have the biggest struggle with. It’s a giant enemy. It’s a powerful enemy, an enemy they have no control over, an enemy they will never be able to dominate, an enemy they will never be able to obliterate and they know it, but they nevertheless try.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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White House Computers Hacked by Russians, Sensitive Information Accessed

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000_was226501.siRussian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation.

While the White House has said the breach only affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion. The hackers had access to sensitive information such as real-time non-public details of the president’s schedule. While such information is not classified, it is still highly sensitive and prized by foreign intelligence agencies, U.S. officials say.

The White House in October said it noticed suspicious activity in the unclassified network that serves the executive office of the president. The system has been shut down periodically to allow for security upgrades.

The FBI, Secret Service and U.S. intelligence agencies are all involved in investigating the breach, which they consider among the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against U.S. government systems. ​The intrusion was routed through computers around the world, as hackers often do to hide their tracks, but investigators found tell-tale codes and other markers that they believe point to hackers working for the Russian government.

National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh didn’t confirm the Russian hack, but he did say that “any such activity is something we take very seriously.” (Read more from “White House Computers Hacked by Russians, Sensitive Information Accessed” HERE)

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NCIS Investigation Reportedly Shows Bergdahl Had ‘Deliberate Plan’ to ‘Offer Himself up’ to the Taliban

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Photo Credit: EPA; AP; Reuters

Photo Credit: EPA; AP; Reuters

A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night.

Shaffer, a former military intelligence officer and Fox News contributor, said two senior sources told him that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation included a forensic review of his computer, which show Bergdahl’s apparent intent to travel to Uzbekistan.

“He was going to go off to Uzbekistan,” Shaffer told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “He had made contact with local Afghans and wanted to be moved to Uzbekistan and then made contact with the Russians because he wanted to talk to Russian organized crime …

“Clearly he was not all there relating to what he was doing,” Shaffer told O’Reilly. “I think we’re going to see more and more, as this report is made public that there were a number of disconcerting things within Bergdahl.”

A military source also told Fox News there was strong intelligence after Bergdahl’s 2009 disappearance indicating he was handed over to the Taliban about 10 days after he left his base, and that the group wanted him. The source, who is familiar with the investigation and efforts to recover Bergdahl, said there was an effort to pick up Bergdahl — and potentially block his crossing into Pakistan — but the intelligence was either bad or old and the effort was not successful. (Read more from “NCIS Investigation Reportedly Shows Bergdahl Had ‘Deliberate Plan’ to ‘Offer Himself up’ to the Taliban” HERE)

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U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions of Calls for Decades

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Businessman has stress - Mann schreit ins TelefonThe U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels’ distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers. They also used the records to help rule out foreign ties to the bombing in 1995 of a federal building in Oklahoma City and to identify U.S. suspects in a wide range of other investigations.

The Justice Department revealed in January that the DEA had collected data about calls to “designated foreign countries.” But the history and vast scale of that operation have not been disclosed until now.

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago. (Read more from “U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions of Calls for Decades” HERE)

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Obama Says Climate Change Is Harming Americans’ Health

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Photo Credit: My Way News

Photo Credit: My Way News

Global warming isn’t just affecting the weather, it’s harming Americans’ health, President Barack Obama said Tuesday as he announced steps government and businesses will take to better understand and deal with the problem.

Obama said hazards of the changing climate include wildfires sending more pollution into the air, allergy seasons growing longer and rising cases of insect-borne diseases.

“We’ve got to do better in protecting our vulnerable families,” Obama said, adding that, ultimately, all families are affected.

“You can’t cordon yourself off from air,” Obama said. Speaking at Howard University Medical School, he announced commitments from Google, Microsoft and others to help the nation’s health system prepare for a warmer, more erratic climate.

Warning of the perils to the planet has gotten the president only so far; polls consistently show the public is skeptical that the steps Obama has taken to curb pollution are worth the cost to the economy. So Obama is aiming to put a spotlight on ways that climate change will have real impacts on the body, like more asthma attacks, allergic reactions, heat-related deaths and injuries from extreme weather. (Read more from “Obama Says Climate Change Is Harming Americans’ Health” HERE)

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Obama Moving Fast to Take Cuba off Terrorism Sponsor List

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Man stands near national flags of U.S. and Cuba on balcony of a hotel being used by first U.S. congressional delegation to Cuba since change of policy announced by U.S. President Obama, in HavanaPresident Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to act quickly once he receives a State Department recommendation on whether to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, a remaining obstacle to the restoration of relations between Washington and Havana.

With just days to go before a hemispheric summit in Panama where Obama will come face-to-face with Cuban President Raul Castro, he offered no clear sign of how he was leaning or the timeframe for his decision. He ordered the review immediately after announcing a diplomatic breakthrough with Havana on Dec. 17.

Obama, in a Reuters interview in early March, said he hoped the United States would be able to open an embassy in Cuba by the time of the April 10-11 Summit of the Americas, and U.S. officials have since said the review was being expedited.

But the lack of a decision so far on taking Cuba off the terrorism blacklist – something Havana has steadfastly demanded – has raised strong doubts about whether the review will be finished in time to make further strides toward normalization before the summit.

“As soon as I get a recommendation, I’ll be in a position to act on it,” Obama said in an interview with National Public Radio. (Read more from “Obama Says Would Move Fast to Take Cuba off Terrorism Sponsor List” HERE)

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FBI Would Rather Prosecutors Drop Cases than Disclose Stingray Details

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Photo Credit: arstechnica

Photo Credit: arstechnica

Not only is the FBI actively attempting to stop the public from knowing about stingrays, it has also forced local law enforcement agencies to stay quiet even in court and during public hearings, too.

An FBI agreement, published for the first time in unredacted form on Tuesday, clearly demonstrates the full extent of the agency’s attempt to quash public disclosure of information about stingrays. The most egregious example of this is language showing that the FBI would rather have a criminal case be dropped to protect secrecy surrounding the stingray.

Ars previously published a redacted version of this document in February 2015, which had been acquired by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in December 2014. The fact that these two near-identical documents exist from the same year (2012) provides even more evidence that this language is boilerplate and likely exists in other agreements with other law enforcement agencies nationwide.

The new document, which was released Tuesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) in response to its March 2015 victory in a lawsuit filed against the Erie County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) in Northwestern New York, includes this paragraph:

In order to ensure that such wireless collection equipment/technology continues to be available for use by the law enforcement community, the equipment/technology and any information related to its functions, operation and use shall be protected from potential compromise by precluding disclosure of this information to the public in any manner including but not limited to: press releases, in court documents, during judicial hearings, or during other public forums or proceedings.

(Read more from “FBI Would Rather Prosecutors Drop Cases than Disclose Stingray Details” HERE)

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