Buck’s personal pilot, Ken Ritz, is dead. He was killed by Global Community Police while trying to help the rest of the Tribulation Force get away as Rayford piloted Tsion and Chloe quickly. Buck has been falsely accused of murdering one of their policemen and is wanted dead or alive. But as Rayford moved along the runway, Buck could only grab the wire that supported the door. As the plane rose into the sky, Buck wrestled with the wire until he broke free and dropped from the plane into the underbrush beneath him that was very close to the airport. Buck has literally been left behind.
Rayford decided to fly north as fast as he could, guessing that GC forces would assume he was heading west. “Tsion, dig through Ken’s stuff and see if he has any record of friends of his in Greece. He mentioned our putting down there or Turkey if necessary.”
Tsion and Chloe opened Ken’s flight bag. “This is painful, Rayford,” Tsion said. “This brother flew me to safety when there was a bounty on my head.”
Rayford could not speak. He and Ken had clicked so quickly that he had made an instant friend. Because of their hours together in the air, he’d spent more time with him than anyone but Buck. And being closer to Ken’s age, he felt a true kinship. He knew violence and death were the price of this period of history, but how he hated the shock and grief of the losses. If he began thinking of all the tragedy he had suffered—from missing out on the Rapture with his wife and son, to the loss of Bruce, Loretta, Donny and his wife, Amanda . . . and there were more—he would go mad. Ken was in a better place, he told himself, and it sounded as hollow as any platitude. Yet he had to believe it was true. The loss was all his. Ken was finally free.
Rayford was bone weary. He was not supposed to be handling the flight back. Ken had reserved his hours behind the controls so he could pilot the Tribulation Force back to the States.
“What is all this?” Chloe asked suddenly. “He’s got lists and ideas and plans for businesses, and—”
“I’ll tell you later,” Rayford said. “He was quite the entrepreneur.”
“And brilliant,” Tsion said. “I never figured him for this kind of thinker. Some of this reads like a manifesto of survival for the saints.” “No names though?
“Nothing that looks like a contact in Greece? I’m going to start that way, just in case. I can’t fly much farther anyway.”
“But we can’t land without a local contact, can we, Dad?”
“We shouldn’t.”
“Can Mac help?”
“He’d call me if he was free to talk. I’m sure they’ve involved him in this fiasco. Pray he’ll somehow misdirect them.”
Mid-afternoon News with Ray – Monday July 20, 2015
Cuban officials formally opened their embassy in Washington, D.C., fully restoring diplomatic relations between the nations after five decades of hostility.
At midnight Monday, Cuba’s flag was hung in the lobby of the U.S. State Department.
“A new stage will begin, long and complex, on the road toward normalization which will require the will to find solutions to the problems that have accumulated over more than five decades and hurt ties between our nations and peoples,” Cuban President Raul Castro said in a televised address.
Likewise, the United States reopened its six-story embassy in Cuba’s captial city of Havana.
“It’s a historic moment,” Cuban diplomat and analyst Carlos Alzugaray said. “The significance of opening the embassies is that trust and respect that you can see, both sides treating the other with trust and respect.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be conflicts — there are bound to be conflicts,” he acknowledged. “But the way that you treat the conflict has completely changed.”
Greek banks finally reopened Monday after being closed for three weeks.
Long lines formed outside banks in Athens as strict limits on cash withdrawals remain in place — 60 euros ($65) a day or a maximum 420 euro ($455) withdrawal weekly.
“I had 20 euros in my pocket when this happened. They said that today we would be able to withdraw 400 euros, but I could only withdraw 60,” pensioner Andreas Chrisavas said.
Greek banks closed their doors on June 29 to prevent a run on the banks after the country flirted with bankruptcy, defaulting on debts to the International Monetary Fund as its second bailout deal expired.
Now average Greek citizens will have to pay for austerity at the cash register in the form of a 23 percent sales tax, up from 13 percent, on many basic goods, making almost everything more expensive in this poor nation. Pensions have also been cut.
Bank customers will still not be able to cash checks, only deposit them into their accounts. Neither will they be able to use their credit or debit cards to withdraw cash abroad, only make purchases.
For Greeks, this is not a solution. And far left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is struggling to contain a growing revolt within his own party over the deal.
JERUSALEM, Israel — The Obama administration and the Netanyahu government continued their campaigns to either endorse or criticize the nuclear deal with Iran. The debate took place as Congress begins its 60-day period to review the agreement.
Both Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took turns on the Sunday talk shows defending their positions.
“Ronald Reagan negotiated with the former Soviet Union. Richard Nixon negotiated with what was then known as Red China. You have to negotiate sometimes with people to make the world and your country safer,” Kerry told told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“And we negotiated because President Obama thought the primary challenge here was getting a nuclear weapon away from Iran and we believe that this deal does that,” he added.
But Netanyahu suggested Iran had just received its “dream deal,” warning the agreement was destined for the same end as the 1994 accord with North Korea.
“There was a celebrated deal just a few years ago, a nuclear deal everybody — the international community, the scientific community — everybody applauded it,” Netanyahu said on “Face the Nation.”
“It was a deal with North Korea,” he continued. “That proved to be a historic deal as well. And North Korea today has a dozen nuclear bombs and is on track to get a hundred nuclear bombs. So I think that this is a repeat of the mistake of North Korea.”
Meanwhile, the clock began ticking on the 60-day period for Congress to review the agreement. The Obama administration, however, plans to take the accord to the U.N. Security Council before Congress can vote.
While Kerry and Netanyahu staked out their positions and Congress began its review of the accord, crowds in Tehran shouted “Death to America.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei vowed Iran’s policy toward what he called the “arrogant” United States would not change and pledged to support its allies in the region.
“America’s regional policies run counter to the Islamic Republic’s policies,” Khamenei said. “We will not stop supporting our friends in the region: the oppressed people of Palestine, the oppressed people of Yemen, the people and government of Syria, the people and government of Iraq, the oppressed people of Bahrain, and the true jihadists in Lebanon and Palestine.”
With billions of dollars in sanctions relief, many Middle East observers fear Iran will soon be able to resupply the terror groups: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
In the meantime, as one more sign of the growing tensions in the region, 47 percent of Israelis would support a unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, all 15 members of the United Nations Security Council gave the Iran nuclear deal a nod of approval on Monday. While the council unanimously endorsed the accord limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting sanctions, it also voted in favor of a measure that would re-impose U.N. penalties should the country breach the agreement.
Several states that have ordered the National Guard to arm military personnel at facilities and recruiting offices in the wake of last week’s shooting rampage in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Those states include Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida.
“I will not permit our citizen-soldiers to remain unable to defend themselves and our facilities around the state,” Indiana Gov. Mike Pence told reporters.
The Pentagon also ordered recruiters into civilian clothes at the office.
Skip Wells was one of the four Marines killed in the shootings in Chattanooga last week.
“We send our service people into harm’s way overseas and that tends to be when we worry about them the most,” his father, Kip Wells, told reporters. “We don’t tend to worry so much when they’re here at home.”
Nancy Proxmire, the mother of the fifth victim, Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith, made a trip to the memorial outside the military recruiting office in Chattanooga on Sunday. Smith died of his wounds in the hospital Saturday.
In tears, Proxmire told reporters, “My son is a hero! He died doing what he loved. He’d have it no other way.”
Meanwhile, the family of the alleged gunman, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, broke their silence this weekend. They expressed sympathy to the victims’ families and noted that the 24-year-old suffered serious mental illness and depression.
“There are no words to describe our shock, horror, and grief,” the family said in a statement.
“We understand there are many legitimate questions that need to be answered,” the family said. “Having said this, now is the time to reflect on the victims and their families, and we feel it would be inappropriate to say anything more other than that we are truly sorry for their loss.”
Abdulazeez was a devout Muslim. So far, the FBI has no evidence he talked with terrorists.
While the biggest weather story of the week is undoubtedly the blockbuster snow affecting western New York, there’s an equally rare phenomenon occurring on the other side of the country: it’s raining in California, and more could come as we head into the winter.
After a winter and early spring yielding record low Sierra snowpack compounding a crippling multi-year drought, parts of California saw a strangely out-of-season soaking late this past week.
Record rainfall fell in southern California. On Thursday, showers and thunderstorms brought locally heavy rainfall to the San Diego area. San Diego International Airport measured 1.51 inches of rain in just about 90 minutes. A total of 1.63 inches fell on Thursday at Lindbergh Field, making it the wettest day in May on record.
This heavy rain brought flash flooding to the area with multiple water rescues reported. There was also a rain delay for the baseball game between the Washington Nationals at San Diego Padres on Thursday night. This is only the fifth rain delay at San Diego’s Petco Park since opening in 2004.
San Diego is also experiencing its second wettest May as of Friday evening, with a monthly total of 2.35 inches. The current record for wettest May is 2.54 inches set in 1921.
Record rainfall also occurred in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday where a daily rainfall record of 0.69 inches of rain was set. LA broke the daily record rainfall again on Friday with an additional 0.16 inches. The previous record was only 0.03 inches set in 1902.
Satellite image and jet stream midday Thursday along the West Coast. Teal-shaded streamlines depict the strongest jet-stream level winds, illustrating the sharp southward plunge of the jet stream off the West Coast.
For much of this past winter and early spring, the polar jet stream had taken a large northward migration into Canada, keeping Pacific storms away from the West Coast.
Instead, late this past week, the jet took a sharp southward plunge over the eastern Pacific Ocean, steering vigorous upper-level disturbances into the West Coast.
While this precipitation may be considered “manna from heaven” in this sun-worshipping state, it is only a tiny drop in a massive bucket that is this multi-year drought.
Let’s stick to the positive news, here. How unusual is this May rain?
How Rare is a May California Soaking?
January-April was the third driest such period on record in California, exceeded only by 2013 — the state’s record driest year — and 1977.
From May through October, only 9 percent of the year’s average rain fell in Los Angeles.
In May, that monthly average was a mere 0.26 inches of rain as the dry season started to set in.
However, L.A. picked up almost four times their average May rainfall in just a two-day time span this week (Thursday and Friday).
In fact, L.A. has only recorded 13 Mays since 1878 with at least an inch of rain, for an average return interval of once every 10-11 years. This last occurred in 2003.
In San Diego, this is even more unusual.
Only once since 1930 has this city synonymous with picture-perfect weather seen a one-inch rainfall in May — May 8, 1977 — when 1.49 inches was measured at Lindbergh Field.
Sierra snow isn’t all that typical in May, either.
Tahoe City, California, only averages 2.3 inches of May snow. By this time of year, spring snowmelt of the heavy Sierra snowpack is well underway, replenishing the state’s reservoirs, a prime source of drinking water.
Senior weather.com meteorologist Nick Wiltgen noted the winter storm warning issued for the Sierra earlier this week was the latest-in-season such warning by the National Weather Service in Sacramento since 2011.
To reiterate, this welcome May event is a tiny drop of drought relief.
While often overstated and oversimplified to imply relief is certain, the developing El Nino may offer hope since the Pacific storm track may not be blocked from California as often next fall and winter, when the real wet season returns to a thirsty state.
Tornadoes ripped through western Illinois Thursday, with the town of Cameron, population 600, taking a direct hit.
Video captured several funnels forming as a multi-vortex storm ripped through Warren County, located southwest of Chicago.
The twisters caused significant damage and left many residents without power. Illinois State Police officials say there no major injuries.
“I lived in this town in 1989 when the last tornado touched down,” Cameron resident Mike Trout, told the Galesburg Register-Mail. “The damage this time is far, far worse; 1989 doesn’t even compare to this.”
Honeybee ‘Crisis’ Now Seen as False Alarm
In 2006 commercial beekeepers began reporting unusually high rates of honeybee die-offs over the winter, blaming a variety of factors for the decline.
Since then the media have warned of a “beepocalypse” threatening America’s food supply. In 2013, NPR said bee declines could bring “a crisis point for crops,” and a Time magazine cover looked ahead at a “world without bees” that are responsible for pollinating one-third of the crops Americans eat.
But here’s the buzz now: There are more honeybee colonies in the U.S. today than in 2006. Data released in March by the Department of Agriculture showed that the number of honeybee colonies is at a 20-year high, and U.S. honey production is at a 10-year high.
“Since colony collapse disorder began in 2006, there has been virtually no detectable effect on the total number of honeybee colonies in the United States, nor has there been any significant impact on food prices or production,” according to the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a Montana-based non-profit environmental think tank, which attributes the industry’s health to the “savvy” of commercial beekeepers.
The beekeepers have been actively rebuilding their colonies, often by splitting healthy colonies into multiple hives and buying new queen bees from commercial breeders.
The fees beekeepers charge farmers to provide pollination services have risen for a few crops, but the higher fees have helped beekeepers offset the cost of rebuilding their hives.
According to the USDA, the honeybee industry thrived last year, with the number of colonies rising to 2.74 million from 2.64 million in 2013. The honey yield per colony also rose, from 56.6 pounds to 65.1 pounds, and production increased from 149 million pounds to 178 million.
Yet the Obama administration last year announced the formation of a task force to develop a “federal strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators. Last month the task force disclosed a plan aimed at reducing honeybee-colony losses to “sustainable” levels. It calls for more than $82 million in federal funding to promote pollinator health.
PERC observed: “Somehow, without a national strategy to help them, beekeepers have maintained their colonies and continued to provide the pollination services our modern agricultural system demands.
“With U.S. honeybee colonies now at a 20-year high, you have to wonder: Is our national pollination strategy a solution in search of a crisis?”
Last week, pro-life activists published a three-hour video of Planned Parenthood’s top doctor talking about the exchange of fetal organs that are extracted from women during abortion. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part,” Dr. Deborah Nucatola tells her lunch guests, undercover activists who posed as members of a biologics startup. “I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Ever since the video’s release, the apologists for legal abortion at Planned Parenthood and in the media have been trying to crush this story with euphemisms. The mainstream media dutifully repeated and expanded on Planned Parenthood’s talking points. The story went like this: A group of fanatics, one of whom is known to pray (ew!), perpetrated a hoax. They falsely portrayed Planned Parenthood’s program of life-saving tissue donations as a sale (which would be illegal).
What has gone largely unmentioned is that the activists also released a complete unedited video. The media went to extreme lengths to avoid quoting this doctor on which parts of an unborn child she “crushes” to preserve valuable organs. The media also failed to mention that she discussed Planned Parenthood affiliates that want to “do a little better than break even” on these transactions. And the reports don’t mention that a firm associated with the sale of these fetal livers, hearts, and headsadvertised the fiscal benefits of preserving them, and had that very daytaken its website offline.
Planned Parenthood’s top talking point was that the video was “dishonestly edited.” The truth is more the opposite. The video revealed the reality that Planned Parenthood and its defenders are working hard to spin. When Planned Parenthood gives one of its patients this consent formfor organ donation, the language is dishonestly edited, referring to hearts and livers as “blood and/or tissue.” When speaking candidly to presumed professionals in the biz, however, PP’s top doctor is far more precise. After all, how do you think Planned Parenthood would react to legislation requiring it to explicitly ask patients if they want to donate the “heart, liver, or brain” of their aborted child to research?
I doubt addressing the conscience of most hard-core abortion supporters is likely to effect change. A moment’s reflection on biology tells you that at the time of conception (not implantation), a unique human DNA code comes into being, bearing a likeness to its mother and father. A moment’s reflection on evolution tells you that from that same moment, the mother’s own body goes through physiological changes designed specifically to protect a healthy unborn child from harm. A glancing familiarity with human reproduction tells you that elective abortions are performed on unborn children with recognizably human features. Arms that can flail, fingers that can grasp, brains that can perceive pain. There is no one part of abortion that is more horrifying than abortion itself.
Someone who knowingly accepts the “crushing” and “snipping” of developing children as part of life in enlightened times, who resolves themselves to this practice as society’s comprehensive and just response to a pregnant woman in crisis, is a person whose conscience is at the ready to accept or wave away any enormity around the practice. If you forced yourself to contemplate them at length, you might question the moral character of the whole enterprise. So you dismiss as local crime Kermit Gosnell’s horror-clinic, where plunging the sink revealed a baby’s arm, and you turn away from stories about hospitals that burn the remains of unborn children as part of a renewable heating energy source. Planned Parenthood’s financial transactions in recently severed baby heads is just the humanitarianadvance of “Science! FTW!” Could you object if they labeled a bag of heads with a meme of Neil deGrasse Tyson? What, are you such a troglodyte that you are “grossed out by science?” We’re just plunging science deep into some necks — I mean “tissue” — here.
Some argue that the pro-life activists are just taking advantage of a natural squeamishness to medical procedures, that they “zero in on those gross medical details for maximum impact.” As if the phrase “I’m gonna crush this” is something only a properly desensitized medical professional can understand. I don’t believe the reaction of disgust here is purely physical.
Just this week I’ve watched television shows that included innocent people being shot in the head, with their blood spilling out in a little gusher. There was once a popular show on SpikeTV called 1,000 Ways to Die, in which extremely gruesome deaths were re-enacted for a thrill. Medical dramas and documentaries show people going into active and traumatic surgery.
We can see bloody cop dramas because we are allowed to deplore the actions depicted, and console ourselves that they are extraordinary and unlawful. The gore of 1,000 Ways to Die we can live with because the events are so abnormal, so unchosen. And the details of medical dramas on television (and in our own lives) are bearable because we know that doctors are trying to save a human life.
The reason the pro-life activist video has to be dismissed as a “hoax” is the same reason the hailed pro-choice activist kept the film of her own abortion framed from the neck up. And it’s the same reason Planned Parenthood wants media outlets to use their bloodless language about “tissues.” Because the clinic, the media, and the culture want your approval of abortion as ordinary, lawful, and competently chosen. They can’t let you see what it actually is: the violent destruction of a human life.
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So until the next newscast this is Ray Mossholder, praying for you my friend. Hav
Mid-afternoon News with Ray – Monday July 20, 2015
Morning News Sunday, July 12, 2015 – Ray’s 5 Top Stories plus
This is Ray Mossholder with the morning news for Sunday, July 12, 2015. Here are the top five stories to this hour……
From The Guardian in England….. “How to save Greece from financial chaos? Germany answers “It’s all Greek to me!”
Greece’s final attempt to avoid being kicked out of the euro by securing a new three-year bailout worth up to $80 billion dollars ran into a wall of resistance yesterday from the eurozone’s fiscal hawks.
Finland rejected any more funding for the country and Germany called for Greece to be forced to sit on the sidelines and out of the currency bloc for at least five years.
The last-chance talks between the 19 eurozone finance ministers in Brussels ended at midnight, as they struggled to draft a policy paper for national leaders another emergency summit for today was called that is billed as the decisive meeting.
With Greece on the edge of financial and social collapse, eurozone finance ministers met to decide on the country’s fate and on what to do about its debt crisis, after experts from the huge amount of creditors said that new fiscal rigour proposals from Athens were good enough to form “the basis for negotiations”.
But the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has called for Greece to be expelled from the eurozone for a minimum of five years and demanded that the Greek government transfer fifty billion dollars of state assets to an outside agency for sell-off.
Timo Soini, the nationalist True Finns leader, meanwhile, threatened to bring down the government in Helsinki if Alex Stubb, the finance minister, agreed to a new bailout for Greece. Berlin also demanded stronger and more intrusive powers for outside monitors to police the economic and fiscal reforms that Alexis Tsipras, the leftist Greek prime minister, would need to commit to to secure the new bailout.
The eurozone has been united for five months in the negotiations with Tsipras, but with the stakes rising greatly in the last 10 days, major divisions have surfaced, with the French working tirelessly to save Greece and the hardliners now pushing Greece’s expulsion for the first time openly.
The European commission and the European Central Bank issued dire warnings that a failure to grant Greece new rescue funds of up to 78 billion would put the country on a trajectory of complete banking and financial collapse.
The widening gulf between eurozone hawks and doves paves the way for a far more serious “World Cup” summit today, with France and Italy lining up against Germany and the northern and eastern European nations. Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, is expected to tell chancellor Angela Merkel that enough is enough and that Greece should not have to put up with any more humiliation.
Merkel is under intense pressure from the Obama administration not to “lose” Greece and is worried about her own legacy. But Greece fatigue is becoming endemic in Germany and she faces growing unrest in her party ranks where Schäuble’s hard line is popular. She is said to have endorsed Schäuble’s tough position.
If the talks break down irretrievably and Greece is allowed to slide into even greater chaos, relations between Berlin and Paris will be extremely strained.
And this from The Washington Post…..Different strokes for different folks.
So what would Greece’s financial collapse mean for the global economy and America in particular?
Maybe not as much as we think. Europe’s firewall seems to be working. It’s hard to say what would happen in the worst case of Greece leaving the euro zone, but it’s probably something like this:
In Greece: The new drachma would plummet, inflation would soar into the double digits, imports such as food and oil might need to be rationed, companies that borrowed in euros might go bankrupt, and the government would have to balance its budget overnight. In other words, things would get a good deal worse than they already are, which is saying something when you’re talking about a country with 25 percent unemployment. But after a year or two, this pain would pass and Greece would be left with a cheaper currency that would make its exports more competitive and its tourism more attractive.
In Europe: First off, they’d lose real money here, as in the hundreds of billions. Greece’s government hasn’t just gotten 240 billion euros, but its banks also have received 89 billion euros in loans from the European Central Bank in the case of a euro exit.
Second, there’d be some harm. Borrowing costs could creep up for Italy, Spain and Portugal, but the fact that the ECB is already buying their bonds and has promised to buy as many as it takes to keep their interest rates low means they shouldn’t rise that much.
Third, all this uncertainty should make the euro fall further, boosting their exports in the process.
And finally, though this might sound cruel, the worst thing that could happen to Europe is if Greece does well after it leaves. That would embolden anti-austerity parties in the rest of the continent by showing that they have nothing to lose but their fiscal chains by challenging the continent’s budget-cutting beliefs.
In the United States and everybody here our banks should be fine. Some hedge funds might fail. And the stronger dollar (the flip side of the weaker euro) should make our exports a little less competitive overseas. And that’s it. There really shouldn’t be too much damage from the failure of a country whose GDP is the size of Connecticut’s. The fact that there is— and there could still be — tells you how fragile the euro zone is.
From The Associated Press…… If you can’t think of a girl’s name who is on a California beach this summer, just call them Sandy…..
Drought-stricken California will be shutting down outdoor showers across the state’s beaches this whole summer, forcing surfers and sunbathers to get creative when it comes time to shake off the sand.
Public rinse stations in all state-run beaches and parks will be off limits starting this coming Wednesday as the state battles a four-year dry spell. The severe condition has led Gov. Jerry Brown to order California communities to cut water use by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels.
California State Parks report that its 278 parks have successfully met the water reduction mandate, but those areas with more water scarcity will have to further reduce consumption.
Todd Lewis, acting superintendent for the department’s Orange Coast district, said visitors should look for alternatives to the showers, such as using a broom to brush off their bodies or bringing their own water, the Los Angeles Times has reported.
“Bring a bottle of water? How big? A tank? That is not a good idea,” Sara Israelsson told the newspaper as she finished rinsing at a public shower at Santa Monica State Beach.
She said she won’t swim in the ocean anymore if she can’t rinse herself off afterward.
Whilemanybeachgoers aren’t thrilled about the showerheads running dry, some said the inconvenience was worth it to conserve water.
“Take your shirt off and dust your feet off,” said Brithany Mcginty, a visitor from Arizona. “We are in a drought.”
Shutting off public showers could save more than 18 million gallons of water annually, the department estimated.
“California is facing extremely severe drought conditions,” California State Parks director Lisa Mangat said in a press release. “It is important for all Californians to conserve water at home, at work and even when recreating outdoors.”
For now, it will be “ocean air, salty hair” until beachgoers reach home for a cool rinse.
From Fox News…..Those Iranians are sneaky. Surprise! Surprise!
It is extremely clear today as world powers hold talks with Iran in Vienna to curb Tehran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, the Islamic Republic’s spies have been seeking atomic and missile technology in neighboring Germany as recently as last month, according to German intelligence sources.
Iran’s illegal activities have continued since talks between Iran and the P5+1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council as well as its rotating member, Germany, began with a Joint Plan of Action in 2013. The talks were intended to stop Iran’s work on a nuclear weapon until a comprehensive agreement is reached.
With a final agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program set for Monday, the intelligence data from Germany raises disturbing questions about the success of a deal.
“You would think that with the negotiations, [Iranian] activities would drop,” a German intelligence source said. “Despite the talks to end Iran’s program, Iran did not make an about-turn.”
Iran has a long history of illegally obtaining nuclear technology from within Germany and transporting it in ways that circumvent international sanctions. German companies have shown an eagerness to legally tap the Iranian market, though none are accused of abetting illegality in the latest efforts by Iran.
Tehran has sought industry computers, high-speed cameras, cable fiber, and pumps for its nuclear and missile program over the last two years, according to German intelligence sources. Germany is required to report Iran’s illegal procurement activities to the UN.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency—the equivalent of the FBI—in late June issued a detailed report on Iran’s wide-ranging activities to obtain illicit technology for its nuclear and missiles program.
Bloomberg News reported in June that sanctions experts from the Iran UN panel said, “The current situation with reporting could reflect a general reduction of procurement activities by the Iranian side or a political decision by some member states to refrain from reporting to avoid a possible negative impact on ongoing negotiations.”
A nuclear deal with Iran that lifts sanctions could be an economic windfall for Germany. Michael Tockuss, a spokesman for the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce Association in Hamburg, said annual exports to Iran could rise to the equivalent of $7 billion after a final agreement. The Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Germany sees bilateral trade rising to the equivalent of more than $13 billion annually in a post-sanctions world.
Germany has not taken as skeptical an eye toward the talks as France, whose top diplomat, Laurent Fabius, famously termed the 2013 Iran talks resulting in the JPOA a “fool’s deal.”
Frank-Walter Steinmeier , Germany’s foreign minister, slammed U.S. Senate Republicans for their letter to Iran’s Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei in which they warned that Congress could override a lousy agreement.
“Obviously mistrust is growing…on the Iranian side if we are really serious with the negotiations,” Steinmeier said in March, adding that he hoped “the letter of the 47 senators no longer causes any disturbance in the negotiations.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., accused Steinmeier of coming from “the Neville Chamberlain school of diplomacy,” in a reference to the World War II-era appeasement diplomacy of the former British prime minister.
From USA Today online……The GOP’s Trump card was played today in Phoenix…..
Donald Trump, the billionaire Republican presidential candidate, on Saturday took his anti-illegal-immigration message to Phoenix, delivering a 70-minute speech to a packed downtown ballroom that at times seemed more about needling his White House rivals and settling scores with his critics than public policy.
Trump’s at times undisciplined afternoon remarks at the Phoenix Convention Centerveered into international trade, national security and foreign policy but always returned to the topic that has his candidacy climbing the polls: immigrants who commit violent crimes while in the United States without authorization.
“I respect Mexico greatly as a country, but the problem we have is that their leaders are much smarter, sharper and more cunning than our leaders,” Trump said. “And they’re killing us at the border.”
Trump, one of 14 declared GOP presidential hopefuls, has claimed repeatedly that the Mexican government is deliberately sending criminals to the United States, and has vowed to build a border fence and force Mexico to pay for the construction.
On Saturday, Trump said that as president he would charge Mexico $100,000 for every undocumented immigrant who crossed the border. And after the speech, he told reporters, without elaborating, that he believes “without question” that Mexican officials are complicit in sending undesirable immigrants to this country.
About 20 minutes into Trump’s speech, a group of protesters disrupted the speech, and the ballroom immediately erupted. Trump supporters shouted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” as the demonstrators were led out.
“I wonder if the Mexican government sent them over here. I think so,” Trump said to applause. “Because I’m telling you. I tell about the bad deals that this country is making. Mexico — I respect the country — they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our manufacturing, they’re taking our money, they’re taking everything, and they’re killing us at the border.”
He added: “Don’t worry, we’ll take our country back.”
Throughout his Phoenix visit, Trump stressed that he loves the Mexican people and their “spirit” and that he respects Mexico. He repeatedly blamed a “dishonest” media that he said took his previous remarks out of context. Trump has drawn heat for saying many Mexican immigrants bring drugs and crime to the United States and are rapists.
“We have a situation that’s absolutely out of control,” Trump told his 4,200 supporters in a crowd that displayed surprising intensity. “We have incompetent politicians, not only the president. I mean, right here, in your own state, you have John McCain.”
The audience booed at the mention of McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and senator from Arizona who has publicly disagreed with Trump’s comments about immigrants.
“For some reason, some people don’t get it, and I don’t think they’ll be in office much longer,” Trump said. “We are going to make this country so great again. We are going to work so hard.”
Trump later predicted to reporters that he will win over Latinos because his policies will provide them jobs.
“I will win the Latino vote,” Trump said. “I have employed tens of thousands of Latinos over the years. I employ many, many Latinos right now. They love me. I love them. They’re fantastic people. But they come to the country legally.”
Trump repeatedly referred to crimes in which undocumented immigrants killed people.
At one point, Trump invited Jamiel Shaw Sr. to speak. Shaw told how his son, a Los Angeles high-school student and athlete, was shot and killed by an undocumented Mexican gang member in 2008. Before Trump arrived, Mary Ann Mendoza addressed the crowd. Her son Brandon Mendoza, a Mesa police officer, was killed in a head-on collision with an undocumented immigrant who was driving the wrong way.
“I tell people all the time when they protest me, when they protest Mr. Trump, what you have to do is soul search,” Shaw said. “Put yourself in my shoes. Think about your child. A man in the street dead. Your mother, your wife, your father, anybody. … Then find out that someone illegally in the country did it.”
As presidential hopeful Donald Trump spoke to a packed crowd in Phoenix, he was interrupted by a group in the crowd holding a large sign. As they were escorted out, the crowd erupted into cheers of “USA!” VPC
Trump was preceded on stage by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has a national reputation as an immigration hard-liner and whose department was found by a federal judge to have racially profiled Latinos.
Arpaio brought up his and Trump’s interest in President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and the widely debunked conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States and thus is not eligible to serve as president under the Constitution.
“We had a couple of things in common. I won’t talk much about it, but the birth certificate,” Arpaio said. “He investigated it. And I have. That’s common. We both want do something about the illegal-immigration problem.”
While stopping illegal immigration was the main theme of the speech, Trump also spent a lot of time ridiculing the companies who have cut business ties with him over his inflammatory anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric. Those companies include ESPN,NASCAR, NBC, Univision and Macy’s Department Stores.
Trump also repeatedly slammed Obama and two presidential rivals, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another leading GOP contender.
Trump criticized Obama for his approach to negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran and for his swapping of Taliban prisoners for captured Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who subsequently was charged with desertion and whom Trump dubbed “a no-good traitor.”
The president is “weak, and he’s ineffective, and he’s not respected,” Trump said.
And the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” must be repealed and replaced, he said.
As for Clinton, Trump dismissed her as “the worst secretary of State in the history of our country” who he said would make “a horrible president.”
He ripped Bush as weak on immigration and education policy.
“How could I be tied with this guy? He’s terrible,” Trump said of Bush. “If you people go with Bush, you’re going to lose.”
From Reuters…. The teacher’s pet seems to be Hillary Clinton…..
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton yesterday scored a key endorsement from a large teachers union at a time when her chief rival is picking up support from organized labor.
By backing Clinton, the American Federation of Teachers, which as the nation’s second-largest education union represents 1.6 million members, became the first national union to endorse a 2016 candidate.
The endorsement comes just two days before Clinton delivers a speech about the economy that labor leaders will watch closely. Some of them have already expressed public support for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also seeking the nomination.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement, citing Clinton’s record as a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, “Hillary Clinton is a tested leader who shares our values, is supported by our members, and is prepared for a tough fight,” Weingarten and Clinton are longtime friends and allies. The AFT endorsed Clinton in 2007 when organized labor split between supporting her or now-President Barack Obama.
Both Bernie Sanders and Clinton are set to meet with labor leaders this week as they court a crucial base of support for Democratic candidates.
Looming over the meetings is a Pacific Rim trade deal that the Obama administration is finalizing and which has drawn vociferous criticism from labor. The issue is a difficult one for Clinton, who was Obama’s secretary of state and has remained largely silent about the agreement, which Sanders has consistently opposed.
Clinton’s campaign released a statement saying she was honored to receive the AFT’s endorsement.
Hillary said in the statement “The men and women of AFT work throughout our communities in our preschools, K-12 schools, hospitals, colleges and universities, and public agencies. Their voices and the voices of all workers are essential to this country.”
Clinton also has a crucial meeting at the end of the month with the executive council of the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for 56 unions, including the AFT.
The AFL-CIO has not said whether or when it will endorse a primary candidate. In 2008, when its member unions were split between Clinton and Obama, it backed Obama only when it became clear he was going to be the Democratic nominee.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has urged local and state federations to remain neutral as the process plays out.
And from CNN…..
Pope Francis delivered yet another biting critique of contemporary capitalism on yesterday, saying the poor are often sacrificed on the “altar of money” and accusing the wealthy of worshipping a new “golden calf.”
“Certainly every culture needs economic growth and the creation of wealth. But political and business leaders have a responsibility to ensure that profits reach the pockets of the poor as well as the rich. ” the Pope told a group of civic leaders in Paraguay, the final stop of his weeklong trip to three South American countries. ” Francis said.
Saturday’s speech was neither as long nor as scathing as the sharp denunciation of modern capitalism the Pope delivered Thursday in Bolivia, in which he called the relentless pursuit of profits the “dung of the devil.” Still, it had its share of rhetorical fire.
The Pope said he gets “snotty’ when he hears highfalutin speeches from politicians that “everyone knows are liars.” He compared corrupt regimes that convict political opponents on bogus charges to Hitler and Stalin. And he said the worshipping of golden calves — an ancient form of paganism — has “returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy.”
Francis’ fierce condemnations of economic inequality have led some — including leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales — to say the Pope is preaching socialism. But he said Saturday that his concern for the poor comes from the heart of Christianity.
“As Christians, we have an additional reason to love and serve the poor; for in them we see the face and the flesh of Christ, who made himself poor so to enrich us with his poverty,” the Pope said, citing the Apostle Paul.
When he heard confessions as a priest, Francis said, he often asked Catholics whether they touched the hands of people to whom they gave alms or just tossed coins in their cups. To do the latter, the Pope said, is to “disdain the poor” and to use them as an object to salve our guilty souls.
Pope Francis has apologized for the “many grave sins” committed by Christians against indigenous peoples in South America during the colonization of the continent by Spain several centuries ago.
In a speech largely dedicated to decrying a “new colonialism,” in which corporations and banks take the place of colonizing nation-states, the Pope acknowledged Thursday that the Catholic Church’s history is not entirely free from transgression.
“I say this to you with regret,” Francis said during a speech to grassroots movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. “Many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God.”
As the Pope noted, his predecessors, including St. John Paul II, had acknowledged the church’s soiled history in South America.
“I humbly ask forgiveness,” Francis added, “not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for the crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”
The Pope’s apology goes further than previous pontiffs, said Andrew Chesnut, a scholar of Catholicism and Latin America at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“Pope Francis’ apology, the fullest ever, is the most significant aspect of his trip thus far.”
Chesnut added that it will be interesting to see whether Francis also apologizes when he visits Cuba in September. The Jesuits were the “largest corporate slaveholders in Brazil,” where they imported slaves from the Caribbean, the scholar said.
Francis has made a point of reaching out to native peoples during his 8-day trip through South America, which has taken him to Ecuador and Bolivia and ends Monday in Paraguay.
The Pope’s approach seems to have earned him at least one prominent fan.
“For the first time, I feel like I have a pope: Pope Francis,” said Bolivian President Evo Morales, who claims to have indigenous ancestry.
One of the key Catholic phrases describing Pope Francis’ mission and manner is “a culture of encounter.”
That’s a fancy way of saying that he tries to meet people where they’re at — and there’s no better example then visiting a prison.
On Friday morning, the Pope went to Santa Cruz-Palmasola, the largest — and most notorious — prison in Bolivia. The men’s facility, where the Pope met prisoners and their families, holds about 2,800 inmates.
“I could not leave Bolivia without seeing you,” Francis told the prisoners, earning a hearty cheer.
Francis called for some reforms, including access to education and easing overcrowding. But perhaps the most poignant moment occurred when the Pope got personal.
“You may be asking yourselves, ‘Who is this man standing before us?"” Francis said. “I would like to reply to that question with something absolutely certain about my own life: The man standing before you is a man who has been forgiven. A man who was, and is, saved from his many sins.”
After the Pope’s blockbuster speech Thursday night, it was another side of Francis showing forth: the humble pastor who looks for lost sheep, not the fiery prophet who denounces the pursuit of money as “the devil’s dung.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the Pope’s prison visit was his body language.
He was leaning forward, attentive, making eye contact with the three prisoners who shared the stage with him and delivered short speeches. It was a contrast from Thursday night, when Francis appeared to be a bit wearied by Bolivian President Evo Morales’ very long speech.
In other early morning headlines……
Italy’s foreign minister vowed that his country would not be intimidated after a deadly explosion yesterday morning killed one person and heavily damaged the Italian Consulate in the Egyptian capital.
In a message on his official Twitter feed, Paolo Gentiloni wrote, “Our thoughts are with the people affected and with our personnel. Italy will not let itself be intimidated.”
In a report released Friday The American Psychological Association, the profession’s largest U.S. organization, colluded with CIA and Pentagon officials on the nation’s post-September 11 interrogation program, a new report finds. Association members, including the ethics director, intentionally released broad ethics guidelines that didn’t restrict interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA was using tactics like waterboarding, widely considered torture, to obtain information from detainees.
The association, which has since renounced the guidelines permitting its members to take part in interrogations, issued an apology after the report was made public on Friday.
Top-seeded Serena Williams overcame a slow start to beat Garbine Muguruza 6-4, 6-4 yesterday to earn her sixth Wimbledon title and fourth straight Grand Slam title. Williams also notched the third win in a quest to hold all four major championship titles in the same calendar year, a feat no one has managed since Steffi Graf in 1988.
Movie, Broadway, and television star Roger Rees has died at 71. Rees played the snobbish Robin Colcord on TV’s “Cheers” and the British ambassador, Lord John Marbury, in “The West Wing.” Other recent TV credits include “Elementary” and “The Good Wife.” On Broadway he played Gomez in “the Addams Family” and “The Life And Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, along with many other roles. In the movies he was the Sheriff of Rottingham in Mel Brooks spoof “Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” and also “The Scorpion King,” and the original “The Pink Panther.” He is survived by his longtime husband, playwright Rick Elice.
A Baltimore woman was reportedly arrested yesterday morning for throwing water on city Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake as she greeted residents at an event.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Lacheisa Pailin-Sheffer, 37, is accused of running up to Rawlings-Blake and pouring a large cup of liquid of the mayor’s head. The mayor’s aides rushed to dry her off, while the protection united grabbed Pailin-Sheffer and arrested her.
Pailin-Sheffer was charged with second-degree assault, police said.
“I didn’t know what it was that she threw at me,” Rawlings-Blake said when asked about the incident. “I hope it was water.”
And finally…… This story is true:
In Amsterdam, there are people paid full-time, with benefits, to fish for bikes
Bike fishermen use a giant claw to remove bikes and other detritus from the Amsterdam canals. The bikes are deposited on a trash barge, and later recycled for scrap.
Traveling journalist Pien Huang writes:
I went to the docks in the very center of Amsterdam with, basically one thought in my mind: This is going to be freaking awesome.
I mean, c’mon. It’s bikes and fishing. For an Oregon boy, it doesn’t get any better than that.
But then, it did. I saw the claw.
It’s like they plucked it straight from “Toy Story 3″ and moved it to Amsterdam. It’s a huge hydraulic claw, connected to a crane that sits on the front of the barge.
“That’s our equipment for fishing the bikes out of the canal,” says Diane Kleinhout, a spokesperson for Waternet, the agency tasked with keeping the canals clean.
Kleinhout says the company has been bike fishing since the 1960s. She says so many bikes were piling up in the canals; they were scraping the bottom of boats.
Along with her are the bike fishermen, Richard Matser and Jan de Jonge. They fish for bikes every day.
Why you ask?
“There are a lot of bikes in the water,” says de Jonge.
That’s why they tow an empty barge behind them. They need a place to put all those bikes.
We start trawling a block or so from City Hall. Matser pilots the boat while Jonge operates the claw, dropping it into the murky water.
“How do you know where the bikes are?” says de Jonge. “We don’t know. We’re just searching.”
Fishing for bikes is like plunging your hand in a sink full of sudsy water, searching around for a spoon. You grab around blindly until you find something.
Pretty soon. We have our first bike.
These guys were good. We caught one on our third cast. This being Amsterdam, it was a black granny bike. It looked like the wheel was pretty shot. Someone probably tried to pedal it and was like, “Ehh, I’m good.” So they hucked it into the drink rather than dealing with it.
This bike will eventually end up at a recycler. Just like all the other bikes the claw plucks out of the canals.
De Jonge says they catch 15,000 bikes a year. Yes. You read that right. To put it in perspective, the city of Amsterdam estimates there are 2 million bikes in the city. So while 15,000 is a huge number, it also means that only .07 percent of all the bikes end up in the canals each year.
Still, it’s nuts.
The habit of throwing things into the canals goes way back. “The canals used to be an open sewer,” says Kleinhout. “There was no sewer system in Amsterdam so this was the open toilet for the people of Amsterdam.”
In 1860 Amsterdam started to see — or rather smell — the error in that practice. They started to clean the canals up. And they encouraged people to stop using canals as a big ‘ol trash can. But Amsterdam still hasn’t totally kicked the habit of tossing things into the drink.
That’s why there are bicycle fishermen. They keep the canals clear for boat traffic by hauling up one bike after another.
“Look, another bike!” says de Jonge.
It was a folding bike. But he says that still counts.
Now, we’d only fished for about a block. But we got quite a haul: six bikes, a shopping cart, that folding bike, and then, well, we pull up a walker. Even though it’s all garbage. It attracts a crowd. Tourists and locals stop to look at what comes up.
“I joined them last week and we found a real professional camera, and a sign for traffic and a scooter,” says Kleinhout. “It was a nice catch of the day.”
Bikes are the main catch. In the next 30 minutes, the claw snatched 30 bicycles from the bottom.
And while the whole thing is cool, and endlessly fascinating — and the claw is worth worshiping — there’s also this weird realization you get after seeing all the bikes. It’s that in Amsterdam, bikes are litter.
It’s not like the states, where some people (me) lust over bikes built by Vanilla, Icarus or Chapman.
I mean, in Amsterdam bikes are tools for transportation for sure. But here, they treat ’em more like keg cups at a tailgate. Easy to use. And easy to huck where you’re done.
I ask de Jonge and Kleinhout why people toss bikes into the canal. They didn’t know. De Jonge thought it was probably just drunk people doing drunk-people things.
There are other theories. Some say that bikes get thrown into the water by thieves, who just want dispose of their crime. Others blame cars for bumping bikes off the edge–there are no guardrails in the city. And still others believe that bikes really are like keg cups. The host of my airbnb rental says he picked one up for about $40 online. So if it costs more to repair, why keep ’em?
Waternet hasn’t launched any public service campaign to stop the practice. They’re relying on journalists like me to spread the word. But I think they might want to start, as the rate of bikes being thrown into the canals remains steady.
But until people stop throwing bikes into the canals, I do know there are two guys in Amsterdam with one of the best city jobs you’ll ever get.
“I love my job,” says de Jonge. “You’re standing outside with a lot of freedom around you. So it’s a nice job.”
Of course it is. He’s fishing for bikes.
We have a newscast coming and did I just want you to know that I am ready almost building with a B ran into a wall of resistance yesterday from the euro zone’s fiscal hawks ****************************
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Morning News Sunday, July 12, 2015 – Ray’s 5 Top Stories plus
From the headquarters of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder and this is the evening news for Friday, July 10, 2015
Here are the five major news stories of this day and add an extra one to make you laugh.……..
1. From the Associated Press…..Greece appears to be melting in the euro frying pan……
ATHENS — Greece finally met a deadline that counted on Thursday and made a series of sweeping proposals that its creditors needed by midnight to set off a mad rush toward a weekend deal to stave off a financial collapse of the nation.
The package met longstanding demands by creditors to impose wide-ranging sales-tax hikes and cuts in state spending for pensions that the left-leaning Greek government had long resisted.
It raised hopes that Greece can get the rescue deal that will prevent a catastrophic exit from the euro after key creditors said they were open to discussing how to ease the country’s debt load, a long-time sticking point in their talks.
In the text of proposals sent by Athens late Thursday, the government conceded to demands it had previously refused to accept — mostly on moving various categories of goods and services to higher sales tax rates — in exchange for a new 53.5 billion-euro ($59 billion) bailout package.
The government said the proposals would be voted on by Greece’s parliament late Friday before an emergency summit Sunday of all 28 European Union leaders.
After months of foot-dragging despite impending chaos, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met a midnight deadline with more than an hour to spare. The spokesman for eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem tweeted that it was “important for institutions to consider these (proposals) in their assessment” of the Greek situation.
Finance officials from the European institutions and the International Monetary Fund were to fine-comb through the proposals on Friday before the 19 eurozone finance ministers assess them on Saturday.In ideal circumstances, a summit of the full European Union would be able to approve them on Sunday.
Earlier Thursday, Donald Tusk of Poland, who chairs the EU summits, indicated that European officials would make an effort to address Greece’s key request for debt relief.
“The realistic proposal from Greece will have to be matched by an equally realistic proposal on debt sustainability from the creditors. Only then will we have a win-win situation,” Tusk said.
Greece has long argued its debt is too high to be paid back and that the country requires some form of debt relief. The International Monetary Fund agrees with the premise, but key European states like Germany have resisted the idea.
On Thursday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the possibility of some kind of debt relief would be discussed over coming days, though he cautioned it may not provide much help.
“The room for maneuver through debt reprofiling or restructuring is very small,” he said.
Making Greece’s debt more sustainable would likely involve lowering the interest rates and extending the repayment dates on its bailout loans. Germany and many other European countries rule out an outright debt cut, arguing it would be illegal under European treaties.
Tsipras met with finance ministry officials and his cabinet throughout the day Thursday to finalize his country’s plan, a day after his government requested a new three-year aid program from Europe’s bailout fund and promised to immediately enact reforms, including to taxes and pensions, in return.
The last-minute maneuvers come as Greece’s financial system teeters on the brink of collapse. It has imposed restrictions on banking transactions since June 29, limiting cash withdrawals to 60 euros ($67) per day to stanch a bank run. Banks and the stock market have been shut for just as long.
The closures, which have been extended through Monday, have led to daily lines at ATM machines and have hammered businesses. Payments abroad have been banned without special permission.
“Can you see anybody in the shop? Nobody’s coming in, because everyone’s living off a drip,” said Magda Petridi, a fortune teller who runs a shop selling good luck charms, aromatic oils and trinkets. “Until a month ago business was going pretty well.”
Pensioners without bank cards have been particularly hard hit as they have struggled to access their accounts. Some branches have been opened so the elderly and unemployed without bank cards can withdraw a maximum weekly sum of 120 euros each. Hundreds lined up outside banks Thursday morning, many facing hours-long waits in the heat.
Meanwhile, many ATMs had a shortage of 20 euro notes, effectively reducing the daily withdrawal limit to 50 euros.
If Tsipras does not get a deal, Greece faces an almost inevitable collapse of the banking system, which would be the first step for the country to fall out of the euro.
“I believe he will have to get an agreement. We will pay dearly for it, but at least we’ll get an agreement,” said mechanic Pantelis Niarchos, walking down the street in central Athens.
After months of fruitless negotiations with Tsipras’ government, elected in January on promises to repeal bailout austerity, the skeptical eurozone creditor states had insisted they wanted to see a detailed, cost-accounted plan of reforms.
Greece’s financial institutions have been kept afloat so far by emergency liquidity assistance from the European Central Bank. But the ECB has not increased the amount in days, leaving the lenders in a stranglehold despite capital controls.
German ECB governing council member Jens Weidmann argued Greek banks should not get more emergency credit from the central bank unless a bailout deal is struck.
He said it was up to eurozone governments and Greek leaders themselves to rescue Greece.
The central bank “has no mandate to safeguard the solvency of banks and governments,” he said in a speech.
The ECB capped emergency credit to Greek banks amid doubt whether the country will win further rescue loans from other countries. The banks closed and limited ATM withdrawals because they had no other way to replace deposits.
Weidmann said he welcomed the fact that central bank credit “is no longer being used to finance capital flight caused by the Greek government.”
____
2. From WND…… If you were a Federal employee since the year 2000, check your wallet and your bank account right now.
At least 21 million Social Security numbers were compromised in the second massive cyberbreach of federal records – reportedly executed by China – which exposed sensitive information of U.S. intelligence and military personnel.
The first major hack in June comprised a separate 4.2 million Social Security numbers.
The Office of Personnel Management, the agency the runs the twice hacked database, announced Thursday that the compromised Social Security numbers include not only those belonging to prospective, current and past employees, but also the numbers of family members and other third parties.
Of the 21.5 million records accessed, 19.7 million belonged to applicants seeking federal security clearances, according to OPM.
Another 1.8 million records belonged to applicants’ family members and other individuals.
The hackers also had access to 1.1 million sets of fingerprints in addition to sensitive background information, including:
job history,
addresses,
drug and criminal histories,
health and mental conditions,
educational history,
information about immediate family members (names, addresses, birthdates, Social Security numbers),
information about personal and business acquaintances,
financial history
information from background investigations,
usernames and passwords used to fill out investigation forms and other information.
Any person who underwent a federal background check after the year 2000 is “highly likely” to have had the personal information compromised by the massive hack, OPM said Thursday. However, individuals investigated before 2000 may still be affected by the breach.
While OPM has offered credit monitoring to the federal employees and security-clearance applicants, the government considers it to be applicants’ responsibility to alert third parties listed on the background check forms.
Those third parties will not be offered the identity-protection services.
According to OPM Director Katherine Archuleta’s testimony before Congress, the massive May 2014 hack was not discovered until May 2015. Archuleta was the political director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Andy Ozment, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress that a January security update stopped most of the data extraction.
In June, federal contractor CSID was tasked with informing and providing identity protection services to the 4.2 million employees impacted by the first hack. However, a company spokesman told the National Journal that CSID won’t be involved in the process for the larger data breach.
CSID has been criticized after federal employees who called with questions about identity protection services were forced to wait for hours for answers.
OPM claims there is no apparent indication that the hacked information has been “misused” or shared.
On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee asked FBI Director James Comey to provide a specific number of individuals impacted by the breach, but he refused to give one. But Comey confirmed the hack was “enormous” and included his own personal information.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle have demanded the resignations of OPM Director Katherine Archuleta and OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour since the hackings were discovered in June.
On Thursday, House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, repeated his call for the two “to resign or be removed” from their positions.
“Since at least 2007, OPM leadership has been on notice about the vulnerabilities to its network and cybersecurity policies and practices,” Chaffetz said. “Director Archuleta and Ms. Seymour consciously ignored the warnings and failed to correct these weaknesses. Their negligence has now put the personal and sensitive information of 21.5 million Americans into the hands of our adversaries. Such incompetence is inexcusable. Again, I call upon President Obama to remove Director Archuleta and Ms. Seymour immediately.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, demanded that Archuleta step down.
“The technological and security failures at the Office of Personnel Management predate this director’s term, but Director Archuleta’s slow and uneven response has not inspired confidence that she is the right person to manage OPM through this crisis,” Warner said in a Thursday night statement. “It is time for her to step down, and I strongly urge the administration to choose new management with proven abilities to address a crisis of this magnitude with an appropriate sense of urgency and accountability.”
Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va. – whose own information was compromised in the breach – echoed Warner’s call.
Comstock said Archuleta showed “complacency, apathy … and incompetence” after the hacking was discovered.
“It goes to the top,” she told the National Journal. “This is a failure of leadership on her part, and if the president does not have the leadership to do this, I think she should step aside.”
Reps. Ted Lieu and Jim Langevin, both Democrats, called for Archuleta’s removal.
Lieu and Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., are reportedly drafting legislation that would task another agency “that has a better grasp of cyberthreats” with handling the security-clearance database instead of OPM.
However, Archuleta, in a Thursday press call, claimed she and her staff should be commended for their efforts to improve cybersecurity since November 2013.
“It is because the efforts of OPM and its staff that we’ve been able to identify the breaches,” she said.
Archuleta said she and Seymour will not resign.
Also on Thursday, a White House spokesman re-confirmed support for Archuleta.
3. From CNN…… The United States Army announces a forced reduction of 40,000 troops.
Washington (CNN)The Army will cut 40,000 troops from its ranks by 2017 as part of a new round of reductions brought on by constraints in the federal budget, the Army’s director of force management said Thursday.
“Unfortunately under sequestration under sequestration and automatic budget cuts, today’s announcement may not be the last,” Brigadier General Randy George told reporters about the current fiscal environment that will reduce the Army’s ranks from its current state of 490,000 soldiers to 450,000.
If automatic budget cuts known as sequestration take place later this year, the Army says it would have to likely reduce its ranks by an additional 30,000 soldiers beyond the numbers announced Thursday, potentially crippling its ability to fight.
“The resulting force would be incapable of simultaneously meeting current deployment requirements, and responding to overseas contingency requirements of the combatant commands,” George said.
Reductions would affect nearly every installation in the force and will also include cutting approximately 17,000 civilian employees from the Army’s payroll. Many of the civilian cuts will come through the 25 percent cut across all of the Army headquarters, though the force does not expect to have greater specificity on those cuts for an additional sixty to ninety days.
And while the Army says some of the reductions will come through attrition and planned retirements, there will be many forced separations as part of the cuts.
“I have had to look captains, majors, soldiers in the eyes, good soldiers, and tell them that we are reducing,” George said. “Those are tough things to do.”
The largest single unit cuts will impact installations like Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas and Joint Base Elmendorf in Alaska. Brigade Combat Team units at both Fort Benning and Joint Base Elmendorf which each currently number approximately 4,000 would be reduced to infantry battalion task forces numbering just over one thousand in each unit.
There will also be cuts to enabler forces like logistics, signal corps and military police units across the entire Army.
Some analysts who follow the Defense Department say such cuts make sense in a new era where the United States is no longer fighting two large land wars, but point to looming difficulties for the communities that host Army bases.
“It’s hard to justify the force size we had at the peak of Iraq and Afghanistan given the deployments and commitments that we have today,” said Todd Harrison with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “When you cut four or five thousand people from a particular base, that also means there’s going need to be fewer people working at the grocery stores, fewer teachers at the school, and so the economic impacts will expand out from the base.”
Following a “long, thoughtful, deliberate” process over the last 18 months, George said the reductions will take into account the current demands of the force around the world in order to maintain a force structure that can also take into account any unknown contingencies around the globe.
Confronted by budget cuts in an uncertain fiscal environment, the Obama administration has looked for ways to cut the size of the military, at one time pledging to scale the Army back to its lowest troop level since before World War II.
With a peak force of 570,000 troops following the 9/11 attacks, the resulting 450,000 troops will represent a drop of 120,000 troops since 2012 or 21 percent of the force.
4. From Fox News…..My name is Sue. How do you do?!
The list of things 15-year-olds are not legally allowed to do in Oregon is long: Drive, smoke, donate blood, get a tattoo — even go to a tanning bed.
But, under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation. Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification — and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan.
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“It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children,” said Lori Porter of Parents’ Rights in Education. “They’re our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it’s mindboggling.”
In a statement, Oregon Health Authority spokeswoman Susan Wickstrom explained it this way: “Age of medical consent varies by state. Oregon law — which applies to both Medicaid and non-Medicaid Oregonians — states that the age of medical consent is 15.”
While 15 is the medical age of consent in the state, the decision to cover sex-change operations specifically was made by the Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC).
Members are appointed by the governor and paid by the state of Oregon. With no public debate, HERC changed its policy to include cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty-suppressing drugs and gender-reassignment surgery as covered treatments for people with gender dysphoria, formally known as gender identity disorder.
HERC officials refused repeated requests by Fox News for an interview and even gave Fox News inaccurate information about the medical director’s work schedule.
Oregon Health Authority officials directed Fox News to their website. It shows transgender policy was discussed at four meetings in 2014. It was passed without any opposition or even discussion about teenagers’ new access to undergoing a sex change.
Gender dysphoria is classified by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder in which a person identifies as the sex opposite of his or her birth. It is rare, affecting one out of every 20,000 males and one out of every 50,000 females.
According to a 2008 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “most children with gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty.”
Dr. Paul McHugh, who led the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department and still practices, said Oregon’s policy amounts to child abuse. “We have a very radical and even mutilating treatment being offered to children without any evidence that the long-term outcome of this would be good,” McHugh said.
Dr. Jack Drescher, a member of the APA who worked on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, says treatment for gender dysphoria has received a lot more attention in recent years. He said this year New York changed its policy to cover cross-sex hormone drugs and sex-reassignment surgery for Medicaid recipients who are at least 18 years old. He thinks Oregon is offering the treatment too early.
“Children age 15 may not fully understand all the consequences of the procedures they are undergoing,” he said.
Jenn Burleton disagrees. She underwent a sex-reassignment surgery and started the Portland non-profit group TransActive. She said requiring parental consent would lead to more suffering and teen suicide attempts.
“Parents may not be supportive,” Burleton said. “They may not be in an environment where they feel the parent will affirm their identity, this may have been going on for years.”
The science is unsettled. A 2010 Murad study concluded “very low quality evidence suggests sex reassignment … improves gender dysphoria and overall quality of life.” The authors admitted the evidence was “sparse and inconclusive.”
Lisa Maloney, a parent and Scappoose, Ore., School Board member, is outraged.
“To know that taxpayers are now on the hook for that, that a child can do that without their parent’s knowledge or information or consent, parents have absolutely no say, that’s appalling,” Maloney said.
The Oregon Health Authority could not say how many Medicaid recipients have been treated for gender dysphoria since the new policy took effect in January. Oregon has 935,000 people enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan. HERC assumes between 14 and 112 of them may be gender dysphoric. It estimates the total cost of adding cross-sex hormone therapy, puberty-suppressing drugs and sex reassignment surgeries to the coverage will be no more than $150,000 per year.
But HERC also believes the state will save money due to fewer suicide attempts. It estimates there will be one less suicide attempt per year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the average cost per suicide attempt in the U.S. is $7,234.
But Dr. McHugh says a sex-change operation, especially for young people with gender dysphoria, is never appropriate.
“We can help them if we begin to explore with them and their families what they’re fearing about development, what they’re fearing about being a young boy, a young adolescent appropriate to themselves.”
5. From Time online…..The Confederate flag will be removed by tomorrow morning:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed a bill into law Thursday that will bring down the Confederate flag outside the Statehouse, a move that seemed unthinkable only a month ago in this Deep South state that was the first to secede from the Union.
The law requires the battle flag to be gone within 24 hours; her staff said it would be removed during a ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday and relegated to the state’s Confederate Relic Room.
“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley said. “We will bring it down with dignity and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”
The flag first flew over the Statehouse dome in 1961 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Civil War and was kept there as a symbol of official opposition to the civil rights movement. Mass protests decades later led to a compromise in 2000 with lawmakers who insisted that the flag symbolized Southern heritage and state’s rights.
They agreed then to move it to a 30-foot pole next to a Confederate monument out front. But even from that lower perch, the historic but divisive symbol remained clearly visible in the center of town, and flag supporters remained a powerful bloc in the state.
The massacre 22 days ago of nine people inside their historic black church in Charleston suddenly changed this dynamic, not only in South Carolina but around the nation.
Police said the shootings inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were racially motivated, and by posing with the Confederate flag before the shootings, suspect Dylann Storm Roof, who has not yet entered a plea to nine counts of murder, re-ignited a debate over the flag’s history as a symbol of white superiority and racial oppression.
Haley moved first, calling on South Carolina lawmakers to vote the flag down, and very quickly thereafter, other Republican lawmakers who have long cultivated the votes of Confederate flag supporters were announcing that other Civil War symbols no longer deserve places of honor.
“These nine pens are going to the families of the Emanuel Nine,” Haley said after signing the bill into law. “Nine amazing individuals who have forever changed South Carolina history.”
South Carolina’s flag removal bill passed easily in the Senate, where state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor gunned down at the church, had served, but was stalled by debate in the House as dozens of amendments were proposed. Any changes to the Senate bill could have delayed the flag’s removal by weeks or months, perhaps blunting momentum that has grown since the massacre.
House members deliberated well into the night, amid anger, tears and shared memories of Civil War ancestors.
Supporters of the flag talked about grandparents passing down family treasures. Some lamented that the flag had been “hijacked” or “abducted” by racists.
Rep. Mike Pitts recalled playing with a Confederate ancestor’s cavalry sword while growing up. He said that for him, the flag is a reminder of how many dirt-poor Southern farmers fought Yankees, not because they hated blacks or sought to preserve white supremacy, but because their land was being invaded.
Black Democrats, frustrated at being asked to honor the Civil War soldiers who also fought to preserve slavery, offered their own family histories as a counterpoint. Rep. Joe Neal talked about tracing his ancestry back to four brothers who were brought to America in chains. A slave owner named Neal bought them, changed their last names and pulled them apart from their families.
“The whole world is asking, is South Carolina really going to change, or will it hold to an ugly tradition of prejudice and discrimination and hide behind heritage as an excuse for it?” Neal said.
Rep. Jenny Horne, a white Republican who said she is a descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, scolded her party members for stalling.
“I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday. And if any of you vote to amend, you are ensuring that this flag will fly beyond Friday. And for the widow of Sen. Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it!” Horne screamed into the microphone.
The bill ultimately passed 93-27 in the House — well above the two-thirds supermajority needed to make changes to the state’s “heritage” symbols. Some lawmakers hugged, cried and high-fived, while others snapped selfies and pumped their fists.
6. Pitching the Wu in Taiwan
Hsinchu, Taiwan: The renter of a house worth NT$30 mn (US$960,000) in Taiwan’s Hsinchu City changed his name by deed poll to match that of his landlord, and then sold the house to 7 unsuspecting victims, 5 of which were real estate agents.
The perp, Mr Wu, already shared the same surname as the home’s owner, Mr Wu. The bad Mr Wu just had to change his given name to match that of his landlord and the evil scheme was ready to proceed. The renter was able to get 7 potential buyers to pay a deposit to purchase the home, which was valued at nearly US $960,000, by offering the property for sale at a deep discount of just $500,000 American.
Sensing a once in a lifetime bargain, the crafty Mr Wu was able to fool 7 prospective buyers into paying a deposit – which included 5 real estate agents – and ended up with proceeds that in Taiwan was valued at $4 million or $128,000 American.
Despite his early success, the whole plan collapsed after the buyers got in touch with the real Mr Wu and asked when they could sign the documents. The game was up for the fake Mr Wu and the real Mr. Wu pitched the Wu. The latest news from EBC is that the phony Wu is now facing more than 4 years in prison for the scheme.
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So until tomorrow morning’s “After Midnight” newscast this is Ray Mossholder, praying for you my friend. Have a miraculous day!
