Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

U.S. Orders Citizens Out of Yemen After Drone Hit
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The US State Department on Tuesday ordered all non-essential staff out of Yemen and told US citizens to leave the country "immediately" over terrorism concerns, reported AFP.

The latest warning comes after the closure of some two dozen US missions across the Middle East and Africa and reports of intercepted messages from Al-Qaeda's top leader ordering its Yemen franchise to carry out an attack.

The BBC reported Tuesday that hundreds of armored military vehicles have been deployed in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa to secure the presidential palace, vital infrastructural buildings and Westerns embassies in the capital.

A security source confirmed to the BBC that Yemeni intelligence services had discovered that tens of al-Qaeda members had arrived in Sanaa over the past few days in preparation for the implementation of a large and dangerous plot. The source suggested that the plot includes “explosions and suicide attacks aimed at Western ambassadors and foreign embassies in Yemen, in addition to operations aimed at the Yemeni military headquarters.”

The US drone strike has killed at least four suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen's eastern Marib province, a tribal source has told the AFP news agency.

The raid targeted their vehicle "and turned it into a ball of fire, immediately killing the four, all of whom are Yemeni", the source said on Tuesday.

About two dozen US diplomatic posts have been shuttered across the Middle East since Sunday after Washington said electronic intercepts of high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives signalled a major attack was imminent.

Among those killed in the drone strike was an al-Qaeda operative listed by Yemeni authorities on Monday, the source said.

Yemen's official Saba news agency confirmed "the death of four al-Qaeda militants in Wadi Abida in Marib".

The tribal source named two of the dead as Saleh al-Tays al-Waeli and Saleh Ali Guti.

According to Al Jazeera, Waeli is on a government list of 25 al-Qaeda suspects wanted in connection with an alleged plot to launch a major attack before Ramadan ends and the Muslim Eid al-Fitr feast begins, either Thursday or Friday.

The New York Times reported that electronic intercepts last week revealed that Al Qaeda boss Ayman Al-Zawahiri had ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), to carry out an attack.

U.S. Directs Agents to Cover Up Program used to Investigate Americans
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsReuters
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”

THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

Today, much of the SOD’s work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.

“Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.”

A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.

But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to “recreate” an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said.

“PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION”

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as “parallel construction.”

U.S. Airlift Evacuates U.S. Citizens and Staff from Yemen
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

US Air Force transport planes began landing at Sanaa airport Tuesday to urgently evacuating US citizens after the US State Department Tuesday urged US citizens living in Yemen to leave immediately due to “extremely high” terrorist threats.” Non-emergency US personnel, including diplomats, were evacuated, followed by British embassy staff. This step indicates a sharp escalation in the far-reaching terror alert in force across the Muslim world since last Thursday.

Scholar - Wanna-bes and Balderdash
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsGood Samaritan's Penny Pulpit
Categories: Commentary

When Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, nailed the identity of the forth guy walking around in his fiery furnace, it was unbelievable: (Dan3:25) so unbelievable that all the modernist translators of our day have disagreed with 1,400 years of Hebrew scribes and scholars, disagreed with fifty-seven skilled multilingual scholars from Cambridge, Westminster and Oxford, disagreed with these superior linguists that worked in six companies for a period of seven years completely funded by one King James of England, and then disagreed with the very Word's of God. This is all very common for the modernist scholar and translator who want to tell you what they logically reason God meant to say in His Word. Here, they reason, Neb could not have know that Jehovah God had an Only Begotten Son. What God's Word meant, they say, was “and the fourth looks like a son of the gods." (RSV, NIV, ASV, NASV, NEV, ESV et al.) Bible believers, however, know that 450 years before Neb came on the scene, one David, king of Israel knew and clearly recorded the presence of the Only Begotten Son of God. (Psalm 2) Bible believers know that Neb knew Daniel, and every one who knew Daniel knew all about Jehovah God, Hebrew – Elohim (Hbrw plural, not dual but plural, i.e. three or more) and His being a triune, Father, Son, and Spirit, Godhead. Modernist “scholars” are without excuse, also knowing His eternal power and Godhead. They pretend that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon could not know, even after he knew for certain; “But there is a God (Hbrw Elohim) in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.” (Dan2:28) Scholar-wanna-bes think Daniel wrote Aramaic and Hebrew scribes didn't get that translated as good as they. Balderdash

Russian Meteor ‘Groupies’ May Still Threaten Earth – Study
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsRianovosti
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The giant meteor that exploded over Russia in February, damaging buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people, may belong to a “gang” of space rocks hurtling towards the planet Earth, the international science journal Nature reported this month.

The 49-foot (15 meter), 11,000-ton (9,979 kg) space rock exploded near the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15.

Scientists around the world have struggled to determine the meteor’s orbit, but there hasn’t been a defined path to help locate “sibling asteroids” on a similar route, until now.

Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, two brothers who are both orbital scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid, ran billions of possible orbits through a computer so they could identify the “most probable orbit,” then compared those results with an asteroid log compiled by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Radioactive Water Leaking Into Pacific Ocean in New Fukushima ‘emergency’
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsABC News
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Japan’s nuclear watchdog says there is a state of emergency at the shattered Fukushima nuclear plant over ongoing leaks of radioactive water.

An official from the Nuclear Regulation Authority says contaminated groundwater has risen above a shore barrier meant to contain it and is seeping into the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Shinji Kinjo revealed the leak is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear complex, are only a temporary solution, Mr Kinjo added.

“Right now, we have an emergency,” he said.

TEPCO has been struggling to contain hundreds of tonnes of groundwater entering the plant everyday – water that quickly becomes contaminated.

But the company has also been roundly condemned for failing to make public leaks of radioactive water into the Pacific, despite knowing about it.

In the early weeks following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese government allowed TEPCO to dump tens of thousands of tonnes of toxic water into the Pacific in an emergency move.

Poll: Majority of Israelis Oppose Concessions
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Ari Sofer
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A poll released by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) has shed significant light on attitudes among Israeli Jews and Arabs regarding peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, among other issues.

The survey, which was conducted between 28th - 30th July 2013, includes 602 respondents constituting a representative sample of the adult population of Israel, according to IDI.

It reveals - perhaps unsurprisingly - significant differences of opinion between Jewish and Arab Israelis over the prospect of Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Below are some of the key findings (with a 4.5% margin of error):

"Right of return"

Among Jewish Israelis, 77% oppose even a recognition in principle by Israel of the so-called "right of return" for the descendants of Arabs who fled during the Israeli War of Independence. Under such a limited recognition, put forward in past negotiations, a small number of the descendants of Arab refugees would be allowed to settle in Israel, with the government providing compensation for the remainder.

In contrast, 82% of Israeli Arabs supported such a move.

Approximately 700,000 Arabs fled fighting during the 1948 War of Independence, many of them encouraged by Arab leaders who urged them to leave their homes temporarily to enable invading Arab armies to "cleanse" the land of Jews, after which they would be able to return. Today, unlike any other refugees, "Palestinian refugee status" includes all descendants of those who fled, which means that nearly 5 million Arabs - most of whom were born outside of Israel - would qualify for compensation.

No mention was made in the poll of the roughly one million Jews from Arab countries who were forced from their homes - both during the same period and in the years that followed - in a concerted act of ethnic-cleansing by Arab governments.

Territorial concessions

The poll also showed that a significant majority of Jewish Israelis are opposed to further territorial concessions. 62.5% opposed a comprehensive withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and much of Jerusalem with land swaps, while 58% opposed evacuating all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria apart from Maaleh Adumim and the city of Ariel, as well as large "settlement blocs." 50% oppose transferring control over Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority, with a special arrangement for holy places.

Interestingly, while Israeli Arabs largely supported Israeli concessions in this area, only a slim majority (55%) wanted to see Arab neighbourhood in Jerusalem transferred to the Palestinian Authority. This may reflect previous findings which indicated that most Arab Jerusalemites prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty rather than under PA control.

Israel has previously made territorial concessions to the PA, including control over large areas of Judea and Samaria, and a full withdrawal from Gaza - along with the expulsion of around 9,000 Jewish residents. Far from achieving peace, however, the regions from which Israel withdrew were used by Arab terrorist groups to launch further attacks on the Jewish State, leading many Israelis to harden their stance against further concessions.

Referendum

As in previous surveys, a clear majority of Jewish Israelis (62%) believe that any decision to deport Jews from Judea and Samaria should be brought to a national referendum. Interestingly, an even larger majority (72%) of Israeli Arabs felt the same way.

Another question posed was whether all Israelis - Arab and Jewish alike - should be eligible to vote in such a referendum over the future of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria. Among Jewish respondents there was a fairly even split -  with 49% believing that only Jews should be eligible and 46% believing that Israeli Arabs should be included. An overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs (88%) felt that the right should be granted to all Israeli citizens.

Other findings

The poll also revealed that the recent hotly-contested Chief Rabbinate elections had a largely negative impact on the reputation of the institution in the eyes of most Israelis. 

Only 12% of the Jewish public think that the elections were "clean," and only 23% placed them halfway between "clean" and "corrupt." The majority of Jewish respondents (42%) believed that the elections were corrupt. Perhaps even more notably, 25% said they did not know - a particularly high rate for IDI polls, and likely a reflection of the growing alienation towards the Chief Rabbinate felt by many Israelis.

Other issues polled included whether the national-religious Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party should remain in the current coalition, given its willingness to negotiate concessions on key issues opposed by the party. Among Bayit Yehudi voters, there is a fairly even split: 49% are against quitting whilst 46% are in favour.

Let the Headlines Speak
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

‘Hey Obama, You Are Stupid, Bad Man’: Viral Egyptian Music Video Accuses Obama of Supporting Terrorism, Muslim Brotherhood
A music video featuring an Arabic-singing belly dancer voicing profanity-laced lyrics that accuse President Barack Obama of supporting terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood has gone viral in Egypt.  

Britain withdraws all staff from Yemen embassy
Britain said on Tuesday it had withdrawn all staff from its embassy in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, and extended the closure of the mission until further notice. "Due to increased security concerns, all staff in the British Embassy have been temporarily withdrawn and the Embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return," the Foreign Office said on its website.  

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.  

Bedeviling Phenomenon: What Do You Make of the 1,200-Foot Wide Pentagram on Google Maps?
It’s found on the southern shore of the Upper Tobol Reservoir where there are almost no other signs of humanity; the closest settlement is the city of Lisakovsk, about 12 miles to the east, according to Yahoo News. Adding fuel to the proverbial lake of fire are reports that you zoom into the center of the pentagram on Google Maps, you can see two spots highlighted by previous visitors to the topographical app: “Adam” and “Lucifer”—and you know what figure that name is connected with…  

Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price - Elites Plan to Control the World
Hugo Salinas Price told King World News in stunning fashion what he believes to be the frightening plan to control the world going forward. He described the people planning this as “barbarians,” and said, “this is not going to end well.” He also issued this ominous warning, “I have very serious doubts about the survival of our civilization under such people.” Hugo Salinas Price: “With regards to the social question in the world, in 1929 a Spanish thinker by the name of Ortega y Gasset wrote a book that really shook up the world titled, ‘The Revolt of the Masses.’ He was talking about the appearance on the world stage of new individuals.  

200,000 mandatory RFID-chipped patrons enjoy slave-training at Lollapalooza in Chi-town
Hundreds of thousands of young and old alternative music fans have lined up and willingly received RFID micro-chipped non-removable wristbands to gain entrance to the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago's Grant Park, which began Friday August 2nd. On their website, festival organizers put a positive spin on the RFID tags, explaining "We're saving paper and saving you the hassle of redeeming a paper ticket for your wristband!"  

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. ...documents...show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how...investigations...begin...  

Al-Qaeda chief’s intercepted message about plans for major terror attack caused embassy closures: officials
An intercepted secret message between al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack was the trigger that set off the current shutdown of many U.S. embassies, two officials told The Associated Press on Monday.  

Egypt crisis: Talks gather pace as US senators arrive
US senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have joined top diplomats in Cairo to help find a peaceful solution to Egypt's political stalemate. The Pentagon said Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel had called army chief Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to discuss mediation progress by US and EU envoys. US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns also visited Muslim Brotherhood deputy head Khairat al-Shater in jail.  

EU needs 'German standards' on data privacy
The EU needs a set of data privacy rules that will keep surveillance by foreign intelligence services in check, Germany's justice minister has said. Speaking to Die Welt newspaper in the aftermath of revelations about the extent of US surveillance operations in Europe, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said EU data rules should be as stringent as those in Germany.  

Israel formulating response to EU settlement guidelines before start of Horizon 2020
The European Union is willing to discuss Israel’s objections to its recently published “settlement guidelines,” but its degree of flexibility on the matter is unclear, and Israel needs to draw its own “red lines,” a senior Israeli official said Monday. ...Those negotiations are set to begin a week from Wednesday.  

US, UK to citizens in Yemen: Leave immediately
The United States and Britain told their citizens in Yemen on Tuesday to leave the country immediately. The State Department also said it had ordered non-essential US government staff in Yemen to leave the country, due to the threat of "terrorist attacks", the US State Department said in a statement.  

First on Cnn: Republican Says E - Mails Could Mean FEC-IRS Collusion
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsCNN
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission told CNN on Monday he has seen numerous undisclosed e-mails between FEC staffers and the Internal Revenue Service that raise new questions about potential collusion between the two federal agencies in the alleged targeting of conservative political groups.

Don McGahn, a Republican FEC commissioner, said an investigator from his agency contacted Lois Lerner, the IRS employee at the center of the political storm now engulfing that agency.

He said the contact was made to discuss the status of one such conservative political advocacy group, the American Future Fund.

Shortly after Lerner was contacted, the IRS sent a questionnaire to the American Future Fund, McGahn added.

“Who’s the dog and who’s the tail (in this case)? Who knows,” McGahn said. But “dealing with Lois Lerner is probably out of the ordinary.”

The answers, McGahn stressed, “could be benign (or) could be more sinister.”

McGahn, who did not provide a timeline of events, said FEC commissioners had not given their staffers permission to reach out to the IRS on the matter, which is generally required for such inquiries.

The e-mails McGahn described to CNN are exactly what Republican congressional investigators are asking IRS and FEC officials to turn over to Congress as part of its investigation.

Ellen L. Weintraub, the Democratic chairwoman of the FEC, said she does not know about the e-mails between the FEC investigator and Lerner to which McGahn is referring.

“If there was any evidence or targeting based on ideology, that would be extremely serious, but I have not seen any evidence of that.

“I am not aware of requesting or receiving any confidential taxpayer information. I am not aware of any requests for anything that wasn’t publicly available.”

Last week, congressional Republicans disclosed several e-mails between Lerner, the former head of the IRS division handling tax exempt organizations, and an unnamed FEC attorney inquiring about the status of the American Future Fund and another conservative outfit, the American Issues Project.

CFACT’s New Billboard Exposes Global Warming — in Their Own Words
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsCFACT
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

In a moment of refreshing candor, the co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group III told the truth about the global warming scare.  The real point, according to Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, is to “redistribute the world’s wealth.”

What he said is no surprise to those of us who have been paying close attention to climate science and policy.

The surprise is not what he said, but that he said it at all.

This same Dr. Edenhofer recently advised the World Bank to divert funds away from helping developing nations advance and into global warming.  Keeping the poor, poor, is not sound economic policy.

'Israel Capable of Striking Iran Alone'
Aug 6th, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today Staff
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Army Radio on Tuesday that the Jewish state is perfectly capable of striking Iran's nuclear facilities on its own, should America fail to join such a mission.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that the Israeli government very much doubts the Obama Administration's seriousness about preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons at all costs.

Washington's weak and ineffective approach to the crisis in Syria, not to mention its utter failure to react when clear red lines were crossed, has created the feeling that the current American government would never take the step of going to war to keep the Islamic Republic from going nuclear.

Quite to the contrary, Israel believes US President Barack Obama is going to use the election of new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as an excuse to loosen sanctions, make concessions and downgrade the situation, even as Iran continues to race toward an atomic bomb.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned that while Rouhani is far more tactful than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he remains the servant of Iran's supreme leader and has long been a key proponent of Iran's nuclear program.