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Source: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151615772224947&id=58482219946
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
BBC America going social with The Stig via branded 'Top Gear' Twitter video
Remember that whole Twitter-sanctioned "in-Tweet branded video" BBC America hinted at back in April? Well, we've got some more info -- and it's coming a few hours ahead of the partnership's debut. Tonight's BBC America premier of Top Gear will feature supplementary Twitter video synced to the show, including the "Stig Cam," which offers "a new perspective" from the masked and anonymous driver. Also on the docket is an "Action Replay," featuring a highlight from the evening's festivities and a "sneak peak" involving a hovercraft, as well as a dirt bike jumping off a building. All in a day's work. You can get in on the action tonight at 8:30 / 7:30 central.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, Software, HD
Monday, July 1, 2013
Syrian rebels threaten to target Shi'ite villages in Aleppo
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels in the northern province of Aleppo on Monday threatened to seize two Shi'ite Muslim villages that back President Bashar al-Assad unless they surrendered to the opposition.
Activists say both Nubl and Zahra villages had been reinforced by Assad's allies in the increasingly sectarian war, among them fighters from Iran and Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite guerrilla group, Hezbollah.
"We announce our intention to liberate Nubl and Zahra from the regime and its shabbiha (pro-Assad militia), and from the Hezbollah and Iranian elements," the rebels said in an Internet video.
The 27-month-old conflict, which pits mostly Sunni insurgents against Assad, from an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has already killed more than 100,000 people and driven 1.7 million Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring countries.
Assad's forces, spearheaded by Hezbollah, have made a number of gains since they seized the border town of Qusair last month. There have also been heavy clashes in Aleppo and surrounding districts, fuelling expectations that Assad aims to re-establish control of Syria's largest city.
On Sunday rebels shot down a helicopter close to Nubl, which activists said had been carrying supplies to the villages. Authorities in Damascus said they were taking Education Ministry employees to supervise school exams. Seven employees and the helicopter crew were killed, they said.
A video released by activists a few weeks earlier showed an army officer apparently recruiting Shi'ite villagers in Zahra and Nubl to form fighting units to support the army against the rebels.
"PREVENT A SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD"
"In order to prevent a single drop of blood from being spilled and to find a peaceful solution, we have set the following conditions," the video statement by the rebels said.
Among the demands were the surrender of Assad's forces and their weapons, followed by a power sharing deal between the locals and the rebels.
"If there is no response (to rebel demands for surrender) there will be a major military operation on those two villages," the statement said.
The sectarian nature of the conflict has set regional Sunni Muslim powers - notably Gulf Arab states and Turkey - against Assad's Shi'ite Iranian and Hezbollah allies in a deepening proxy war on Syrian soil.
Deputy U.S. Secretary of State William Burns, speaking at the end of a visit to neighboring Lebanon, condemned Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria.
"Despite its membership in the Lebanese government, Hezbollah has decided to put its own interests and those of its foreign backers above those of the Lebanese people," Burns said.
"We condemn in the strongest terms Hezbollah's actions in Syria. They ... stand in direct violation of Lebanon's disassociation policy (from Syria) and place the future of Lebanon at risk."
Hezbollah's role in Syria, along with Sunni Islamist fighters smuggled over the border to fight for the Syrian rebels, has exacerbated sectarian tensions in Lebanon which is still scarred by its own 1975-1990 civil war.
Fighting has broken out in the Mediterranean cities of Tripoli and Sidon, while rockets have been fired at a Hezbollah district of southern Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley.
Saudi Arabia, which has accelerated armed support for the rebels according to Gulf sources, urged the European Union on Monday to arm Syrian rebels without delay.
Riyadh and its partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council also called on the United Nations Security Council to meet to prevent a massacre in the central city of Homs, where Assad's forces have been waging an assault on rebel-held districts.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy army bombardment and clashes with rebel fighters for a third day in the contested city, which sits on an axis connecting Damascus to the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean.
It said neither side appeared to be gaining any ground.
(Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/assads-forces-battle-tighten-control-central-syria-090118241.html
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Ford : Mustang GT Premium 2012 Black Ford Mustang GT 5.0/ Nav, Brembos, Rear View Cam, and custom exhaust
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You Can Get Xbox Music In Your Browser Now
We've been keen on Xbox Music
A web-client is the first step toward real corss-platform functionality, but there's no word of iOS or Android apps in the works, so it's still got a way to go to be a full-fledge player in the game. But not being imprisoned in Windows 8 is a good first step toward success.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/you-can-get-xbox-music-in-your-browser-now-633792101
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Kazakhstan trade trip poses human rights test for UK's Cameron
By Andrew Osborn
ATYRAU, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron helped inaugurate the world's costliest oil project in Kazakhstan on Sunday on a trip aimed at sealing business deals but quickly beset by questions over the Central Asian nation's poor human rights record.
Kazakhstan hopes Cameron's visit, the first by a serving British prime minister, will cement its status as a rising economic power and confer a degree of the legitimacy from the West it has long sought.
The visit takes place just days before the nation marks 15 years since the founding of the new Kazakh capital Astana, also the 73rd birthday of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a national holiday and cause for celebration that has been anticipated for days in state media.
Nazarbayev, a former Communist party apparatchik, has overseen market reforms and maintains wide popularity among the 17-million strong population, but has tolerated no dissent or opposition during his more than two decades in power.
Cameron said he hoped the 30 businessmen accompanying him would sign over 700 million pounds worth of deals during his two-day trip.
"We are in a global race for jobs and investment. This is one of the most rapidly emerging countries in the world," Cameron told reporters on his arrival in the Kazakh oil capital Atyrau.
His office said he aimed to "put British businesses in prime position to secure contracts that the Government believes could total ?85 billion in the coming years".
Cameron is also hoping to persuade Kazakhstan to expand transit rights for British military forces relocating equipment from Afghanistan between now and a planned withdrawal next year. Nazarbayev has already granted overflight rights, but Cameron is looking for land transit rights too.
Cameron and Nazarbayev together opened the Bolashak (Future) oil plant which will process crude that is due to start flowing from the giant Kashagan offshore oilfield in September.
Royal Dutch Shell has a 16.81 percent stake in the facility, which is in the Kazakh segment of the Caspian Sea. Nazarbayev said last week consortium members had so far invested $48 billion, making it the most expensive oil venture in the world.
TEMPTING TARGET
As Britain's trade with the euro zone suffers because of the currency bloc's debt woes, it is looking further afield to forge business links with countries that have enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years.
With a $200 billion economy, the largest in Central Asia, and deep oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan is a tempting target. Britain is already among the top three sources of foreign direct investment, according to Kazakh officials.
Since its 1991 independence, officials say British firms have invested about $20 billion in their economy, part of a total $170 billion ploughed into Kazakhstan since then.
But more high profile trade links carry political risks.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cameron had a duty to use his trip to denounce human rights abuses.
"We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, (and) tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association," it said in a letter on Friday.
Answering questions from reporters in Atyrau on Sunday, Cameron said he never put trade and business interests before rights.
"We will raise all the issues, including human rights. That's part of our dialogue and I'll be signing a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan," he said.
"Nothing is off the agenda, including human rights."
Activists most want Cameron to bring up the case of Vladimir Kozlov, a jailed opposition leader, when he meets Nazarbayev.
An outspoken critic of the Kazakh leader, Kozlov was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in October for colluding with a fugitive billionaire in a failed attempt to rally oil workers to bring down the government. Kozlov denied the charges.
Nazarbayev, a former steelworker who now holds the title "The Leader of the Nation", says that he puts stability and rising living standards before hasty political changes in his steppe nation, the world's ninth-largest by area and five times the size of France.
Comparing Kazakhstan to "Asian economic tigers" like South Korea and Singapore, he has said he wants to turn it into "the economic snow leopard of Central Asia".
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; in Almaty; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kazakhstan-trade-trip-poses-human-rights-test-uks-201117657.html
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Texas filibuster star Davis still weighing future
Texas filibuster star Wendy Davis says she hasn't decided whether she'll be a candidate for statewide office next year.
The Democratic state senator gained national fame for her filibuster last week against Texas abortion restrictions. She's gotten encouragement from fellow Democrats to seek higher office - perhaps even run for governor.
The Harvard-trained lawyer told The Associated Press she has been fielding congratulatory phone calls from around the world since her marathon filibuster that helped run out the clock on the special session and kill the abortion bill.
Her focus now is on another session set to begin Monday, when Republicans will try to push the bill through again.
Perry has promised the law will pass and Texas will remain a Republican stronghold.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52356985/ns/local_news-indianapolis_in/
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Sunday, June 30, 2013
Muslims In Myanmar: Trapped In Ghetto After Clashes
SITTWE, Myanmar -- From inside the neighborhood that has become their prison, they can look over the walls and fences and into a living city.
Stores are open out there. Sidewalk restaurants are serving bottles of Mandalay beer. There are no barbed-wire roadblocks marking neighborhood boundaries, no armed policemen guarding checkpoints. In the rest of Sittwe, this city of 200,000 people along Myanmar's coast, no one pays a bribe to take a sick baby to the doctor.
But here it's different.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE ? This story is part of "Portraits of Change," a yearlong series by The Associated Press examining how the opening of Myanmar after decades of military rule is ? and is not ? changing life in the long-isolated Southeast Asian country.
___
Aung Mingalar is just a few square blocks. You can walk it in 10 minutes, stopping only when you come to the end of the road and a policeman with an assault rifle waves you back inside, back into a maze of shuttered storefronts, unemployment and boredom.
In the evenings, when bats fly through the twilight, the men gather for prayers at Aung Mingalar's main mosque, the one that wasn't destroyed in last year's violence.
Zahad Tuson is among them. He had spent his life pedaling fares around this state capital, a fraying town, built by British colonials, full of bureaucrats and monsoon-battered concrete buildings. Now his bicycle rickshaw sits at home unused. He hasn't left Aung Mingalar in nearly a year.
"We could go out whenever we wanted!" he says. His voice is a mixture of anger and wonder.
What has caused this place to become a ghetto that no one can leave and few can enter? A basic fact: Aung Mingalar is a Muslim neighborhood.
A year after sectarian violence tore through Myanmar, the fury of religious pogroms has hardened into an officially sanctioned sectarian divide, a foray into apartheid-style policies that has turned Aung Mingalar into a prison for Sittwe's Muslims and that threatens this country's fragile transition to democracy.
Muslims, Tuson says, are not welcome in today's Myanmar.
It's simple, he says: "They want us gone."
___
For generations, Aung Mingalar existed as just another tangle of streets and alleys in the heart of Sittwe. It was a Muslim quarter; everybody knew that. But the distinction seldom meant much.
Until suddenly it meant everything.
Last year, violence twice erupted between two ethnic groups in this part of Myanmar: the Rakhine, who are Buddhist, and a Muslim minority known as the Rohingya. While carnage was widespread on both sides of the religious divide, it was Muslims who suffered most, and who continue to suffer badly more than a year later.
Across Rakhine state, more than 200 people were killed, 70 percent of them Muslim. In Sittwe, where Muslims were once almost half the population, five of the six Muslim neighborhoods were destroyed. Over 135,000 people remain homeless in Rakhine state, the vast majority of them Muslims forced into bamboo refugee camps that smell of dust and wood smoke and too many people living too close together.
The troubles here were, at least initially, driven by ethnicity as much as religion. To the Rakhine, who dominate this state, as well as to Myanmar's central government, the Rohingya are here illegally, "Bengalis" whose families slipped across the nearby border from what is now Bangladesh. Historians say Rohingya have been here for centuries, though many did come more recently. Their modern history has been a litany of oppression: the riots of 1942, the mass expulsions of 1978, the citizenship laws of 1982.
What started with the Rohingya has evolved into a broader anti-Muslim movement, helping ignite a series of attacks across Myanmar ? from Meikhtila in the country's center, where Buddhist mobs beat dozens of Muslim students to death in March, to Lashio near the Chinese border, where Buddhist men swarmed through the city burning scores of Muslim-owned stores in May.
The violence is about religion and ethnicity, but also about what happens when decades of military rule begin giving way in the nation once known as Burma, and old political equations are clouded by the complexities of democracy.
In 2010, political change finally came to Myanmar, a profoundly isolated nation long ruled by a series of mysterious generals. Opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from house imprisonment. National elections were held. Former political prisoners became politicians.
Amid the tumult ? and with the military still wielding immense power behind the scenes ? old animosities and new politicians flourished. Ethnic groups formed powerful regional parties. Buddhist nationalists, with a deep-seated suspicion of Muslims, moved from the fringes into the mainstream.
Political frustration fed on economic frustration, with millions of poor rural residents flocking to Myanmar's cities only to find continued poverty in ever-growing slums. In a country that is about 90 percent Buddhist, Myanmar's Muslims, who number as little as 4 percent of the population, became political bogeymen.
U Shwe Maung, a top official with the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, the state's most powerful party, will tell you about the problems with the Rohingya: They have too many children, they are angling for political clout, they claim to be citizens.
"We are not willing to live with them," the onetime high-school English teacher says in his quiet voice. He's an avuncular man, friendly and unfailingly polite. "They want to Muslimize this land. They want power."
Anti-Muslim sentiment has been magnified by an increasingly virulent strain of Buddhist nationalism, as a once-obscure group of monks nurtures populist fears of a growing Muslim threat. Muslims are criminals, they say, a "poison" driving up land prices and pushing aside the Buddhist working class. Crowds pack monasteries and prayer halls to hear the monks' speeches. Recordings are sold in sidewalk stalls along Myanmar's streets.
"They will destroy our country, our religion, our people. They will destroy the next-generation Buddhist women, since their aim is to mix their blood with ours," a popular monk, Ashin Tayzaw Thar Ra, said in a speech earlier this year. "Soon, Buddhists will have to worship in silence and fear."
___
In Aung Mingalar, they know all about fear.
The neighborhood is where Maung Than Win once served hundreds of meals a day at the little restaurant his father had opened, and where residents gathered at the Chat Cafe to gossip in the cool of twilight. It is where dozens of boys showed up every day for classes at Hafeez Skee's Islamic school, but most children attended secular schools.
It was widely seen as the wealthiest of Sittwe's Muslim neighborhoods, but it was hardly an island of economic isolation. It was a place where day laborers built thatch huts for themselves, and rich businessmen, their fortunes often made on small fleets of wooden fishing boats that troll the Bay of Bengal, built sprawling houses covered in shiny green tiles. A few families farmed gardens of watercress in a swampy area between some of the alleys. The main streets, once brick or cobblestone, had turned to dirt over the years.
"My grandfather was from Aung Mingalar. My father was from Aung Mingalar. I'm from Aung Mingalar," says Win, his teeth stained red from years of chewing betel nuts. At 32 he has spent nearly his entire life working at his restaurant, the Love Tea Shop. It filled with people every day, particularly after prayers at the mosque. "I just want to stay as long as I can."
Not that everything was perfect. Buddhist and Muslim residents of Sittwe agree at least on that.
There were fights, though they tended to be just one person against another. In the last sectarian violence, in 2001, only one person died in Sittwe. The last widespread bloodshed was during World War II, when the Rohingya backed the British colonial forces and the Rakhine supported the Japanese. Hundreds of people were killed.
"I had heard about the troubles then," says Ferus Ahmad, a pharmacist. "We thought something like this could never happen again."
But it did. It began last year on May 28, with the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by a group of Rohingya men in a village a few hours from here. Days later, a bus carrying Muslim travelers was surrounded by a Buddhist mob and ten Muslims were killed. Five days after that, Rohingya mobs attacked Rakhine near the Bangladesh border. It's unclear how many people died.
With fear spiraling on both sides, trouble came to Sittwe. Over five days, Rakhine and Rohingya mobs battled one another. By the end, hundreds of Rakhine homes had been destroyed, as had nearly every Rohingya neighborhood. Today, other than Aung Mingalar, Muslim Sittwe is little more than destroyed mosques and once-crowded communities grown over with grass and weeds, completely empty of residents.
During the street battles, the women and children of Aung Mingalar were put into a mosque for safety, while the men protected the neighborhood's edges. Then something unusual happened: The security forces arrived to help.
Across Myanmar, the army and the police have done little to protect Muslims through a year of violence, and rights groups say they have often joined in the attacks. It's still unclear why it was different in Aung Mingalar.
But while they arrived as protectors, those soldiers soon became jailers. Today, the security forces enforce the official ghetto. And the dominant story line remains: Not only did Muslims never need protection from Buddhists, but they destroyed their own neighborhoods.
"The Bengalis lit their own houses on fire, because they knew they would get another house" in the refugee camps, says U Win Myaing, the Rakhine state assistant director for communications. "Plus, they thought the fires would spread to Rakhine areas and burn those houses down."
Increasingly, such stories about Muslims are believed across Myanmar.
___
Today, Aung Mingalar is consuming itself.
House after wooden house has been torn down for firewood. The dead, who can no longer be taken out to the Muslim cemetery, are buried behind the mosque. Food, which comes from occasional government handouts and the twice-weekly markets some residents can attend, is scarce and expensive.
There are no stores left open, just a few food stalls and a makeshift pharmacy that sells laxatives and herbal headache medicine.
There are also few heroes. Residents say wealthy Rohingya have bought land from poorer or more desperate neighbors. While the authorities occasionally allow some Rohingya into the neighborhood to sell supplies, they charge double what customers pay on the outside.
"People aren't competing with each other," says Win, the tea shop owner, "but they are not working together either."
Officials refuse to say when ? or if ? Aung Mingalar will be allowed to rejoin the rest of Sittwe.
There is one way to get out. The bribe to pass the checkpoints is 10,000 kyats (about $10) each way, according to current and former residents. That's a lot of money here, but plenty of people are paying it. While no one is sure of the neighborhood's size ? aid workers say it was probably about 4,000 before the violence ? it's now dropping fast.
"When everything they have is gone, people just want to leave," Win says.
Thousands have left Myanmar, paying smugglers to slip them into Malaysia or Thailand. But most head to the refugee camps outside towns, endless rows of bamboo shelters filled with Rohingya. Many of the camps are restricted areas ? residents are not allowed to come and go as they wish ? but most are also large enough to have their own economies.
Across Myanmar, many Muslims are now more closed-off than they once were, barricading their neighborhoods at night against possible attackers. But so far, at least, Aung Mingalar is the only sealed ghetto.
Ahmad, the pharmacist, lived in Aung Mingalar for 38 years. Until the violence of 2012, he owned a pharmacy in Sittwe's main market, a warren of shops near the port. But soon after the trouble started, Aung Mingalar was sealed and Ahmad couldn't get to his shop. The medicines expired. His customers went elsewhere. The shop has been closed for months.
Ahmad wonders at what has happened to his country. The 2010 transition was supposed to bring change, but he's seen nothing to encourage him.
"We now have a president, a government," says Ahmad, his button-down shirt faded from so many washings. "But it's like there is no ruler."
For many like him, the main sustenance now is memories. That is what keeps Ahmad going.
A couple of times a week, back when things were good, Ahmad would close his pharmacy, pick up his wife and two children at home and head to the Sittwe beach, barely a mile away. Now, only Rakhine are allowed at the beach and Ahmad has left the neighborhood where he grew up. His family is still there, but he has moved to the refugee camps, where he seeks work and tries to remember what normal felt like.
"We'd just walk along the beach," he says of those family outings. "I dream about that sometimes."
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/30/muslims-myanmar_n_3525222.html
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Obama sees no threat in China rivalry for Africa business
PRETORIA |
PRETORIA (Reuters) - The United States does not feel threatened by the growth of trade and investment in Africa by China and other emerging powers, U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday.
Suggestions that he has allowed China to steal a march over the United States in doing business with Africa have dogged Obama's three-nation swing through the continent, but he said the increased Chinese engagement was beneficial for all.
"I don't feel threatened by it. I feel it's a good thing," Obama told a news conference during a visit to South Africa.
The more countries invest in Africa, the more the world's least developed continent can be integrated into the global economy, the first African-American U.S. president said.
"I want everybody playing in Africa. The more the merrier."
China has greatly expanded its reach in Africa since the start of the new century. It overtook the United States as Africa's largest trading partner in 2009, a February report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) showed.
China's advantage in trade stems mostly from how much it sells to Africa. Chinese exports to the continent in 2011 were almost triple the level of U.S. exports.
When it comes to investment flows, however, the picture is different. Data for 2007-2011 suggest U.S. foreign investment flows to the region were larger than China's, the GAO said.
"China's role as an investor, aid donor and financier is not outsized," Johns Hopkins University China scholar Deborah Brautigam wrote recently.
"Although Western countries fret about China's growing role in Africa, the United States alone disbursed more official finance to African countries than China did in 2010."
Still, China's influence looms large over the continent, partly because it has been so aggressive in its courtship.
Beijing and Washington should be partners in Africa to foster development and peace, said an official Chinese commentary after Obama's made his remarks.
Obama's stops in South Africa and Tanzania mirror a visit in March by then newly named Chinese President Xi Jinping, which could be seen as rivalry between the two superpowers on the African continent, state-run news agency Xinhua said.
"This mentality belongs to the past. It results from the West's biased perception of China's role in Africa," Xinhua said. "It also misses the bigger picture in which Beijing and Washington, instead of being competitors undermining each other's efforts, can actually work as partners in promoting Africa's development."
RESTING ON ITS LAURELS?
Obama's visit to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania will bring to four the number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa that the U.S. president has visited in the last four years. He stopped briefly in Ghana in his first term.
In contrast, Chinese presidents and vice presidents have visited 30 African countries over the same period, said Mwangi Kimenyi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
There is also a sense that the United States may be resting on its laurels.
"There hasn't really been a presence of U.S. companies since 1994, taking advantage of the new opportunities," Haroon Bhorat, a professor at the University of Cape Town said recently, speaking of South Africa.
"So, you've seen new emerging markets entering into other emerging markets like South Africa and taking advantage of economic opportunities in a way where the U.S., already with a foothold, arguably hasn't done enough."
Obama's aides have argued that he has had two wars and a deep economic crisis to deal with since he took office in 2009.
Obama has also said that U.S. interactions with Africa have included goals of social and political development, unlike those of China, which he said were more narrowly focused on commercial benefits.
"A lot of people are pleased that China is involved in Africa," he told reporters travelling with him on Friday.
"On the other hand, they recognize that China's primary interest is being able to obtain access for natural resources in Africa to feed the manufacturers in export-driven policies of the Chinese economy."
That relationship makes Africa an exporter of raw materials but does not create jobs in Africa and is not a sustainable model over the long-term, he added.
In Pretoria on Saturday, Obama urged African nations to be tougher negotiators in accepting investments from abroad.
"You produce the raw materials, sold cheap and then all the way up the chain somebody else is making the money and creating the jobs and the value," he said.
"Make sure that whoever you're dealing with ... you're getting a good deal that's benefiting the people here and that can help to spur on broad-based development."
(Additional reporting by Terrill Yue Jones in Beijing, Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Mark Felsenthal, Editing by Gareth Jones and Michael Perry)
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~3/k49KUZJ3Gg0/story01.htm
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Video: Ford?s Virttex driver performance simulator:
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Monday, June 24, 2013
AP Source: NSA leaker Snowden's passport revoked
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed a highly classified surveillance program has had his U.S. passport revoked, an official said Sunday.
Edward Snowden's passport was annulled before he left Hong Kong for Russia and while that could complicate his travel plans, the lack of a passport alone could not thwart his plans, the U.S. official said. If a senior official in another country or with an airline orders it, a country could overlook the withdrawn passport, the official said.
The U.S. official would only discuss the passport on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter.
Snowden's allies said he was heading toward Ecuador, where the foreign minister said the government had received a request for asylum.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to comment on Snowden's passport specifically but said individuals facing arrest warrants could have their passport withdrawn.
"Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status. Persons wanted on felony charges, such as Mr. Snowden, should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel other than is necessary to return him to the United States," Psaki said in a statement.
The State Department said the United States was in touch, through diplomatic and law enforcement channels, with countries that Snowden might travel through or to.
Snowden, a CIA technician and former NSA contractor, helped The Guardian and The Washington Post to disclose surveillance programs that collects vast amounts of online data and email, sometimes sweeping up information on ordinary American citizens. Officials have the ability to collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved.
Since news organizations began publishing reports based on Snowden's disclosures, he had been in hiding in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a high degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong but was rebuffed; Hong Kong officials said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws.
Snowden was said to have landed in Moscow on Sunday but was not seen leaving the airport.
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PFT: NFL names award after Deacon Jones
Getty ImagesReggie Williams, the Jaguars? first-round pick in 2004, was among the final cuts of the CFL?s Toronto Argonauts on Saturday.
Williams, 30, signed with the Argonauts on May 29. According to the Canadian QMI Agency wire service, Williams had a one-handed TD catch in the Argonauts? final preseason game Thursday vs. Montreal.
While Reggie Williams? stint in Toronto has ended, another former Jaguars receiver is very much a key part of the Argonauts? 2013 plans.
In fact, this ex-Jaguar is the CFL?s top best player in the estimation of TSN and sportswriters across Canada.
Chad Owens, a sixth-round pick of Jacksonville in 2005, was voted the CFL?s best player?on Friday.
Owens, 31, was the CFL?s Most Outstanding Player in 2012 after catching 94 passes for 1,328 yards and six TDs for the Grey Cup-champion Argos. Moreover, he set a league record for all-purpose yards.
Owens could never quite stick with the Jaguars, who released him in January 2008. But he stuck with professional football. He played Arena ball for a year, then landed on the Montreal Alouettes? practice roster for much of 2009. The next year, the Als traded him to Toronto, and he has been a key contributor since.
For former NFL players, making a?CFL roster is easier said than done. There are just eight CFL teams, and the Canadian game is different than the NFL game, with the wider field one example.
Given that Reggie Williams hasn?t been on an NFL roster since 2010, lasting until Toronto?s final cuts may signal he?s retained some professional-caliber skill. That?s one silver lining. Another may well be the success of his former Jaguars teammate, who?s authored quite the impressive career revival in Canada.
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Those We're the Best Day's of my Life
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A group of high school graduate's, living in the early 1960's are getting ready to move on to college and go their separate ways in life, and are enjoying one last summer together. But what will happen when they end up all going to the same college?
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Police again search home of Patriots' Hernandez
NORTH ATTLEBORO, Mass. (AP) ? State police officers and dogs are searching the home of New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez as they investigate the killing of a semi-pro football player whose body was found nearby.
Saturday's search of Hernandez's sprawling home in North Attleboro involved several officers.
Police have previously searched in and around the home as they try to figure out who killed Odin Lloyd, whose body was found about a mile from Hernandez's home.
Lloyd's family says the two men were friends and together the night he died. Authorities have ruled Lloyd's death a homicide.
A spokeswoman for the Bristol District Attorney's office declined to comment on the investigation Saturday.
An attorney for Hernandez has said he would not comment on the searches.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-again-search-home-patriots-hernandez-205013835.html
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Egypt Morsi Protests: Army Ready To Save Nation From 'Dark Tunnel,' Defense Minister Says
CAIRO ? Egypt's army chief warned on Sunday that the military is ready to intervene to stop the nation from entering a "dark tunnel" of internal conflict.
Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi spoke a week ahead of mass protests planned by opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. There are fears the demonstrations calling for Morsi's ouster will descend into violence after some of the president's hard-line supporters vowed to "smash" them. Others declared protesters were infidels who deserve to be killed.
El-Sissi's comments were his first in public on the planned June 30 protests. Made to officers during a seminar, they reflected the military's frustration with the rule of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president who completes one year in office on June 30.
His comments, posted on the military's Facebook page, could add pressure on Morsi as he braces for the protests after he spent his first year in office struggling with a host of problems that he is widely perceived to have failed to effectively tackle, like surging crime, rising prices, fuel shortages, power cuts and unemployment.
El-Sissi also appeared to lower the threshold for what warrants intervention by the military. Earlier he cited collapse or near collapse of the state.
He said that while the military has recently stayed out the political fray and focused instead on its combat capabilities, its patriotic and moral responsibility toward Egyptians obliges it to intervene and stop Egypt from "slipping into a dark tunnel of conflict, internal fighting." He said sectarian violence and the collapse of state institutions would also justify intervention.
He urged all parties to use the week left before the June 30 protests to reach a "genuine" understanding to defuse the crisis. "We have a week during which a great deal can be achieved. This is a call that is only motivated by love of the nation, its presence and future."
"Those who think that we (the military) are oblivious to the dangers that threaten the Egyptian state are mistaken. We will not remain silent while the country slips into a conflict that will be hard to control," he said.
In a thinly veiled warning to Morsi's hard-line backers, el-Sissi said: "It is not honorable that we remain silent in the face of the terrorizing and scaring of our Egyptian compatriots. There is more honor in death than watching a single Egyptian harmed while his army is standing idly by."
El-Sissi also warned that the military will no longer tolerate any "insults" to the armed forces and its leaders, a reference to a series of comments by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Morsi hails, that were perceived by the military as insults.
The military took over power after President Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011. They remained at the helm for nearly 17 months before handing over to Morsi. In August, Morsi retired the military's top two generals, ending the de facto military rule of Egypt that dates back to a 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy.
Morsi appointed el-Sissi as military chief and defense minister, leading many to believe he would be beholden to the president. But el-Sissi, through a series of subtle but telling hints, has shown his displeasure over Morsi's policies.
Morsi's comrades in the Brotherhood have made it clear that they want the military to focus entirely on protecting the nation against outside threats, but el-Sissi has countered by making clear that maintaining the security and stability of the nation was part of the military's mandate.
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Dems, GOP talk up deficit reduction, but don't act
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Liberals' loud objections to White House proposals for slowing the growth of huge social programs make it clear that neither political party puts a high priority on reducing the deficit, despite much talk to the contrary.
For years, House Republicans have adamantly refused to raise income taxes, even though U.S. taxes are historically low, and the Bush-era tax cuts were a major cause of the current deficit.
And now, top Democrats are staunchly opposing changes to Medicare and Social Security benefits, despite studies showing the programs' financial paths are unsustainable.
Unless something gives, it's hard to see what will produce the significant compromises needed to tame the federal debt, which is nearing $17 trillion.
"There's not much of an appetite for deficit reduction," said Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition, which pushes for "responsible fiscal policy."
There might be a few small steps this year, he said, when the government again needs to raise its borrowing limit. But a "grand bargain" involving significant spending cuts and revenue increases seems unlikely, Bixby said.
He added, "It's a little depressing to hear the reactions to the president's budget, from both sides."
There was nothing surprising about Republican denunciations of Obama's proposed tax increases, which he wants to combine with spending cuts to reduce the deficit.
The newer wrinkle was the left's sharp criticism of his proposals to slow the growth in Medicare and Social Security benefits, provided Republicans agree to new revenues. Obama has offered Republicans such a deal before. But this month's budget proposal gave it a new imprimatur.
The group MoveOn.org said Wednesday that supporters "who are outraged at President Obama's proposal to cut Social Security benefits will protest and deliver petitions" this week.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent from Vermont, is leading a similar petition drive, opposing "any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid." The deficit, his letter says, "was primarily caused during the Bush years by two unpaid-for wars, huge tax breaks for the rich and a prescription drug program" for Medicare, funded through borrowing. He suggests that higher taxes on the wealthy are the fairest way to tackle the deficit.
Democrats cite several reasons to raise taxes on high-income households. Obama campaigned for such tax increases in 2008 and 2012 but accomplished them only partially with the "fiscal cliff" resolution of Jan. 1.
Major tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 played big roles in turning a federal budget surplus into soaring deficits, according to research by the Congressional Budget Office and others. And by many measures, the U.S. tax burden in near historic lows.
Households earning roughly the national median income paid, on average, 11.1 percent of their income in total federal taxes in 2009, the most recent year for such data. That's the lowest level in more than 30 years, the CBO says.
Nonetheless, House Republicans have placed their highest priority on refusing to raise income tax rates, effectively ranking it above all other goals.
"The president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is fond of saying. It's a reference to the $620 billion in new revenues, over 10 years, that Republicans were unable to stop because of the "fiscal cliff" law, resolved on New Year's Day.
If it's easy to make a case for higher revenues, the same is true for slowing the growth of Social Security and Medicare benefits. For decades, studies have warned of approaching trouble in these popular but costly programs, as health care costs rise and baby boomers begin to retire.
"Both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing, and legislative modifications are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers," the Social Security Administration says, summarizing findings by the two programs' trustees.
"The early detection light has been going on for a while, and there has been a failure to act," Social Security trustee Charles P. Blahous recently told a House panel. If lawmakers are to preserve the programs for future retirees, he said, they will have to accept much more "political pain" than officials endured during a 1983 overhaul that included "several extremely controversial measures."
Obama has proposed an often-discussed step, which deals with government accounting in general, not just entitlement programs. If Congress agrees to higher tax revenues, the president said, he would back a slower growth calculation for cost-of-living increases for Social Security benefits, plus higher Medicare premiums for higher-income seniors.
Interest groups have criticized both ideas. AARP calls the slower cost-of-living formula a "harmful change," and urges seniors to oppose it.
American voters can largely blame themselves when Congress is more talk than action on deficit reduction. Americans routinely say they want a smaller federal debt, but not at the cost of programs they hold dear ? including Social Security and Medicare.
A CBS News poll in March found that most Americans want to cut spending and raise taxes to reduce the deficit. But 4 in 5 oppose cuts to Social Security or Medicare. And two-thirds are unwilling to have their own taxes raised in the name of deficit reduction.
When Pew Research asked which was more important ? reducing the national debt or keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are now ? the public sided with safeguarding the benefits programs, 53 percent to 36 percent.
The deficit-spending partisanship continued Wednesday. On a party-line vote, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans passed a bill to protect Social Security recipients and investors in Treasury bonds if the government hits its borrowing limit and can't pay all its bills later this year. Democrats say if the federal government starts reneging on any obligations ? even if it pays bondholders ? financial markets will lose faith and the economy will tank.
Some Democrats fear a lose-lose situation if they support Obama's proposals. First, they could be attacked from the left for tweaking the programs that many Democrats see as their party's greatest legacy. And second, Republicans might accuse them of "raiding Medicare" in next year's congressional elections. That battle cry proved effective in 2010 after Obama's health care overhaul bill was passed.
Democrats call such tactics shamelessly hypocritical. Republicans, they note, have long called for reining in entitlement spending.
Boehner rebuked a top GOP campaign figure for hinting at a renewal of the "raiding Medicare" attacks. But Reince Priebus, the national Republican Party chairman, seemed eager to revive the question of whether Democratic trims to Medicare's costs amount to an unfair cut in benefits.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dems-gop-talk-deficit-reduction-dont-act-070757688--finance.html
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Officials: Dead bomber name in terrorism database
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The federal government added the name of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect to a terrorist database 18 months before the deadly explosions, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The CIA made the request to add Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name to the terrorist database after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that he had become a follower of radical Islam. About six months earlier, the FBI had separately investigated Tsarnaev, also at Russia's request, but the FBI found no ties to terrorism, officials said.
The new disclosure that Tsarnaev was included within a huge, classified database of known and suspected terrorists before the attacks was expected to drive congressional inquiries in coming weeks about whether the Obama administration adequately investigated tips from Russia that Tsarnaev had posed a security threat. Shortly after the bombings, U.S. officials said the intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon before the April 15 explosions.
Tsarnaev died Friday in a police shootout hours before his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was discovered hiding in a boat in a suburban back yard.
The terrorist database is called TIDE, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. Analysts at the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center submit names and even partial names into TIDE. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 people listed in the database. Intelligence analysts scour TIDE, trying to establish connections and update files as new intelligence is uncovered.
For entries with a full name, date of birth and intelligence indicating a reasonable suspicion that a person is a terrorist or has terror ties, the person's name is sent to a terror watch list, which feeds into lists like the one that bans known or suspected terrorists from traveling on planes.
Officials say they never found the type of derogatory information on Tsarnaev that would have elevated his profile among counterterrorism investigators and placed him on the terror watch list.
Five days after the U.S. determined who was allegedly behind the deadly Boston marathon terror attacks, Washington is piecing together what happened and whether there were any unconnected dots buried in U.S. government files that, if connected, could have prevented the bombings.
Lawmakers who were briefed by the FBI said they have more questions than answers about the investigation of Tsarnaev. U.S. officials were expected to brief the Senate on the investigation Thursday.
"The review is just beginning, but I haven't seen any red flags thus far," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and was briefed on the investigation Wednesday. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., however, said lawmakers intend to pursue whether there was a breakdown in information-sharing.
U.S. officials described to the AP what the government knew about Tsarnaev since he was first placed on the intelligence community's radar 18 months ago. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.
Russia's internal security service, the FSB, sent information to the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev on March 4, 2011. The Russians told the FBI that Tsarnaev, an ethnically Chechen Russian immigrant living in the Boston area, was a follower of radical Islam and had changed drastically since 2010. Because of the subsequent FBI inquiry, Tsarnaev's name was added to a Homeland Security Department database used by U.S. officials at the border to help screen people coming in and out of the U.S. That database is called the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS.
The FBI's Boston office opened a preliminary review of Tsarnaev and searched government databases for potentially terror-related communications. Investigators looked into whether Tsarnaev used online sites that promoted radical activity. They interviewed Tsarnaev and his family members but found nothing connecting him to terror activity. The FBI shared that information with Russia and also asked for more information on Tsarnaev, but never heard back. The FBI's review into Tsarnaev was closed in June 2011.
Then, in late September 2011, Russia separately contacted the CIA with nearly identical concerns about Tsarnaev. The Russians provided two possible birthdates for him and a variation of how his name might be spelled, as well as the spelling in the Russian-style Cyrillic alphabet.
The CIA determined that Tsarnaev should be included in TIDE, and the National Counterterrorism Center added it into the database. The spelling of Tsarnaev's name in TIDE was not the same as the spelling the FBI used in its investigation. The CIA also shared this information with other federal agencies in October.
In January 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia and returned to the U.S. in July. Three days before he left for Russia, the TECS database generated an alert on Tsarnaev. That alert was shared with a Customs and Border Protection officer who is a member of the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. By that time, the FBI's investigation into Tsarnaev had been closed for nearly six months because the FBI uncovered no evidence that he was tied to terror groups.
On Jan. 21, 2012, the airline on which Tsarnaev was traveling misspelled his name when it submitted its list of passengers to the U.S. government for security screening. Airlines are required to provide the list of passengers on international flights so the U.S. can check their names through government databases, including the terrorist watch list. Because his name was misspelled, there was not another alert like there was three days earlier.
In July 2012, Tsarnaev returned to the U.S., and another alert was generated in TECS. This information was again shared with the Customs and Border Protection officer on the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. But because the FBI had closed its investigation into Tsarnaev a year earlier, there was no reason to be suspicious of his travels to Russia.
"Later on, these agencies will be judged," said Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "But right now, it's way too soon to criticize or to start making political arguments or who failed or whatever."
___
Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.
___
Follow Eileen Sullivan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/esullivanap
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-dead-bomber-name-terrorism-database-224317195.html
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Pollution Is Radically Changing Childhood in China?s Cities
[unable to retrieve full-text content]High levels of deadly pollutants in Beijing and other cities have led parents to alter their children?s day-to-day activities drastically, and some plan to leave the country.
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Senate passes bill to end air traffic control furloughs
By Richard Cowan and Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved quickly late on Thursday to end air traffic controller furloughs that were causing widespread airline flight delays related to last month's automatic federal spending cuts.
Without any debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation giving the Department of Transportation flexibility to use unspent funds to cover the costs of air traffic controllers and other essential employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The House of Representatives, which is expected to approve the measure, could take it up on Friday, capping a feverish effort by Congress to end the flight delays that were snarling traffic at major U.S. airports and angering travelers.
Some Senate aides said the measure would also give the FAA flexibility to keep open nearly 150 "contract towers" at smaller airports that are staffed by non-FAA employees who help control takeoffs and landings.
Explicit language to keep open those towers was not included in the measure, however, according to the aides, and it was not clear how the agency would handle the matter.
"I'm delighted that the Senate has just passed a bipartisan bill to resolve a serious problem confronting the American traveling public and our economy," said Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of a handful of senators who wrote the legislation.
The bill moved with lightning speed in the Senate where legislation often bogs down for weeks or months. It was passed after a day of furious negotiations between lawmakers and the Obama administration.
The bill, if passed by the House, would close another chapter in a series of Washington battles over budget and taxes that have been waged since 2011.
The cause of the air traffic controller furloughs was the controversial "sequestration" that took effect on March 1, requiring across-the-board spending cuts among most federal agencies. With those cuts starting to bite, a public backlash prompted Congress to reconsider, and fully fund high-profile FAA operations.
Lawmakers are eager to fix the air travel problem before they head out of town for next week's congressional recess. They are concerned about deepening public resentment over the delays caused by the furloughs of controllers.
Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who also negotiated the legislation, applauded its quick passage, but added, "It does nothing for other essential government operations and employees that also desperately need relief."
ANGRY TRAVELERS
Airline passengers have grown increasingly irritated over the past week with delays at major hubs like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Some have reported delays of several hours in takeoff times and planes being put in holding patterns in the air. Many pilots blame furloughs for landing delays.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said on Thursday that many of the 1,978 controller trainees were now working full shifts by themselves to help cover staffing shortages.
Airline executives had ratcheted up their complaints. "This is government not working - capital letters, exclamation point - when we're sitting here holding the traveling public hostage in the midst of sequestration," JetBlue Chief Executive Dave Barger said on a conference call on Thursday.
The FAA has said it had no alternative to furloughing controllers this week after Congress failed to come up with a budget deal that would have averted the $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts between March 1 and September 30.
At the same time, the FAA has emphasized that passenger safety is not at risk. Airlines for America, the trade organization for U.S. airlines, also said on Thursday the furloughs had not created a safety issue.
While Republicans joined the effort for a quick fix, many were skeptical about whether the White House and FAA were taking advantage of flexibility they already had.
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of maximizing the disruptions to try to shift budget blame on Republicans, an allegation the administration has denied. Republicans have created a Twitter hashtag, #Obamaflightdelays, for people to complain about the delays.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican, sent a letter on Thursday to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking for internal documents discussing budget flexibilities. The Department of Transportation said it was reviewing the request.
But a congressional aide involved in the original automatic spending cut legislation that was enacted in August 2011 told Reuters the administration could not under current law shift money from outside accounts to fund the air traffic controller account.
SEQUESTRATION FALLOUT
Without the legislation, the FAA said it would have to furlough 47,000 employees for up to 11 days through September 30 in order to save $637 million that is required by the sequestration.
Of those 47,000 workers, almost 15,000 are full-time air traffic controllers or trainees.
The FAA issued an update that said more than 863 delays in the system on Wednesday were attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furloughs.
An additional 2,132 delays were attributed to weather and other factors, the FAA said. The agency said it would work with airlines to minimize delays.
Airlines, many of which are reporting earnings this week, have pushed the government to quickly ease the flight delays caused by the furloughs.
Jeff Smisek, chairman and chief executive of United Continental Holdings Inc, said his company's network operations center was working around the clock to minimize the impact of fewer controllers.
"We are disappointed that the FAA chose this path, that maximizes customer disruptions and damage to airlines instead of choosing a less disruptive method to comply with the budget obligations," Smisek said on a conference call.
The proposal being weighed would not spare other agencies and federal programs from the across-the-board reductions.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Doug Palmer, Thomas Ferraro, David Lawder, Karen Jacobs and Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Writing by Karey Van Hall; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/congress-moving-toward-quick-fix-flight-delays-000258160.html
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