CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY
A free service of Jesus Christ is Lord Ministries
News selected and edited by Ray Mossholder
CHRISTIAN NEWS FROM RAY, March 15, 2014
THE FUTURE OF THIS WORLD COULD BEGIN TOMORROW
Ukraine must be ready for a full-scale Russian invasion “at any moment,” the country’s acting president warned Thursday, as officials announced the emergency call-up of a 60,000-strong national guard force. Oleksander Turchynov said Moscow was “ready” to go much further than the annexation of the Black Sea territory of Crimea, which is expected to vote to secede from Ukraine in a referendum on Sunday.
Only clear international pressure could halt or slow the momentum of the Kremlin, he said. “All of civilized humanity supports our country,” said Mr. Turchynov. “I am sure that this united effort in the international arena, bringing together all democratic countries, can still allow us to halt this aggression.”
Washington and the international community won’t recognize the outcome of Sunday’s referendum in Crimea on seceding from Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday after six hours of talks with Russia’s foreign minister.
His comments came after Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov acknowledged there was no “common vision” between the two nations over the crisis in Ukraine.
Sunday’s vote on Crimea — Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula of 2 million people — is certain to back secession and, potentially, annexation with Russia. The new government in Kyiv believes the vote is illegal, but Moscow says it does not recognize the new government as legitimate.
The U.S. and EU say the Crimean vote violates Ukraine’s constitution and international law. If Crimea votes to secede, the U.S. and European Union plan to slap sanctions as early as Monday on Russian officials and businesses accused of escalating the crisis and undermining Ukraine’s new government.
Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Thursday that Ottawa will contribute $220-million to an international effort to bailout Ukraine’s government. “Restoring economic stability in that country is a priority for both Canada and of our international partners during this important transition period towards a Euro-Atlantic future for Ukraine,” he said
Ukraine’s parliament voted to create the national guard from interior ministry employees and members of the militias that emerged from the pro-Western protest movement that toppled Viktor Yanukovych, the former president.
The measure was passed as Russia confirmed that it was conducting military manoeuvres in the Rostov, Tambov and Belgorod regions near the Ukraine border, involving 8,500 ground troops, 270 tanks and 180 armored personnel carriers. “The main purpose of these actions is to completely check teamwork of the units and make them implement combat missions on an unknown territory,” the Russian defense ministry said.
With tensions mounting across the region, Moscow also sent three fighter jets to Belarus at the request of its government following the deployment of 12 F-16 fighters to Poland by the U.S. Senior NATO and Russian generals discussed the moves by hotline.
Mr. Turchynov said mismanagement of the security forces by Mr. Yanukovych had rendered the country incapable of defending itself. He said the forces would be rebuilt “effectively from scratch.”
Illustrating the volatility of Crimea, the Ukrainian commander of an air base in Sevastopol asked his superiors in Kyiv to give him instructions should he be fired
upon. “To avoid armed confrontations, I ask you to tell us as quickly as possible what commanding officers need to do if troops or members of their families come under threat,” said Col. Yuli Mamchur on Ukrainian television. “If you do not make a decision, we will act according to the status of the Ukrainian armed forces, even opening fire if need be.”
In an unusually robust and emotional speech, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned of “catastrophe” unless Russia changed course. “We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat,” she said. “This would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically.”
The head of the Russian Duma’s international relations committee acknowledged that Russian troops were controlling Crimea, in a break from Moscow’s position that armed, uniformed men in the area were “self-defense units.” “There are some military units there, which are in position in case there is an aggression, expansion from Kyiv,” Leonid Slutsky said, that armed, uniformed men in the area
were “self-defense units.” “There are some military units there, which are in position in case there is an aggression, expansion from Kyiv,” Leonid Slutsky said.
Russian troops from the leased naval base in Sevastopol, and possibly troops from Russia itself, have been instrumental in securing the territory, which is now run by a Moscow friendly leader of a fringe party.
Rumours swirled in Simferopol, the capital, that cash supplies to the region would be cut off after the referendum result is confirmed, prompting a run on some banks. Payouts were swiftly limited to 3,000 hryvna ($215).
The Associated Press
MANY NATIONS ARE COMING TO HELP UKRAINE
VICENZA, Italy — Atlas Vision is canceled. But Rapid Trident is still a go.
The status of two annual U.S. Army Europe military exercises that were scheduled for July — one in Russia, one in western Ukraine — is being affected differently by the situation in Ukraine, which has been described as the worst crisis since the end of the Cold War. The fact that the U.S. and its allies chose to go ahead with an exercise in Ukraine while canceling the one in Russia demonstrates Western support for Kiev in its confrontation with Moscow. On March 3, the Pentagon announced that all exercises, bilateral meetings, port visits and planning conferences with Russia were off.
Air Force Lt. Col. David Westover, a spokesman, said the U.S. European Command had been in the planning stages for Atlas Vision 2014, which was to take place in July in Chelyabinsk, in northeastern Russia, and focus on joint peace-keeping operations. But because of the crisis, “all planning for this exercise has been suspended,” he said. However, planning for Rapid Trident 2014 — a large, USAREUR led multinational exercise in Ukraine scheduled for July — is ongoing, he said.
That exercise, in Lviv, near the Polish border, is to “promote regional stability and security, strengthen partnership capacity, and foster trust while improving interoperability between USAREUR, the land forces of Ukraine, and other (NATO and partner) nations,” according to the USAEUR website.
In addition to USAREUR troops, Rapid Trident 2014 will include units from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Moldova, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, Westover said. It will feature a combined U.S. and Ukrainian battalion headquarters practicing a peacekeeping operation, he said. “Exercise planning will continue until we are told otherwise.”
Last year’s exercise lasted two weeks and included about 1,300 troops. It focused on “airborne and air-mobile infantry operations,” according to a report on the Rapid Trident website.
In the meantime, the crisis in Ukraine shows no sign of a quick resolution.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is considered key in dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that “the territorial integrity of Ukraine cannot be called into question.” The same day, President Obama vowed to “stand with Ukraine” during a White House visit by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the besieged country’s pro-Western acting prime minister.
Westover said if relations were again normalized between the West and Russia, Atlas Vision might or might not be rescheduled. “Obviously without proper prior planning, conducting an exercise of this nature becomes difficult and jeopardizes our ability to participate,” he said
NORTH KOREA AND SYRIA SUPPORT RUSSIA’S INVASION
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad was the first to congratulate Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Crimea. Today Kim Jung-un announced he also applauds Russia or what he’s doing.
SABOTAGE OF MISSING MALAYSIAN PLANE MOST LIKELY NOW
BEIJING – China’s state media say Vietnamese authorities have detected signals from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. The Xinhua News Agency, citing a local Vietnamese media report, says a Vietnamese search and rescue official reported that the pings have been detected from the plane from about 220 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of Vietnam’s southernmost coastal province of Ca Mau.
It is largely suspected that someone with evil intent kidnapped Flight 370 with 239 aboard, plus flight crew, because it made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar, U.S. officials told CNN on Friday, raising questions for investigators about just who was at the controls of the commercial jetliner that went missing one week ago.
The more the United States learns about the flight’s pattern, “the more difficult to write off” the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, one of the officials familiar with the investigation said.
This revelation came as CNN learned that a classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean.
The analysis conducted by the United States and Malaysian governments may have narrowed the search area for the jetliner that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leaving little trace of where it went or why. The analysis used radar data and satellite pings to calculate that the plane diverted to the west, across the Malayan peninsula, and then either flew in a northwest direction toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean.
The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for up to five hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, confirmed to CNN that automated signals were registered on its network.
Re-creating MH370′s altitude change
Flight 370 search expands to Indian Ocean
Taken together, the data points toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism.
That theory is buoyed by word from a senior U.S. official familiar with the investigation that the Malaysia Airlines plane made several significant altitude changes and altered its course more than once after losing contact with flight towers.
The jetliner was flying “a strange path,” the official said. The details of the radar readings were first reported by the New York Times yesterday.
Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said. The question of what happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials. Suggestions have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to sabotage to hijacking to pilot suicide.
The sabotage theory got a boost Friday from The Wall Street Journal, which reported investigators increasingly suspect the plane’s communications systems were manually switched off.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the satellite communications system that pinged for hours stopped functioning because “something catastrophic happened or someone switched off” the system, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the jet’s last known position.
The pings stopped at a point over the Indian Ocean, while the jetliner was flying at a normal cruising altitude, according to the newspaper.
What is now being called “a movie plot theory,” some suggest flight 370 may have landed on a remote Indian Ocean island chain. The suggestion — and it’s only that at this point — is based on analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggesting that the plane wasn’t just blindly flying northwest from Malaysia. Reuters, citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, reported that whoever was piloting the vanished jet was following navigational waypoints that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands.
The radar data doesn’t show the plane over the Andaman Islands, but only on a known route that would take it there, Reuters cited its sources as saying.
That movie-plot theory seems more complicated and unlikely than one in which the plane — its flight crew perhaps incapacitated — simply flew on until it ran out of fuel or faced some other problem. But it’s one that law enforcement has to check out, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom said.
Aviation experts say it’s possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have hijacked and landed the giant Boeing 777 undetected. The international airport in Port Blair, the regional capital of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, has a runway that is long enough to accommodate a 777, according to publicly available data.
But the region is highly militarized because of its strategic importance to India, Indian officials with knowledge of the operation tell CNN, making it an unlikely target for pirates trying to sneak in an enormous airplane with a wingspan of more than 200 feet.
Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper, says there’s just nowhere to land such a big plane in his archipelago without attracting notice.
“There is no chance, no such chance, that any aircraft of this size can come towards Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land,” he said.
A senior U.S. official offered a conflicting account Thursday, telling CNN that “there is probably a significant likelihood the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean.”
Among the things being considered is whether lithium batteries in the cargo hold, which have been blamed in previous crashes, played a role in the disappearance, according to U.S. officials briefed on the latest developments in the investigation.
But if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, it still doesn’t fully explain other anomalies with Flight 370, the officials say.
Malaysian officials, who are coordinating the search, said Friday that the hunt for the plane was spreading deeper into both the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
India has deployed assets from its navy, coast guard and air force to the south Andaman Sea to take part in the search, the country’s Ministry of Defense said Friday. Indian search teams are combing large areas of the archipelago. Two aircraft are searching land and coastal areas of the island chain from north to south, an Indian military spokesman said Friday, and two coast guard ships have been diverted to search along the islands’ east coast. Indian officials are also including part of the Bay of Bengal in their search.
As of Friday, 57 ships and 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search, Hishammuddin Hussein, the minister in charge of defense and transportation, said at a news briefing.
China, which said it would be extending its search, said crews have searched more than 27,000 square miles (about 70,000 square kilometers) of the South China Sea without finding anything.
On Friday, the United States sent the destroyer USS Kidd to scout the Indian Ocean as the search expands into that body of water. “I, like most of the world, really have never seen anything like this,” Cmdr. William Marks of the U.S. 7th Fleet said of the scale of the search. “It’s pretty incredible. It’s a completely new game now.”
Chinese researchers say they recorded a “seafloor event” in waters around Malaysia and Vietnam about an hour and a half after the missing plane’s last known contact. The event was recorded in a non-seismic region about 116 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of the plane’s last confirmed location, the University of Science and Technology of China said. “Judging from the time and location of the two events, the seafloor event may have been caused by MH370 crashing into the sea,” said a statement posted on the university’s website.
However, U.S. Geological Survey earthquake scientist Harley Benz said Friday that the event appeared to be consistent with a naturally occurring 2.7-magnitude earthquake.
Authorities continued to defend their response to the crash. “A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses the search,” Hussein said. “But this is not a normal investigation. In this case, the information we have forces us to look further and further afield.”
However, Bob Francis, a former National Transportation Safety Board official, is one of several experts who have questioned how Malaysian authorities have handled the situation. “The Malaysians are not doing a superb job of running this investigation,” he said. “And they apparently give you some information, and then they withhold information. How much are they relying on and listening to the Europeans and the NTSB who are there with more expertise? I don’t know, but I think you know we’ve got a mixture of a very strange situation that happens to be in an environment, a regulatory environment, that really isn’t capable or isn’t running an investigation the way it should be run.”
As the radio announcer used to say at the end of every Superman adventure, “Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode!”
WHICH AIRLINE’S ARE THE SAFEST AND MOST COMFORTABLE?
A list of the world’s safest airlines has just been released. Top of the ranking from AirlineRatings.comof the safest carriers in 2013 is the Australian airline Qantas. Awarding it a full seven stars, the website cites the airline’s fatality-free flying record from the beginning of the jet era in the early 1950s.
Other airlines sharing the seven-star rating and winning a place among the top 10 safest airlines are, in alphabetical order, Air New Zealand, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Eva Air, Royal Jordanian, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. Of the 448 airlines AirlineRatings.com surveys, 137 have a top seven-star rating.
Along with fatality crash records and audits from aviation governing bodies, the website takes into account the quality of the “in-flight product” airlines offer — including in-flight entertainment, seating, and food — to determine their ranking.
BOMBS AND BULLETS ARE A WAY OF LIFE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
Israel fired tank and artillery shells last night into southern Lebanon after a roadside bomb exploded near its soldiers patrolling the border. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said the explosion damaged a military vehicle near the border. He said no soldiers were hurt in the blast, though three went to a hospital for observation to rule out internal injuries.
He said the military immediately responded with tank and artillery fire directed at “Hezbollah positions and other suspicious locations.” Soldiers also used smoke-screen munitions to mask their movements. He said, “The military is on alert and reinforcing its presence on the border.”
Hezbollah had no immediate comment last night.
The Lebanese army said in a statement that a roadside bomb hit the Israeli patrol around 5:45 p.m. local time. In response, “the Israeli enemy forces fired several artillery shells, nine of which fell on Bastara Farms.”
Lebanese security officials said at least two artillery shells fired from Israel landed near the village of Halta in southern Lebanon, but caused no casualties.
A Halta resident reached by telephone said at least six or seven shells landed in the hills east of the village.
Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite group committed to Israel’s destruction, battled to a stalemate during a monthlong war in the summer of 2006. Both sides have mostly avoided any direct confrontation since a United Nations-brokered cease-fire ended the fighting.
KARZAI SAYS US MILITARY HAVE NEVER BEEN WELCOME IN AFGHANISTAN
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the last 12 years of war were “imposed” on Afghans, a reference to the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban. In a last address to Parliament on Saturday, Karzai also said his armed forces, now responsible for 93 percent of the country, were ready to take over entirely after the final withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops later this year.
Karzai was named as head of state by an international agreement, and subsequently by a council of Afghan notables, in the aftermath of the invasion. His final term in office expires with presidential elections next month.
He reiterated his stance that he wouldn’t sign a security pact with Washington to allow a residual force to remain behind in Afghanistan, unless the U.S first brings peace.
Faced with the ongoing exit of American troops from Afghanistan, the top U.S. aid agency wants to step up its use of smartphones, satellite imagery and GPS cameras to oversee tax-funded development projects that aid workers because they will no longer be able to observe what’s necessary with their own eyes.
The U.S. Agency for International Development on Saturday began seeking bids on a new monitoring project contract, which could cost up to $170 million. The agency hopes the five-year project will allow aid work to continue in Afghanistan despite the troop drawdown and satisfy lawmakers and others who have criticized it for weak monitoring.
Unless security improves significantly, Afghans hired by USAID contractors will increasingly be on the front line of overseeing USAID’s largest single-country program.
“As the U.S. prepares to have a smaller military footprint, it could become increasingly challenging for us to do our direct monitoring and have U.S. employees on the ground looking at things,” Mark Feierstein, associate administrator for USAID, said in an interview this week at USAID’s headquarters in Washington. “We are going to try to do whatever oversight we can with USAID employees,” Feierstein said. “If we conclude that even with the best technology we just can’t have eyes and ears there, we just won’t do the project.”
Since 2001, USAID has spent $12 billion on development projects in Afghanistan, and millions more will pour into the country in coming years.
USAID-funded projects are monitored by aid workers, contractors, other U.S. government employees, USAID’s own inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, the Afghan government and civil organizations, and the office of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.
The new monitoring project contract going out for bid aims to enhance oversight by combining these existing monitoring techniques with stepped up use of high-tech tools, which USAID has already used in Afghanistan and other hard-to-access countries, such as Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and certain areas of Colombia.
The tools include satellite imagery, cameras that take photos with the time, date and GPS coordinates, and cellphones that can be used to collect data and conduct informal public opinion surveys. Typically, Afghans are hired to go to project sites and collect information useful in monitoring the work — a job that can put them in danger if they are seen by insurgents fighting America’s presence in Afghanistan.
The drawdown of forces and further restricted movement of U.S. civilian workers in Afghanistan has alarmed Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, who has long criticized waste and fraud in U.S. reconstruction projects in the war-torn country. At a Senate hearing earlier this week, McCaskill noted that SIGAR predicts that soon no more than 21 percent of Afghanistan will be accessible to U.S. civilian oversight personnel. “Now that’s a 47 percent reduction since 2009,” McCaskill said. “We had eyes and ears on the majority of Afghanistan during a time period that … billions of dollars of American taxpayer money was being spent to build things. We’re only going to have eyes and ears in 21 percent of the country.”
In its most recent quarterly report, SIGAR also expressed deep concern that oversight could suffer. “As the U.S. drawdown continues, implementing agencies and oversight bodies will have far less visibility over the reconstruction programs than in the past,” it said in the report issued in January.
In a letter to U.S. officials late last year, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said access had already become an issue. He noted that in 2013 SIGAR was unable to visit $72 million in infrastructure projects in northern Afghanistan because they were in areas that could not be reached by U.S. civilian employees. Sopko said five zones, encircling many of the highest-populated cities in the country, have been identified as having “possible oversight access.” He said U.S. military officials have told SIGAR that “requests to visit a reconstruction sites outside of these oversight bubbles will probably be denied.” U.S. military officials also have told SIGAR that they will provide civilian access only to areas within a 30-minute trip of an advanced medical facility.
In his letter, Sopko acknowledged USAID’s work to use third-party monitors to oversee construction sites and said the State Department was looking at ways to expand access by periodically moving emergency medical and security forces to the edges of the oversight bubbles. “Even if these alternative means are used to oversee reconstruction sites, direct oversight of reconstruction programs in much of Afghanistan will become prohibitively hazardous or impossible as U.S. military units are withdrawn, coalition bases are closed, and civilian reconstruction offices in the field are closed,” he wrote.
Many Democrats as well as Republicans want to complete withdrawal of our troops this year, and they oppose leaving any troops in Afghanistan. The point to billions of wasted dollars that are unaccounted for, the hatred many Afghans have for all US troops, and the extreme danger of having elite equipment being stolen and used instead by al–Qaeda.
EUROPE WORRIED ABOUT JIHADISTS RETURNING THERE FROM SYRIA
Security officials in Europe are concerned the Syrian civil war could lead to jihad in their countries. Many Islamic radicals traveled from Europe to Syria to fight in the war and some are now coming home.
In Germany, authorities arrested a man they believe fought for a hard-line Islamic group in Syria. They believe he was planning an act of violence.
Meanwhile, Spanish and Moroccan police arrested seven suspected members of a cell that allegedly recruited jihadists to fight in Syria and other places.
Last year, Spanish police arrested eight suspected jihadist militants in a similar operation.
ONE PRAYER ANSWERED – IRAN REMOVES THE SHACKLES FROM AMERICAN PASTOR
Abedini was promised surgery for injuries he suffered from prison beatings—only to have the Iranian government deny the surgery, put him in shackles and threaten to return him to his prison cell without medical treatment.
One of Abedini’s family members went to Rajai Shahr Prison to find out why he was denied medical care. He was told by prison officials that the whole ordeal was a “mistake,” and that the warden called the hospital and ordered Abedini be unchained and allowed to visit the family member.
The ACLJ said a short visit was allowed with Abedini at the hospital. He was not in shackles at the time, but had not received any medical treatment. “We know that the voices and prayers of the worldwide community truly make a difference,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the ACLJ, which represents Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, and their two young children who live in the U.S.
Speaking in the news release Sekulow said, “We will continue to put pressure on Iran to provide the vital medical treatment that Pastor Saeed so desperately needs. It’s extremely disturbing that the Iranian government continues to play games with the life of this U.S. citizen—who has been imprisoned in Iran for a year and a half now simply because of his Christian faith. We are continuing to fight for Pastor Saeed’s freedom. Right now, a legal team from both our U.S. and international offices is meeting with world leaders at the United Nations office in Geneva.”
Sekulow continued, “The start of the Iranian new year on March 21st is often a time when the Iranian government offers clemency to prisoners of conscience. Iran has a very visible window of opportunity in the week ahead to act on earlier comments from Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif who told the media that clemency for Pastor Saeed could be possible. It’s time for Iran to act and to free Pastor Saeed now, so he can get the medical attention he needs and return to his family.”
Abedini, 33, is serving an eight year prison sentence because of his Christian faith. He has been incarcerated for more than a year.
Editor’s Note: Join us in prayer for a miracle release of Pastor Saeed.
FBI TOLD TO STOP INVESTIGATING TWO SENATORS
FBI agents working alongside Utah state prosecutors in a wide-ranging corruption investigation have uncovered accusations of wrongdoing by two of the U.S. Senate’s most prominent figures — Majority Leader Harry Reid and rising Republican Senator. Mike Lee — but Eric Holder and the Justice Department has thwarted their bid to launch a full federal investigation.
The probe, conducted by one Republican and one Democratic state prosecutor in Utah, has received accusations from an indicted businessman and political donor. They have interviewed other witnesses and gathered preliminary evidence such as financial records, Congressional Record statements and photographs that corroborate some aspects of the accusations, officials have told The Washington Times and ABC News. But the Justice Department’s public integrity section — which normally handles corruption cases involving elected figures — rejected FBI agents’ bid to use a federal grand jury and subpoenas to determine whether the accusations are true and whether any federal crimes were committed by state and federal officials.
The information involving Senators Reid and Leeis not fully developed but centers on two primary issues:
Whether both or either politician sought or received money or other benefits from donors and/or fundraisers in connection with doing political favors or taking official actions.• Whether Senator Lee provided accurate information when he bought, then sold, a Utah home for a big loss to a campaign contributor and federal contractor, leaving his mortgage bank to absorb large losses. “There are allegations, but they are very serious allegations and they need to be looked at by somebody,” Sim Gill, a Democrat who is the elected chief prosecutor in Salt Lake County, told The Times. “If true, or even if asserted, they truly should be investigated and put to rest, or be their crimes should be confirmed.”
Spokesmen for both senators denied their bosses engaged in any wrongdoing and said the lawmakers were unaware of the investigations.
The investigative efforts have been further complicated by the fact that Senator Reid worked to get Mr. Lee’s chief counsel, David Barlow, confirmed in 2011 as the U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City. That action — a Democratic Senate leader letting a Republican be named to a key prosecutor’s position in the Obama administration — raised many eyebrows and angered some Democrats.
Subsequently, the entire office of federal prosecutors in Utah was forced to recuse itself from the corruption case after questions surfaced about a conflict of interest involving one prosecutor and a subject of the probe. After the recusal, state prosecutors secured a court order transferring the federal evidence gathered up to that point to their possession.
The process has left FBI agents in the unusual position of trying to help two local prosecutors make a case in state court without the ability to use the federal court system to determine whether accusations against two powerful members of Congressare true. “We’re just two local prosecutors but everybody who was supposed to look at this evidence above us has made a decision not to, and by default left it to us to investigate and prosecute at the state level,” Gill said.
He and his counterpart in the wide-ranging probe, chief Davis County prosecutor
Troy Rawlings, praised the FBI agents assisting their case for their dedication to finding the truth.
WILL OBAMACARE END UP AS A SICK JOKE?
The latest casualty with Obamacare is the very core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. Last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.
This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn’t think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don’t comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. This second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was canceled to opt out of the mandate altogether.
In 2013, Health and Human Services decided that ObamaCare’s wave of policy terminations qualified as a “hardship” that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts. But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was canceled and that you “believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your canceled health insurance policy” or “you consider other available policies unaffordable.”
This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person’s belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified non reason that “you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance,” which only requires “documentation if possible.”
And yet another waiver is available to those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.
Keep in mind that the White House argued at the Supreme Court that the individual mandate to buy insurance was indispensable to the law’s success, and President Obama continues to say he’d veto the bipartisan bills that would delay or repeal it. So why are ObamaCare liberals silently gutting their own creation now? The answers are the website implementation fiasco and politics.
HHS revealed Tuesday that only 940,000 people signed up for an ObamaCare plan in February, bringing the total to about 4.2 million, well below the original 5.7 million projection. The predicted “surge” of young beneficiaries isn’t materializing even as the end-of-March deadline approaches, and enrollment decelerated in February.
Meanwhile, a McKinsey & Company survey reports that a mere 27% of people joining the exchanges were previously uninsured through February. The survey also found that about half of people who shopped for a plan but did not enroll said premiums were too expensive, even though 80% of this group qualify for subsidies. Some substantial share of the people ObamaCare is supposed to help say it is a bad financial value. They even call it a hardship.
HHS is also trying to pre-empt the inevitable political blowback from the nasty 2015 tax surprise of fining the uninsured for being uninsured, which could help reopen ObamaCare if voters elect a Republican Senate this November. Keeping its mandate waiver secret for now is an attempt get past November and in the meantime sign up as many people as possible for government-subsidized health care. Those in the insurance industry are worried the regulatory loophole sets a mandate non-enforcement precedent, and they’re probably right. The longer it is not enforced, the less likely any President will enforce it.
The larger point is that there have been 29 unilateral executive waivers and delays to The Affordable Care Act. As Nancy Pelosi once said, “We have to pass the law to find out what’s in it.” The ironic fact is, with all these changes ObamaCare has made since the 60 Democrats in Congress passed it, it must be unrecognizable to its drafters and they’re not sure what the law contains.
PRESIDENT OBAMA CALLS FOR HELP ON IMMIGRATION
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new promise to seek ways to ease his administration’s rate of deportations aims to mollify angry immigrant advocates but carries risks for a White House that has insisted it has little recourse.
In asking Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review enforcement practices, Obama could undo already fragile congressional efforts to overhaul immigration laws. And he still could fall short of satisfying the demands of pro-immigrant groups that have been increasing pressure on him to dramatically reverse the administration’s record of deportations.
The White House announced Thursday that Obama had directed Johnson, who was sworn in three months ago, to see how the department “can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law.” Then the president summoned 17 labor and immigration leaders to the White House yesterday afternoon for what some participants described as a spirited discussion of his deportations policies and the strategy for enacting a comprehensive congressional overhaul of immigration laws.
“The president displayed a great deal of sympathy for the families affected by the deportation machinery,” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said after the nearly two-hour session. “There was less agreement on when and what should be done about it by the president.”
Participants emerged from the meeting unified in their call for House Republicans to act on immigration legislation. Privately, some said Obama voiced frustration during the meeting with the criticism many of the illegal immigrants have directed at him, including calling him “deporter in chief.”
Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s office pointedly warned that fixes to the immigration system should be carried out by Congress, not by the president on his own. The Democratic-controlled Senate last year passed a comprehensive bill that would enhance border security and provide a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas. But the Republican-held House contends that legal immigrants need to receive citizenship before the illegals do.
PRISON BLUES
Nearly a third of Rikers Island inmates in New York who said their visible injuries came at the hands of a correction officer last year had suffered a blow to the head, a tactic that is supposed to be a guard’s last resort because it is potentially fatal according to an internal report obtain.
The report, acquired by the Associated Press via a Freedom of Information request, also found that an average of three inmates a day were treated for visible injuries they claimed were caused by correction officers and 20 others each day suffered injuries primarily from violent encounters with other inmates.
Inmate advocates said the report shows that not enough is being done to stop violence at the notorious 12,000-inmate jail, by far the largest of New York City’s lockups.
“The New York City jails are extremely violent,” said Legal Aid Society attorney Mary Lynne Werlwas, who is representing Rikers inmates in a class-action lawsuit that alleges a pattern of excessive force by officers. “We should not be seeing these numbers of head shots. We should not be seeing this degree of facial injury. … It’s a problem the department has known about for some time.”
IThe report, prepared by New York City health department officials, found 8,557 verified injuries among Rikers’ inmates between April 2012 and April 2013. Of those, 1,257 injuries allegedly resulted from use-of-force by corrections officers. The rest were attributed primarily to inmate-on-inmate violence. It classified 304 of the injuries as serious, meaning they were fractures or other injuries that required more than first-aid treatment.
Among the injuries blamed on guards, 28 percent involved a blow to the head.
Referred to as “head shots” in corrections parlance, our only to be used when the guard feels his life may be in danger. Under department policy, officers are instructed to use less forceful measures first, such as issuing verbal orders, using pepper spray or stun guns and grasping or pushing inmates.
City Department of Correction officials said in a statement most injuries from use of force last year were treated with over-the-counter first aid. The department also said that, given the number of inmates in the system, it considers the rate of serious violence to be relatively low and continues to look for ways to reduce it further, such as stepping up investigations and adding nearly 2,000 security cameras in recent years.
New York’s isn’t the only U.S. jail system to struggle with violence and use-of-force issues. Sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles County jails, the nation’s largest, have recently been indicted for alleged crimes that included beating inmates and even jail visitors. The American Civil Liberties Union has monitored conditions there since 1985 and released a report in 2012 that found 11 inmates had facial bones broken by deputies between 2009 and 2011.
Comparisons to other penitentiaries are difficult to make. City jails in general are considered more dangerous than state or federal prisons, according to experts. And only 5 percent of the roughly 3,000 jails nationwide have 1,000 inmates or more, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Kip Kautzky, a national prisons expert who served as head of corrections in Iowa and Colorado, reviewed the New York City data and said the number of use-of-force injuries said to be caused by blows to the head appeared to be startlingly high. “It just isn’t a defensive tactic that is useful or should be allowed,” he said.
The report’s findings come as the U.S. Justice Department probes violence among adolescent inmates at Rikers, particularly those in a youth jail that houses 16-to 18-year-olds, according to three city officials. An ongoing investigation is in progress.
Adolescent inmates accounted for 754 of the verified injuries, according to the report. About 14 percent of them allegedly involved a correction officer. One of them likely included Aunray Stanford, who was 18 years old in May 2012 when, he alleges in a federal lawsuit, his skull was fractured and his face was cut when Rikers guards beat him at the youth jail. The city Law Department declined to comment on the ongoing lawsuit.
Officers decide to use force based on perceived threats in real time, said Martin F. Horn, a former city correction commissioner.
Norman Seabrook, president of the city’s 9,000-member correction officers’ union, said correction officers should use “whatever force is necessary to terminate an aggression.” Unlike police officers, correction officers “only have their hands and/or their batons to use,” he said. Corrections officers themselves are at risk of injury. Prison guards have one of the highest injury rates among all occupations, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Seabrook said chronic understaffing combined with rampant gang violence at Rikers, particularly among adolescents, has created an environment in which violence becomes hard to manage. “Until you’ve had human feces thrown at you or have an inmate slash you with a razor … you have no idea what we deal with,” he said.
FATHER NOT CHARGED FOR KILLING BOY IN BED WITH HIS DAUGHTER
A Houston father who police say fatally shot a 17-year-old boy who was inside his daughter’s bedroom early Thursday morning will likely not be charged, an area prosecutor told MyFoxHouston.com Although a grand jury will review the case, prosecutor Warren Diepraam said it is unlikely that the father will be charged.
“What was going on in the person’s mind at the time of the shooting, [not] what they found out after the fact” is key, Diepraam said. “They’re looking at what he was thinking when he made the decision to shoot.”
The investigation into the shooting is ongoing, and a grand jury will ultimately decide if charges are appropriate. But so far it appears the father, who was only identified as a 55-year-old in reports, was awakened by one of his other children at about 2:20 a.m. He was told someone was in his 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom and he grabbed his gun. He reportedly found the teen in bed with his daughter and confronted him. His daughter apparently told him she did not know the boy.
The father had told the boy not to move, but reportedly saw the teen reach for something, at which point police say the father opened fire. The teen did not have a gun. His daughter later confessed that she snuck her boyfriend, 17, into the house, the report said.
“We don’t know if the father knew him or not,” Sgt. Ben Bell with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, told the station. The family had just moved into the neighborhood.
In 2008, a Harris County grand jury did not indict a homeowner after he fatally shot two burglars in the back, The Houston Chronicle reported. In that case, lawyers told jury members that the shooter feared for his life, hence the act was justifiable under Texas law.
DRUNK DRIVER WILL BE INDICTED FOR MURDER
A drunken-driving suspect who police say killed two people after he smashed his car through a street barricade at the South By Southwest festival Austin, Texas, did not use his brakes and even accelerated as he approached crowds, according to an arrest warrant released yesterday.
Rashad Charjuan Owens was charged Friday with one count of capital murder, though additional charges can be added later. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo has said Owens intentionally steered toward pedestrians shortly after midnight Thursday in hopes of escaping an officer who was trying to pull him over. Acevedo has suggested Owens could face two capital murder charges and as many as 23 counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle.
The 21-year-old from Killeen, about 70 miles north of Austin, remains in police custody after a district court judge set his bail at $3 million.
According to the arrest warrant, Owens told police that he “got scared” when he saw police lights behind him around 12:30 a.m. Thursday because outstanding warrants meant he could go to prison for five years. The warrant says Owens said he’s facing kidnapping warrants issued as part of a custody battle over his daughter.
A breath test indicated Owens’ blood-alcohol content was .114, exceeding the legal limit of .08.
The officer who tried to pull over Owens was looking for suspected drunken drivers when he spotted a 2012 gray Honda Civic that didn’t have its headlights turned on, the arrest warrant says. Owens then made a turn from a middle lane and “would have caused a crash” with the police cruiser had the officer not turned to avoid it.
Investigators say Owens then cut through a gas station and sped the wrong way down a one-way street before crashing through police barriers blocking a street closed for South By Southwest festivities — forcing another police officer manning the roadblock on foot to dive out of the way.
Police say Owens then plowed into a crowd of concertgoers, hitting and killing a man from the Netherlands on a bicycle and an Austin woman on a moped. Investigators say he eventually crashed into a taxi and parked van and tried to run before police subdued him with a stun gun.
The warrant says a video from the police unit giving chase “shows the Honda accelerating into crowds, not simply crowded areas but crowds of people who are hit by the car and flung into the air.” It adds that Owens drove “for almost three city blocks, accelerating into crowds and did not use his brakes, as in the video there are no brake lights visible from the rear of the Honda.”
Court records indicate that Owens pleaded guilty to driving under the influence in Fairbanks, Alaska, in October 2011, when he was 19.
Owens also faced 2012 charges in Alaska of criminal mischief, and a warrant was issued for him after he failed to appear in court. In 2010, meanwhile, he was arrested in Texas by Killeen Independent School District police for criminal trespassing and pleaded guilty. “His plans for the future are set,” said one of the police officers.
EAST HARLEM PASTORS BEGIN ROUND-THE-CLOCK PRAYER
FOR PASTOR WHO HAS LOST HIS CHURCH
New York City firefighters began their workday yesterday with hope of still of finding survivors from Wednesday’s deadly gas explosion in East Harlem.
Rescue workers searched a pile of rubble with sound devices to probe for voices and telescopic cameras to peer into small spaces. At least eight people are confirmed dead.
Two of the victims are Griselde Camacho, 44, and Carmen Tanco. Camacho was a public safety officer and Tanco was a dental hygienist. Both woman are being remembered as active members of Bethel Gospel Assembly, the church they attended just a few blocks from the explosion site.
Meanwhile, New York City ministers are rallying around the church that lost everything in the deadly blast. Spanish Christian Church occupied the first floor of one the two buildings leveled by the explosion. Pastor Thomas Perez lost five church members from his congregation of 60. They lived in the apartments above the church.
Thursday morning, area ministers began holding round-the-clock prayer vigils for the church. Pastor William Devlin from Infinity Church in the Bronx is leading the effort. “We have all gathered together to support Pastor Thomas Perez,” Devlin told CBN News. “He is an older gentleman in his 70s. The church had been there for 80 years…they really have been salt and light here in the community of East Harlem.”
“The pastor is very concerned about the future of the church and what it is going to mean for him and where it is going to go,” he continued. “We plan to help him and the remaining members of his congregation.”
Investigators later confirmed that at least five church members were killed.
EPA THREATENS WYOMING FARMER WITH HUGE FINES
All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a stock pond on his sprawling eight-acre Wyoming farm. He and his wife Katie spent many weeks constructing it, filling it with crystal-clear water, and bringing in brook and brown trout, ducks and geese. It was a place where his horses could drink and graze, and a private playground for his three children. But instead of enjoying the fruits of his labor, the Wyoming welder says he was harangued by the federal government, stuck in what he calls a petty power play by the Environmental Protection Agency. He claims the agency is now threatening him with civil and criminal penalties – including the threat of a $75,000-a-day fine.
“I have not paid them a dime nor will I,” a defiant Johnson told FoxNews.com. “I will go bankrupt if I have to in order to fight it. My wife and I built [the pond] together. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. It was our dream.” But Johnson may be in for a rude awakening.
The government says he violated the Clean Water Act by building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. Further, the EPA claims that material from his pond is being discharged into other waterways.
Johnson says he built a stock pond — a man-made pond meant to attract wildlife — which is exempt from Clean Water Act regulations. The property owner says he followed the state rules for a stock pond when he built it in 2012 and has an April 4-dated letter from the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office to prove it.
The property owner says he followed the state rules for a stock pond when he built it in 2012 and has an April 4-dated letter from the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office to prove it.
But the EPA isn’t backing down and argues they have final say over the issue. They also say Johnson needs to restore the land or face the fines.
Johnson plans to fight. “This goes a lot further than a pond,” he said. “It’s about a person’s rights. I have three little kids. I am not going to roll over and let [the government] tell me what I can do on my land. I followed the rules.”
Johnson says he was “bombarded by hopelessness” when he first received the administrative order from the EPA. He then turned to state lawmakers who fast-tracked his pleas to Wyoming’s two U.S. senators, John Barrasso and Mike Enzi, and Louisiana Senator David Vitter. These Republican senators are fighting on his behalf. But the EPA says if Johnson doesn’t comply, he’s subject to $37,500 per day in civil penalties as well as another $37,500 per day in fines for statutory violations. The authority of the EPA has recently been called into question over proposed rule changes that would redefine what bodies of water the government agency will oversee under the Clean Water Act.
For now, the matter remains unresolved. Johnson says he’s not budging and there’s been no indication from the EPA they will withdraw the compliance order.
Regardless of the outcome, Johnson says his legal fight with the government agency is a teachable moment for his kids
Regardless of the outcome, Johnson says his legal fight with the government agency is a teachable moment for his kids. “This is showing them that they shouldn’t back down,” Johnson said. “If you need to stand up and fight, you do it.”
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Only God’s laws are always fair.
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