http://rt.com/news/253561-un-israel-attacks-schools/#.VT7ueuvChbE.f...

UN blames Israel for attacks on schools during Gaza War

Published time: April 27, 2015 20:56

A Palestinian boy rides his bicycle in front of a house that witnesses said was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war last summer, in the east of Gaza City April 27, 2015. (Reuters / Mohammed Salem)

A UN inquiry has found that Israeli security forces conducted seven deadly attacks on UN schools that were being used as shelters during last year’s Gaza offensive. The conflict killed 44 Palestinians and injured 227.

The independent board of inquiry found that Israel was responsible for damage to seven UN facilities in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. Palestinian militants were also exposed to have used three UN facilities for storing weapons and for shooting rockets and mortars.

“I deplore the fact that at least 44 Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli actions and at least 227 injured at United Nations premises being used as emergency shelters,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in a cover letter accompanying a summary of the inquiry's findings.

The full report, released on Monday, is 207 pages and is “top-secret”, but 27 pages of it were released as an unclassified document.

Schools in Gaza are considered UN facilities and according to international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convection cannot be targeted.

At the fourth school, for girls, hit by the Israeli military no warning was given.“No prior warning had been given by the government of Israel of the firing of 155 MM high explosive projectiles on, or in the surrounding area of the school,” the report said.

The Secretary General announced in November last year that an independent inquiry would be set up to investigate the damage caused to UN installations in Gaza, as well as when these places were used to hide weapons.

The inquiry was headed by an international team and was headed by Patrick Cammaert, a former senior officer in the Dutch military who also served as Ban’s military adviser and commander of UN forces in the Congo.

Israel had lobbied the UN to delay the investigation on the grounds that they were conducting their own inquiries into Operation Protective Edge. Although they as well as Hamas – the Islamist group that governs Gaza – said they would cooperate fully with the inquiry.

The war in Gaza last July killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, many of them civilians and children. 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians inside Israel were also killed.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194552#.VT8C9iFViko

Just when we thought the drama was out of the COW wars. Redstone, at 91, sexual expose photos by this 44 year old live-in girlfriend? http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/sumner-redstone-girlfriend...

Facebook bug is stopping users from posting anything with a link

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/30/8525239/facebook-bug-links-scraping

 The problem seems to have begun last night with issues in Facebook's image-scraping system, which automatically pulls pictures from posted links. The issue was reported in the Facebook developer forums and the ops team promised a fix — but the resulting fix appears to have broken the system entirely.

(Could just be completely innocuous.. Looks like problem became worse when Facebook tried to patch the bug.)

American Psychological Association Bolstered C.I.A. Torture Program, Report Says http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/report-says-american-psycholog...

“The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” the report’s authors conclude.

The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals to make sure they were safe.

Russia loses control of unmanned spacecraft

http://news.yahoo.com/unmanned-russian-spacecraft-plunging-earth-11...

Moscow (AFP) - Russia said Wednesday it had lost control of an unmanned spacecraft taking supplies to the International Space Station and it is plunging back to Earth but is likely to burn up in the atmosphere.

The loss of the Progress supply ship, a Soviet design known for its reliability, is the latest embarrassment for Russia's space programme that has been recently hit by a series of mishaps.

Grim-faced officials from the Russian space agency told a hastily arranged news conference that the capsule had been lost.

"Most likely it is some sort of unforeseen situation related to the separation of the ship from the carrier," Alexander Ivanov, deputy chief of the Roscosmos state agency, told reporters.

"It is impossible to say now who is guilty and of what."

Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said the vessel's debris is likely to burn up in the atmosphere, estimating the cost of the launch and the spacecraft at nearly 2.6 billion rubles ($50.8 million).

Roscosmos estimates that the vessel will burn up in the atmosphere some time between May 5-7.

A Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress M-27M spacecraft with supplies for the ISS successfully launched on Tuesday but communication with the vessel was lost soon afterwards.

Speaking to AFP earlier Wednesday, a Russian official familiar with the situation said the capsule had begun descending.

"It has nowhere else to go," he said.

He said controllers had done everything to try to rescue the ship.

"We have scheduled two more communication sessions to ease our conscience," the official said earlier.

The Russian mission control said that attempts to contact the spacecraft had been unsuccessful.

"It's the first time that we have such a combination of emergency situations," a mission control spokesman told AFP.

The controllers had on Tuesday opted to change the flight plan and extend the vessel's journey to two days instead of six hours in a bid to fix the glitch.

NASA said that Russia had informed it that the vehicle "will not be docking with the International Space Station."

The ship had been rescheduled to dock with the ISS, where an international crew of six people was awaiting the cargo, on April 30.

NASA said none of the equipment on board was critical for the US section of the ISS, and that the astronauts have plenty of provisions, enough to last for months.

The Progress was carrying "1,940 pounds (880 kilos) of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,128 pounds of spare parts, supplies and scientific experiment hardware," NASA said.

The next delivery to the ISS is planned by SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship on June 19.

-'Right to spring surprises'-

Igor Lisov, an editor at the industry magazine Cosmonautics News, said the accident was out of the ordinary, noting that the Progress vessel is a reliable workhorse.

"Around 100 Progress vessels have been launched since 1978," he told AFP. "On the whole it is a very reliable system."

Independent space expert Vadim Lukashevich said that the mishap should not be seen as a catastrophe.

"There were no cosmonauts on board, no one will die," he told AFP. "Equipment, especially when it is so complex, has every right to spring surprises -- especially after so many years of service."

The Russian space programme is renowned for having sent the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite, Sputnik 1, four years earlier, and its achievements remain a major source of national pride.

But more recently it has endured a series of setbacks, notably losing expensive satellites and a similar Progress supply ship in 2011.

That vessel crashed into Siberia shortly after launch in one of Russia's biggest space setbacks.

Of all the space fails recently it seems reasonable to wonder if this was 'intentional' or not....

Doomsday at Mercury: NASA craft falls from orbit into planet

http://news.yahoo.com/doomsday-mercury-nasa-craft-close-falling-pla...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The only spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury ended its four-year tour with a crash landing Thursday

NASA's Messenger plunged from orbit as planned and slammed into the sun's closest planet at about 8,750 mph (14,081 kph), creating a crater an estimated 52 feet (16 meters) across.

Messenger became the first spacecraft to orbit hot, little Mercury, in 2011. It circled the solar system's innermost planet 4,105 times and collected more than 277,000 images.

"Today we bid a fond farewell to one of the most resilient and accomplished spacecraft ever to have explored our neighboring planets," said lead scientist Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Solomon noted in a statement that Messenger set a record for planetary flybys — once past Earth, twice past Venus and three times past Mercury before entering Mercury's orbit — and survived "both punishing heat and extreme doses of radiation" to surpass expectations.

Flight controllers managed to keep the spacecraft going a few extra weeks by using helium gas not originally intended as fuel. But the gas tank finally emptied and gravity's relentless tug did Messenger in.

Thursday's crash occurred on the side of Mercury facing away from Earth and telescopes. Several minutes passed before NASA received confirmation. Controllers received no signal from Messenger when it was supposed to be back in the coverage zone — a sign that the spacecraft, measuring 10 feet solar wingtip to wingtip, had, indeed, succumbed to gravity.

"Well I guess it is time to say goodbye," the Messenger Twitter feed stated as the end drew near.

Then after the impact: "On behalf of Messenger, thank you all for your support. We will continue to update you on our great discoveries. We will miss it."

Astronomers who used Messenger to detect Mercury's frozen water-covered poles and significantly off-center magnetic field called it an end of an era. Other discoveries: volcanic deposits that are evidence of the planet's eruptive past, and noticeable global shrinkage.

View gallery

This combination of images provided by NASA shows the readings from the Mercury Atmosphere and Surfa …

"It has been an amazing journey of discovery," said the University of British Columbia's Catherine Johnson, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Data analyses will continue for at least another year.

Messenger's $427 million mission began with a launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2004. Johns Hopkins University handled everything for NASA.

Until Messenger, the only spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10 back in the 1970s. That was only a fly-by mission.

The Europeans and Japanese are teaming up for Mercury's next guests, a pair of satellites known as BepiColombo. They're scheduled for launch in 2017 and arrival in Mercury's orbit in 2024.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/05/01/iran...

Iran’s claim that Israel has 400 nuclear weapons

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

“It’s laughable that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has become everybody’s nonproliferation guru. He is sitting on 400 nuclear warheads, nuclear warheads that have been acquired in violation of the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

–Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking in New York, April 29, 2015

In the debate over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the unacknowledged nuclear stockpile of Israel often comes up.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Israel secretly acquired the technology and material to build nuclear weapons, frequently misleading the U.S. government about its intentions. (France was Israel’s partner in the building of the Dimona reactor in the Negev desert, while South Africa is believed to have assisted Israel in conducting at least one nuclear test in the 1970s.)

Zarif quickly noted that Israel (unlike Iran) is not a member of the NPT, but added:  “Those who provided them with the technology were members of the NPT and violated the NPT to provide them with the technology, and we know who they were. And now they are the proponents of nonproliferation.” (Actually, France’s cooperation with Israel ended in 1966, before the NPT went into effect in 1970.)

Zarif’s estimate of Israel’s stockpile seemed rather large. Does Israel really have 400 nuclear weapons?

The Facts

For a secret and unacknowledged program, the history of Israel’s quest for nuclear weapons is relatively well-documented. Our colleague Walter Pincus recently recounted how Israel misled the Kennedy and Johnson administrations about the facility in the Negev, describing it at one point as “a textile plant” and later as “a metallurgical research installation.”

Requested inspections by U.S. experts were cursory and often postponed — Israel refused to accept visits from the International Atomic Energy Agency – and later it was learned that the Israelis had built fake walls around the elevators that led to an underground reprocessing plant, according to a 2014 account in The Guardian newspaper.

By 1968, the CIA was convinced Israel had nuclear weapons – just as negotiations on the NPT were completed and the treaty designed to thwart the spread of nuclear weapons was opened for signature by members of the United Nations. U.S. officials concluded it was too late to turn back the clock and make Israel abandon its nuclear capability.

In a private one-on-one White House meeting on Sept. 26, 1969, then President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir cut a secret deal: Israel would not test its weapons or acknowledge them, and in return the United States would end its Dimona visits and stop pressuring Israel to sign the NPT. (The actual details of the discussion are still shrouded in mystery, as no formal record of the conversation has emerged. But a memo from then national security adviser Henry Kissinger indicates Nixon pressed Meir not to visibly introduce nuclear weapons in the region.)

In 1979, a U.S. satellite (known as Vela 6911) designed to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty detected a possible nuclear test off the coast of South Africa. Then-President Jimmy Carter and other U.S. officials quickly suspected this was an Israeli test, which would have been in violation of the Nixon-Meir agreement.

Editorial continues.........

CBS Airs Report on Jade Helm 15 Training, an open secret now.

Interesting to note that conspiracy personalities like Alex Jones are positioning themselves to get the "Martial Law" prediction right.

Comcast Planning Nationwide Internet Video Service http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Planning-Nationwide-Inte...

They're trying to compete with the youtube platform.

FCC Hits AT&T With $10.4 Million Fine for Lifeline Fraud http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCC-Hits-ATT-With-104-Million-Fi...

AT&T Sued, Executive Fired Over Racist Text Messages http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Sued-Exec-Fired-Over-Racist-...

Wow, Soros losing 7 of his 24 billions bucks! He does not look happy. Soros was supposedly behind the Kiev Ukraine debacle. The "rebellion" that would put Russian oil and gas fields into his hands.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3065025/George-Soros-face-7...

Don't know what is going on exactly with cable TV access across much of the US... but apparently right now during the Mayweather Vs. Pacquiao fight, cable tv is suffering outages across many different regions and providers.  Don't know if this may mean hack attack or what but sharing here as it strikes me as another oddity especially considering the average price of the fight to watch $100.  Free for other countries like Mexico, Philippines and a few others.   Sigh.  Isn't greed fun?  lol ironic I suppose.  

• Mayweather vs. Pacquiao is breaking Pay-Per-View and everyone's fre...
• Technical issues keep pay-per-view buyers from watching Mayweather-...
• Headline: TV Execs Will Force You to Pay to Watch the Big Fight
• Mayweather vs Pacquiao 'live' coverage: PPV orders causes delays
• Tulsa Bar Says It's Getting Gouged By Mayweather-Pacquiao Fight Cost

From George Soros piece

-At the end of 2013, Soros had amassed $13.3 billion through the use of deferrals, according to Irish regulatory filings by Soros.

-Congress closed the loophole in 2008 and ordered hedge fund managers who used it to pay the accumulated taxes by 2017.

-Just before Congress closed the loophole, Soros transferred assets to Ireland—a country seen by some at the time as a possible refuge from the law. The filings show for the first time the extent to which Soros’s fortune came from finding ways to delay taxes and reinvesting the money in his fund.

-From October 2008 through the end of 2013, Quantum Ireland paid Irish taxes of $962 on $3,851 of net income after allocating $7.2 billion of operating income to investors as distributions on profit participation notes. Most, if not all, of the notes were held by Soros’s tax-exempt Open Society foundations.

-Last year, Soros shut down Quantum Ireland and moved the deferred fees to a new entity incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

-----------------------------

But in 2012, [when] he was asked by CNN if he supported President Barack Obama's proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy, he said, 'Yes, I very much do so, because it's the big boom, the super-bubble that resulted in a great increase in inequality. 

'Not only do we have the after effect where we have slow growth one way or the other, but if you have better distribution of income, the average American will be better off.'

-He now owes $6.7 billion in taxes; & this is only based on information that is public.

From Ryan's links, & this link, basically all the cable & satellite companies were fielding outage issue tweets.

Charter tweeted that the NBA playoffs & other channels were affected, as well.

http://yournewswire.com/iran-says-israel-must-give-up-its-nuclear-w...

Iran Says Israel Must Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons For Peace

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has demanded that Israel give up its nuclear weapons in order for peace in the Middle-East to succeed.

Rt.com reports:

Israel has never admitted or denied the widespread assumption it has nuclear weapons. However, Zarif says Israel’s assumed nuclear arsenal was a threat to regional security.

The Iranian Foreign Minister said the non-aligned movement regards Israel’s nuclear program as, “a serious and continuing threat to the security of neighboring and other states, and condemned Israel for continuing to develop and stockpile nuclear arsenals,” according to Reuters.

Israel has not signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), though it has sent an observer to the month long conference for the first time in 20 years.

Zarif added that the non-aligned bloc are looking to create a nuclear free-zone in the Middle East “as a matter of high priority,” which will only be possible, if Israel abandons its nuclear stockpile.

“Israel, [is] the only one in the region that has neither joined the NPT nor declared its intention to do so, (…) renounce possession of nuclear weapons,” AFP cited Zarif as saying.

The plan to create a nuclear free Middle East was agreed at the previous conference in 2010, but steps were never taken to ensure it was enforced.

Iran has been accused on numerous occasions by the West of trying to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge that Tehran has repeatedly denied. The country says its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes. Iran recently agreed on a framework deal concerning its nuclear interests with the P5+1 group in Switzerland, which would pave the way for it to be finalized in the summer.

However, Israel was highly critical of the move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that it “would not block Iran’s path to the bomb. It would pave it.”

During the conference, Tehran also demanded that countries who possessed nuclear weapons should not seek to modernize their weapons stockpiles.

“We call upon the nuclear-weapon states to immediately cease their plans to further invest in modernizing and extending the life span of their nuclear weapons and related facilities,” Zarif said.

The head of the UN, Ban Ki-moon singled out the US and Russia for criticism for failing to advance their nuclear disarmament. He added this was a setback that marked a return to a Cold War mindset. He added that a nuclear free world was a “historic imperative of our time.”

“I am deeply concerned that over the last five years this process seems to have stalled,” the UN leader said, AFP reported.

In an apparent attempt to deflect criticism, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States wants to “leave the race for nuclear arms in the past.”

“I am pleased to announce today that President Obama has decided that the United States will seek to accelerate the dismantling of retired nuclear warheads by 20 percent,” Kerry said.

Meanwhile Russia is fully open to a serious dialogue on nuclear disarmament, but it must be without any “double standards,” said the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Weapons Control, Mikhail Ulyanov.

“[Russia] is firmly committed to nuclear disarmament,” he said. “Clear evidence of that is the consistent implementation of the Russian-American New START treaty.”

The NPT came into force in 1970 and has seen a drastic cut in the number of nuclear weapons. However, UN officials believe that more can be done to reduce these stockpiles further.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194895#.VUbWevlVikr

Carter: Netanyahu is Not Committed to Peace

Former US President Jimmy Carter had harsh words for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday, saying a meeting with him would be a "waste of time."

Carter is in the midst of a three-day visit to Israel working to bring about a two-state solution. He met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Saturday, but did not meet with Netanyahu or President Reuven Rivlin. 

According to Carter, he had no intentions of meeting with Netanyahu, who refused to meet with him in any case, but would have liked and did request to meet with the President. 

Rivlin, however, on the advice of the Foreign Ministry, declined, due to Carter's staunch "anti-Israel opinions" and known sympathy for Gaza-based terror organization Hamas. 

In addition to calling a meeting with Netanyahu a "waste of time," the former President took another shot at the Prime Minister during an interview with Channel Two News, asserting that peace is not on his agenda. 

"The [Elders Group] stands for peace and human rights, and if human rights and peace are not on Netanyahu's agenda, I understand why he does not want to meet us," Carter charged. 

Earlier on Saturday, Carter urged Palestinian Arabs to hold elections to end the rapidly growing fierce enmity between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria.

During the Channel Two interview, Carter maintained his stance that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, adding that Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal is "strongly in favor of the peace process."

While saying he "deplored" criminal acts" by members of Hamas against "innocent" Israeli citizens, Carter claimed not all members of Hamas are terrorists, and that he is seeking the moderate members of the organization. 

He was not so complimentary in his assessment of Netanyahu, saying thatthe Prime Minister is not "in favor of a two-state solution" and thereforenot committed to peace. 

“I don’t see that deep commitment on the part of Netanyahu to make concessions which [former prime minister] Menachem Begin did to find peace with his potential enemies,” Carter said.

Stay Tuned for Cable Mergers as CEOs Convene This Week http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-03/stay-tuned-for-ca...

The cable-TV industry is again on the brink of large-scale consolidation, and odds are that Time Warner Cable Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and Bright House Networks will finally get together....

It’s possible Charter, Bright House, and Time Warner Cable all merge to form a company with about 18 million subscribers, challenging market leader Comcast as a clear No. 2 in the cable industry, the people said. That company would be owned by the Newhouse family, John Malone’s Liberty Broadband Corp., which owns more than 25 percent of Charter, and the remainder of Time Warner Cable and Charter’s shareholders.

(The Newhouse Family & John Malone together own Discovery , as well.)

===================

Quashing the Comcast Merger Is Just the Beginning - A new antitrust movement is on the march. http://www.thenation.com/article/205721/quashing-comcast-merger-jus...

Wells Fargo is accused of opening up accounts and credit cards in customers' names without their authorization.   http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/05/news/companies/wells-fargo-customer...

The accounts are being opened by Wells Fargo employees under pressure to meet unrealistic sales goals and quotas, according to the civil complaint filed by the Los Angeles City Attorney.

When fees on unauthorized accounts went unpaid, some customers were placed into collection. Others had negative information placed on their credit reports as a result.

The complaint, filed in California Superior Court on Monday, seeks a $2,500 fine for every unauthorized account, and seeks to have all of the money taken from customers returned. 

(Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is coincidentally Wells Fargo's largest shareholder)

(Here's how desperate Comcast is to salvage its badly bruised reputation.)

Group Sponsored By Comcast Gives An Award To Comcast http://consumerist.com/2015/05/05/group-sponsored-by-comcast-gives-...

The chair of the board from the Comcast-sponsored group is also a senior VP at Comcast. Basically, Comcast gave Comcast a pat on the back for being Comcast.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Profit Falls 52%  http://www.wsj.com/articles/news-corp-profit-falls-52-1430860529

Clinton Charity Hid More Foreign Donations Than First Realized 

http://firedoglake.com/2015/05/05/clinton-charity-hid-more-foreign-...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1158745...

Israeli school removes plaque honouring Lord Janner, the peer accused of sexual abuse

The plaque honouring the Labour peer at the school in Maalot Tarshiha in Israel's northern Galilee region was removed. The peer's family deny the abuse allegations

It has been ruled that Lord Janner is too ill to stand trial  Photo: Rex

^{Lord Janner, left, with Dr Israel Singer and US representative Gary Ackerman in Jerusalem in 2006 (AP)}

Officials at the school met last week to discuss changing its name after it emerged that there was enough evidence to try Lord Janner - who was MP for Leicester West for more than 30 years - with 22 counts of alleged sexual abuse.

Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, has ruled that Lord Janner, 86, is too ill to stand trial on the grounds that he is suffering from severe dementia and is unable to understand the charges against him.

Several men who claim they suffered abuse at Lord Janner's hands are seeking a legal review of the decision. The veteran peer was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2009.

Lord Janner's family has denied the allegations.

Exclusive: Obama to back Palestinian state at Security Council – payback for Israel’s right-wing cabinet.

http://www.debka.com/article/24582/Exclusive-Obama-to-back-Palestin...

Google Adsense censorship of alternative media:

http://antiwar.com/blog/2015/03/18/google-disables-all-ads-on-antiw...

http://wearechange.org/wearechange-censored-by-google-operation-in-...

* We have repeatedly stated that taking control of the Iranian oil fields was part of the plan from the start of the Bush takeover of the Executive Branch of the US government. The plan was to acquire Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, then push up into the Russian oil fields via Afghanistan, then finally a takeover by coup of Venezuela. This was so that the Bush clan and their cronies could control the majority of known oil resources in the world, becoming kings of the world in the time after the pole shift. The adamant insistence by Bush that Iran was a threat, accompanied by beating the drums of war, was based on this plan. -- ZetaTalk Chat December 8, 2007

*ZetaTalk: White Lie

Guatemala Vice President Resigns Amid Corruption Scandal
GUATEMALA CITY — May 8, 2015, 9:39 PM ET

Earlier in the day, she lost an appeal with the Constitutional Court seeking to overturn a ruling that gave congress a green light to begin an investigation into whether to strip her of the prosecutorial immunity that comes with office.

Recent days had seen rising calls for Baldetti's resignation by protesters and even influential business leaders.

After the announcement, hundreds of people celebrated in the streets of the capital with cheers, applause, firecrackers and honking car horns.

"Roxana's resignation is a victory for the people!" jubilant protesters chanted in central Constitution Square.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/guatemala-vice-presid...

Talk about the big payoff. Media top guys, editors, etc, getting their palms crossed so they stay "loyal".

.................

https://deadline.com/2015/05/media-executive-compensation-2014-list...

Everyone from Ted Cruz to Elizabeth Warren agrees: The widening income disparities between the super rich and everyone else threaten the health of the economy and the political system. But Big Media companies don’t mind based on Deadline’s fifth annual examination of industry moguls’ compensation packages.

Related

Media Companies Opened Compensation Spigots In 2014 - Full List

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/2014-ceo-comp-12.p..."/>

 

CBS,

Comcast,Discovery, Disney, Fox, Time Warner, and Viacom collectively allocated a record $399.2 million to their CEOs in 2014, up 50.9% vs 2013. The median outlay was $44.3 million, up 32.9%.

The numbers are skewed by Discovery’s $156.1 million package for David Zaslav; it’s inflated by a new contract awarding him huge slugs of stock that vest over several years. But if you take him out of the equation, the total still was up 5.2% to $243.1 million while the median increased 15.7% to a record $38.6 million.

Putin dismissed 18 generals

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on dismissal of 18 Russian generals. The decree was published on the official website of legal information.

The Head of State dismissed the Lieutenant General of Police Sergey Lavrov and head of the Federal Drug Control Service post of the Krasnodar Territory, Major-General Internal Service Andrei Pilipchuk from office Head of Media Relations of the Ministry of Interior. Also lost their posts Major General Internal Service Nikolai Shustov, the deputy chief of the emergency department for the Krasnodar Territory Police Major General Anatoly Zhukovsky, head of the Interior Ministry in Komi and other military personnel.

Presidential Decree shall enter into force on the day of its signing on 8 May.

In early April, Vladimir Putin held a large-scale layoffs in the MOE. Resigned from their posts were sent 22 senior management personnel of the Moscow and regional emergency department with the rank of colonel to colonel-general.

top.rbc.ru

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&a...

Judge’s Ruling Against 2 Banks Finds Misconduct in ’08 Crash

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/business/dealbook/nomura-found-li...

Kerry, ..., to Meet With Putin http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/world/middleeast/kerry-searching-...

A few days ago Putin meets with Xi Jinping at the victory parade, there were long negotiations and signed a lot of documents. Maybe ask a question in the chat, and this is due to the announcement?

Verizon buys AOL for $4.4bn http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32702558

AOL owns huffington post.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_REL_VATICAN_PALESTINIAN?S...

VATICAN RECOGNIZES "STATE OF PALESTINE" IN NEW TREATY

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty finalized Wednesday, immediately sparking Israeli ire and accusations that the move hurt peace prospects.

The treaty, which concerns the activities of the Catholic Church in Palestinian territory, is both deeply symbolic and makes explicit that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic recognition from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state and had referred to the Palestine state since. But the treaty is the first legal document negotiated between the Holy See and the Palestinian state, giving the Vatican's former signs of recognition an unambiguous confirmation in a formal, bilateral treaty.

"Yes, it's a recognition that the state exists," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was "disappointed."

"This move does not promote the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct and bilateral negotiations," the ministry said in a text message.

The United States and Israel oppose recognition, arguing that it undermines U.S.-led efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian deal on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Most countries in Western Europe have held off on recognition, but some have hinted that their position could change if peace efforts remain deadlocked.

The treaty was finalized days before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visits Pope Francis at the Vatican. Abbas is heading to Rome to attend Francis' canonization Sunday of two new saints from the Holy Land.

"This is a very important recognition as the Vatican has a very important political status that stems from its spiritual status," said Abbas' senior aide, Nabil Shaath. "We expect more EU countries to follow."

The Vatican has been referring unofficially to the state of Palestine since 2012.

During Pope Francis' 2014 visit to the Holy Land, the Vatican's official program referred to Abbas as the president of the "state of Palestine."

The Vatican's foreign minister, Monsignor Antoine Camilleri, acknowledged the change in status, but said the shift was simply in line with the Holy See's position.

The Holy See clearly tried to underplay the development, suggesting that its 2012 press statement welcoming the U.N. vote constituted its first official recognition. Nowhere in that statement does the Vatican say it recognizes the state of Palestine, and the Holy See couldn't vote for the U.N. resolution because it doesn't have voting rights at the General Assembly.

The Vatican's efforts to downplay the move seemed justified given the swift condemnation of the development by Israeli groups: The American Jewish Committee said it was "counterproductive to all who seek true peace between Israel and the Palestinians." The Anti-Defamation League said it was "premature."

"We appreciate that the Vatican's basic intention is to promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, but believe that this diplomatic recognition will be unhelpful to that end," the ADL's Abraham Foxman said.

The 2012 U.N. vote recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state, made up of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians celebrated the vote as a milestone in their quest for international recognition. Most countries in Africa, Asia and South America have individually recognized Palestine. In Western Europe, Sweden took the step last year, while several parliaments have approved non-binding motions urging recognition.

This isn't the first time that the Vatican under Francis has taken diplomatic moves knowing that it would please some quarters and ruffle feathers elsewhere: Just last month, he referred to the slaughter of Armenians by Turkish Ottomans a century ago as a "genocide," prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador.

Facebook 'tramples European privacy law': Belgian watchdog    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/us-facebook-eu-privacy-id...

Belgium's privacy watchdog accused Facebook (FB.O) on Friday of trampling on European privacy laws by tracking people online without their consent and dodging questions from national regulators. The commission said Facebook would not explain in detail how it uses data it collects. It highlighted problems with plug-ins such as Facebook's "Like" button, which it said affected many who do not have a Facebook account... 

Facebook places tracking "cookies" when anyone visits a Facebook page, meaning it can track the online activities of a huge number of non-customers, but has said this is a bug that it is working to fix.

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and UBS are likely to plead guilty to rigging foreign exchange rates to benefit their transactions  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/us-forex-rigging-pleas-id...

Banks want assurances from U.S. regulators that they will not be barred from certain businesses before agreeing to plead guilty to criminal charges...because criminal pleas trigger consequences such as removing the ability to manage retirement plans or raise capital easily.

Many of the banks want an SEC waiver to continue operating as "well-known seasoned issuers" so they can...bypass U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission approval and raise capital.

Another waiver being sought by some banks is the ability to retain a safe harbor that shields them from class action lawsuits when they make forward-looking statements.

The banks involved are also seeking waivers that will allow them to continue operating in the mutual fund business

related?

George Stephanopoulos, chief anchor of ABC News, pulls out of moderating Republican debate after Clinton donations revealed 

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/14/media/george-stephanopoulos-apology/

Stephanopoulos apologized on Thursday for not telling viewers or his bosses about $75,000 in recent donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Within hours [of the revelation], Stephanopoulos came out and said he would recuse himself from ABC's planned Republican presidential primary debate, scheduled to take place next February.

"I don't want to be a distraction," he told CNNMoney, "so I'm not going to moderate that debate." However, Stephanopoulos said, "I am going to continue to cover the 2016 campaign."

Stephanopoulos was one of Bill Clinton's closest advisers during Clinton's first term as president. He is now one of the most-respected and best-paid anchors at ABC News.

The network is not taking any disciplinary action against him

Russian Proton rocket feared lost after botched launch

http://rt.com/news/259217-russia-proton-launch-fail/

The launch of Russian Proton-M rocket went bad when its telemetry stopped, sources told media. There is concern that the rocket and its payload, a Mexican communication satellite, may be lost.

Telemetry stopped a minute before the MexSat-1 satellite was due to be placed into orbit. Roscosmos agency specialists are working to determine what exactly happened.

“It’s not known yet what happened, but apparently the detachment of the third stage of the vehicle did not go as scheduled,” a source in the space agency told RIA Novosti.

Another source said the third stage’s engines shut down after Proton had spent 498 seconds in flight.

“Preliminary data indicate that the third stage and the Mexican satellite may fall in the Chita region [of Russia]. The emergencies ministry has been notified,” the source told Interfax.

Local authorities said there were no reports in the Chita region of rocket debris falling anywhere near towns.

“If there were any casualties or damage, we would have known by now,” a spokesman for the local branch of the emergencies ministry told RIA Novosti.

MexSat-1, a 5.4 ton communication satellite was built for the Mexican government by Boeing Satellite Systems.

Saturday’s launch was initially scheduled for April 29 but was postponed at Boeing’s request, as the company required additional time for satellite testing. Proton’s previous launch was on March 29, when the rocket placed a Russian communication satellite into orbit.

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More.

Media Critique ABC News' Knee-Jerk Defense Of Stephanopoulos  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/15/media-george-stephanopoulo...

Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Friday that he was not surprised by how quickly the network came out in support of Stephanopolous.

"He's their chief anchor, he does 'GMA,' he does 'This Week,' he will come in to the anchor chair whenever there's breaking news -- he's the franchise," Wemple said. "He is ABC News."

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, on the other hand, said he was stunned by ABC's defense of Stephanopolous, but agreed with Wemple on the network's probable reason to do so: Peters added that the network has invested heavily in Stephanopoulos, so it "can't afford" to allow the controversy to sink his career.

"This is really a corporate branding protection exercise," Peters said.

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Geraldo Rivera: ABC Fired Me for $200 Donation, Why Not the Same for Stephanopoulos?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/geraldo-abc-fired-me-for-200-donatio...

http://thedailycoin.org/?p=29264#sthash.x5DXUkzr.07aPlDyg.dpbs

Another Dead Banker – Morgan Stanley Trader Shows Up Dead

BY THE DAILY COIN · MAY 16, 2015

Police had been searching the affluent neighbourhood along the shore of Lake Ontario for Abbott, who was last seen April 25. Abbott was a vice president in the capital markets group of Morgan Stanley’s Canadian wealth management division.

Abbott, 36, joined the New York-based bank in 2010 and earlier worked at Blackmont Capital Inc., a Toronto-based brokerage.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/pants-on-fire-analysis-shows-60-of-fox...

Fox News’ penchant for inaccuracy has give rise to popular urban legends, debunked by Snopes.com, suggesting that Fox won the right to lie in court — a claim based on a court case that involved a local Fox affiliate — and that the network was banned in Canada for lying.

Punditfact divides Fox’s on-air falsehoods into categories, from claims that are mostly false (21 percent), those that were completely false (31 percent), and the most blatant lies, which are termed “Pants On Fire” (9 percent).

But Fox News is not the only network blurring the lines between fact and fiction. A combined scorecard for MSNBC and NBC shows that Punditfact found 44 percent of the news broadcast by those networks was at least “mostly false” or worse. CNN got the best grades on their scorecard, with 80 percent of their reports deemed at least “half true.”

Punditfact began maintaining these scorecards in 2014, and their January analysis shows that MSNBC and CNN are improving their truthfulness score with time. Fox, however, is not improving — in fact, it’s getting worse.

Punditfact warns that these scorecards are based only on analysis of selected claims, not a statistically accurate survey: “We use our news judgment to pick the facts we’re going to check, so we certainly don’t fact-check everything. And we don’t fact-check the five network groups evenly.”

Even so, the Punditfact score cards show that while it is a myth that courts upheld Fox News’ right to lie, it can hardly be considered a reliable news outfit. Despite this fact, Fox routinely ranks as the top TV news network in terms of viewership, based on Nielsen statistics, causing irreparable harm to public perception of events.

In March, Jon Stewart compared this effect to blindness caused by a solar eclipse.

“It’s recommended you only watch Fox through a tiny pinhole poked in a piece of cardboard,” quipped Stewart. “You can’t look directly at Fox. It will indelibly burn your soul!”

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Billionaire_Oil_CEO_Demands_Scientis...

The billionaire CEO of Continental Resources told a dean at the University of Oklahoma that he wanted earthquake researchers fired. In one of the most transparently oligarchic tactics we have seen yet during this 'recovery', oil tycoon Harold Hamm demanded certain scientists be dismissed following their findings that fracking wastewater disposal was the .... Despite his protestations recently that "I don't try to push anyone around," as the following email obtained by Bloomberg, exposes, "Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed."

As we noted previously, no matter what other problems may or may not be linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly is primarily responsible for the recent spate of earthquakes in Oklahoma, normally a seismologically quiet state.

That’s the conclusion of a report issued April 21 by the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), in which the state geologist Richard D. Andrews and Dr. Austen Holland, the state seismologist, said the rate of earthquakes near major oil and gas drilling operations that produce large amounts of wastewater demonstrate that the quakes “are very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process.”

Andrews and Holland concluded that the “primary suspected source” of the quakes is not hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which water and chemicals are injected under high pressure to crack shale to free oil and gas trapped inside. It saidthe source is more likely the injection of wastewater from this process in disposal wells, because water used in fracking cannot be re-used.

“The OGS considers it very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those in central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells,” the statement said. It warned that residents should prepare for “a significant earthquake.”

Oklahoma recorded 585 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or greater, the equivalent of the force felt in Oklahoma City at the time of t....This is a significant increase from 109 earthquakes of the same magnitude in 2013. Before 2008, when fracking became a popular drilling technique in the state,there were fewer than two earthquakes in Oklahoma each year, on average.

 

Andrews’ and Holland’s report draws the same conclusions as a study last year by Katie Keranen, an assistant professor of seismology at Cornell University, who found that injecting fracking wastewater into underground disposal sites tends to widen cracks in geological formations, increasing the chances of earthquakes.

Keranen’s study, in turn, reinforces similar conclusions in a previous study by the U.S. Geological Survey, which found that earthquakes in central and eastern parts of the United States between 2010 and 2013 also coincided with the disposal of fracking wastewater.

What’s important about Andrews’ and Holland’s conclusion is that they represent the state of Oklahoma, where energy is an important industry, providing about one-quarter of the state’s jobs. Last autumn, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, dismissed the problem as speculativ...

But in a statement coinciding with Andrews’ and Holland’s report, Fallin said their ability to link wastewater disposal with earthquakes was significant and promised unspecified action. “Oklahoma state agencies already are taking action to address this issue and protect homeowners,” she said.

The state’s energy industry also supports further study of the state’s recent uncharacteristic seismic activity. “Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas producers have a proven history of developing the state’s oil and natural gas resources in a safe and effective manner,” Kim Hatfield, regulatory committee chairman for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, said in a statement.

And now, as Bloomberg reports, it is clear the elites were not happy with these findings...

 

 

According to the dean's e-mail recounting the conversation, Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state's nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes...

 

O’Reilly’s lack of response is especially worth noting. The anchor has spent his highly remunerated career obsessing over patterns of violence among racial minorities, particularly black people, and the apparently unique effect of violence on the integrity of black families.