USAHitman | Conspiracy News |  |
- German embassy bodyguard shot dead in ambassador kidnap attempt
- Four-legged, DARPA-funded, running war robot unveiled
- Japans abandoned ghost island of Hashima
- Feds Try to Close the OCEAN Because of Shutdown
- Google and YouTube Suppress Controversial 9/11 Truth Videos and News
- Pentagon to recall most furloughed workers, Hagel says
- Not how we do it in New York: Ex-cop questions sisters killing by Capitol police
- U.S. Says Navy SEALs Stage Raid on Somali Militants
- CT woman gunned down in DC believed Obama was communicating with her
- Netscape founder: The world is going to see an explosion of countries in the years ahead
- 5 off-duty officers among bikers in SUV incident
- Doctors Report Thousands Of Japanese People With Nose Bleeds From Radiation
- US govt does not see implications of its investigation techniques – Lavabit founder
- New shape-shifting metals discovered
- US shutdown puts free trade talks with EU in impasse
- Wheres sense of crisis in a 17% government shutdown?
- Judge orders release of schizophrenic Guantanamo detainee
- Obama open to name change for Washington Redskins
- Police: Man Who Set Himself Ablaze on Mall Dies
- Owner of Silk Road website charged with attempted assassination of employee
- The National Weather Service may have posted a secret message to Congress
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Headed For Finish Line Amid Official Secrecy
- Priests threatened with arrest if they minister to military during shutdown
- Kentucky Marketplace: WARNING: No Explicit or Implicit Expectation of Privacy
- Father forces son to hold pink ‘I am a bully’ sign on Texas highway
- There are clearly 2 people in the car at Washington DC Shootout
- Newtown Shooting to Get Comprehensive Book
- 13 Anonymous hacktivists indicted over Operation Payback
- Witnesses Describe Dramatic Arrest Of Alleged Drug Kingpin Inside SF Library
- Obama administration asks Congress to hold off on new Iran sanctions
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Posted: 06 Oct 2013 08:01 AM PDT
 A German national was shot to death in Yemen’s capital on Sunday. According to AFP’s sources the person was in the German ambassador’s security team, while the attack was aimed at kidnapping the ambassador.Gunmen in a passing vehicle opened fire on the victim as he was leaving a shop in the Hada district of the capital of Sana’a where most of the foreign embassies are located. “He was leaving the market to go to his vehicle,” a source told Reuters, adding that the attack bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda. Western diplomatic sources have confirmed the attack but have not given the victim’s identity or what position he held at the embassy. Germany was among a number of Western countries, which closed their embassies in Yemen in August following warnings of an Al-Qaeda attack, although the missions soon reopened. Yemen is battling to curb one of the most active branches of Al-Qaeda in the world, which is known as AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) and in the past has attempted to attack several western targets including airliners. DETAILS TO FOLLOW Source |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:06 PM PDT
 Developers at Boston Dynamics, an engineering company specializing in robotics, have released video of an untethered robot capable of standing and mobilizing on its own.WildCat is a four-legged outdoor runner capable of rising, turning, and reaching running speeds up to 16 mph on flat ground. WildCat is a close cousin to Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah, another quadrupedal robot that was unveiled a year ago, running at speeds over 28 mph on a treadmill – quicker than world’s fastest man Usain Bolt’s top speed of 27.78 mph. However, unlike WildCat, Cheetah was connected to a power source. The runner carries a large – and very loud – motor to operate its four limbs, though the weight hampers its speed and agility. Boston Dynamics has not detailed what is next for WildCat, but it is known to have been developed for military use, as the project is part of the Maximum Mobility and Manipulation Program funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:06 PM PDT
 Located off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan is an eerie island that has long been abandoned. With its warship-like appearance, it’s little wonder why Hashima Island is commonly known as Gunkanjima (or ‘Battleship Island’). It’s other nickname? Ghost Island. For nearly a century (from 1887 to 1974), the island was a bustling coal mining facility that housed thousands of workers. Mitsubishi bought it in 1890 and built Japan’s first large concrete building, at nine stories high. With a population of 5259 people in 1959, the 6.3ha island was the most densely populated place per square metre in the world. When the busy mine closed, Hashima Island fell into ruins. But the deserted island is anything but forgotten. It continues to lure tourists with its enchanting yet eerie crumbling structures. The concrete wall that surrounds the entire island has partly collapsed due to the force of typhoons. Decaying buildings and structures found inside including a school, hospital and restaurants. Photos:       Read More Here |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:05 PM PDT
 by Mike FlynnJust before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was “closed” due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown. The Park Service will also have rangers on duty to police the ban… of access to an ocean. The government will probably use more personnel and spend more resources to attempt to close the ocean, than it would in its normal course of business. This is governing by temper-tantrum. It is on par with the government’s ham-fisted attempts to close the DC WWII Memorial, an open-air public monument that is normally accessible 24 hours a day. By accessible I mean, you walk up to it. When you have finished reflecting, you then walk away from it. At least that Memorial is an actual structure, with some kind of perimeter that can be fenced off. Florida Bay is the ocean. How, pray tell, do you “close” 1,100 square miles of ocean? Why would one even need to do so? Apparently, according to an anonymous Park Service ranger, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.” Centuries ago, King Canute famously failed to command the ocean tide to stop. His display was actually a means to educate his subjects on the limits of royal power. Today, however, our President actually believes he has the power to control the oceans. Source |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:03 PM PDT
 By Elizabeth WoodworthIntroduction With polls consistently showing that approximately 50% of Canadians and Americans doubt the official story of 9/11, the feat of keeping the lid on a public debate for over 12 years has been nothing short of miraculous. This article presents a simple case study showing that this miracle is being performed with the assistance of Google and YouTube search engine interference On September 8, 2013, the popular Russia Today “Truthseeker” program, with over a million subscribers on YouTube,[1] published a 13-minute newscast entitled “The Truthseeker: 9/11 and Operation Gladio (E23).” Below the video frame ran the caption: Bigger than Watergate’: US ‘regular’ meetings with Al-Qaeda’s leader; documented White House ‘false flag terrorism’ moving people ‘like sheep’; the father of Twin Towers victim tell us why he backs this month’s 9/11 campaign on Times Square and around the world; & the protests calendar for September. This paragraph was followed by a list of interviewees, including four people representing three scholarly research organizations: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,[2] the 9/11 Consensus Panel,[3] and The Journal of 9/11 Studies.[4] The “Truthseeker” video immediately started to gain popularity on YouTube, reaching 131,000 views in the first three days.[5](The history of the viewing statistics may be seen by clicking on the little graphic symbol under the video frame, and to the right) Truthseeker posted its program to YouTube on Sept. 8. Russia Today tweeted the YouTube link to its 546,000 followers and to the interviewer, Daniel Bushell, that day: RT The Truthseeker: 9/11 and operation Gladio (E23) http://youtu.be/vka7Da6e9LY A MOXNEWS copy of the same newscast was also posted September 8 under the title “Russia Today News Declares 9/11 An Inside Job False Flag Attack!” which in turn started to escalate, with over 80,000 views in the first few days.[6] Other uploads of the program also appeared, with less traffic, bringing the early viewing total to over a quarter of a million people. What Happened Next? In both the RT and MOXNEWS cases, the viewer statistics on YouTube suddenly flat-lined on the morning of September 11 — like a heart monitor when a patient dies. The YouTube search engine had suddenly failed to locate these videos. Oddly, although the RT video may still be viewed on YouTube through its direct link (if known) from the Google URL box,[7] it cannot be accessed on YouTube by its title, or by portions of its title, or by searching “Truthseeker.” The MOXNET version was also decoupled from the YouTube search engine for a period of time after September 11, but has since been restored to normal indexing. How Were the Search Engine Failures Detected and Verified? Investigations carried out independently by a US engineering colleague and myself revealed the following: I. YouTube Search Results and Rankings: · Searching the exact title of the original “Truthseeker” posting (“9/11 and Operation Gladio”) does not yield the original RT post. It does yield other posts with far fewer viewings, but the original, which as we have seen still exists as a URL, is evidently no longer in the YouTube index. http://www.youtube.com/ Its viewings have slowly risen over several weeks from 131,000 to 136,000 through the early news reports — but with by far the most views of all the uploads, it should appear at the top of the list.
An exploration of the Google Web and Google Video search results revealed the following about access to the RT “Truthseeker” Episode 23: · Google Web Rankings: On a search of “9/11 and Operation Gladio,” Google Web first brought up several news items, followed by an array of low-volume YouTube uploads that did not include the popular original RT version. https://www.google.com/search? · Google Video Rankings: On the same search, “9/11 and Operation Gladio,” Google Video first listed the “Truthseeker” website page from which the video may also be watched and downloaded (as discussed below). This was followed by a half dozen uploads from other sources, mostly showing 50-200 video views. The original RT video that is still available by direct link and now records 136,000 views, did not show up at all — yet it should have been on top. https://www.google.com/search? · On both Google Web and Google Video, searching the original RT URL failed to bring up the early version of the program that had started to go viral[8] — although its direct link still exists and shows up on several early September news websites. III. The Truthseeker’s Own Website: The “Truthseeker” produces a new show every two weeks. As of this writing, the “Truthseeker” home page shows Episode 24, dated September 22, right at the top, followed by Episodes 22, 21, 20, and 19. Our case-study Episode 23, dated September 8, was displayed at the top of the home page from September 8-11, before it disappeared. It was then located under a different date — August 1, 2012 — buried on a back page with earlier episodes from over a year ago. This may have been a simple mistake on the part of a large investigative news network that is attracting personnel and audiences away from Western networks, or it may be the result of hacking or political pressure. [It should be noted that when a September 8 2013 posting is given a new date namely August 1, 2012, it no longer appears on Google News in the days leading up to and following September 11, 2013, the date of commemoration of the 9/11 attacks. This redating of the September 8 posting also affects its ranking in the search engines, GR Ed.]. The bottom line is that at least with regard to the Google and YouTube (which is owned by Google) search engines, something highly unusual has gone awry.[9] Failure of Email Transmissions Describing the Above Investigation Perhaps the most disturbing element of this case study is that for more than two weeks after September 11, 2013, it was impossible for some people to transmit by email the link to the original YouTube Episode 23 that had started to go viral.[10] An email containing this link would at first appear to have transmitted normally, for it would show up in the sender’s Sent Mail. But it would not be received by the addressees — including the sender, if copied to self. To my knowledge, at least six people, including three IT professionals, experienced the failure of email transmissions containing this particular link. Of these IT professionals, one concluded, “There is no benign explanation for this.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:02 PM PDT
 By Craig WhitlockThe Pentagon will recall most of its furloughed civilian workers in the coming days, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Saturday, in a move that could substantially ease the impact of the government shutdown on the federal workforce. The Pentagon did not immediately specify how many employees would be summoned back to work, except to say that “most” of its 400,000 furloughed civilians would be allowed to return. That means that at least 200,000 Defense workers will go back on the job – a figure that by itself represents one quarter of the 800,000 federal employees on furlough. Hagel’s decision is based on liberal interpretation of the Pay Our Military Act, a bill passed by Congress last week and signed by President Obama that ensures that uniformed members of the military will not have their paychecks delayed by the shutdown. The bill includes general language exempting Defense Department civilians from furlough if they provide direct support to the military. After consulting with Pentagon lawyers and Obama administration officials in recent days, Hagel decided that he could justify recalling most of the Pentagon’s furloughed workforce based on that provision in the law. A senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity estimated that potentially 300,000 or more furloughed Pentagon employees could return to work. Read More Here |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
 Police in Washington DC did not have to resort to shooting dead an unarmed woman, who lead officers on a short-lived car chase through the Capitol on Thursday, said the driver’s sister, former New York police sergeant Valarie Carey.“My sister could have been any person traveling in our capital,” Valarie Carey told reporters outside her Brooklyn home on Saturday. “Deadly physical force was not the ultimate recourse and it didn’t have to be.” Miriam Carey, a 34-year old dental hygienist from Connecticut, tried to drive her black Infiniti coupe through a barrier near the White House, hitting a Secret Service agent who attempted to wave her away. She then sped toward Capitol Hill, leading police on a high-speed pursuit that came to an end when her car got stuck on the median and police shot her. A Capitol Police officer was also hurt when his car hit a barricade during the mile and a half mid-afternoon chase, which lasted just a few minutes. Law enforcement sources said Carey did discharge a firearm and there was no indication that she was in possession of a weapon. “I’m more than certain that there was no need for a gun to be used [by police] when there was no gunfire coming from the vehicle,” Valarie Carey said. “I don’t know how their protocols are in DC, but I do know how they are in New York City.” Representatives from the Capitol Police and the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department could not be reached for comment early on Saturday. Read More Here |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 By NICHOLAS KULISHA Navy SEAL team targeted a senior leader of the Shabab militant group in a raid on his seaside villa in the Somali town of Baraawe on Saturday, American officials said, in response to a deadly attack on a Nairobi shopping mall for which the group had claimed responsibility. The SEAL team stealthily approached the beachfront house by sea, firing on the unidentified target in a predawn gunbattle that was the most significant raid by American troops on Somali soil since commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Qaeda mastermind, near the same town four years ago. The Shabab leader was believed to have been killed in the firefight, but the SEALS were forced to withdraw before that could be confirmed, a senior American official said. Such operations by American forces are rare because they carry a high risk, and indicate that the target was considered a high priority. Baraawe, a small port town south of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, is known as a gathering place for the Shabab’s foreign fighters. “The Baraawe raid was planned a week and a half ago,” said an American security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about a classified operation. “It was prompted by the Westgate attack,” he added, referring to the mall in Nairobi that was overrun by militants two weeks ago, leaving more than 60 dead. Witnesses in the area described a firefight lasting over an hour, with helicopters called in for air support. A senior Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the raid, saying, “The attack was carried out by the American forces and the Somali government was pre-informed about the attack.” A spokesman for the Shabab, which is based in Somalia, said that one of its fighters had been killed in an exchange of gunfire but that the group had beaten back the assault. American official initially reported that they had seized the Shabab leader, but later backed off of that account. The deadly assault on the Westgate shopping mall was a stark reminder of the power and reach of the Islamist group, which had a series of military setbacks in recent years and was widely viewed as weakened. The F.B.I. sent dozens of agents to Nairobi after the shopping mall siege to help Kenyan authorities with the investigation. United States officials fear that the Shabab could attempt a similar attack on American soil, perhaps employing several of the group’s Somali-American recruits. Read More Here |
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Posted: 05 Oct 2013 12:02 PM PDT
 The suspect in the high-speed chase between the White House and the Capitol Building was identified Friday by a law enforcement source as a dental hygienist from Connecticut with a history of mental issues.The source identified the woman as Miriam Carey, 34, of Stamford, Conn. Carey tried to plow her car into a barricade at the White House, then led cops on a high-speed chase before being shot dead near the Capitol, according to reports. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News that investigators believed Carey suffered “serious” mental issues and that President Obama was trying to communicate with her through radio waves. Sources tell Fox News that the FBI is currently investigating how long the suspect was in Washington, DC and why she had travelled there from Connecticut. Leslie Silva, a Stamford lawyer who has represented Carey, said she was unaware of any connection or reason why Carey would have been in Washington. “Oh my goodness, I represented her,” Silva said to when reached by phone. “She was a really nice woman, we had [our] children at about the same time, we had pleasant conversation.” Silva added that she represented Carey when she bought her Stamford condo and again more recently in a dispute over a small amount of money with the development that was settled in February, the last time she communicated with the suspect. “I had nothing but pleasant conversations with her when I represented her and I’m just really really shocked,” she said. A harrowing car chase unfolded Thursday after the driver rammed the barricades, briefly shuttering the chambers where federal lawmakers were debating how to end a government shutdown and stirred fresh panic in a city where a gunman two weeks ago killed 12 people. Police said there appeared to be no direct link to terrorism, and there was no indication the woman was even armed. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine, whose officers have been working without pay as a result of the shutdown, called it an “isolated, singular matter.” Still, tourists, congressional staff and even some senators watched anxiously as a caravan of law enforcement vehicles chased a black Infiniti with Connecticut license plates down Constitution Avenue outside the Capitol and as officers with high-powered firearms canvassed the area. The House and Senate both abruptly suspended business, a lawmaker’s speech cut off in mid-sentence, as the Capitol Police broadcast a message over its emergency radio system telling people to stay in place and move away from the windows. The woman’s car at one point had been surrounded by police cars and she managed to escape, careening around a traffic circle and past the north side of the Capitol. Video shot by a TV cameraman showed police pointing firearms at her car before she rammed a Secret Service vehicle and continued driving. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said police shot and killed her a block northeast of the historic building. Carey’s mother, Idella Carey, told ABC News Thursday night that her daughter began suffering from post-partum depression after giving birth to her daughter, Erica, last August. Idella Carey said her daughter had “no history of violence” and she didn’t know why she was in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. She said she thought Carey was taking Erica to a doctor’s appointment in Connecticut. Authorities also discovered an unidentified white powder at her Connecticut home. Source |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:08 PM PDT
 By Hamish McKenzieNetscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen thinks the world is going to see an explosion of new countries in the years ahead. “I think there is going to be double, triple, quadruple countries in the coming years,” Andreessen told Sarah Lacy at Thursday night’s PandoMonthly in San Francisco. The cofounder of venture firm Andreessen Horowitz noted that the borders of today’s countries are in some cases arbitrary, pointing to Iraq, Syria, and much of Africa as artificial constructs. In the last few decades, the world has seen the emergence of a litany of new companies, and he sees no reason why that splintering is going to slow down. “You’re going to get a much larger number of countries,” he said, before noting that the proliferation of nations could be a positive force in the long term, measured by a span of 100 years or more. “The transition is going to be very painful,” he said, “but I think ultimately it’s going to be very healthy.” He envisions a world in which neighboring countries choose to ally with each other and collaborate, rather than foment conflict. And, he thinks, software will play an important role in that cross-border cooperation. Read More Here |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:07 PM PDT
 Eyewitness News has learned that among the bikers on the Henry Hudson last weekend, were five off-duty NYPD officers.Sources say at least two detectives witnessed the attack on Alexian Lien and did not directly intervene. And investigators are still working to determine what role, if any, was played by the other three officers. What is clear, sources say, is that the men did not begin to come forward until late Wednesday, four full-days after the incident. And detectives are also investigating reports that several others in the group may have been off-duty New York City correction officers. An undercover detective has informed Internal Affairs that he was present at the time of the confrontation. The undercover narcotics detective, himself a motorcycle rider, was off duty. Official sources say he did not get involved because he did not want to blow his cover. Internal Affairs is now investigating. The undercover detective is being advised by an attorney. Also Friday night, 38-year-old Reginald Chance of Brooklyn turned himself in to police and is in custody. Detectives believe he used his silver helmet to smash the driver’s side window of the victim’s SUV. However, his role in the actual assault of the driver is unclear. On Saturday, police released photos of another suspect they want to speak to about his possible involvement in the incident. Earlier Friday, the biker who allegedly opened the SUV’s door at one point during the chase was taken into custody. 35-year-old Robert Sims, who grabbed the SUV’s door at 5:05 seconds into the YouTube video, surrendered to police in Brooklyn. Detectives are also looking at about a half dozen other bikers who may have had a role in the assault of the driver. Some have already been interviewed by investigators after being identified by video and photographs that have been coming in. Investigators are interviewing as many motorcyclists as possible to determine their roles before filing charges. “This is a complex investigation with a lot of people involved,” a source said. Read More Here |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:02 PM PDT
 When is the Japanese government going to start telling the truth?!? Thousands in Japan reported to be suffering massive and recurring nosebleeds in recent days. Below is some info I pulled off social media sites and other sites:Over 5,000 ppl were reported of tweeting “nosebleed”（hanaji) over the past two-day period from 9/22-9/23 Over 3,000 ppl were reported of tweeting “can’t stop my nosebleed” (hanaji ga tomaranai) during the week of 9/20-9/30 (as of 12am 10/01/2013 JST) Over 2,500 ppl were reported of tweeting “I’m nosebleeding” (hanaji ga deta) during the short days of 9/28-9/30 (as of 12 am 10/01/2013 JST) Gundersen: Japan doctors tell us, “We know our patients have radiation illness” but we are forced to keep it a secret. |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:02 PM PDT
 Lavabit owner Ladar Levison told RT that he had no choice but to close his email service because the FBI, in pursuit of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, forced him into an ethical dilemma by demanding he hand over customers’ personal data.RT: The FBI demanded you hand over encryption codes to collect data from a specific account that is not named in the documents. What was your initial response? Ladar Levison: That’s actually not correct. What they demanded were the SSL keys that were protecting all the data coming in and out of my network for all of my users, and that’s what I had an issue with. I’ve said before that I took the stance that I did not to try and protect a single person but because I was concerned about the invasion and the sacrificing of everyone’s privacy rights that were accessing my system. RT: We were led to believe that you had been threatened to be charged with criminal content if you did not comply. Do you feel those threats would have eventually become reality if you didn’t follow suit? LL: Oh, I know they would. In fact they went on to charge me $5,000 a day for every day that I didn’t turn over those keys, which is why I was eventually forced to hand them over. Given the difficult choice of remaining silent about what I thought was a grave injustice or taking, like you said, the lesser of two evils and shutting down the service. I just wasn’t comfortable knowing that they were examining all the data that was coming in and out of my network without any kind of transparency or auditing by myself to ensure that they were only collecting the information they were legally authorized to and continuing to run the service with that knowledge. So I made the only decision I felt was appropriate. In terms of being arrested, I think the only reason they didn’t is because if they had the system would have had nobody to maintain it. That’s one of the advantages of being a small business owner, you wear many hats. RT: The former NSA chief joked that he could have put Edward Snowden on some sort of a list. Many people have since speculated what type of list it could it be. Could it be a hit list, perhaps? Now, that seems tasteless. It doesn’t seem like a funny joke to me, but how far is the government willing to go to cover up their actions or to stop these email encrypted systems? LL: As far as they’re concerned, they should be able to force [someone in my position] to do anything humanly possible to aid in their investigation…They definitely feel like what they’re doing is right and they just look at it as, you know, they’re going after a criminal. They don’t see the implications of what they’re doing. But from my perspective, somebody who’s been entrusted with protecting the privacy of my users, protecting their most private information – you know your email address is effectively the heart of your online identity. Everything else you do online is tied to an email account, and to allow them access to everyone’s email account, to allow them to intercept passwords, credit card numbers, new user registrations, to be able to collect IP address information, and then to be able to do it without telling anybody what they were doing or who they were collecting information on. Well, I was completely uncomfortable with that. I just shuttered to think. RT: You ran a small business basically but what do you think about larger corporations like Google? They are now going to the US courts, suing the government to try to clear their name and not have any affiliation with the NSA. What do you think about that? LL: The fact is if you’re a domestic company, you don’t deal with the NSA directly. You deal with the FBI. It’s actually put the FBI in what I think is a tenuous, unethical position because they’re now the slaves to two masters: they do the work on behalf of the Department of Justice in terms of domestic law enforcement investigations, and they do the work of the NSA by interacting with companies like my own who cooperate here domestically. If I were a foreign company, the NSA either would have broken into my servers electronically or found a local asset to do it for them physically. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want to move my system abroad. At least here in the US they try and use the court system to compel you to do stuff. But it’s pretty scary to think about what lengths they’re willing to go to conduct these investigations. Source |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
 A new shape-changing metal crystal is reported in the journal Nature, by scientists at University of Minnesota. It is the prototype of a new family of smart materials that could be used in applications ranging from space vehicles to electronics to jet engines.Called a “martensite”, the crystal has two different arrangements of atoms, switching seamlessly between them. It can change shape tens of thousands of times when heated and cooled without degrading, unlike existing technology. Currently, martensite metals are made of an alloyed mixture of nickel and titanium. They have the remarkable ability to “remember” their shape and even after being bent will return to their original form. For this, they are called “shape memory” metals. They have been used in spectacle frames and brassiere wires, but also in surgery as frameworks for shaping healing bones, and as “stents” for holding heart arteries open. Martensite metals change shape when heated or cooled through a certain temperature, when the atoms that make up their structure rearrange themselves in a sudden transformation. Some call this a “military transformation” because the rows of atoms that make up the metal crystal click into their new shape in an orderly manner. The transformation means that martensite can be used in smart mechanisms that respond to temperature change. Examples include automatic windows-openers in glasshouses, a means for automatically guiding solar panels to point at the Sun on the Hubble Space Telescope, and, very recently, in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner to morph the trailing edge of the engine cowling, making it quieter when it runs hot on take-off. The pitfall of current martensites is that after repeated shape changes, they build up stresses inside that degrade them and eventually break them apart. The new alloy, made of a mixture of zinc, gold and copper, changes back and forth almost indefinitely with little internal damage, opening up a new range of applications for these types of “active materials”. The aim is now to apply the lessons learned from the new metal to make a family of ceramic solids that can also be shape-switched back and forth. “The real advance is to make the transformations reversible that could be applied in many situations” explains Prof Richard James, one of the authors of the study. “You could make devices that convert heat to electricity directly. They could use the waste heat from computers and cell phones to recharge the battery and make them more efficient.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
 The United States has no choice but to delay negotiations over a major free trade deal with countries in the European Union because of the partial federal government shutdown, the Obama administration has said.Michael Froman, a US trade representative working within an agency of the same name (USTR), phoned European Union Trade Commissioner Karel Del Gucht Friday to inform the Belgian politician that US officials would not be taking a scheduled trip to Brussels next week to discuss future plans. Washington and the EU were expected to meet for the second time on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, according to Reuters. The agreement will become the world’s largest free-trade deal if it is signed when the shutdown is lifted. Over 800,000 US government workers are temporarily out of work after negotiations over the federal budget ground to a halt in Washington earlier this week. More employees are likely to be placed on unpaid leave as the conflict drags on. Major government contractors, including Lockheed Martin, have begun announcing their own furloughs as the impact reverberates. “USTR will work with the [European] Commission to craft an alternative plan that can begin once the US government shutdown ends,” the USTR said in a statement. Framers of the agreement have promised that the deal would stimulate employment in both the United States and Europe, where the jobless rate stood at 12 percent through August and September according to Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union. Karel De Gucht, who has been the European commissioner for trade since 2010, said in a statement that the cancellation of the meetings “in no way distracts us from our overall aim of achieving an ambitious trade and investment deal.” US President Barack Obama announced the first round of negotiations with the EU Trade Commission on the first day of the G8 Summit in June. Meeting with trade representatives and leaders from some of the 17 countries represented in the EU, Obama proposed that a settlement between the two entities could eliminate all trade tariffs, strengthen rules-based investment, and determine improved market access on trade-in services, among other possibilities. “America and Europe have done extraordinary things before,” Obama said in Northern Ireland, going on to say that he hopes they will create “an economic alliance as strong as our diplomatic and security alliance.” Source |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 By BYRON YORKEveryone knows the phrase “government shutdown” doesn’t mean the entire U.S. government is shut down. So in a partial government shutdown, like the one underway at the moment, how much of the government is actually shut down, and how much is not? One way to measure that is in how much money the government spends. In a conversation Thursday, a Republican member of Congress mentioned that the military pay act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama at the beginning of the shutdown, is actually a huge percentage of the government’s discretionary spending in any given year. And that is still flowing. So if you took that money, and added it to all the entitlement spending that is unaffected by a shutdown, plus all the areas of spending that are exempted from a shutdown, and added it all together, how much of the federal government’s total spending is still underway even though the government is technically shut down? I asked a Republican source on the Senate Budget Committee for an estimate. This was the answer: “Based on estimates drawn from CBO and OMB data, 83 percent of government operations will continue. This figure assumes that the government pays amounts due on appropriations obligated before the shutdown ($512 billion), spends $225 billion on exempted military and civilian personnel, pays entitlement benefits for those found eligible before the shutdown (about $2 trillion), and pays interest costs when due ($237 billion). This is about 83 percent of projected 2014 spending of $3.6 trillion.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 A federal judge has ordered the US to release a Guantanamo Bay prisoner suffering from mental illness who has spent much of his 11 years at the prison in a psychiatric ward.Judge Royce Lamberth of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a release order Friday for Ibrahim Idris of Sudan, who was never formally charged for a crime despite being held at the US naval base as an enemy combatant. Lamberth issued the order after US Department of Justice lawyers filed court papers earlier this week stating that the government would not oppose his release as it had previously. Idris’ legal counsel has long argued that his illness was too great for him to pose a security threat. Idris was captured with Al-Qaeda fighters by Pakistani forces in 2001 while attempting to cross into Afghanistan. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia by a US Army psychiatrist not long after his arrival at Guantanamo in 2002. |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 By JULIE PACEPresident Barack Obama says he would “think about changing” the Washington Redskins’ name if he owned the football team as he waded into the controversy involving a word many consider offensive to Native Americans. Obama, in an interview with The Associated Press, said team names such as the Redskins offend “a sizable group of people.” He said that while fans get attached to the names, nostalgia may not be a good enough reason to keep them in place. “I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things,” he said in the interview, which was conducted Friday at the White House. An avid sports fan who roots for his hometown Chicago Bears, Obama said he doesn’t think Washington football fans are purposely trying to offend American Indians. “I don’t want to detract from the wonderful Redskins fans that are here. They love their team and rightly so,” he said. But he appeared to come down on the side of those who have sharply criticized the football team’s name, noting that Indians “feel pretty strongly” about mascots and team names that depict negative stereotypes about their heritage. The team’s owner, Dan Snyder has vowed to never abandon the name. Read More Here |
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Posted: 04 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 A man who set himself on fire on the National Mall in the U.S. capital has died of his injuries, which were so severe that authorities will have to use DNA and dental records to identify him, District of Columbia police said Saturday.The man died Friday night at a Washington hospital where he had been airlifted, Officer Araz Alali, a police spokesman, said. The man poured a can of gasoline on himself in the center portion of the mall Friday afternoon. He then set himself on fire, with passing joggers taking off their shirts to help douse the flames. Police had said he was conscious and breathing at the scene, but he was airlifted to MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Police are investigating the man’s possible motives. Lt. Pamela Smith of the U.S. Park Police said she was unaware whether he carried signs or had articulated a cause. One witness, Katy Scheflen, said that she saw a tripod set up near the man but that she did not hear him say anything intelligible before he set himself on fire. It was unclear whether the man was filming the incident. The immolation occurred in a city with jangled nerves following a Sept. 16 mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard and high-speed car chase outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. The chase ended with a woman being shot dead by police with a young child in the car. Source |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:08 PM PDT
 Only hours after a criminal complaint unearthed on Wednesday accused a California man of operating an online black market, an indictment unsealed in Maryland alleged that the same webmaster ordered the assassination of a former employee.The unsealing of the indictment late Wednesday lent even more weirdness to an already bizarre account of events unraveled earlier that day through a federal complaint. It accused 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht of San Francisco, CA of operating the Silk Road website, and in turn masterminding a criminal conspiracy that involved the mass buying and selling of illegal drugs and other contraband over the Internet. Wednesday’s indictment also indicated for the second time in under a day that Ulbricht had been under investigation regarding not one, but two attempted assassinations. Earlier that day, security researcher Brian Krebs uncovered a sealed complaint signed by a federal magistrate for the Southern District of New York Court. It accused Ulbricht of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy by way of his alleged involvement with the Silk Road website. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ulbricht used the website to facilitate the transfer of hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs to over a hundred thousand buyers, laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Silk Road “served as a sprawling black-market bazaar, where illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services have been regularly bought and sold by the site’s users” using the encrypted, almost-anonymous digital currency Bitcoin, FBI Agent Christopher Tarbell testified in the complaint. Authorities also indicated that through their surveillance of Ulbricht they believed he asked a Silk Road user to execute another customer for a fee of $300,000. The would-be victim, a Silk Road vendor operating under the name “FriendlyChemist” according to the complaint, threatened to release the identities of otherwise anonymous Silk Road clients if Ulbricht didn’t pay him to keep quiet. “In my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn’t mind if he was executed,” Ulbricht allegedly told Silk Road user “redandwhite” on March 26 of this year. When FriendlyChemist threatened again to release the identities of Silk Road users, Ulbricht reportedly told redandwhite, “I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you.” When redandwhite said the price to execute a hit could be upwards of $300,000, the FBI claims Ulbricht wrote back contesting the cost as too high, adding, “Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do?” Although redandwhite later sent images to Ulbricht purported to be of a slain FriendlyChemist, the FBI does not believe the murder occurred. According to the indictment unsealed hours later, though, Ulbricht wasn’t bluffing when he said he had ordered executions before. Indictment against Ulbricht: An October-1 superseding indictment made public shortly after the complaint did its rounds on Wednesday and revealed that the US District Court for the District of Maryland charged Ulbricht this week with not just conspiracy regarding the buying and selling of contraband over Silk Road, but also for the attempted assassination of a Silk Road employee months earlier. The FBI’s claims reinforce the comments made about the killing of FriendlyChemist in March when Ulbricht referred to an earlier hit. Indeed, authorities say Ulbricht authorized the murder — or at least intended to — of a former staffer at Silk Road for a fraction of the $300,000 he spent on the second, likely botched murder. Before Ulbricht became concerned that FriendlyChemist would post the identities of his clients, he was worried that a recently arrested Silk Road employee would reveal even more to the feds. The indictment suggests that starting January 26, Ulbricht engaged in online discussions with an undercover FBI agent that he believed to be a hit-man. A Silk Road employee had recently been arrested by law enforcement and had stolen funds from the website’s users, Ulbricht allegedly told the agent, and in response he wanted him “beat up, then forced to send the Bitcoins he stole back.” One day later, Ulbricht told the agent that the employee “was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info.” Ulbricht “never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case,” the FBI claims he told the agent. Days later, Ulbricht allegedly wired $40,000 from his bank account to one registered at a Capitol One branch in Washington, D.C. After he received photos from the undercover agent of a mock murder, he wired the remaining half of the bounty at the end of February. “Ulbricht,” writes the FBI, “did attempt to kill the employee, with intent to prevent the communication by the employee to a law enforcement officer of the United States of information relating to the commission and possible commission of a federal offense, to wit: narcotics conspiracy in violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 846.” The FBI claims that, beginning in November 2011, it purchased drugs on more than 100 occasions from Silk Road vendors. The site, which generated an estimated $1.2 billion in sales while in operation, went offline this week after Ulbricht was arrested. Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:04 PM PDT
AlJazeera America’s Jared B. Keller just Tweeted a possibly astonishing finding: the Anchorage, Alaska office of the National Weather Service, where salaries are hanging in the balance as a result of the government shutdown, may have embedded a secret message into a weather bulletin. The update definitely read: PLEASE PAY US. Here’s a screen grab of the forecast, which was posted at 5:00 a.m. Alaskan daylight time.
 Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:04 PM PDT
 By Daniel TencerPrime Minister Stephen Harper and Trade Minister Ed Fast are headed to Malaysia and Indonesia this week, and one of the main issues on their agenda is a trade deal that would cover one-third of the world’s international commerce. But what the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will contain is so far a matter of rumour, conjecture and guesswork — nowhere more so than in Canada, where the government has kept a tight lid on news coming out of the talks. Negotiations on the TPP, covering 12 Pacific Rim countries including Canada, are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Kyodo News reports that officials from the negotiating countries will issue a statement next week announcing negotiations are headed for the finish line. Along with Canada and the U.S., negotiating countries include Australia, Japan and Mexico, but not China. The Financial Times describes the TPP as being “billed as a 21st century trade deal aimed at setting new high standards for future agreements.” But critics, such as the Council of Canadians, say it sets a new standard for prioritizing “corporate rights” over the rights of consumers. Particularly worrying for some consumers’ advocates are reports that the deal will force participating countries to significantly tighten controls over the internet. According to consumers’ groups citing an early draft of the deal leaked in 2011, the TPP could mean criminal penalties for even small-scale unauthorized downloading; could result in “three strikes” laws that would see households kicked off the internet for copyright violations; and could mean expanded copyright and patent terms that would mean lessened access to generic drugs. The humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders issued a statement on Thursday urging governments “not to make political trade-offs during trade negotiations that will harm access to affordable medicines for millions of people” in the signatory countries. Despite moves by the U.S. to soften the drug patent provisions, “this is still a terrible deal that will continue to delay the entry of affordable generic medicines that [Doctors Without Borders] and millions of people rely on,” said Judit Rius, manager of Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign in the U.S. The consumer advocacy group OpenMedia has launched a campaign opposing the copyright and internet-related provisions in the trade deal, under the moniker “say no to internet censorship.” The group says more than 100,000 people have signed the letter to TPP leaders so far. Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:03 PM PDT
By Alex Pappas
 In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown. “With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.” According to its website, the Archdiocese for the Military Services “provides the Catholic Church’s full range of pastoral ministries and spiritual services to those in the United States Armed Forces.” In his piece, Schlageter worries about this restriction as Sunday nears. “If the government shutdown continues through the weekend, there will be no Catholic priest to celebrate Mass this Sunday in the chapels at some U.S. military installations where non-active-duty priests serve as government contractors,” he wrote. Because of the lack of active-duty Catholic chaplains, the military relies on hiring civilian priests to serve as government service and contract ministers. Those civilian priests are not allowed on the bases during a shutdown, Schlageter wrote. One Republican lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee told The Daily Caller on Friday that this “crosses a constitutional line.” “The constitutional rights of those who put their lives on the line for this nation do not end with a government slowdown,” Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and an Army veteran, said in a Friday statement. ”It is completely irresponsible for the president to turn his back on every American’s First Amendment rights by furloughing military contract clergy.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:02 PM PDT
 BY: Elizabeth HarringtonThe Kentucky Obamacare marketplace has no “expectation of privacy,” warning its prospective customers that their information can be monitored and shared with government bureaucrats. When clicking “let’s get started” on the state-run health insurance marketplace “kynect,” the user is quickly prompted to a “WARNING NOTICE.” “This is a government computer system and is the property of the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” it states. “It is for authorized use only regardless of time of day, location or method of access. “ “Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy,” the disclaimer reads. “Any or all uses of this system and all files on the system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized state government and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.” Such information includes Social Security numbers. When calling kynect to enroll in the marketplace a person is told to have their Social Security card, immigration status, pay stubs, alimony payments, student loan information, and current health insurance information at the ready. The kynect disclaimer says users information can be shared at the will of state government agencies. “By using this system,” the warning states, “the user consents to such at the discretion of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” “Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative disciplinary action and/or civil and criminal penalties,” it says. “The unauthorized disclosure of Data containing privacy or health data may result in criminal penalties under Federal authority.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
 A Texas father is refusing to apologize for forcing his child to hold a pink “I am a bully” sign because he says that “we don’t need another Columbine.” When Jose Lagares found out that his son got in trouble for bullying in his fourth grade class, he sent the boy out to the intersection of Ft. Hood Street and W. Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Ft. Hood on Tuesday. KCEN captured video of the fourth grader holding a pink sign that read: “I am a bully. Honk if you hate bullies.” “Bullying is also a form of public humiliation,” Lagares told the station. “Maybe he understands that when he humiliates someone publicly that doesn’t feel good.” “Hopefully he’ll take that with him so the next time he tries to bully someone he’ll think about it twice.” In an interview with KCEN on Thursday, Lagares said that he had received negative criticism, but he did not regret punishing his son. “I refuse to allow my child to be somebody else’s pain,” he explained. “Ya know, we don’t need another Columbine, and we don’t need another Solomon Harris. Ya know, we don’t need that to happen, and I refuse for my child to be the cause of that.” Read More Here |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
Check this video out, there seems to be two people the car that was involved in the shootout in Washington DC:
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Posted: 02 Oct 2013 05:04 PM PDT
 The tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last winter will be getting a deep dive in the coming book Newtown: An American Tragedy from journalist Matthew Lysiak. Pegged to the first anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary that left 26 dead, including 20 children, the book will reportedly feature exclusive interviews and emails from shooter Adam Lanza’s mother as well as the broader story of the tragedy.Lysiak, a reporter for the New York Daily News, obtained the emails earlier this year for a big story on Lanza’s history of mental illness. And the initial description suggests that the book will keep that focus on getting inside the mind of Lanza: Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a decade’s worth of emails from Lanza’s mother to close friends that chronicled his slow slide into mental illness, Newtown pieces together the perfect storm that led to this unspeakable act of violence that shattered so many lives.The book is expected to be released December 10. Source |
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Posted: 02 Oct 2013 05:03 PM PDT
A federal grand jury has returned an indictment against 13 alleged members of the hacktivist movement Anonymous and has charged them with participating in an anti-copyright campaign that targeted government and corporation websites in 2010 and 2011.
The 28-page indictment, unsealed on Thursday, accuses the defendants of engaging in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-led initiative that went after the US Copyright Office, major credit card companies and international law firms and trade groups starting in late 2010. The movement was in response to attempts from those entities to keep otherwise protected materials from being freely circulated on the Internet. According to the indictment, Operation Payback targeted victims which Anonymous claimed “opposed its stated philosophy of making all information free for all, including information protected by copyright laws or national security considerations.” The wave of attacks – an orchestrated effort to temporarily take websites offline by overloading them with illegitimate traffic – was launched shortly after the notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay was taken down in 2010. Targets included the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the US Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, Visa, MasterCard and Bank of America, as well as entities outside of the United States, such as British intellectual property rights protection firm Davenport Lyons and the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), a UK trade group that served as the across-the-pond equivalent of the MPAA. Federal prosecutors say that Anonymous launched a series of coordinated distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks against targets using custom software called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, or LOIC, that flooded web servers with traffic and rendered sites unavailable for legitimate users. The defendants are all charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to protected computers, and range in age from 21 to 65, according to Reuters reporter David Ingram. At least one of the defendants, Dennis Owen Collins, has previously ended up in the sights of federal investigators. Collins and 13 others were indicted in 2011 for a similar wave of DDoS attacks that targeted PayPal in response to the company’s refusal to process donations to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. That group, the so-called “PayPal 14,” is expected to appear in federal court in California later this month. Other defendants in the Operation Payback case include Jeremy Leroy Heller, Zhiwei Chen, Joshua S. Phy, Ryan Russell Gubele, Robert Audubon Whitfield, Anthony Tadros, Geoffrey Kenneth Commander, Phillip Garrett Simpson, Austen l. Stamm, Timothy Robert McClain, Wade Carl Williams and Thomas J. Bell. The 13 suspects, the indictment claims, participated in and coordinated the DDoS cyber attacks by deciding on which websites to strike and when, then circulating announcements across the web using flyers distributed on forums and social media platforms and chat rooms. One September 2010 flier – allegedly circulated by a defendant and cited by the prosecution – quotes Anonymous as admitting that the RIAA and MPAA were brought down by the group during a 72-hour span. Another, which was dated one month later, encouraged Anonymous to “send pizza and other crap” to the chairman and CEO of the RIAA. In addition to retaliating against the closure of The Pirate Bay, Anonymous also protested the shuttering of Limewire, another file-sharing service that was brought down with the assistance of the RIAA. The defendants in the Operation PayBack case allegedly circulated one flier on the web claiming that the trade group, in shutting down Limewire, “exercised more control than any private entity should be allowed.” “Globally, these corporations are trying to censor the internet, a place without borders, a place where millions freely share ideas and information,” the flier read. “If Limewire is gone today, what will we lose tomorrow?… When does this stop? Anonymous says it stops right now…Be against censorship. Be against private corporations having more rights than the average citizen. Be against the massive power of copyright labels. We must fight back. No more shall we wait. It is time for action. If they dare to take down Limewire, then we shall take down the RIAA in kind.” According to a two-year-old Gawker article, defendant Zhiwei Chen was raided in early 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In a Reddit post that has since been deleted, Chen reportedly admitted that the FBI came into his dorm room, “pushed everyone out of bed” and “searched the place and questioned all people involved.” A search warrant reportedly posted on the web by Chen in early 2011 revealed that the FBI seized a number of electronic devices, including computers, an iPhone, and multiple USB drives from Chen. Source |
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Posted: 02 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT
 The dramatic arrest inside a San Francisco public library of a man accused of running an underground drug website has become the talk of the neighborhood.Witnesses described what played out in the Glen Park branch library Tuesday like a scene from a television police show as undercover FBI agents quietly surrounded 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht, confiscated his laptop and placed him in handcuffs. First, a woman approached Ulbricht as he sat at a large table and screamed, “I’m so sick of you,” then lunged in to seize his computer. “He started to get a little bit agitated. He gets up, and I’m guessing he’s going to go ahead and try and grab his own laptop back,” said a witness who asked not to be identified publicly. Then the other patrons seated at the table got up to surround and corner him against a wall. “They politely ask him to turn around, put his hands behind his back. One of them breaks out cuffs and they cuff him,” the witness continued. The unusual arrest became surreal as the people surrounding Ulbricht shed their outer layers to reveal blue FBI vests. Ulbricht is due in court Friday to face charges of narcotics trafficking, computer hacking and money laundering for operating a website called Silk Road that allowed users to anonymously browse ads for drugs and other illegal services that could be paid for with the Internet currency Bitcoin. The undercover agent who provoked the incident took a look at all of the witnesses and said, “Surprise,” as the agents left with their suspect in custody. Not even the librarian knew what was going on as the agents headed for the exit. Read More Here |
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Posted: 02 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT
 A top US State Department official urged members of Congress Thursday to hold onto fresh sanctions against Iran until President Barack Obama’s administration can assess the new conciliatory tone from the Iranian government.“Let me assure you that we will continue to vigorously enforce the sanctions that are in place as we explore a negotiated resolution, and will be especially focused on sanctions evasion and efforts by the Iranians to relieve the pressure,” Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. The US, United Nations, and European Union have all joined to press Iran with punitive sanctions for what they say are measures to curb Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran counters the claims, saying that it simply aims to produce and use nuclear energy. The sanctions in place have devastated the Iranian economy, cutting oil exports in half while causing crippling inflation and high unemployment. Yet new President Hassan Rouhani has recently expressed a desire to reconcile with US officials, marking the possibility of new relations between the countries. Sherman asked lawmakers to at least wait until US and Iranian officials meet in Geneva in mid-October before moving forward with more sanctions. “In terms of legislation that is currently being discussed here on the Hill, we do believe it would be helpful for you all to at least allow this meeting to happen on the 15th and 16th of October before moving forward to consider those new sanctions,” said Sherman, who is leading the US delegation in talks with Iran. The UK, Germany, France, Russia, and China will also participate in the Geneva talks, although direct Iran-US meetings are expected be the most important of the negotiations. The US Senate is weighing a new round of fresh sanctions against Iran following the passage in July of a House bill that would seek to further cut Iran’s oil exports by another one million barrels a day for the next year to almost zero according to reported estimates. The legislation also vows military force against Iran should they defy orders not to pursue a nuclear weapon. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who drove the bill in the House, told the Guardian the legislation is designed to strengthen the US case during any talks and to “inject into the discussion the importance of Mr. Obama not making a bad deal – because a bad deal is worse than no deal at all.” Franks added that any offerings or promises made by Iranian officials in the talks would be met with automatic suspicion by conservative members of the House. The sentiments echo comments this week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that overtures from Rouhani come from a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Sanctions on Iranian oil exports, shipping, and insurance businesses cost the Islamic Republic billions in revenue each month. Existing measures already pressure countries including China, India, and Japan to reduce importing Iranian oil by threatening to block their banks from the US financial system. Read More Here |
