a new thread for the daily news

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timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Maldives-hit-by-water-crisis-India-sends-help/articleshow/45385033.cms

colombogazette.com/2014/12/06/maldives-thanks-lanka-for-water/

www.seychellesnewsagency.com/articles/1914/Maldives+declare+public+holidays+to+battle+water+crisis

in.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/china-maldives-idINKBN0JL04620141207

(Reuters) - China is sending a military vessel filled with water to the Maldives to help with a fresh-water crisis on the Indian Ocean archipelago, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

A fire at the sole water sewage treatment plant in the capital, Male, has left 100,000 people temporarily without safe drinking water from the tap.

The Maldives has appealed for aid from India, Sri Lanka, the United States and China.

The Chinese vessel is carrying 960 tonnes of fresh water, the Defense Ministry said, according to Xinhua. The Foreign Ministry said 20 tonnes of bottled water were sent on two civilian flights on Saturday.

India is sending five planes with water and two ships with parts that can help fix the machinery at the plant, India said earlier.

The Maldives, a group of 1,190 coral islands southwest of India, is visited by more than 750,000 tourists a year. The country has a population of about 400,000 people, most of whom are Muslim.

(Reporting by Adam Rose; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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www.washingtonpost.com/world/washington-post-reporter-charged-by-tehran-court/2014/12/06/11885813-eeb8-4b7d-8d8b-34066f085c1e_story.html?hpid=z3

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www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/02/congress-again-blocks-white-house-efforts-to-close-guantanamo.html

Associated Press | Dec 02, 2014 | by Donna Cassata

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's 5-year-old campaign to close the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suffered a major setback as lawmakers finalizing the annual defense policy bill rejected steps toward shuttering the facility.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday that the final bill omits a provision giving the president the authority to transfer terror suspects to the United States if Congress signs off on a comprehensive plan to close the prison.

Levin had pushed for the authority and hailed it in May as creating "a path to close Guantanamo." With lawmakers rushing to complete the defense bill in this month's lame-duck session, Levin said proponents were unable to prevail.

"Our language ... ]on Guantanamo] ... will not be in," Levin said.

The House and Senate are expected to vote and overwhelmingly approve the sweeping policy bill in the coming days, sending it to Obama.

The president has pushed to close the post-9/11 prison since his inauguration in January 2009. He has faced strong resistance from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who don't want terror suspects housed in U.S. facilities and have warned of suspects returning to the fight when they are transferred back to their home countries.

In its version of the defense bill in May, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision that would authorize the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. soil "for detention, trial and incarceration, subject to stringent security measures and legal protections, once the president has submitted a plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo and Congress has had an opportunity to vote to disapprove that plan under expedited procedures."

The House version of the defense bill prohibited the transfer to U.S. soil, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have repeatedly and successfully fought White House efforts to move detainees prevailed in the final version of the defense bill.

Currently, the prison holds 142 men, including 73 already cleared for release.

Last month, the Pentagon said it sent a Saudi citizen who has spent the past 12 years detained at Guantanamo to his homeland. The transfer of Muhammad al-Zahrani was based on the conclusion of a U.S. government board that has been re-evaluating the need to continue holding some of the men as prisoners.

www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/us-usa-guantanamo-idUSKBN0JL0A220141207

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/07/guantanamo-prisoners-uruguay/20047083/


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www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/near-collisions-between-drones-airliners-surge-new-faa-reports-show/2014/11/26/9a8c1716-758c-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

By Craig Whitlock November 26 Follow @craigmwhitlock

Pilots around the United States have reported a surge in near-collisions and other dangerous encounters with small drones in the past six months at a time when the Federal Aviation Administration is gradually opening the nation’s skies to remotely controlled aircraft, according to FAA records.

Since June 1, commercial airlines, private pilots and air-traffic controllers have alerted the FAA to 25 episodes in which small drones came within a few seconds or a few feet of crashing into much larger aircraft, the records show. Many of the close calls occurred during takeoffs and landings at the nation’s busiest airports, presenting a new threat to aviation safety after decades of steady improvement in air travel.

(Related: Close encounters on rise as small drones gain in popularity)

Many of the previously unreported incident reports — released Wednesday by the FAA in response to long-standing public-records requests from The Washington Post and other news organizations — occurred near New York and Washington.

The FAA data indicates that drones are posing a much greater hazard to air traffic than previously recognized. Until Wednesday, the FAA had publicly disclosed only one other near-collision between a drone and a passenger aircraft: a March 22 incident involving a US Airways regional airliner near Tallahassee, Fla.
Since June 1, pilots of passenger airlines and other aircraft have reported 25 near-collisions with small drones across the United States. View Graphic

The newly released incident reports, however, reveal that the FAA has been receiving a steady stream of near-miss alerts from airliners and private pilots since then.

On Sept. 30, air-traffic controllers at LaGuardia Airport in New York reported that Republic Airlines Flight 6230 was “almost hit” by a brightly colored small drone at an altitude of 4,000 feet as the passenger plane was descending to land. On Sept. 8 at LaGuardia, three different regional airliners — Express Jet, Pinnacle and Chautauqua — reported “very close calls” with a drone within minutes of one another at an altitude of about 2,000 feet as they were preparing to land.

On July 29, a US Airways shuttle flight that had departed from Reagan National Airport reported an extraordinarily narrow encounter with a yellow drone with a four-foot wingspan that suddenly passed within 50 feet of the aircraft while it was approaching LaGuardia.

Outside Washington, Porter Airlines Flight 725 from Toronto was descending to Dulles International Airport at an altitude of 2,800 feet on June 29 when it reported that a black-and-silver drone zipped past, just 50 feet away. On June 1, a United Airlines flight originating from Rome alerted the control tower at Dulles that a four-engine helicopter drone interfered with its descent and passed just 100 feet underneath the Boeing 767.

The 25 near-midair collisions were among more than 175 incidents in which pilots and air-traffic controllers have reported seeing drones near airports or in restricted airspace since June. Pilots described most of the rogue drones as small, camera-equipped models that have become increasingly popular with hobbyists and photographers.

Although such drones often measure only a few feet in diameter and weigh less than 10 pounds, aviation safety experts say they could easily trigger an accident by striking another plane’s propeller or getting sucked into a jet engine.

“The potential for catastrophic damage is certainly there,” said Fred Roggero, a retired Air Force major general who was in charge of aviation safety investigations for the service and now serves as a consultant to companies seeking to fly drones commercially.
Small aircraft proliferate

The reported increase in dangerous encounters comes as the FAA is facing pressure from federal lawmakers and drone manufacturers to move more quickly to open the skies to remotely controlled aircraft.

Under a 2012 law, Congress ordered the FAA to safely integrate drones into the national airspace. The FAA is still developing regulations to make that happen, a process that is expected to take years.

Under FAA guidelines, it is legal for hobbyists to fly small drones for recreational purposes, as long as they keep them under 400 feet, at least five miles away from airports and outside other restricted areas. Flying drones for commercial purposes is largely prohibited, although the FAA has begun to issue special permits to filmmakers and other industries to operate drones on a case-by-case basis until the agency can adopt a final set of safety regulations.

The FAA, however, is struggling to keep up with an influx of cheap drones that have flooded the market. According to some estimates, half a million small drones have been sold in the United States in the past three years.

The aviation-safety agency lacks the manpower to police airports or effectively track down offenders. Only a handful of rogue drone operators have been apprehended or penalized across the country.

In a statement, the FAA acknowledged that it is now receiving about 25 reports a month from pilots who have spotted drones flying in restricted airspace or in close proximity to other aircraft.

“In partnership with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, the FAA has identified unsafe and unauthorized [drone] operations and contacted the individual operators to educate them about how they can operate safely under current regulations and laws,” the agency said.

Previously, the only other occasion in which the FAA has released data on drone sightings near airports came in June, when The Post reported that the agency had received a total of 15 reports of risky encounters over a period of two years — or an average of fewer than one incident a month.

Asked why there had been such a large increase in reports since then, the FAA said in a statement Wednesday that the difference could be “attributed to increased awareness by pilots and the public and improved reporting and record-keeping processes.”
Pressure to open the skies

Manufacturers and businesses that want to fly drones — including real estate agents, delivery firms, photographers and farmers — have criticized the FAA for moving too slowly to develop rules of the sky for using the new technology.

They say the absence of clear regulations for certifying drone pilots and aircraft has contributed to a rise in reckless behavior by untrained drone enthusiasts.

“The reality here is that we need to have rules,” said Michael Drobac, executive director of the Small UAV Coalition, a lobbying group for firms that make drones or want to integrate them into their business operations. He said “sophisticated companies” are largely prohibited from flying drones but that hobbyists can operate them without oversight.

Among the companies that are part of the Small UAV Coalition is Amazon.com, which wants to use autonomous drones to deliver small packages to customers’ doorsteps. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Post.)

Rapid advances in technology have made small drones affordable and easy for people to fly right out of the box. Some models cost less than $500. Most come with powerful miniature cameras that can film striking video scenes while hovering over back yards, stadiums, city centers and other places previously beyond the reach of amateur photographers.

R. Lee Morris, a professional photographer in Charleston, S.C., said he began flying a small DJI Phantom drone with a GoPro camera last year and was “blown away” by its capabilities. “It’s just an incredible thing to have fun with.”

In a blog post in March, he wrote that he wanted to see how high the Phantom could fly so he tested it over the skies in a populated area in Charleston. He estimated that the Phantom rose to about 1,000 feet — more than twice as high as the FAA guidelines for hobbyists — and acknowledged that it could have caused problems for rescue helicopters or low-flying aircraft.

In an interview, Morris said he felt a little guilty afterward and removed videos of the flight from his Web site because “I didn’t want to set a bad example.” But he added that he wasn’t convinced that flying a small drone like a Phantom posed an aviation hazard. He said a pilot friend told him that if the drone struck another plane’s propeller, the remotely controlled aircraft “would just explode into a million pieces.”
‘It was some idiot out there’

Several pilots who reported dangerous encounters with drones to the FAA disagreed strenuously, telling The Post in interviews that the tiny aircraft can pose a menace to air safety.

Drones are not equipped with transponders to broadcast their locations in the sky, and most models are too small to show up on radar or anti-collision warning systems. By the time they become visible at high altitudes, pilots said, it is usually too late to change course.

“All it’s going to take is for one to come through a windshield to hurt some people or kill someone,” said Kyle Fortune, who was flying a four-seat Cirrus SR-22 near Medford, Ore., on Sept. 22, when he said a drone about four feet in diameter suddenly appeared 100 feet underneath his plane.

He was flying at an altitude of 4,000 feet — about 10 times higher than the FAA’s height restrictions for small drones.

“It was some idiot out there with a drone. I have no idea what he was doing up there, taking pictures or whatnot,” Fortune said. “If it had come through the cockpit it wouldn’t have been a good day.”

Mike Gilbert, chief flight instructor at Aviation Adventures, a flight school based in Manassas, Va., was flying a Cessna with a student and another passenger about 9:45 p.m. on Sept. 17 when a small drone with two red lights suddenly appeared about 200 feet overhead.

“It came seemingly out of nowhere,” Gilbert said. “As pilots, at a minimum it’s distracting. If one of them hits us, we’re coming down. We’re trained to deal with dead engines, but we’re afraid it’s going to hit a [propeller], which would be a disaster, or the airframe.”

Several other near-collisions have been reported by pilots of rescue helicopters used to transport patients needing emergency medical attention.

A Life Flight helicopter in Pottsville, Pa., reported Nov. 19 that it was descending at 2,400 feet when a flight nurse in the co-pilot seat suddenly yelled: “Watch out!” A small drone was flying straight toward the rescue helicopter “at a high rate of closure,” according to a report that the crew said it filed with the FAA.

The pilot was forced to make a sharp banking turn to the right to avoid a collision, according to the report. The crew estimated that the drone passed with about 50 to 100 feet of separation.

Greg Lynskey, government relations manager for the Association of Air Medical Services, said small drones were becoming a major concern for rescue helicopter crews around the country. He said the FAA guidelines that allow hobbyists to fly drones as long as they stay five miles away from airports are too lax and do little to protect helicopters that fly near hospitals or pick up patients at accident scenes on the ground.

“I’m hoping this can get worked out before we have a catastrophic incident,” he said. “It wouldn’t take much to bring down a helicopter. If a drone hits the tail rotor, that’d pretty much be it.”

Concerned about the potential for trouble, drone manufacturers have begun to add software upgrades to their drone operating systems to prevent them from flying near airports or above a certain altitude.

DJI, the Chinese firm that makes the popular Phantom model, now programs its drones so that they cannot take off within 1.5 miles of a major airport and must stay below 400 feet within a five-mile radius of the installation.

The default height limit in other areas is programmed at 400 feet, although owners can bypass that ceiling by downloading a software application that comes with safety warnings.

“We did start noticing one of the challenges, or opportunities, we have is to program basic safe-flying practices into the firmware,” said Michael Perry, a DJI spokesman. “We all want to see this technology safely integrated into the airspace.”
Craig Whitlock covers the Pentagon and national security. He has reported for The Washington Post since 1998.

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www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/korean-air-vp-under-fire/1517650.html

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www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-is-barack-obama-so-passive-in-the-face-of-racial-injustice-9909088.html

www.spiegel.de/international/world/african-americans-express-disappointment-with-obama-over-ferguson-a-1005993.html

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Dec 7, 2014 17:43:05 GMT -5 lavender1 said:

www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/02/congress-again-blocks-white-house-efforts-to-close-guantanamo.html

Associated Press | Dec 02, 2014 | by Donna Cassata

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's 5-year-old campaign to close the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, suffered a major setback as lawmakers finalizing the annual defense policy bill rejected steps toward shuttering the facility.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday that the final bill omits a provision giving the president the authority to transfer terror suspects to the United States if Congress signs off on a comprehensive plan to close the prison.

Levin had pushed for the authority and hailed it in May as creating "a path to close Guantanamo." With lawmakers rushing to complete the defense bill in this month's lame-duck session, Levin said proponents were unable to prevail.

"Our language ... ]on Guantanamo] ... will not be in," Levin said.

The House and Senate are expected to vote and overwhelmingly approve the sweeping policy bill in the coming days, sending it to Obama.

The president has pushed to close the post-9/11 prison since his inauguration in January 2009. He has faced strong resistance from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who don't want terror suspects housed in U.S. facilities and have warned of suspects returning to the fight when they are transferred back to their home countries.

In its version of the defense bill in May, the Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision that would authorize the transfer of terror suspects to U.S. soil "for detention, trial and incarceration, subject to stringent security measures and legal protections, once the president has submitted a plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo and Congress has had an opportunity to vote to disapprove that plan under expedited procedures."

The House version of the defense bill prohibited the transfer to U.S. soil, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers who have repeatedly and successfully fought White House efforts to move detainees prevailed in the final version of the defense bill.

Currently, the prison holds 142 men, including 73 already cleared for release.

Last month, the Pentagon said it sent a Saudi citizen who has spent the past 12 years detained at Guantanamo to his homeland. The transfer of Muhammad al-Zahrani was based on the conclusion of a U.S. government board that has been re-evaluating the need to continue holding some of the men as prisoners.

www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/us-usa-guantanamo-idUSKBN0JL0A220141207

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/07/guantanamo-prisoners-uruguay/20047083/


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www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/guantanamo-bay-was-wurde-aus-dem-terrorlager-der-usa-a-1003721.html

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www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/folter-usa-untersuchungsbericht-birgt-risiken-fuer-usa-a-1007355.html

sotu.blogs.cnn.com/2014/12/08/bush-refutes-cia-torture-report/


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques


www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

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www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2865214/Forecasters-issue-snow-ice-warnings-Britain-ahead-80mph-Atlantic-storm-strike-later-week.html

www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/atlantik-wetter-sturm-und-20-meter-hohe-wellen-vorhergesagt-a-1007379.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Ss3nGlmmM

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Dec 9, 2014 5:29:53 GMT -5 lavender1 said:

www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/folter-usa-untersuchungsbericht-birgt-risiken-fuer-usa-a-1007355.html

sotu.blogs.cnn.com/2014/12/08/bush-refutes-cia-torture-report/


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques


www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf


www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/08/cia-torture-report-release-date-nears?CMP=ema_565

The CIA is bracing for what could be one of the most damaging moments in its history: a public airing of its post-9/11 embrace of torture.

The Senate intelligence committee is poised to release a landmark inquiry into torture as early as Tuesday, after the Obama administration made a last-ditch effort to suppress a report that has plunged relations between the CIA and its Senate overseer to a historic low point.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday the administration welcomed the release of the report, but warned US interests overseas were at risk of potentially violent reactions to its contents.

The release of the torture report will represent the third major airing of faulty CIA intelligence in 15 years, following official commissions into the 9/11 plot and Saddam Hussein’s defunct illicit weapons programs.

Despite months of negotiation over how much of the 6,000-page report will be declassified, most of its findings will never see the light of the day. But even a partial release of the report will yield a furious response from the CIA and its allies.

On Sunday, George W Bush made a show of support for CIA operatives who had participated in torture, calling them “patriots”.

“We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf,” he told CNN. “These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”

The Senate report is likely to attract global attention, owing to the CIA’s network of unacknowledged prisons in places like Poland, Thailand and Afghanistan.

Human-rights investigators have found 54 countries cooperated in various ways with the CIA’s renditions, detentions and interrogations, but the commitee is unlikely to reveal the agency’s foreign torture partners.

On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry called Senator Dianne Feinstein – the California Democrat who spearheaded the inquiry – to urge consideration of what spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the “foreign policy implications” of the report’s timing, suggesting it could inflame anti-American outrage worldwide.

Bloomberg first reported that the committee understood Kerry to be arguing for suppressing the report, though the State Department denies it.

Congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday that US allies have warned that the release of the report could provoke “violence and deaths”.

“I think this is a terrible idea,” Rogers told CNN. “Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’ Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths”.

Several foreign governments, including the UK and Poland, are fearful of identification by the Senate and have added to the pressure on the committee.

Some of the CIA’s major allies included dictators whom Barack Obama relinquished US support for or even went to war to depose, such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Jose Rodriguez, a former senior CIA official who has ardently defended torture, has already published an op-ed accusing Feinstein and her committee allies of breaking faith with a CIA it once wanted to do its utmost to stop terrorism. Several former CIA directors and Bush officials intend to argue that the Senate investigation is itself misleading.

Rodriguez, writing in the Washington Post, said that the committee’s conclusion that torture “brought no intelligence value is an egregious falsehood” and termed the report “a dishonest attempt to rewrite history”.

The report’s fundamental conclusions have been well-trailed. Senate investigators determined that the CIA’s embrace of mock-drowning, sleep deprivation, “stress positions”, sensory and dietary manipulation and other torture techniques were ineffective, and the CIA covered up that ineffectiveness by misrepresenting its results to Bush officials, Congress and the public.

Its executive summary examines 20 such instances during the 2002-2006 height of what the CIA prefers to call “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

After the committee voted in April to declassify sections of the report, Feinstein called the CIA’s actions a “stain on our history”.

Feinstein hoped the committee would finish its declassification negotiations with the administration within 30 days. Yet the White House placed the CIA in charge of censoring a report into its own conduct and discussions have stretched into their 10th month. In August, Feinstein and other leading Senate Democrats rejected proposed administration redactions, saying they would leave the committee’s findings incomprehensible. The agency has rejected even the use of pseudonyms for its operatives on the grounds they could reveal classified identities.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Feinstein conceded that she had been obliged to give in on some of her demands for transparency: “We have to get this report out.”

“We will find another way to make known some of the problems,” she said.

The drawn-out process has prompted speculation that the administration wants to outlast Feinstein’s tenure as chairwoman and prefers for committee Republicans, who consider the inquiry a wasteful witch hunt, to preside over its partial release come January. Two committee Democrats, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have publicly flirted with using parliamentary procedure to force disclosure, considered to be an attempt at exerting pressure on the administration.

Human rights campaigners have pressured the White House for months to release a maximally declassified report so as to hold the CIA accountable. It is unlikely to lead to any legal consequence for CIA officials, particularly after a special Justice Department inquiry into torture declined to indict anyone for abuses in the CIA program. The report’s greatest legal impact may be on the military tribunal for the accused 9/11 co-conspirators, whose lawyers wish to introduce the report into evidence that their clients were tortured into delivering inadmissible statements implicating themselves.

Hostility to the report is not restricted to the right wing. Human rights groups have criticized Senate investigators for not looking into the Bush administration architects of the program in a concession to committee Republicans, and for declining to attempt a definitive legal analysis of torture. While the CIA has criticized the inquiry for not interviewing its operatives, lawyers for CIA torture victims have said Senate investigators did not seek to interview their clients, either.

Beyond questions of accountability, a lingering effect of the report is likely to be damage between the CIA and the secret Senate committee that oversees the powerful intelligence agency.

Director John Brennan had to apologize in July after the CIA inspector general determined that agency officials surreptitiously accessed committee work product and email on a firewalled shared network. Brennan had initially denied wrongdoing that Feinstein stated had provoked a constitutional crisis. Udall and others have called on Brennan – himself a senior CIA official during the time of the inquiry’s focus – to resign.

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www.thinkspain.com/news/versionimprimir.asp?x=34tger634sdg34&y=5346345645634&CodNoticia=25226

Infanta Cristina to pay back 587,000 euros in exchange for criminal charges being dropped

Politics & People (09/12/2014 18:01:48) . Author: thinkSPAIN

THE Infanta Cristina is due to pay nearly 600,000 euros requested by the prosecution service in the hope that this will buy the Royal sister her freedom.

According to the Duchess of Palma's solicitor Miquel Roca, she is willing to refund the taxes she reportedly evaded for the years 2007 and 2008 by offsetting personal expenses against the front company Aizoon, which had no commercial activity and which she owned 50-50 with her husband, Iñaki Urdangarín.

The firm was set up to launder funds received through the Nóos Institute, set up as a non-profit entity to promote sporting and cultural events, but which was actually a lucrative business.

Invoices for events funded by the regional governments of Valencia and the Balearic Islands and organised by the Nóos Institute were inflated so Urdangarín and his business partner, Diego Torres, could pocket the difference.

Fake invoices 'sent' by the company Aizoon for work which had never been carried out were then issued to allow the money to be 'received' by the firm and then withdrawn by the Duke and Duchess.

And the Duke invoiced his work as consultant to multi-national companies from Aizoon, because this way, he would attract a lower level of income tax.

The Infanta Cristina, whose brother is King Felipe VI, said she had no dealings whatsoever in the financial side of Aizoon and was unconnected to the Nóos Institute, merely 'signing what her husband told her to sign' out of 'love and trust'.

Prosecutor Pedro Horrach does not believe she has been guilty of a criminal offence, but it is recognised that the tax she avoided paying, plus interest, a total of 587,413 euros, needs to be paid back to the State.

This means there is no public prosecution against her, only a private prosecution by the anti-corruption body Manos Limpias ('clean hands') calling for eight years in prison on the grounds she was a 'necessary collaborator' to the Nóos racket and not just a beneficiary thereof.

And the judge in charge of the case does not agree with Horrach that she is entirely innocent.

As a result, whether or not the Infanta will face criminal charges and be sentenced hangs in the balance, but her solicitor is attempting a bargain involving paying back her debts in exchange for her actions being decriminalised.

Iñaki Urdangarín, in the meantime, has refused to negotiate any type of plea bargain that would lead to his going to jail, unless the sentence is for two years or less when he would not have to serve it as his is a first offence.

Horrach proposed he plead guilty and refund the six million euros including interest in public funds he had allegedly swindled out of the two regional governments, and go to prison for six years.

If he refuses, Urdangarín is likely to face a sentence of up to 20 years.

The Duke says he is prepared to agree to 'pay whatever' but will not agree to a custodial term.

As well as Urdangarín, his business partner Diego Torres and the latter's wife Ana Tejeiro, three former Valencia regional politicians could go to prison for eight years and another for six, in accordance with the anti-corruption prosecution service's recommendations.

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abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/moldova-arrested-suspected-uranium-smuggling-27465515

Seven people have been detained in Moldova on suspicion they smuggled uranium and mercury in a metal container from Russia to be used in a dirty bomb, police said Tuesday.

House searches were carried out last week in the capital and two other towns and police confiscated 200 grams (7 ounces) of uranium-238 mixed with uranium-235, a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of mercury and an unidentified radioactive solid material. The material, smuggled by train, has a black-market value of 1.6 million euros ($2 million), police chief Ion Bodrug said.

Aided by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, authorities began investigating in January and a police officer was infiltrated into the group.

Those arrested are aged 32 to 75, belong to a criminal gang and have specialized knowledge in radioactive substances, authorities said. They have admitted their guilt, Bodrug said Tuesday.

Prosecutor Vladimir Mosneaga said the uranium had been transported on the train in a metal container specially adapted to diminish the effect of radiation.

"They had experience in the past with radioactive material and had certain links with other people," Mosneaga said, without providing more details. Authorities gave no indication of the material's eventual destination.

Police are cooperating with Ukrainian and Russian police to identify other gang members.

Five people were detained in June 2011 in Chisinau suspected of smuggling radioactive substances as they were attempting to sell a kilogram of uranium for 32 million euros. The buyers were believed to be in North Africa. The suspects were convicted and handed prison sentences of three to five years.

Uranium-238 can be enriched into the fissile material of nuclear warheads or converted into plutonium, also used to arm nuclear missiles.

[lavender1]

Dec 9, 2014 17:50:25 GMT -5 lavender1 said:

Dec 9, 2014 5:29:53 GMT -5 lavender1 said:

www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/folter-usa-untersuchungsbericht-birgt-risiken-fuer-usa-a-1007355.html

sotu.blogs.cnn.com/2014/12/08/bush-refutes-cia-torture-report/


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques


www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf


www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/08/cia-torture-report-release-date-nears?CMP=ema_565

The CIA is bracing for what could be one of the most damaging moments in its history: a public airing of its post-9/11 embrace of torture.

The Senate intelligence committee is poised to release a landmark inquiry into torture as early as Tuesday, after the Obama administration made a last-ditch effort to suppress a report that has plunged relations between the CIA and its Senate overseer to a historic low point.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday the administration welcomed the release of the report, but warned US interests overseas were at risk of potentially violent reactions to its contents.

The release of the torture report will represent the third major airing of faulty CIA intelligence in 15 years, following official commissions into the 9/11 plot and Saddam Hussein’s defunct illicit weapons programs.

Despite months of negotiation over how much of the 6,000-page report will be declassified, most of its findings will never see the light of the day. But even a partial release of the report will yield a furious response from the CIA and its allies.

On Sunday, George W Bush made a show of support for CIA operatives who had participated in torture, calling them “patriots”.

“We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf,” he told CNN. “These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”

The Senate report is likely to attract global attention, owing to the CIA’s network of unacknowledged prisons in places like Poland, Thailand and Afghanistan.

Human-rights investigators have found 54 countries cooperated in various ways with the CIA’s renditions, detentions and interrogations, but the commitee is unlikely to reveal the agency’s foreign torture partners.

On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry called Senator Dianne Feinstein – the California Democrat who spearheaded the inquiry – to urge consideration of what spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the “foreign policy implications” of the report’s timing, suggesting it could inflame anti-American outrage worldwide.

Bloomberg first reported that the committee understood Kerry to be arguing for suppressing the report, though the State Department denies it.

Congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday that US allies have warned that the release of the report could provoke “violence and deaths”.

“I think this is a terrible idea,” Rogers told CNN. “Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’ Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths”.

Several foreign governments, including the UK and Poland, are fearful of identification by the Senate and have added to the pressure on the committee.

Some of the CIA’s major allies included dictators whom Barack Obama relinquished US support for or even went to war to depose, such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

Jose Rodriguez, a former senior CIA official who has ardently defended torture, has already published an op-ed accusing Feinstein and her committee allies of breaking faith with a CIA it once wanted to do its utmost to stop terrorism. Several former CIA directors and Bush officials intend to argue that the Senate investigation is itself misleading.

Rodriguez, writing in the Washington Post, said that the committee’s conclusion that torture “brought no intelligence value is an egregious falsehood” and termed the report “a dishonest attempt to rewrite history”.

The report’s fundamental conclusions have been well-trailed. Senate investigators determined that the CIA’s embrace of mock-drowning, sleep deprivation, “stress positions”, sensory and dietary manipulation and other torture techniques were ineffective, and the CIA covered up that ineffectiveness by misrepresenting its results to Bush officials, Congress and the public.

Its executive summary examines 20 such instances during the 2002-2006 height of what the CIA prefers to call “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

After the committee voted in April to declassify sections of the report, Feinstein called the CIA’s actions a “stain on our history”.

Feinstein hoped the committee would finish its declassification negotiations with the administration within 30 days. Yet the White House placed the CIA in charge of censoring a report into its own conduct and discussions have stretched into their 10th month. In August, Feinstein and other leading Senate Democrats rejected proposed administration redactions, saying they would leave the committee’s findings incomprehensible. The agency has rejected even the use of pseudonyms for its operatives on the grounds they could reveal classified identities.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Feinstein conceded that she had been obliged to give in on some of her demands for transparency: “We have to get this report out.”

“We will find another way to make known some of the problems,” she said.

The drawn-out process has prompted speculation that the administration wants to outlast Feinstein’s tenure as chairwoman and prefers for committee Republicans, who consider the inquiry a wasteful witch hunt, to preside over its partial release come January. Two committee Democrats, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have publicly flirted with using parliamentary procedure to force disclosure, considered to be an attempt at exerting pressure on the administration.

Human rights campaigners have pressured the White House for months to release a maximally declassified report so as to hold the CIA accountable. It is unlikely to lead to any legal consequence for CIA officials, particularly after a special Justice Department inquiry into torture declined to indict anyone for abuses in the CIA program. The report’s greatest legal impact may be on the military tribunal for the accused 9/11 co-conspirators, whose lawyers wish to introduce the report into evidence that their clients were tortured into delivering inadmissible statements implicating themselves.

Hostility to the report is not restricted to the right wing. Human rights groups have criticized Senate investigators for not looking into the Bush administration architects of the program in a concession to committee Republicans, and for declining to attempt a definitive legal analysis of torture. While the CIA has criticized the inquiry for not interviewing its operatives, lawyers for CIA torture victims have said Senate investigators did not seek to interview their clients, either.

Beyond questions of accountability, a lingering effect of the report is likely to be damage between the CIA and the secret Senate committee that oversees the powerful intelligence agency.

Director John Brennan had to apologize in July after the CIA inspector general determined that agency officials surreptitiously accessed committee work product and email on a firewalled shared network. Brennan had initially denied wrongdoing that Feinstein stated had provoked a constitutional crisis. Udall and others have called on Brennan – himself a senior CIA official during the time of the inquiry’s focus – to resign.

www.worldmeets.us/gazetawyborcza000043.shtml

[lavender1]

www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7015

www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/medizin-pr-pressestellen-uebertreiben-haeufiger-als-journalisten-a-1007644.html

[lavender1]

Dec 9, 2014 10:47:00 GMT -5 lavender1 said:

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