U.S. ground troops going to Poland, defense minister
says 18 Apr 2014 Poland and the
United States will announce next week the deployment of U.S. ground forces to
Poland as part of an expansion of NATO presence in Central and Eastern Europe in
response to events in Ukraine. That was the word from Poland's defense minister,
Tomasz Siemoniak, who visited The Post Friday after meeting with Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday. There will also be
intensified cooperation in air defense, special forces, cyberdefense and other
areas.
U.S. Plans Ground-Force Exercises in Eastern
Europe --U.S. considering other ways to maintain regular
ground-force presence in Eastern Europe 19 Apr 2014 The United
States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia,
Western officials said Friday. It is not yet clear what additional troop
deployments the United States and other NATO nations might undertake in
Eastern Europe after the exercises. The exercise in Poland, which is expected to
be announced next week, would involve a United States Army company and would
last about two weeks, officials said. The exercise in Estonia would be similar,
said a Western official who declined to be identified because he was talking
about internal planning.
Ex-Russian Alaska 'too cold' to annex, Putin
jokes 17 Apr 2014 In a patriotic
fervour, Russians are asking President Vladimir Putin to bring back the US state
of Alaska, sold off to the United States in Tsarist times. Putin's answer? It's
too cold. During Putin's annual marathon phone-in session Thursday, when
Russians pose questions to the Russian leader, a pensioner asked him to possibly
follow the annexation [reunification] of Crimea from Ukraine with the taking of
Alaska... "We have a northern country -- 70 percent of our territory are in the
north and the far north," he noted. "Alaska is cold too," he said. "Let's not
get ahead of ourselves."
US sends advanced weapons to Syrian
'rebels'
19 Apr 2014 The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel terrorist groups with a
small number of advanced American antitank missiles for the first time in a
pilot program that could lead to larger flows of sophisticated weaponry, people
briefed on the effort said. This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can
find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the
hands of extremists, Saudi and Syrian opposition figures said. The U.S. has long
feared that if it does supply advanced arms, the weapons will wind up
with radical groups--some tied to al Qaeda [al-CIAduh]--which have set up bases
in opposition-held territory.
Guantánamo judge to CIA: Disclose 'black site' details to USS
Cole defense lawyers
--Order was sealed as document 120C on war court website Thursday
morning 17 Apr 2014 The military judge in the USS Cole bombing case has
ordered the CIA to give defense lawyers details -- names, dates and places -- of
its secret overseas detention and interrogation of the man accused of planning
the bombing, two people who have read the still-secret order said Thursday. Army
Col. James L. Pohl issued the five-page order Monday. The order sets the stage
for a showdown between the CIA and a military judge, if the agency refuses to
turn over the information to the prosecution for the defense
teams.
Covert Inquiry by F.B.I. Rattles 9/11
Tribunals --With that
signature, Mr. bin al-Shibh's lawyers say, the government turned a member of
their team into an F.B.I. informant. 19 Apr 2014 Two weeks ago, a pair
of F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced at the door of a member of the defense
team for one of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a
contractor working with the defense team at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the man was
bound by the same confidentiality rules as a lawyer. But the agents wanted to
talk. They asked questions, lawyers say, about the legal teams for Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other accused terrorists who will
eventually stand trial before a military tribunal at Guantánamo. Before they
left, the agents asked the contractor to sign an agreement promising not to tell
anyone about the conversation.
Edward Snowden asks Putin about mass
surveillance --Russian
President Vladimir Putin denies that his country is intercepting the
communications of millions of Russian citizens 17 Apr 2014 President
Putin was asked by former National Security Agency systems
analyst Edward Snowden, whether Russian officials stored, or analysed "the
communications of millions of individuals". Putin said he doesn't allow "this
kind of mass surveillance" to take place in Russia, adding that his country
doesn't have the technical or financial capabilities that the United States
has.
Lavabit loses contempt of court appeal over Edward Snowden
encryption keys
--Government had issued so-called 'pen/trap order' to access metadata from
account of target, thought to be Snowden 17 Apr 2014 A federal appeals
court on Wednesday upheld a contempt of court ruling against Lavabit, an email
service that was used by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward
Snowden. Lavabit founder Ladar Levison challenged the contempt of court order issued to him for refusing to provide the government with
encryption keys to his secure email service. The fourth US circuit court of
appeals Judge G Steven Agee said in the ruling that the
court’s decision was made because of a procedural error in the
appeal.
Flight MH370 climbed to 39,000 feet, just short of safe
operating limit --Jet
was equipped with four emergency locator transmitters, source says 18
Apr 2014 New information has come to light about the path taken by Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370 before it disappeared from radar screens on March 8. The
plane deviated from its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing by turning
leftward over water while it was still inside Vietnamese airspace, a senior
Malaysian aviation source told CNN. The aircraft then climbed to 39,000 feet,
just short of the Boeing 777-200ER's 41,000 feet safe operating limit, and
maintained that altitude for about 20 minutes over the Malaysian Peninsula
before beginning to descend, the source said.
Security threat reported on
Detroit-Denver Delta flight 18 Apr
2014 A Delta Airlines flight that landed at a Denver airport was directed to a
remote taxiway after an unspecified "potential security threat" onboard and
passengers were ushered off the plane, interviewed and the scene secured,
officials said. Flight 1500, a Boeing 737 with 151 passengers and six crew,
landed roughly on time at Denver International Airport from Detroit Metropolitan
Airport at about 4:40 p.m. Mountain Time (2240 GMT), airline spokesman Russell
Cason said. The passengers were quickly sent off the plane without their luggage
and taken by bused to a separate part of the airport where they were being
interviewed by FBI officials.
False
flag prep work: Law enforcement holds security drills at BART
stations 18 Apr 2014 A number of
police and state and federal law enforcement agencies converged on several BART
stations Friday morning to conduct security drills. The drills were an effort to
help coordinate amongst the agencies just in case of a major emergency, said
officials. The drill ran from 8:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the West Oakland,
Embarcadero, Coliseum and SFO BART stations.
Federal prosecutors want to talk to Port Authority
commissioners about Bridgegate - source 18 Apr 2014 Federal prosecutors want to talk to Port Authority
commissioners about September's George Washington Bridge lane closures, a source
told The Star-Ledger. At least one member of the Port Authority Board of
Commissioners received a call from the U.S. attorney's office in Newark today,
said a source familiar with the matter. "They want to talk about the bridge,"
said the source, referring to the GWB, where the closing of two out of three
local access lanes snarled traffic in Fort Lee, touching off the so-called
Bridgegate scandal.
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