http://www.youtube.com/v/-1RTh92dOA0?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Visit site: Suicide bomber targets troops in Afghanistan
Britain to double aid to Syrian opposition in 2014 – Cameron
Cameron has vowed an extra £10 million for non-lethal equipment and £30 million more for humanitarian assistance for Syrian people as the two politicians outlined further steps to “bring to an end the killing” of Syrian people.“We will double non-lethal support to the Syrian opposition in the coming year. Armored vehicles, body armor and power generators are about to be shipped,” Cameron said at the press conference after an Oval Office meeting with US president Barack Obama. Britain’s actions in Syria completely coincide with the US plans that the Obama administration voiced last week. Speaking after a meeting of the Syrian opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would double its non-lethal aid to opposition forces in Syria in the coming year bringing the total sum to $250 million. As for arming the Syrian opposition, Britain claims it has not “made decision to arm opposition groups in Syria”, however, Cameron said that it “is pushing for more flexibility in the EU arms embargo”.“What we have done is we have amended the EU arms embargo in order that we can give technical assistance and technical advice,” he said. He also said that UK will continue to examine the embargo to “see if we need to make further changes”.The current sanctions recently amended in April allow the supply of certain non-lethal equipment as well as technical and financing assistance related to it. However, a recently leaked six-page long draft proposal revealed the UK proposed two options to EU diplomats to amend the current embargo: the first, full exemption of Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary forces from the arms embargo and the second, to remove ‘non-lethal’ language to allow shipment lethal equipment to Syria. Cameron said Assad had to realize there could be no military victory for his forces. President Obama has backed Cameron’s words. From his side, he said that the “work to establish the use of chemical weapon in Syria” will continue and the findings “will help guide” the next steps. Obama said the US would be “very persistent” in pursuing a peaceful political transition that leads to Assad’s exit but leaves Syria “intact”.”I’m not promising it is going to be successful. Frankly, sometimes once the furies have been unleashed in a situation like we are seeing in Syria, it’s very hard to put things back together,” Obama said. Both Cameron and Obama welcomed “successful” talks the Prime Minister had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, at which the two leaders sought to hammer out a common approach to ending Syrian conflict. “There is now common ground between the US, UK, Russia and many others that whatever our differences we have the same aim, a stable, inclusive and peaceful Syria free from the scourge of extremists,” Cameron said. … Read More
California wildfire burns 15-mile path to Pacific
BUTTE MEADOWS, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California wildfire carving a path to the sea grew to more than 15 square miles and crews prepared Friday for another bad day of gusting winds and searing weather.”We’re going to be at Mother Nature’s mercy,” Ventura County fire spokesman Tom Kruschke said.The wind-whipped fire erupted Thursday in the Camarillo area, damaging 15 homes and a cluster of recreational vehicles in a parking lot. About 2,000 Ventura County homes remained threatened and evacuations remained in force although the fire line edged southwards toward Malibu. It was about 20 miles from the coastal enclave at daybreak.The blaze was 10 percent contained but the work of more than 900 firefighters and deputies was just beginning, fire officials said.The weather forecast called for parching single-digit humidity, highs in the 90s in some fire areas and morning winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 45 mph — slightly down from a day earlier.There’s still a chance of “explosive fire spread” before winds begin tapering off in the afternoon and cooler weather begins to kick in, said Curt Kaplan, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard.Continue Reading… … Read More
US Navy gets their first squadron of drones
On Thursday the Navy inaugurated the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 35, or the “Magicians,” a fleet made up of both manned and unmanned vehicles that will accompany US warships into battle across the world. Included in that fleet are eight traditionally piloted helicopters and a yet to be determined number of Fire Scout MQ-8 B drones, each capable of being operated at a distance of 110 miles away and maintaining flight for half-a-day straight.Until this week, the Pentagon has only allocated unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to the US Air Force. According to the AP, most Navy drones in use until this point have been operated by contractors overseen by military personnel.The Navy’s brand new fleet will be unveiled at the Naval Air Station North Island base on Coronado, near San Diego, California on Thursday, but the Associated Press quotes Lt. Aaron Kakiel as saying that the “Magicians” will only start appearing on one of the force’s new littoral combat ships in about a year.One of those so-called LCS boats, the USS Freedom, was just two months ago deployed to Southeast Asia where it will likely spend the remainder of 2013 off the coast of Singapore. According to a press release issued by the Navy, “lessons learned from logistics and maintenance support during the transit and port visits will inform follow-on rotational deployments as well as the overall LCS program.”The addition of drones to the Navy’s arsenal comes 100 years after that division of the US military first used air detachment vehicles, but also comes amid escalating public outcry over the use of unmanned aircraft. Despite being tied to upwards of thousands of civilian casualties, the Pentagon continues to stand by the use of drones in oversea antiterrorism operations, and just last week Air Force Major General H.D. Polumbo confirmed that US drones will remain in Afghanistan even after the last American troops are expected to leave in 2014.Meanwhile, the UK used an armed drone for the first time on Thursday. Just days earlier roughly 400 anti-war demonstrators marched in Lincolnshire to protest the opening of the British Royal Air Force’s drone program. … Read More
German Labor Day rioting: Firecrackers and water cannons unleashed (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Berlin and Hamburg were the scenes of massive demonstrations on Wednesday. In the capital, around 9,000 people, some of them masked, marched the streets as some 7,000 officers were on stand-by.As night approached, several incidents of violence occurred. Protesters threw stones and bottles and police and emergency vehicles, damaged a bank office and several parked cars. At least one person was arrested.In Hamburg, the protesting crowd numbered about 1,400 participants closely monitored by a cordon of 1,600 police officers. The traditionally passionate rally escalated into violence. Several officers were injured as they used water guns, pepper sprays and batons against rioting troublemakers. At least eight of those were arrested.Despite the incidents, a police spokesman said the service was satisfied with how the demonstrations were handled, saying the violence was less severe than in previous years. German police took the strategy to deescalate pressure on radical protesters on Labor Day. … Read More
New law will ban protesters from riding mass transit in California
Starting next week, law enforcement officers policing the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland and other cities can issue bus and subway bans for unruly passengers — and according to one local news report, that power could be used to prevent political protesters from getting to demonstrations or essentially going anywhere.Under the recently passed State Assembly Bill 716, BART can issue “prohibition” orders to any passenger cited or arrested for certain offenses, essentially blacklisting some people from boarding public transit vehicles if they’ve been charged with certain crimes.BART Board President Tom Radulovich told Bay City News the law is “an important safety initiative to keep our employees and riders safe,” adding, “We’re very concerned that for the past few years folks have been assaulting our station agents.””We are really wanting to send the message that if you are going to come onto our system and be unruly or violent, there are going to be consequences,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told local ABC affiliate KGNO News.But while the new bill will provide BART police the authority to immediately revoke riding privileges for persons arrested or convicted of acts involving violence, threats of violence, lewd or lascivious behavior or possession or sale of drugs on area transit, those charged with minor infractions could be targeted too. “AB 716 won’t only target violent behavior,” KGNO reported. “It can be applied to protestors who have been arrested during free-speech movements.”The law will allow for prohibition orders to be issued on-the-spot if a person is just once arrested or convicted for a misdemeanor or felony involving lewd, violent or drug-related acts in a BART zone, but passengers cited three or more times for minor infractions in just as many months are subject to the ban as well.Under the bill, a transit district may issue a prohibition order to any person charged with violating a number of local statutes, including Section 640 of state Penal Code — the law that goes after riders accused of “Willfully disturbing others on or in a system facility or vehicle by engaging in boisterous or unruly behavior” and those “Willfully blocking the free movement of another person in a system facility or vehicle.”Although the official statute includes a note from the state declaring that Section 640 “shall not be interpreted to affect any lawful activities permitted or First Amendment rights protected under the laws of this state or applicable federal law,” allowing BART officers to ban users even accused by law enforcement of a misdemeanor could disenfranchise a huge percentage of their rider base and has critics already warning of potential authoritarian overreach.”Certain instances have happened over the years that have caused some tragic things to happen, but you got to be careful who your profile,” BART passenger Kadmiel McCrory told KGNO.Indeed, one doesn’t have to look too deep to divulge instances of arguable overreach in not just the Bay Area but on the BART system as well. On the morning of January 1, 2009, BART Officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot an unarmed, 22-year-old passenger, Oscar Grant, on an Oakland train platform. The killing of Grant remains a highly contested issue among Bay Area residents, and has spawned a number of large protests impacting the BART system, including a November 2010 demonstration that led to 152 arrests. Then in July 2011, BART police shot and killed another passenger — a mentally ill homeless man name Charles Blair Hill — who is alleged to have thrown a knife at an officer. The response that occurred as a result can easily be considered a precursor to enacting AB 716.Following the 2011 shooting death of Hill, BART passengers orchestrated a massive protest that made national headlines thanks in part to the involvement of Internet hacktivist group Anonymous. A rally for Hill days after his death began peacefully but ended in violence and at least three dozen arrests. When a second protest was planned the following month, BART officials responded by having cell phone service shut down in four separate train stations to prevent demonstrators from coordinating their actions.”We’re going to take steps to make sure our customers are safe,” BART spokesman Jim Allison said in a statement that August. “The interruption of cell phone service was done Thursday to prevent what could have been a dangerous situation. It’s one of the tactics we have at our disposal. We may use it; we may not. And I’m not sure we would necessarily let anyone know in advance either way.”Although that protest never materialized as planned, Anonymous responded by leaking the names, passwords and other identifying information for more than 2,000 customers of a BART-affiliated website, announcing in a statement, “we will not tolerate censorship.”“Anonymous demands that this activity revolving around censorship cease and desist and we know you are already planning to do this again,” the hacktivists wrote. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union opposed the decision to throttle cell service as well.Now with AB 716 going into effect, protesters may once again find they are unwelcome to ride on the fifth-busiest heavy rail rapid transit system within the United States. Accumulating only three easy-to-obtain infractions in just 90 days can cause a prohibition order to be issues, and when the law goes into effect on Monday, BART officers will actually be provided with the names and photographs of prohibited individuals in order to keep them from riding mass transit, BART police Chief Kenton Rainey told the San Francisco Appeal. According to Rainey, officers’ computers will contain information about active orders, and any persons picked up or cited on the BART system for new crimes can be matched against the database to see their status.Rainey added that BART officers will go through training to work with special-needs riders, including the homeless and mentally ill. Even if one of those passengers is cited with a prohibition order, though, it might take a lengthy appeal process to have their ban rescinded. Prohibition orders restrict passengers from riding for anywhere from 30 days up to one year. … Read More
Boston police chief wants drones for next year’s marathon
Notwithstanding last week’s terrorist attack that killed three and wounded hundreds, Boston, Massachusetts is expected to continue its tradition of hosting the annual 26-mile run next spring. Speaking to the city’s Herald newspaper though, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says he’s looking to add at least one new element in 2014: unmanned aerial vehicles.Weighing in with regards to how his city will ensure another attack won’t ruin next year’s marathon, Davis says he’s looking towards obtaining a drone aircraft to conduct surveillance from the Boston sky.“Drones are a great idea. I don’t know that would be the first place I’d invest money, but certainly to cover an event like this, and have an eye in the sky that would be much cheaper to run than a helicopter is a really good idea,” he tells the Herald.Elsewhere in the interview, Commissioner Davis says the city must do everything possible to prevent terrorists from attacking their city again. “We need to harden our target here,” Davis says. “We need to make sure terrorists understand that if they’re thinking about coming here, we have certain things in place that would make that not a good idea. Because they could hit any place. They’re going to go for the softest, easiest thing to hit.”“We need to gather all the information we can as to what happened and make a determination as to the overall commitment the city of Boston has to the threat of terrorism,” he says. “That’s very, very important to me. It’s very important to the mayor. I’m sure there will be a lot of questions about that.”Indeed questions are quickly amounting, and they’ve been asked of officials in Massachusetts and else since well before last week’s attack. The Federal Aviation Administration expects tens of thousands of drones in US airspace by the end of the decade, and already the FAA is approving Certificates of Waiver or Authorization (COA) for a number of law enforcement agencies on target to fully take America into the age of drones.The FAA says that 327 COAs were active as of February of this year, but a recent report published by the Los Angeles Times suggests that surveillance drones could fully permeate airspace earlier than once thought. According to the Times, the FAA issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, a statistic that Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jennifer Lynch says is “far more than were previously known.”The EFF has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the FAA in recent years to try and get the facts of the expansive use of drones, but the federal agency has been less than fully compliant in terms of answering their questions. Discrepancies exist in the statistics that have been released, admits the EFF, but at the same time what has been brought to light through these FOIA requests reveals a great deal about domestic drone use that might otherwise not be made public.Thanks to efforts by the EFF and others, Americans now know the names of dozens of law enforcement and educational entities that have applied for a permit to put experimental drones up in the sky, and that list includes institutions such as Cornell University, the Houston, Texas Police Department and a number of federal agencies, especially branches of the US Department of Homeland Security.And while no record of an applicant looking for a drone permit in Massachusetts has been published, it’s quite possible that the unmanned planes will be cleared to fly over cities like Boston and Lowell in little time. In fact, some Massachusetts legislators are already looking at stopping the spread of drones in their state before law enforcement agencies capitalize on the aircraft’s surveillance capabilities: in January, Republican State Senator Robert L. Hedlund introduced S.B. 1664, “An Act to regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”If Sen. Hedlund’s bill is passed, Massachusetts law enforcement will be limited with how they operate drones within the state. The senator’s act has been approved by a number of colleagues in the state capitol, and if enacted it will forbid police agencies from using UAVs for dragnet surveillance. Hedlund’s law limits drone to single out only persons of interest named in official court warrants, and biometric matching technology would not be allowed to be implemented on any other person picked up by a drone’s cameras.Earlier this month, the Florida State Senate voted unanimously to ban law enforcement agencies there to conduct overhead spy missions using unmanned aerial vehicles except in situations where the DHS believes that drones could deter a high-risk terrorist attack. … Read More
