Montana: 559 Pounds of High Explosives Stolen from U.S. Forrest Service Bunker
May 2nd, 2013Via: KPAX:
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office are asking for help from the public in gathering information about the theft of approximately 559 pounds of high explosives from a USFS explosives bunker located near Red Lodge.
A press release from the ATF says that in April 2013, someone used forced entry to get into an explosives storage facility owned and operated by the U. S. Forest Service, which is located about two miles south of Red Lodge.
Officials say that various emulsion-type explosives, explosive cast boosters and detonating cord were taken from the facility.
Florida: Teen Faces Felony Charges for High School Science Experiment
May 2nd, 2013Via: Riptide:
Kiera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn’t the kind of kid you’d expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that’s exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong.
On 7 a.m. on Monday, the 16 year-old mixed some common household chemicals in a small 8 oz water bottle on the grounds of Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida. The reaction caused a small explosion that caused the top to pop up and produced some smoke. No one was hurt and no damage was caused.
According to WTSP, Wilmot told police that she was merely conducting a science experiment. Though her teachers knew nothing of the specific project, her principal seems to agree.
…
After the explosion Wilmot was taken into custody by a school resources officer and charged with possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device. She will be tried as an adult.
She was then taken to a juvenile assessment center. She was also expelled from school and will be forced to complete her diploma through an expulsion program.
FinFisher Now Used in 36 Countries
May 2nd, 2013Via: Quartz:
A new report from Citizen Lab, a Canadian research center, shows surveillance software sold by FinFisher, a “governmental IT intrusion” company owned by the UK-registered Gamma International, is now active in 36 countries. That’s up from the 25 countries reported two months ago.
Gamma’s product, which it sells exclusively to governments, infects computers and mobile phones through devious means. These include posing as Mozilla Firefox and the (frankly quite elegant) ruse of using a “right-to-left override,” which is typically used to render writing in Arabic but can work in any language. This helps it foil users trained to look out for suspicious file extensions by hiding, say, an “.exe,” and making the file appear to be an image with a .jpg extension instead.
More: Mozilla Has Sent a Cease-and-Desist Letter to Gamma International
U.S. Banks to Send Checks for $3.6 Billion in Foreclosure Settlement
May 2nd, 2013Via: AP:
The nation’s largest banks will begin sending payments this week to millions of Americans who may have been wrongfully foreclosed on during the housing crisis.
A total of $3.6 billion in cash will be distributed to 4.2 million borrowers who lost their homes or were at risk of foreclosure, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency said Tuesday. Payments will range from $300 to $125,000. About 90 percent of borrowers whose mortgages were serviced by 11 of the banks will receive payments by the end of April, the agencies said.
The last group of payments is expected in mid-July.
A large share of those receiving payments, about 3 million borrowers, will each get only $300 or $400, according to data issued by the two agencies. Around 80 percent of them will receive $1,000 or less.
At the other end of the scale, $125,000 payments will go to 1,082 military personnel, who were foreclosed upon in violation of a law prohibiting foreclosures on active-duty service members, and to 53 borrowers who weren’t in default on their mortgages but still lost their homes.
Guantanamo Attorney Found Dead in Apparent Suicide
May 2nd, 2013The piece indicates that Hart had an eleven-year-old daughter. I couldn’t find any other original coverage of his death. All of the sources that I found link back to this Truthout piece.
Via: Truthout:
An attorney who represented prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay was found dead last week in what sources said was a suicide.
Andy P. Hart, 38, a federal public defender in Toledo, Ohio, apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hart left behind a suicide note and a thumb drive, believed to contain his case files. It is unknown where Hart died, what the suicide note said or whether an autopsy was performed.
Hart’s death comes amid escalating chaos that has engulfed Guantanamo over the past three months—from a mass hunger strike to military commissions and renewed pressure on the White House to shut down the prison facility. Hart was one of three-dozen Guantanamo attorneys who signed a letter in March urging Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to take immediate action and bring about an end to the hunger strike.
Because Hart was a federal employee working on sensitive legal issues the FBI was contacted about his death. It is unknown if the agency has been investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.
Neither the FBI nor local law enforcement officials in Toledo, Ohio returned calls for comment. A phone number listed for Hart was disconnected Wednesday.
Truthout learned about the details of Hart’s death Wednesday from an investigator who has been tapped by attorneys to work on a number of cases involving Guantanamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions. The investigator requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
Research Credit: luky
Fed Will Maintain $85 Billion a Month Asset Purchasing Program
May 2nd, 2013Foreigners now hold more than $13 trillion in American securities, a record set as the U.S. seeks to assert itself as the safest port in troubled global waters.
China and Japan combined owned more than $3.4 trillion, including $2.4 trillion in debt, a number that has grown since the data set was compiled.
Via: CNBC:
The Federal Reserve held fast to its ultra-accommodative monetary policy Wednesday, solidified by what board members described as an economy weakened by fiscal policy.
Interest rates will remain at historically low levels while the U.S. central bank will not alter its $85 billion a month asset purchasing program, the Fed’s Open Markets Committee decided at this week’s meeting.
Obama Regime to Ship Arms Directly to Syrian Rebels
May 1st, 2013The U.S. has been supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels for months through third countries. Let’s just get over this nonsense about pretending that it hasn’t been happening all along.
Via: Washington Post:
President Obama is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition and has taken steps to assert more aggressive U.S. leadership among allies and partners seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, according to senior administration officials.
‘Obamacare’ Poll Finds 42% of Americans Unaware It’s Law
May 1st, 2013Via: ABC:
A new poll finds that many Americans are confused about the health care overhaul legislation commonly called “Obamacare.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation released results of a non-partisan study today finding more than 40 percent did not even know the law was in place.
“Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the ACA [Affordable Care Act] is still the law of the land,” the report says, “including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”
The survey showed public opinion on Obamacare is at its second-lowest rating in the past two years.
Less than half – 40 percent – of adults viewed the ACA favorably, whereas 35 percent said they viewed it unfavorably. Another 24 percent said they did not know or refused to answer.
For Those of Us Who Fled the U.S.: Affordable Healthcare Act Does Not Apply to Americans Living Abroad
Saudi Arabia Warned U.S. About Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012
May 1st, 2013Update: Saudi Arabian Ambassador to U.S. Denies Story:
Hmm.
Via: Daily Mail:
The Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. today denied its government warned the U.S. about accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
According to a highly placed source who spoke to MailOnline, the Saudis sent a written warning about Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012. That was long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds.
The official told MailOnline about a written warning from the Saudi government to the Department of Homeland Security, and said he had direct knowledge of that document.
But the Middle Eastern nation’s embassy in Washington died [sic.] that account on Wednesday.
It issued a statement which read: ‘The Saudi government had no prior information about the Boston bombers. Therefore, it is not true that any information, written or otherwise, was passed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other US agency in this regard,’ an embassy statement statement claimed.
‘The Saudi government also does not have any record of any application by Tamerlan Tsarnaev for any visa to Saudi Arabia.’
—
Via: Daily Mail:
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012, long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds, according to a senior Saudi government official with direct knowledge of the document.
The Saudi warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.
Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the source said. Tsarnaev’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.
The Saudis’ warning to the U.S. government was also shared with the British government. ‘It was very specific’ and warned that ‘something was going to happen in a major U.S. city,’ the Saudi official said during an extensive interview.
Gonorrhea Superbug
May 1st, 2013Via: MSNBC:
“Getting gonorrhea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days,” Christianson said. “This is very dangerous.”
“It’s an emergency situation,” said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. “As time moves on, it’s getting more hazardous.”
This gonorrhea strain, HO41, was discovered in Japan two years ago in a 31-year-old female sex worker who had been screened in 2009. The bacteria has since been found in Hawaii, California and Norway.
Because it resists current antibiotic treatment, the strain has been placed in the superbug category with other resistant bacteria, such as MRSA and CRE. These superbugs kill about half the people they attack, and nearly one in 20 hospital patients become infected with one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though no deaths from HO41 have been reported, efforts to combat it must continue, Smith said.
