Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

War Drill Set to Test Responses to Chemical Attack
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Authorities will hold a war drill next week based on the scenario of missiles po

uring in from multiple fronts, with some carrying chemical warheads. The “targets” in the drill include population centers and strategic facilities.

Named “Steadfast Home Front 1,” the exercise will simulate the firing of missiles from Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, and will include two air-raid sirens that will ring out across the country next Monday, May 27.

During the sirens, members of the public are encouraged to seek a preselected safe zone and drill their responses to missile attack.

The first siren will sound at 12:30 p.m., and is mainly aimed at schools and work places, while the second, at 7:05 p.m., is to drill families at home.

The drill will test the responses of all first responders – police, firefighters, and paramedics – as well as the IDF Home Front Command and national and local government, said Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

“This is one of the lessons the government and emergency responders learned from the Second Lebanon War, when they were caught unprepared, and suffered from a lack of coordination,” Erdan said.

Venomous Jellyfish Believed to Have Killed Two Australian Snorkelers While Children Watched
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

It took just minutes – and a tiny jellyfish – to kill two snorkelers off the western Australian coast and orphan their two horrified children, who watched the tragedy from the beach.

Authorities now believe the minute, extremely venomous irukandji jellyfish is responsible for the deaths last week of Kathreen Ricketson, 41, and Robert Shugg, 48, of Canberra. A search for Shugg’s missing body near Warroora and the Ningaloo Reef has since been called off.

The two were spotted unmoving off the beach and fellow campers were able to haul Ricketson’s body ashore and attempt to resuscitate her as the shocked children looked on, WAtoday.com reported. Shugg’s body slipped under water and was not recovered after a five-day search.

The children, Otilija, 13, and Orlando, 10, have been sent to Melbourne to live with family members.

Some U.S. Utilities Say They’re Under Constant Cyber Attack
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Several power utilities say they face a barrage of cyber attacks on their critical systems, a report by two Democratic lawmakers found echoing warnings from the Obama administration that foreign hackers were trying to bring down the U.S. power grid.

California Representative Henry Waxman released the report, co-authored with Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey, at the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s cybersecurity hearing on Tuesday.

The pair asked some 160 utilities to describe their experiences fighting cyber attacks over the past five years. In response, more than a dozen said they experienced daily, constant or frequent attempted cyber attacks, according to a 35-page report summarizing their responses.

But utilities termed the report as overblown, saying their systems were adequately protected through mandatory standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) that ensure separation of control systems and consumer-facing or administrative networks.

“The majority of those attacks, while large in number, are the same attacks that every business receives” through web-connected networks, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation Chief Executive Duane Highley told the hearing.

Massive Sinkhole Kills Five in South China Town of Shenzhen
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

FIVE people have died after a 10-metre wide sinkhole opened up at the gates of an industrial estate in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boom town neighbouring Hong Kong.

The Shenzhen Longgang district government said on its verified page on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, that five people had died and added that it was investigating the incident.

The sinkhole formed just outside the Huamao Industrial Park in Shenzhen on Monday evening, at a time when many factory workers would have been changing shifts, according to the website of Beijing-based newspaper the Guangming Daily.

The state-run Shanghai Daily newspaper said that rescuers saved one man.

Reports said it was unclear how many people had fallen into the hole in total, but the search was continuing on Tuesday.

Sinkholes in China are often blamed on construction works and the country’s rapid pace of development.

Surveillance cameras in March captured images of a security guard being swallowed by a sinkhole, also in Shenzhen.

Two months ago a man was killed when his bedroom was swallowed by a eight metre sinkhole in Florida, in the US

Let the Headlines Speak
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Earthquake rumbles through North Hastings
In a report by Natural Resources Canada it was confirmed that the rumbling earth and rattling windows felt by residents throughout North Hastings at 9:43 a.m. was in fact an earthquake measured at a magnitude of 5.2.  

A BIG ASTEROID APPROACHES
Near-Earth asteroid 1998 QE2 is approaching the Earth-Moon system for a flyby on May 31st.  

Biden: Jewish leaders drove gay marriage changes
Biden says culture and arts change people's attitudes. He cites social media and the old NBC TV series "Will and Grace" as examples of what helped changed attitudes on gay marriage. Biden says, quote, "Think — behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it's in Hollywood or social media, are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry."  

CIA source: 4th shoe about to drop
a CIA official has told a Drudge Report editor that a fourth shoe is about to drop, make that the 5th shoe in the correct count, that has Obama political operatives at the White House literally shaking in their boots. The CIA source that provided top secret information that a mega-scandal is brewing has been 100 percent reliable in the past when providing hot tips concerning the murky underbelly of Washington, D.C.  

‘Multiculturalism failing’: Swedish PM pleas for order as riots engulf Stockholm suburbs
Hundreds youths hurling rocks, burning cars and smashing windows for the second day in a row in Stockholm say they are protesting against police brutality and inequality. In Sweden, critics of the multiculturalism policies lash out at immigration laws.  

WHO warns Saudi coronavirus may be spreading; calls for urgent search for source
Saudi Arabia, after all, is the home of Mecca. The holy site draws roughly three million Muslims from around the world every year to the Hajj, a mass pilgrimage Muslims are meant to perform at least once in their lifetimes. As well, nearly one million international tourists travel to Mecca during Ramadan — the Muslim month of fasting — to take part in another pilgrimage called Umrah.  

Tunisia: Man dies from new coronavirus after visit to Saudi Arabia Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/tunisia-man-dies-from-new-coronavirus-aft
A 66-year-old Tunisian man has died from the new coronavirus following a visit to Saudi Arabia and two of his adult children were infected with it, the Tunisian Health Ministry reported. His sons were treated and have since recovered but the rest of the family remains under medical observation, the ministry said in a statement Monday.  

Top IRS Official to Plead Fifth
a bombshell was dropped into the already explosive IRS scandal when it was reported that Lois Lerner, a top IRS official in the non-profit division that paralyzed Tea Party groups with ongoing harassment, would invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions during Congressional testimony schedule before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.  

Rand Paul: My colleagues just voted to arm the allies of al Qaeda
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, which voted overwhelmingly to arm elements of the Syrian opposition in a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). "This is an important moment," Paul said, addressing his Senate colleagues. "You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It's an irony you cannot overcome."  

Russia moves closer to jail terms for offending religion
Russian lawmakers on Tuesday took a step toward imposing jail terms for offending religious feelings, approving legislation proposed after punk band Pussy Riot performed a raucous protest song in Moscow's main Orthodox Christian cathedral. Critics say the bill will give government-approved religious groups protection others lack and blur the line between church and state under President Vladimir Putin...  

Unions break ranks on ObamaCare
Labor unions are breaking with President Obama on ObamaCare. Months after the president’s reelection, a variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. They warn that unless there are changes, the results could be catastrophic.  

US immigration bill passes Senate panel
A sweeping immigration bill that would offer a chance of citizenship to millions living in the US illegally has taken a stride forward in Congress. A Senate panel voted 13-5 to back the measure, after a plan to allow people to sponsor same-sex partners for permanent legal status was withdrawn. The full Senate will now debate the proposal next month.  

Gay-Marriage Bill Faces Lords Hurdle as It Passes U.K. Commons
Prime Minister David Cameron won passage through the House of Commons of a bill legalizing gay marriage in England and Wales. It must next be approved by the upper unelected House of Lords before becoming law.  

Top IRS official will invoke the Fifth Amendment in congressional hearing about tea party targeting program
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday afternoon that Lois Lerner, who heads up the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt division, plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs. The Fifth Amendment provides that U.S. citizens may not be compelled to offer testimony if telling the truth would incriminate them.  

Iraq crisis: Fresh bombings kill at least 23
At least 23 people have been killed in new bomb attacks in Iraq, a day after a wave of bombings across the country left at least 70 people dead. In Tuesday's bloodiest attack, a car bomb exploded near a Sunni mosque in the west of the capital, Baghdad, killing at least 10 people.  

Japan's trade deficit hits $8.6B due to weaker yen
Japan's trade deficit widened to a larger-than-expected 879.9 billion yen ($8.6 billion) in April as its weakening currency accentuated surging import costs. Exports rose 3.8 percent from the same month a year earlier to 5.78 trillion yen ($56.3 billion), while imports jumped 9.4 percent to 6.66 trillion yen ($64.9 billion), according to preliminary figures reported by the Finance Ministry on Wednesday. Japan's trade deficit stood at 362.4 billion yen in March, just over half the size of February's gap.  

North Korean leader sends 'special envoy' to China
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dispatched a high-profile official and close confidant to travel to China on Wednesday as a special envoy while Beijing is under pressure to rein in its belligerent neighbor.  

Discovery of alleged Russian plot points to growing jitters
As Russia congratulated its forces for foiling an alleged Islamist plot on Moscow, the discovery of the plan also pointed to the growing security threat before the 2014 Winter Olympics. Monday's killing of two suspected militants and arrest of a third in a sleepy town near Moscow was quickly followed by the killing of one of the leaders of an Islamist insurgency being waged in Russia's North Caucasus.

Kerry: Thousands of Hizballah Fighting in Syria
May 22nd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Israel 'Has Had Enough' of Syrian Fire on Golan
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today Staff
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Israeli and Syrian forces clashed in the Golan Heights on Tuesday in the most intense border incident since the start of Syria's civil war.

Syrian forces, both those belonging to the regime of Bashar Assad and rebel groups, have fired into the Israeli Golan Heights on a number of occasions over the past year. But until Tuesday, nearly all of those cross-border violations were classified as accidental.

For the first time in decades, Syrian officials on Tuesday confirmed that the Syrian army had purposely engaged Israeli troops on the border. The Syrians claimed to have destroyed an Israeli patrol vehicle, though Israel denied that it had suffered any casualties in the firefight.

Images published by the Hebrew press showed a Syrian force firing into Israel, and then being destroyed by an Israeli missile.

Shortly after the battle, Israeli army chief General Benny Gantz visited the area and stated that Israel "has had enough" of the cross-border attacks, and will make Assad pay.

It is still widely believed that Assad has no desire to provoke a full-scale war with Israel, knowing full well that he cannot fight both the Jewish state and the mounting rebel threat inside his own country. However, Gantz and other Israeli officials expect isolated cross-border incidents to increase significantly in the coming weeks.

* PHOTO: IDF chief Gen. Benny Gantz surveys the Golan border region.

Don't Turn the Other Cheek
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Tsvi Sadan
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A disturbing exposé in the weekend edition of the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv features the testimonies of Israeli soldiers serving in Judea and Samaria who, contrary to the ongoing lies about Israeli cruelty, are forbidden by from reacting like soldiers, even when their lives are in danger.

Due to Israeli army restrictions against using force on Palestinian assailants, we are treated to images where, for lack of any other option, soldiers are fleeing from the scene, locking themselves in their vehicles or forced to endure to verbal abuse and sexual gestures aimed at humiliating them, and to humiliate our soldiers is to humiliate Israel.

This policy of non-violence that calls on Israeli soldiers to "contain" themselves is based on the false supposition that human beings operate best when reason is detached from emotion. One can hear politicians and generals repeatedly say things like “we should follow our minds, not our guts.” Therefore, since humiliation comes from the “gut,” soldiers must learn to ignore it. But they can’t, no one can.

“Containment” is an Orwellian term meant to hide bewilderment and fear. Global anti-Israel sentiments bewilder politicians and generals, and cause them to be indecisive. The fear factor, contrary to the slogan “we should follow our minds,” is the fear of possible legal consequences that may result from decisive actions. Bewilderment and fear therefore paralyze our leaders, who in turn paralyze our soldiers.

Though it is tempting to compare of Israel’s “containment” policy to the New Testament’s virtue of “turning the other cheek,” it is unlikely that Jesus even imagined that his lofty principle would be used to justify lack of faith and wisdom. I must say that this policy worries me, because I have seen it and its results before. Israel’s unilateral and hasty withdrawal from South Lebanon in the summer of 2000 happened because of bewilderment and fear.

Israel’s position on the effectiveness of the military zone in South Lebanon had for years been eroding. At first this erosion manifested itself in the construction of massive fortified military posts inside Lebanon and aggressive operations against Hezbollah. But as the erosion deepened, seasoned generals patented the “containment policy” in an attempt to justify passivity in order to minimize their own personal responsibility in case things went poorly. In its final stages, soldiers were ordered to lock themselves in their bunkers in case of attack. Hezbollah, as a result, was able to raise its flags undisturbed over “conquered” Israeli military posts. Finally, under negligent public opinion against an Israeli presence in Lebanon that grew out of proportion, Israel hastily withdrew, abandoning its allies in the process. A similar process preceded the so called “disengagement” from Gaza.

Ma'ariv’s exposé shows serious erosion in Israel’s position in regards to Judea and Samaria. If this kind of containment policy continues, its final outcome is already written on the wall.

DOJ Seized Phone Records of Numbers Tied to Fox News Lines, Documents Show
May 22nd, 2013
dTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Newly uncovered court documents show the Justice Department seized phone records associated with several Fox News lines as part of a leak investigation — a revelation that comes as the White House Correspondents’ Association spoke out against the administration’s monitoring of reporters.

Documents from October 2011 appear to show exchanges that match the specific locations of Fox News’ White House, Pentagon, State Department and other operations. The last four digits of each of the phone numbers listed are redacted in the government filing so it is impossible to know the full numbers.

Meanwhile, the Correspondents’ Association spoke out on incidents involving two news organizations. The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of phone records from the Associated Press and obtained a search warrant for the personal emails of Fox News’ James Rosen. The information about the phone records was uncovered Tuesday.

In the latter case, an FBI agent also claimed in an affidavit that Rosen was possibly a criminal “co-conspirator.”

Though no charges were brought against Rosen, the White House Correspondents’ Association said no journalist should even face that threat for doing their jobs.

Christian Oil Company Boosts Exploration in Israel
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Ryan Jones
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Zion Oil & Gas, an American Christian-run company, submitted a new exploratory license last month that will significantly increase its efforts to find oil in Israel.

Zion already explores for oil in areas covering some 218,000 acres of the Jewish state on its Asher-Menashe, Jordan Valley and Joseph licenses. The new Megiddo-Jezreel Valley Licence would add another 98,000 acres of territory.

Israel is generally supportive of outside efforts to find oil in the Holy Land, and is particularly intrigued by Christian involvement in that enterprise, even if many local experts remain skeptical about the chances of actually finding commercially-viable amounts of crude.

Israel Today spoke with Zion Oil & Gas during a company visit to the region in 2011. Founder John Brown said the company "exists because of God's faithfulness to Israel," and expressed his firm belief that the land will one day soon spill forth its bounty for the children of Israel.

That contagious optimism has infected some Israeli petroleum officials, including former Petroleum Commissioner Yaakov Mimran, who previously said that deep strata exploration, like that carried out by Zion, could soon pay off.

China Space Program Ramping Up Capabilities, Pentagon Says
May 22nd, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

China’s growing space prowess shows no signs of slowing, the U.S. Department of Defense said in its annual report to Congress on military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China.

The Pentagon has been carefully monitoring China’s space activities, and pointed out that last year, the country conducted a total of 18 space launches and expanded its space-based intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, meteorological and communications satellite constellations.

“At the same time, China continues to invest in a multidimensional program to deny others access to and use of space,” said David Helvey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, during a Pentagon news conference on May 6 that highlighted the report.