“A private study by military and security professionals has concluded that the Americans killed at the Benghazi embassy annex on September 11, 2012 were killed by rebels who had been supplied with weapons by the U.S. government.

The Interim Report by the “Citizens Commission on Benghazi” concluded that “the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qa’eda-dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion.” The group’s report stressed that “the key significance of this episode is the demonstration of a military chain-of-command relationship between the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood leadership of the TNC and the al-Qa’eda-affiliated militia (Ansar al-Shariah) that has been named responsible for the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.” U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on a consulate annex maintained by the CIA on September 12, 2012.

The “Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi” was formed by the conservative Accuracy in Media organization in Washington, and staffed by 18 former high-ranking military and intelligence specialists for the U.S. government — most of whom held the rank of Colonel, Admiral, or General, or served in Special Forces…..”

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“Ukrainian troops are moving in on what Reuters describes as “pro-Russian armed men” in the east Ukraine city of Slaviansk (here’s video). Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said its forces had killed “up to five” militants in the “anti-terrorist operation.”

“During the armed clash up to five terrorists were eliminated,” it said, adding that one person has been wounded on the side of government forces.

REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

Ukrainian security force officers walk past a checkpoint set on fire and left by pro-Russian separatists near Slaviansk April 24, 2014.

These are what some of the pro-Russian gunman look like in the city of 130,000….”

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“It took Joe Biden just a day after his arrival in Kiev to kill and bury the last remaining hope that last week’s latest attempt at diplomatic de-escalation in Geneva would actually be anything more than a joke. A few hours ago, in a statement posted on the parliament website, Ukraine acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said that pro-Russian separatists have “crossed line” adding that East Ukraine is currently controlled by “terrorists” supported by Russia.

In other words, the same old song and dance.

Which is why this time Russia made it quite clear to issue a warning that the next time there is a provocation against its soldiers or, more importantly, against its people, those in East Ukraine to be specific, it would retaliate. Once again, Obama’s “costs” message is lost on Putin…

RT reported moments ago that “Russia will retaliate if it is attacked and the interests of the Russian people are threatened” citing Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. He alleged the US has a hand in the current stand-off in Ukraine between the coup-appointed government and anti-Maidan activists….”

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“Source: examiner.com

This article was based on today’s exclusive interview with Kevin Annett of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State on this week’s litigation in the Brussels Common Law Court of Justice. Five judges and 27 jury members from six countries including the USA, considered evidence on over 50,000 missing Canadian, US, Argentine and European children who were suspected victims of an international child sacrificial cult referred to as the Ninth Circle.

Two adolescent women claimed that Pope Francis raped them while participating in child sacrifices. Eight eyewitnesses confirmed the allegations according to evidence presented this week at a Brussels Common Law Court of Justice. The Ninth Circle Satanic child sacrifice rituals were said to take place during the Springs of 2009 and 2010 in rural Holland and Belgium.

Pope Francis was also a perpetrator in satanic child sacrifice rites while acting as an Argentine priest and Bishop according to records obtained from the Vatican archives. A prominent Vatican official and former Vatican Curia employee obtained the sealed documents for use by the court. This was not the first time satanic activities were suspected to be at the Vatican according to this ABC news story.

Another witness was set to testify that they were present during Pope Francis’ meetings with the military Junta during Argentine’s 1970′s Dirty War. According to the witness, Pope Francis helped traffic children of missing political prisoners into an international child exploitation ring run by an office at the Vatican.

Evidence of a Catholic Jesuit Order document called the “Magisterial Privilege” was presented in court by the Chief Prosecutor. The record dated Dec. 25 1967 was said to show that every new Pope was required to participate in Ninth Circle Satanic ritual sacrifices of newborn children, including drinking their blood.

“Documents from Vatican secret archives presented to court clearly indicate that for centuries the Jesuits had a premeditated plan to ritually murder kidnapped newborn babies and then consume their blood,” the Chief Prosecutor told the five international judges and 27 jury members. “The plan was born of a twisted notion to derive spiritual power from the lifeblood of the innocent, thereby assuring political stability of the Papacy in Rome. These acts are not only genocidal but systemic and institutionalized in nature. Since at least 1773, they appear to have been performed by the Roman Catholic Church, Jesuits and every Pope.”

Two witnesses claimed that as children they were at child sacrifices with the former Pope Joseph Ratzinger. Since at least 1962 Ratzinger participated in child sacrifices as a member of the Knights of Darkness according to the Vatican records presented at court. Ratzinger was an S.S. Chaplain’s assistant at the German Ravensbruck Concentration Camp during World War II. The children to be killed were supplied from prisoners at the death camp. The Nazi Waffen S.S. Division Knights of Darkness was established by Hitler in 1933 and embraced ancient pagan occult beliefs in human sacrifice.

Dutch Therapist-ritual abuse survivor Toos Nijenhuis testified of her witness to child sacrifice in this video. “Survivors of these rituals describe newborn babies being chopped to pieces on stone altars and their remains consumed by participants” the Chief Prosecutor said.”During the 1960′s the survivor-witnesses were forced to rape and mutilate other children and then cut their throats with ceremonial daggers.”

According to witnesses Pope Francis, former Pope Joseph Ratzinger, Jesuit Superior General Adolfo Pachon and Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby were participants in the Ninth Circle Satanic child sacrifice cult rape and killing of children. Evidence also could link to cult ceremonies UK High Court Justice Judge Fulford, members of the British Royal Family including Prince Phillip, Dutch Cardinal Alfrink, Dutch Queen Wilhemina, her family and consort King Hendrick, Belgian Royals and Bilderberger founder Crown Prince Bernhard….”

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSPrqMVytW8 450 300]

“There is no large Russian military presence in East Ukraine, head of EU intelligence, Commodore Georgij Alafuzoff, has said. The spy chief has dismissed multiple accusations from the West alleging Russian involvement in the unrest in the region.

In an interview with Finnish national news broadcaster, Yle, Alafuzoff said the Russian military had nothing to do with the seizing of government buildings in eastern Ukraine.

“In my opinion, it’s mostly people who live in the region who are not satisfied with the current state of affairs,” said Alafuzoff, referring to the situation in East Ukraine. He went on to say that the people are worried for the welfare of those who speak Russian as their first language in the region.

Alafuzoff echoed the words of the Russian government which has categorically denied interfering in the ongoing unrest. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a press conference on Monday that Moscow is not interested in destabilizing Ukraine and wants the country to remain united.

Anti-Kiev activists in the southeast of Ukraine have seized local government buildings as a mark of protest against the coup-appointed Ukrainian government. In response to the unrest, Ukraine’s interim President Aleksandr Turchinov announced the beginning of an “anti-terrorist” operation in eastern Ukraine.

On Tuesday, military hardware and troops began to mass on the outskirts of the eastern city of Slavyansk. Sightings of groups of military vehicles have been reported in the neighboring Kharkov and Lugansk regions, where pro-Russian and anti-Kiev sentiment is high.

Moscow has condemned Kiev’s operation as “anti-constitutional” and “criminal” and indicative of the government’s unwillingness to open dialogue with the regions…..”

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJcQfrkcls&noredirect=1 450 300]

“In a world of problems and solutions, few ideas spur both immediate hope and skepticism as the idea of free energy, and, on the brink of ecological disaster, nothing may be of greater importance to the human race.

The story of Nikola Tesla is a remarkable reminder of how our economic, political and media systems create our reality, because it shows how human ingenuity can be co-opted, shut-down, taken-over and hushed by powerful people with financial interests at stake. Fortunately, the legacy of Tesla lives on and people are now more interested than ever in his theories about cosmic energy and his patents for energy systems that could offer promise for liberating earth from dependence on fossil fuels.

Could it be that his vision has finally come to fruition and has been made available to the public, some 100 years after his patent for a fuel-less electricity generator?

“This new power for the driving of the world’s machinery will be derived from the energy which operates the universe, the cosmic energy, whose central source for the earth is the sun and which is everywhere present in unlimited quantities.” –Nikola Tesla

In March of 2014, a small group of independent engineers and developers released to the public open-source plans for a continuously running fuel-less electricity generator based on a patent by Nikola Tesla, and re-designed by inventor James Robitaille. Calling it the Quantum Energy Generator, or QEG, the portable device is supposedly capable of producing enough electricity to power a modern home, and is about the size and weight of a home gas generator.

“The Quantum Electric Generator system (QEG) is an adaptation of one of Nikola Tesla’s many patented electrical generator / dynamo / alternator designs. The particular patent referenced is No. 511,916, titled simply “Electric Generator”, and dated January 2, 1894 (see back of this manual). The adaptation is a conversion from a linear system, to a rotary system.

The QEG prototype is scaled to produce electrical power in the range of 10-15 kW (kilowatts) continuously, and can be set up to provide either 120 Volt or 230-240 Volt single phase output. We are also planning future designs to provide 3-phase power.” [Fix The World]

Developed by an organization known as the ‘Fix the World Council,’ and promoted by the lively Hopegirl, the prototype for the QEG was recently crowd-funded by over 600 independent contributors, and the plans for the QEG have been made available to the public for download here:

Download Plans for the Quantum Energy Generator here..…”

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“Russia’s military carried out a flight test of a new multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile on Monday amid growing tensions with the United States over the crisis in Ukraine.

The SS-27 Mod 2 road-mobile ICBM was launched around 2:40 a.m. EST from Russia’s Plesetsk launch facility, located about 500 miles north of Moscow.

“The main purpose of the launch is to validate the reliability of a batch of this class of missiles made at the Votkinsk Plant,” Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run Interfax-AVN.

An unspecified number of simulated nuclear warheads landed at an impact range on the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the Russian Far East, Yegorov said. The distance is around 3,500 miles.

The SS-27 Mod 2 is Russia’s newest ICBM and has been touted by Russian officials as designed specifically to defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Mark B. Schneider, a missile specialist with National Institute for Public Policy, said there is evidence indicating the Russians have violated the START arms treaty by developing the SS-27 Mod 2 with multiple warheads.

“The original missile that Russia called the Topol M Variant 2 and we call the SS-27 was a single warhead missile,” Schneider told the Free Beacon. “START prohibits increasing the declared number of warheads.”

The missile test launch followed an incident Saturday when a Russian Su-24 jet conducted a dozen low-altitude passes over a U.S. warship in the Black Sea. The Pentagon called the maneuver “provocative.”

“The aircraft did not respond to multiple queries and warnings from USS Donald Cook, and the event ended without incident after approximately 90 minutes,” Army Col. Steven Warren said.

“The Donald Cook is more than capable of defending itself against two Su-24s,” the colonel said.

Warren said the aircraft appeared to be authorized to make the low passes. “We’ve seen the Russians conduct themselves unprofessionally and in violation of international norms in Ukraine for several months, and these continued acts of provocation and unprofessionalism do nothing to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, which we called on the Russians to do,” he said.

The warship has been in the Black Sea in a show-of-strength deployment. It is currently making a port visit to Constanta, Romania.

The Russian ICBM, which Moscow calls the RS-24 Yars missile, will replace older Topol mobile ICBMs.

The United States currently has no comparable road-mobile ICBM. The mobility makes the missiles very difficult to detect and target…..”

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“A Ukrainian military operation to wrest control of cities in the east from pro-Russian militants has begun, Ukraine’s acting president said Tuesday, as Russia’s foreign minister warned use of force could derail international talks on the crisis.

Oleksandr Turchynov said that a phased “antiterrorist” operation began in the early morning hours in the northern Donetsk region, where the majority of the cities commandeered by pro-Russian forces are located. But there were no immediate reports of specific action and it was not clear how big the effort was.

“Overnight, an antiterrorist operation began in the north of Donetsk. But it will be phased, responsible and balanced. The purpose of the actions, I stress once again, is to protect the citizens of Ukraine,” he told Ukraine’s parliament, according to Interfax.

The swelling unrest is posing a major challenge to the new authorities in Kiev. The country’s military is ill-equipped to face off with pro-Russian forces who have barricaded themselves inside buildings in city centers in the east, once the key base of support for ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. A major operation to roust them could be bloody.

In Slovyansk, which emerged as a key city in the recent wave of unrest, there was no sign of the Ukrainian military and the mood remained calm, although many shops were closed. A man guarding a barricade outside the city’s main police station, which was seized on Sunday, said the protesters were prepared for any assault…..”

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“Both sides in Syria’s bloody civil war said Saturday that a rural village fell victim to a poison gas attack, an assault that reportedly injured scores of people amid an ongoing international effort to rid the country of chemical weapons.

What exactly happened Friday in Kfar Zeita, a rebel-held village in Hama province some 125 miles north of Damascus, remains unclear and likely won’t be known for some time. It took United Nations weapons inspectors months to say it was likely some chemical weapons attacks happened last year, including an August attack that killed hundreds and nearly sparked Western airstrikes against President Bashar Assad’s forces.

But online videos posted by rebel activists from Kfar Zeita echoed earlier images that sparked a world outcry, showing pale-faced men, women and children gasping for breath at a field hospital. They suggest an affliction by some kind of poison — and yet another clouded incident where both sides blame each other in a conflict that activists say has killed more than 150,000 people with no end in sight.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said the poison gas attack hurt dozens of people, though it did not identify the gas used.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that relies on a network of on-the-ground volunteers, said the gas attack happened during air raids that left heavy smoke over the area. It reported that people suffered from suffocation and breathing problems after the attack, but gave no further details.

State-run Syrian television blamed members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front rebel group for the attack, saying they used chlorine gas to kill two people and injure more than 100. It did not say how it confirmed chlorine was used.

Chlorine, one of the most commonly manufactured chemicals in the U.S., is used to purify drinking water. But as a gas, it can be deadly, with the German army using it in warfare in World War I. The Geneva Protocol of 1925, which Syria signed, banned its use in battle.

The TV report also claimed the Nusra Front is preparing for another chemical attack against the Wadi Deif area in the northern province of Idlib, as well as another area in Hama. The government station did not explain how it knew the Nusra Front’s plans.

Activists in the village could not be reached Saturday.

An activist from Hama who is currently in Turkey and is in contact with residents told The Associated Press that the attack occurred around sunset Friday. The man, who goes with the name Amir al-Basha, said the air raids on the rebel-held village came as nearby areas including Morek and Khan Sheikhoun have witnessed intense clashes between troops and opposition fighters.

An amateur video posted online by opposition activists showed a hospital room in Kfar Zeita that was packed with men and children, some of whom breathing through oxygen masks. On one bed, the video showed six children, some appearing to have difficulty breathing while others cried.
The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the attack.

Chemical weapons have been used before in Syria’s 3-year-old conflict. In August, a chemical attack near the capital, Damascus, killed hundreds of people. The U.S. and its allies blamed the Syrian government for that attack, which nearly sparked Western airstrikes before a negotiated diplomatic settlement saw Assad’s government agree to give up its chemical weapons. Damascus denied the charges and blamed rebels of staging the incident.

Before the August attack, there have been several incidents of toxic gases being used. Britain, France and the U.S. have spoken about chemical weapons use in the central city of Homs, Damascus and elsewhere.

A U.N. weapons inspectors’ report released in December identified four locations where chemical weapons likely had been used in 2013: Khan al Assal outside Aleppo, Jobar in Damascus’ eastern suburbs, Saraqueb near Idlib in the northwest and Ashrafiah Sahnaya in the Damascus countryside. In two cases, inspectors reportedly found “signatures of sarin,” a nerve agent.

The Syrian National Coalition called on the U.N. to conduct a “quick investigation into the developments related to the use of poisonous gas against civilians in Syria.” The coalition also claimed that another chemical weapons attack Friday struck the Damascus suburb of Harasta, though state media did not report on it.

In Washington, the State Department said Friday that the U.S. had no information to corroborate the latest claims of a gas attack. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she would not speculate on any U.S. response if the reports were found to be accurate…..”

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“U.S. mortgage lending is contracting to levels not seen since 1997 — the year Tiger Woods won his first of four Masters championships — as rising interest rates and home prices drive away borrowers.

Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the two largest U.S. mortgage lenders, reported a first-quarter plunge in loan volumes that’s part of an industry-wide drop off. Lenders made $226 billion of mortgages in the period, the smallest quarterly amount since 1997 and less than one-third of the 2006 average, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.

Lending has been tumbling since mid-2013 when mortgage rates jumped about a percentage point after the Federal Reserve said it might taper stimulus spending. A surge in all-cash purchases to more than 40 percent has kept housing prices rising, squeezing more Americans out of the market. That will help push lending down further this year, according to the association.

“Banks large and small are going to have to adapt to a new reality because mortgage origination volumes going forward aren’t going to support the big businesses they’ve had in place for the last few years,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. “They’re going to have smaller, leaner operations, and we’re seeing them make that shift.”

At Wells Fargo, home-loan originations exceeded $100 billion for seven straight quarters, ending in June 2013. The figure plunged to $36 billion in the three months through March, the San Francisco-based bank said April 11.

Rising Rates

Wells Fargo’s results show the shift in the housing market away from refinancings as interest rates climb. Just 34 percent of its originations went to customers refinancing loans, compared with 69 percent in the same period of 2013.

Timothy Sloan, Wells Fargo’s chief financial officer, said a combination of forces, including tougher standards following the housing crash, account for the falloff in lending.

“It’s too early to call it a secular shift,” Sloan said in an interview. “This recovery has just been more complicated because of the impact of rates being low, and now they are backing up a little bit. We’ve had a lot of regulatory changes, we’ve had a change in underwriting standards that the market is getting used to.”

The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 4.34 percent last week, up from 3.54 percent a year ago, according to a statement from Freddie Mac.

Cutting Staff….”

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“If Russia’s intention was to give Ukraine enough “escalation” rope with which to hang itself once again, it may have succeeded when a little over an hour ago acting president Oleksander Turchinov said in a televized address that Ukraine has mobilized its armed forces to launch a “full-scale anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Russian separatists. Furthermore, knowing the only real escalation Kiev can engage in is in the war of words department, Ukraine set an 0600 GMT Monday deadline for pro-Russian separatists to give up their weapons and leave buildings they have occupied in the east of the country, a presidential decree said. It is unclear if this would be the catalyst to launch the military operation, but should Kiev indeed bring in the army it is certainly clear that Russia will respond in kind.

Reuters reports:

Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two of his comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until Monday morning to lay down their weapons.

 

He blamed Russia, which opposed a pro-Europe uprising that forced Moscow-backed former president Viktor Yanukovich to flee, for being behind the rash of rebellions across Russian-speaking towns in eastern Ukraine.

 

“The blood of Ukrainian heroes has been shed in a war which the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine,” he said in an address to the nation. “The aggressor has not stopped and is continuing to sow disorder in the east of the country.”

Russia promptly responded, alleging Ukraine’s planned operation is criminal….”

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“An alarming lapse in Internet security has exposed millions of passwords, credit card numbers and other sensitive bits of information to potential theft by computer hackers who may have been secretly exploiting the problem before its discovery.

The breakdown revealed this week affects the encryption technology that is supposed to protect online accounts for emails, instant messaging and a wide range of electronic commerce.

Security researchers who uncovered the threat, known as “Heartbleed,” are particularly worried about the breach because it went undetected for more than two years.

Although there is now a way to close the security hole, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned, said David Chartier, CEO of Codenomicon. A small team from the Finnish security firm diagnosed Heartbleed while working independently from another Google  researcher who also discovered the threat.

“I don’t think anyone that had been using this technology is in a position to definitively say they weren’t compromised,” Charier said.

Chartier and other computer security experts are advising people to consider changing all their online passwords.

“I would change every password everywhere because it’s possible something was sniffed out,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer for Qualys, a maker of security-analysis software. “You don’t know because an attack wouldn’t have left a distinct footprint.”

But changing the passwords won’t do any good, these experts said, until the affected services install the software released Monday to fix the problem. That puts the onus on the Internet services affected by Heartbleed to alert their users to the potential risks and let them know when the Heartbleed fix has been installed so they can change their passwords.

“This is going to be difficult for the average guy in the streets to understand, because it’s hard to know who has done what and what is safe,” Chartier said.

Yahoo, which boasts more than 800 million users worldwide, is among the Internet services that could be potentially hurt by Heartbleed. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said most of its most popular services — including sports, finance and Tumblr — had been fixed, but work was still being done on other products that it didn’t identify in a statement Tuesday.

“We’re focused on providing the most secure experience possible for our users worldwide and are continuously working to protect our users’ data,” Yahoo said.

Heartbleed creates an opening in SSL/TLS, an encryption technology marked by the small, closed padlock and “https:” on Web browsers to signify that traffic is secure. The flaw makes it possible to snoop on Internet traffic even if the padlock had been closed. Interlopers could also grab the keys for deciphering encrypted data without the website owners knowing the theft had occurred, according to security researchers.

The problem affects only the variant of SSL/TLS known as OpenSSL, but that is one of the most common on the Internet.

About two-thirds of Web servers rely on OpenSSL, Chartier said. That means the information passing through hundreds of thousands of websites could be vulnerable, despite the protection offered by encryptions. Beside emails and chats, OpenSSL is also used to secure virtual private networks, which are used by employees to connect with corporate networks seeking to shield confidential information from prying eyes…..”

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“Italy’s bishops have adopted a policy, with backing from the Vatican, that states they are not obliged to inform police officers if they suspect a child has been molested.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference said the guidelines published on Friday reflected suggestions from the Vatican’s office that handles sex abuse investigations.

Victims have denounced how bishops systematically covered up abuse by moving priests while keeping prosecutors in the dark.

Only in 2010 did the Vatican instruct bishops to report abuse to police — but only where required by law.

Italian guidelines cite a 1985 treaty between the Vatican and Italy stipulating that clergy aren’t obliged to tell magistrates about information obtained through their religious ministry. The guidelines remind bishops, however, they have a ”moral duty“ to contribute to the common good.

The ruling comes less than a week after….”

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“WASHINGTON (AP) – At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama’s health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.

Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

“Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.

No member of the House GOP leadership has publicly hailed the fix, which was tucked, at Republicans’ request, into legislation preventing a cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

It is unclear how many members of the House rank and file knew of it because the legislation was passed by a highly unusual voice vote without debate….”

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“The United Nations pseudo-“human-rights” bureaucracy released another report attacking Americans’ self-defense rights, “Stand Your Ground” statutes passed at the state level, and the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment protection of the people’s God-given right to keep and bear arms without government infringement. Agreeing with the Obama administration and the most extreme anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, the UN “Human Rights Committee” also claimed that the U.S. government needed to expand the unconstitutional background-check regime to include even private firearms sales.

In a section of the report entitled “gun violence,” the UN “experts,” virtually all of whom come from governments that do not recognize the fundamental human right to possess weapons or of self-defense, claimed to be “concerned” about multiple issues surrounding U.S. gun laws. Despite “measures taken to reduce gun violence,” an advance of the UN document claims, “the Committee remains concerned about the continuing high numbers of gun-related deaths and injuries and the disparate impact of gun violence on minorities, women and children.” It was not immediately clear where the outfit obtained its data.

Especially troubling to the UN bureaucrats was the alleged “discriminatory effect of ‘Stand Your Ground Laws,’” according to the report. While the UN “experts” praised an “investigation” conducted by the federal “Commission on Civil Rights” into the popular state protections for self-defense rights, the unelected international committee claimed to be “concerned about the proliferation of such laws that are used to circumvent the limits of legitimate self-defence [sic] in violation of the State party’s duty to protect life.” The report marks at least the third time in recent months that self-styled UN authorities have used discredited arguments to attack American protections for fundamental human rights.

The State Party [the U.S. government] should take all necessary measures to abide by its obligation to effectively protect the right to life,” the report continues, despite the fact that studies show widespread gun ownership protects lives. “In particular, it should: (a) continue its efforts to effectively curb gun violence, including through the continued pursuit of legislation requiring background checks for all private firearm transfers … and (b) review Stand Your Ground Laws to remove far-reaching immunity and ensure strict adherence to the principles of necessity and proportionality when using deadly force in self-defence.”

In other words, the UN is now brazenly and openly pushing for radical and unconstitutional changes to both U.S. and state law. In particular, the report is calling for a massive expansion of the background-check regime — a plot that was so extreme it did not even make it through the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate amid a full-blown assault on gun rights by the Obama administration. Critics have attacked the controversial idea from all angles, but especially troublesome are the constitutional implications, as well as well-founded suspicions that the Obama administration is unlawfully trying to use background checks to compile a national gun registry in defiance of federal law……”

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“Update with Ukraine’s take: SEPARATIST ACTION IN EAST UKRAINE SHOWS “SECOND STAGE OF RUSSIAN SPECIAL OPERATIONS AGAINST UKRAINE” IS UNDERWAY-UKRAINIAN ACTING PRESIDENT – RTRS

Less than a month after the Crimean referendum which pulled the region away from Ukraine and ceded it to Russia, another east Ukraine regional city, Donetsk, has just declared its independence from Kiev following the previously reported mini coup yesterday in which pro-Russia activists seized the government building in the city, as well as the other two regional capitals. Specifically, as RT reports, today at 12:20 local time, a session of the people’s Council of Donbass (Donetsk region) took place in the main hall of the Regional Council and without the police (whose allegiance to Kiev also appears to be non-existent) intervening, unanimously voted on a declaration to form a new independent state: the People’s Republic of Donetsk.

Sure enough, promptly thereafter the Council of the new republic issued an address to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for deployment of a temporary peacekeeping force to the region. Just like Crimea.

And so another city pulls away from Ukraine and gives Russia the go ahead to create a toehold in East Ukraine, just according to Putin’s plan.

RT has the details:

The Council proclaimed itself the only legitimate body in the region until the regions in southeast Ukraine conduct a general referendum, set to take place no later than May 11.

The Council in Donetsk issued an address to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for deployment of a temporary peacekeeping force to the region.

“Without support it will be hard for us to stand against the junta in Kiev,” said the address…..”

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The report by the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee found that the BBC had used unqualified experts instead of scientists to give their views on the issue.

In addition, the committee said the BBC’s use of climate lobbyists has blurred the lines between scientific facts and belief-based opinions.

Committee chair Andrew Miller said it was “disappointing that the BBC does not ensure all of its programs and presenters reflect the actual state of science in its output,” adding, BBC’s news teams, including Radio 4’s Today program “continue to make mistakes in their coverage of climate science by giving opinions and scientific fact the same weight.”

The parliamentary panel also criticized British newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph  and The Daily Mail  for their coverage on global warning. ….”

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“A US judge has ruled shareholders can can sue JPMorgan Chase for securities fraud over the activities of the “London whale” trader.

The US bank lost $6.2 billion  (£3.7 billion) as a result of the scandal linked to trades made by Bruno Iksil from the London-based chief investment office.

District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said shareholders could pursue claims that chief executive Jamie Dimon and former chief financial officer Douglas Braunstein hid increased risks the office had been taking early in 2012, according to Reuters.

But he dismissed an action brought against bank’s directors and another brought by employees over losses made by investing in the bank’s stock in their pensions….”

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