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President Barack Obama has arrived in Senegal on the first leg of a three-nation tour of Africa.
This is Barack Obama’s second visit to the African continent since he became president.
President Barack Obama has arrived in Senegal on the first leg of a three-nation tour of Africa
Barack Obama is hoping to boost economic ties with the African countries and promote good governance – all the countries he is visiting have stable democracies.
The South African leg of his trip is expected to be overshadowed by the continuing critical condition of former President Nelson Mandela.
The White House has said it will defer to the wishes of Nelson Mandela’s family over whether the former South African president is well enough to receive a visit from him in hospital.
Barack Obama, who arrived in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on Wednesday night with his family, is due to meet the country’s President Macky Sall later on Thursday.
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President Barack Obama has used his public speech in Berlin to propose cuts of one-third in American and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, Barack Obama called for reductions in the number of tactical warheads deployed in Europe.
The US president also pledged to boost efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and tackle climate change.
Earlier, Barack Obama met Chancellor Angela Merkel, who criticized the broad scope of US surveillance programmes.
This is Barack Obama’s first visit to Berlin as American president.
His address to students and government officials at the Brandenburg Gate, which once divided East and West Germany, comes almost 50 years after President John F. Kennedy’s celebrated “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
In a speech which centred on a theme of freedoms, Barack Obama said the gate was a symbol that “no wall can stand against the yearnings for justice… that burn in the human heart”.
“Today’s threats are not as stark as they were half a century ago, but the struggle for freedom and security and human dignity, that struggle goes on,” he said.
“We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe,” calling for intensified efforts to limit their spread.
Barack Obama said he had determined that the US could ensure its own and its allies security and maintain a credible deterrent “while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third”.
“I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” he said.
Under the New Start treaty which the US signed with Russia in 2010, each side is allowed a maximum of 1,550 warheads and no more than 700 deployed launchers.
The new limit on delivery systems is less than half the ceiling of 1,600 specified in the original Start treaty from 1991.
Barack Obama spoke at Brandenburg Gate 50 years after JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech
Barack Obama added that the US would also work alongside NATO allies to seek “bold reductions” in the use of tactical weapons in Europe, and would also seek to forge a new international framework for the use of peaceful nuclear power.
He said the US rejected the nuclearisation of countries like North Korea and Iran.
Shortly before Barack Obama spoke, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying that Moscow “cannot allow the balance of the system of strategic deterrence to be disturbed or the effectiveness of our nuclear force to be decreased”.
A senior foreign policy adviser to Vladimir Putin said other nuclear-armed countries would have also have to reduce their stockpiles for such a plan to work.
“The situation now is not like in the 1960s and 1970s when only the United States and the Soviet Union held talks on reducing nuclear arms,” Yury Ushakov told a briefing in Moscow.
“Now we need to look more broadly… and increase the circle of participants in possible contacts on this matter.”
Barack Obama said that for the US, moving beyond the Cold War “mindset of perpetual war” also meant redoubling efforts to close the US prison camp at Guantanamo, tightly controlling the use of new technology like drones and “balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy”.
In her morning meetings with Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel had criticized PRISM, the recently exposed US phone and internet surveillance programmes, saying: “We do see the need for gathering information, but there is a need for due diligence and proportionality.”
The chancellor grew up in Communist East Germany, where police surveillance was widespread.
Angela Merkel acknowledged that the internet “enables enemies of a free liberal order to use and abuse and bring threats to all of us”, but “an equitable balance must be struck”.
Barack Obama said the monitoring applied within narrow limits to do with national security. It had detected 50 potential threats and saved many lives, he emphasized.
“This is not a situation where we simply go into the internet and begin searching any way we want,” the US president told a news conference in Berlin.
Barack Obama’s visit comes after G8 leaders backed calls for holding Syrian peace talks in Geneva “as soon as possible”.
Speaking earlier, Barack Obama said the US was confident that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons during the 26-month-old conflict, but refused to spell out what aid might go the rebels.
“I cannot and will not comment on specifics on our programmes related to the Syrian opposition,” Barack Obama said, stressing his support for a political transition.
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War correspondent Michael Hastings has died in a car crash in Los Angeles at the age 33, his employer, news website BuzzFeed, has confirmed.
The journalist’s vehicle hit a tree and caught fire on Tuesday morning, US media report.
Michael Hastings was best known for his award-winning profile in Rolling Stone magazine of ex-US Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal.
General Stanley McChrystal was dismissed after he openly criticized President Barack Obama in the story.
The military leader later quipped about the incident, telling military staff during his Pentagon farewell address: “I have stories on all of you, photos of many, and I know a Rolling Stone reporter.”
The accident which killed Michael Hastings is thought to have occurred on Highland Avenue in the Hancock Park neighborhood.
War correspondent Michael Hastings has died in a car crash in Los Angeles at the age 33
Authorities confirmed a man had been killed in a car crash there on Tuesday morning, but would not confirm his identity.
BuzzFeed‘s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, said he had learnt the news from a family member.
“We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone,” Ben Smith said.
“Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians.”
At the time of his death, Michael Hastings was also still a contributing editor at Rolling Stone.
“I’m sad that I’ll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won’t be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours,” the magazine’s managing editor Will Dana said.
Michael Hastings began his career at Newsweek magazine in 2002, and was named the publication’s Baghdad correspondent in 2005.
Michael Hastings’ work has also appeared in The Washington Post, the LA Times and numerous publications.
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Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have acknowledged at the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland that they have a different stance on Syria, but agreed to push for a summit in Geneva.
After face-to-face talks, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin said they shared a common desire to end the violence.
Both also said they were optimistic on Iran, after its presidential election.
Earlier, the G8 nations discussed the global economy, with the leaders agreeing world prospects remained weak.
The G8 leaders are now heading to a working dinner, where Syria is likely to be top of the agenda.
Other nations joining the UK, US and Russia for the 39th Summit of the Group of Eight (G8) in Lough Erne, County Fermanagh, are Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama met for about two hours on the sidelines of the summit.
Correspondents say that both leaders looked tense as they addressed journalists afterwards, with the Russian president regularly looking at the floor.
Vladimir Putin said: “Our positions do not fully coincide, but we are united by the common intention to end the violence, to stop the number of victims increasing in Syria, to resolve the problems by peaceful means, including the Geneva talks.”
Barack Obama said the two leaders had instructed their teams to press ahead with trying to organize the peace conference in Switzerland.
Neither the rebels nor the Syrian government have yet fully committed to the proposed Geneva talks, which would seek to end more than two years of unrest that has left an estimated 93,000 people dead.
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin did say that they had agreed to meet in Moscow in September.
Earlier UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who is hosting the summit, had said he hoped to find “common ground” on Syria.
The US said last week it was prepared to arm opposition forces, saying it had evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons on a “small scale”.
David Cameron, who backed the recent lifting of EU arms sanctions against the rebels, said on Monday that no decision had yet been made on whether the UK would do the same.
In an interview in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Monday, President Bashar al-Assad denied that his military had used chemical weapons, and warned that arming the rebels would result in “the direct export of terrorism to Europe”.
“Terrorists will return to fight, equipped with extremist ideology,” he said.
US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland
On Monday, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said of the possibility of a no-fly zone over Syria: “I think we fundamentally would not allow this scenario.”
The formal talks on Monday covered the global economy.
In their statement after the session, the leaders said prospects remained weak but added that action in the US, Japan and eurozone had helped ease the situation.
“Downside risks in the euro area have abated over the past year, but it remains in recession.
“The US recovery is continuing and the deficit is declining rapidly in the context of a continuing need for further progress towards balanced medium-term fiscal sustainability.”
Ahead of the first session, the US and EU members of the G8 announced that negotiations were to begin on a wide-ranging free-trade deal.
David Cameron, Barack Obama and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso held a press conference on the proposed EU-US deal.
The British prime minister said a successful agreement would have a greater impact than all other world trade deals put together.
“This is a once-in-a-generation prize and we are determined to seize it,” said David Cameron.
He said the deal “could add as much as £100 billion [$157 billion; 117 billion euros] to the EU economy, £80 billion to the US economy and as much as £85 billion to the rest of the world”.
Barack Obama said the deal was a priority for the US and he hoped that it would create an economic alliance as strong as the diplomatic and security alliances the two sides enjoyed.
G8 Summit agenda
Monday:
- 15:45: Official arrivals
- 16:45: Global economy
- 18:15: Bilateral meetings
- 20:00: Foreign policy
Tuesday:
- 07:00: Bilateral meetings
- 08:30: Counter-terrorism
- 10:30: Tax transparency
- 14:30: Closing talks
- 15:30: UK PM press conference
- 15:45: Other leaders’ press conferences
(All timings BST)
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It appears the Washington Post on Friday revised the story about Barack Obama’s trip to Africa with no note to the reader about the changes.
The Washington Post on Thursday reported the White House canceled Barack Obama’s Tanzanian safari “following inquiries” from the paper “about the trip’s purpose and expense” – but the version online and in print on Friday offers a different take with no clarification or note that the story has been updated and changed.
In the first version, there’s a direct connection between the Washington Post’s inquiries and the canceled safari – and in the updated version, that link is no longer directly made. Readers to the item, meanwhile, were not told that any information in the story had been revised. The story states “published: June 13,” but not that it was updated and revised.
“Obama’s trip to Africa could cost $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, according to one person familiar with the journey,” the Washington Post reported.
In the first version of the story, posted online on Thursday, the reporters stated: “The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counter-assault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document. But the White House canceled the safari on Wednesday following inquiries from The Washington Post about the trip’s purpose and expense, according to a person familiar with the decision.”
Friday’s version of the story – both online and in print – has the same set-up in the section about the canceled Tanzanian safari, but no longer includes the line that the White House canceled the trip following their inquiries. Instead, the story now reads that officials said the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island.
“When The Post first asked White House officials about the safari last week, they said no final decision had been made,” the story reads.
“A White House official said Thursday that the cancellation was not related to The Post’s inquiries.”
Spokesman Josh Earnest told the newspaper: “We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.”
It appears the Washington Post revised the story about Barack Obama’s trip to Africa with no note to the reader about the changes
The Washington Post, however, notes that “internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.”
The story does not include any indication that it was revised and updated.
Document: Major resources needed for Obama Africa trip is currently #1 on the Washington Post’s “most popular” list for Politics.
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President Barack Obama’s trip to Africa this month could cost the tax payers anywhere from $60 million to $100 million, according to the Washington Post, which obtained an internal planning document for the travel itinerary.
At the end of June, President Barack Obama and his family will take an eight-day trip to sub-Saharan Africa, making stops in Senegal, Tanzania, and South Africa in the name of reinforcing U.S. commitment to forging strong relationships with emerging democracies in the region.
Barack Obama will hold meetings with “a wide array of leaders from government, business, and civil society, including youth,” according to a White House press release announcing the trip, and seek to “underscore the [his administration’s] commitment to broadening and deepening cooperation between the U.S. and the people of sub-Saharan Africa to advance regional and global peace and prosperity.”
Presidential trips to foreign countries tend to be expensive in any administration: According to the Washington Post, former President Bill Clinton’s 1998 trip to Africa racked up a bill of at least $42.7 million, not including what were likely significant Secret Service costs. For his part, former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, took two trips to Africa in 2003 and 2008, involving significant resources as well. But there are also paper reports that, due to “a confluence of factors,” Barack Obama’s three-country trip could be “one of the most expensive” of his presidency.
“Obama’s trip could cost the federal government $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, according to one person familiar with the journey, who was not authorized to speak for attribution,” the Washington Post reported. The paper said that it received the internal planning document from a “person who is concerned about the amount of resources necessary for the trip.”
President Barack Obama’s trip to Africa this month could cost the tax payers anywhere from $60 million to $100 million
According to the Washington Post, the expenses listed on the document include: “Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.
“Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.”
Other sources of expense include the use of 56 vehicles and hundreds of Secret Service agents, according to the Washington Post. The document, however, did not note specific prices.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama had reportedly been planning to go on a safari in Tanzania, but the Washington Post says that trip was canceled after reporters inquired into the cost and purpose of the trip.
At a press briefing on Friday, White House spokesman Ben Rhodes defended the trip, noting that “we have not traveled to Africa in the same way that we’ve traveled to other regions in the world” and that “Africa’s a critically important region of the world.”
“We have huge interests there… So for the United States to say, <<We’re a world leader except in this continent>> doesn’t make any sense,” Ben Rhodes told reporters.
“From a foreign policy perspective, in some respects, people believe this trip is overdue. And, frankly, there will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa, because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you can have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit.”
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The White House has announced today that President Barack Obama has approved for the first time a direct military aid to the Syrian opposition.
President Barack Obama made the decision after his administration concluded Syrian forces under President Bashar al-Assad were using chemical weapons, a spokesman said.
Ben Rhodes did not give details about the military aid other than to say it would be “different in scope and scale to what we have provided before”.
Russia said the US claims on Syria’s chemical weapons use were unconvincing.
Yury Ushakov, a senior aide to President Vladimir Putin, told reporters that Washington had provided Moscow with its evidence, but “what was presented…. does not look convincing to us”.
The US announcement is one that the Syrian opposition has been pushing and praying for months.
It seems clear that President Barack Obama has finally been persuaded, as Britain and France have argued, that the battlefield cannot be allowed to tilt strongly in the regime’s favor, as is currently happening.
Washington’s “clear” statement was welcomed by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who urged Syria to let the UN “investigate all reports of chemical weapons use”.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK agreed with Washington’s assessment and said an urgent response to the Syria crisis would be discussed at the G8 this week.
But a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told said that he remained against “any further militarization” of the conflict in Syria, saying the people there need peace not more weapons.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, said the US intelligence community believed the “Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times over the last year”.
He said intelligence officials had a “high confidence” in their assessment, and also estimated that 100 to 150 people had died from chemical weapons attacks, “however, casualty data is likely incomplete”.
“We have consistently said the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses red lines that have existed in the international community for decades,” Ben Rhodes said.
President Barack Obama has approved for the first time a direct military aid to the Syrian opposition
Ben Rhodes said President Barack Obama had made the decision to increase assistance, including “military support”, to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) and Syrian Opposition Coalition.
He did not give details of the aid, but administration officials have been quoted by US media as saying it will most likely include sending small arms and ammunition.
The New York Times quoted US officials as saying that Washington could provide anti-tank weapons.
Syria’s rebels have been calling for both anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is also considering a no-fly zone inside Syria, possibly near the border with Jordan, that would protect refugees and rebels who are training there.
When asked whether Barack Obama would back a no-fly zone over Syria, Ben Rhodes said one would not make a “huge difference” on the ground – and would be costly.
He said further actions would be taken “on our own timeline.”
The CIA is expected to co-ordinate delivery of the military equipment and train the rebel soldiers in how to use it.
Until now, the US has limited its help to rebel forces by providing rations and medical supplies.
Ben Rhodes said the White House hoped the increased support would bolster the effectiveness and legitimacy of both the political and military arms of Syria’s rebels, and said the US was “comfortable” working with SMC chief Gen Salim Idris.
“It’s been important to work through them while aiming to isolate some of the more extremist elements of the opposition, such as al-Nusra,” he said.
The US decision marks a significant escalation of the proxy war that has been gathering pace in Syria, our Beirut correspondent says.
The support of the West’s regional allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, had helped the rebels in the days after the uprising became militarized.
But the tide turned after the Assad government turned to Moscow and Tehran for help. Hezbollah fighters have also been involved in the government’s counter-offensive.
Now the West is lining up to try and help the rebels, but that is likely to take many months with more bloodshed and destruction.
The White House announcement immediately shook up the ongoing debate in Washington DC over how the US might provide assistance to the rebels.
Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have been particularly strident in their calls for military aid, said the finding must change US policy in Syria. They called for further action, saying US credibility was on the line.
“A decision to provide lethal assistance, especially ammunition and heavy weapons, to opposition forces in Syria is long overdue, and we hope the president will take this urgently needed step,” they said in a joint statement.
“But providing arms alone is not sufficient. The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air.”
The White House announcement came on the same day the UN said the number of those killed in the Syrian conflict had risen to more than 93,000 people.
A UN report released on Thursday found at least 5,000 people have been dying in Syria every month since last July, with 30,000 killed since November.
More than 80% of those killed were men, but the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says it has also documented the deaths of more than 1,700 children under the age of 10.
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The White House said today that Syrian forces under President Bashar al-Assad have used chemical weapons “on a small scale” against the opposition rebels.
A senior aide to President Barack Obama said the US estimated 100-150 people had died in “multiple” attacks.
Ben Rhodes said the US president had decided to provide unspecified “military support” to the opposition.
The White House had previously warned that the US considers the use of such weapons crossing a “red line”.
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama, said the US had no “reliable” evidence the opposition had used chemical weapons.
Earlier, the United Nations said the number of those killed in the Syrian conflict had risen to more than 93,000 people.
Ben Rhodes said the president had made the decision to increase assistance, including “military support”, to the opposition’s Supreme Military Council (SMC).
He declined to provide further details, other than to say it would be “different in scope and scale to what we have provided before”.
Syrian forces under President Bashar al-Assad have used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition rebels
“The president has been clear that the use of chemical weapons – or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups – is a red line for the US,” Ben Rhodes said.
“Our intelligence community now has a high confidence assessment that chemical weapons have been used on a small scale by the Assad regime in Syria. The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has.”
Ben Rhodes said US intelligence agencies had concluded Bashar al-Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, based on battlefield reports, “descriptions of physiological symptoms” from alleged victims, and laboratory analysis of samples obtained from alleged victims.
However, the full number killed by chemical weapons was “likely incomplete”, Ben Rhodes said in a conference call with reporters.
“Put simply, the Assad regime should know that its actions have led us to increase the scope and scale of assistance that we provide to the opposition,” he said, including direct support to the SMC.
“These efforts will increase going forward.”
Further actions will be taken “on our own timeline”, Ben Rhodes said.
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David Siegel is the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a huge national timeshare company and one of the largest resort developers in the world.
In 2007 David Siegel was a billionaire, although he may be only a hundred-millionaire now.
David Siegel, 78 and his 47-year-old wife Jackie were the subjects of the recent documentary The Queen of Versailles, about their ongoing quest to build the largest house in America, a 90,000 square foot monument to excess.
Last year David Siegel sent an email to all of his thousands of employees, in which he—in a veiled way—insinuated that they would be fired of Barack Obama is reelected.
In fact it was a popular chain letter that was circulated just before the 2008 elections. Even David Siegel confirmed he used a chain letter which was adapted to fir his company. “I did use the letter that had circulated before as a guideline, but I changed it [to fit my circumstances],” he said.
“It speaks the truth and it gives [employees] something to think about when they go to the polls.”
David Siegel also said that its threats of possible layoffs are real, based on his assessment of the political and economic climate. He added that he “hasn’t had any negative feedback” on the letter.
The Florida-based Westgate Resorts is not a public company. It is the domain of David Siegel, a staunch Republican. In fact, David Siegel has publicly claimed credit for George W. Bush defeating Al Gore, saying: “I had my managers do a survey on every employee [8,000 total]. If they liked Bush, we made them register to vote. But not if they liked Gore.”
The Queen of Versailles documentary depicts the dashing of David Siegel’s mansion dreams after the recession hit. But just months before, he restarted construction on his personal Palace of Versailles (with the intention of selling it for $100 million) and told Reuters: “We’re the most profitable we’ve ever been.”
David Siegel and his wife Jackie were the subjects of the recent documentary The Queen of Versailles, about their ongoing quest to build the largest house in America
David Siegel’s amazing email sent to all Westgate employees:
Subject: Message from David Siegel
Date:Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:58:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: [David Siegel]
To: [All employees]
To All My Valued Employees,
As most of you know our company, Westgate Resorts, has continued to succeed in spite of a very dismal economy. There is no question that the economy has changed for the worse and we have not seen any improvement over the past four years. In spite of all of the challenges we have faced, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. Of course, as your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn’t interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose. In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best.
However, let me share a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest. The current administration and members of the press have perpetuated an environment that casts employers against employees. They want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. They label us the “1%” and imply that we are somehow immune to the challenges that face our country. This could not be further from the truth. Sure, you may have heard about the big home that I’m building. I’m sure many people think that I live a privileged life. However, what you don’t see or hear is the true story behind any success that I have achieved.
I started this company over 42 years ago. At that time, I lived in a very modest home. I converted my garage into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you. We didn’t eat in fancy restaurants or take expensive vacations because every dollar I made went back into this company. I drove an old used car, and often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. Meanwhile, many of my friends got regular jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a nice income, and they spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into this business —-with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford to buy whatever I wanted. Even to this day, every dime I earn goes back into this company. Over the past four years I have had to stop building my dream house, cut back on all of my expenses, and take my kids out of private schools simply to keep this company strong and to keep you employed.
Just think about this – most of you arrive at work in the morning and leave that afternoon and the rest of your time is yours to do as you please. But not me- there is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have that freedom. I eat, live, and breathe this company every minute of the day, every day of the week. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. I know many of you work hard and do a great job, but I’m the one who has to sign every check, pay every expense, and make sure that this company continues to succeed. Unfortunately, what most people see is the nice house and the lavish lifestyle. What the press certainly does not want you to see, is the true story of the hard work and sacrifices I’ve made.
Now, the economy is falling apart and people like me who made all the right decisions and invested in themselves are being forced to bail out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed 42 years of my life for. Yes, business ownership has its benefits, but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the costs of running a business have gotten out of control, and let me tell you why: We are being taxed to death and the government thinks we don’t pay enough. We pay state taxes, federal taxes, property taxes, sales and use taxes, payroll taxes, workers compensation taxes and unemployment taxes. I even have to hire an entire department to manage all these taxes. The question I have is this: Who is really stimulating the economy? Is it the Government that wants to take money from those who have earned it and give it to those who have not, or is it people like me who built a company out of his garage and directly employs over 7000 people and hosts over 3 million people per year with a great vacation?
Obviously, our present government believes that taking my money is the right economic stimulus for this country. The fact is, if I deducted 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, that’s what happens to me.
Here is what most people don’t understand and the press and our Government has chosen to ignore – to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Instead of raising my taxes and depositing that money into the Washington black-hole, let me spend it on growing the company, hire more employees, and generate substantial economic growth. My employees will enjoy the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But that is not what our current Government wants you to believe. They want you to believe that it somehow makes sense to take more from those who create wealth and give it to those who do not, and somehow our economy will improve. They don’t want you to know that the “1%”, as they like to label us, pay more than 31% of all the taxes in this country. Thomas Jefferson, the author of our great Constitution, once said, “democracy” will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate business, not kill it. However, the power brokers in Washington believe redistributing wealth is the essential driver of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change they want.
So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.
So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn’t? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job. While the media wants to tell you to believe the “1 percenters” are bad, I’m telling you they are not. They create most of the jobs. If you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the “1%”; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country.
You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities. If that happens, you can find me in the Caribbean sitting on the beach, under a palm tree, retired, and with no employees to worry about.
Signed, your boss,
David Siegel
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The FBI teamed up with the US Postal Service to track down ricin mailing suspect Shannon Guess Richardson using a system that snaps pictures of “every mail piece that is processed”, according to a complaint.
Filed Friday in Texas, the complaint details how federal investigators narrowed down the origin of the letters by reviewing the pieces of mail scanned before and after the ricin containing letters sent to President Barack Obama, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a gun control lobby sponsored by the mayor.
Postmarked in Shreveport, Louisiana, the letters were processed at a regional distribution facility in the city, according to the complaint. Though in Louisiana, the plant also processes mail for parts of Arkansas and Texas, where Shannon Richardson resides, the complaint explains.
By referencing two separate batches of mail processed by the postal service’s Automated Facer Canceller System (ACFS) on May 20, as well as the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, which takes the actual pictures of the mail, agents determined the mail came from the area around New Boston, Texas, the complaint states.
FBI and the US Postal Service tracked ricin suspect Shannon Guess Richardson down using an advanced system that takes pictures of and tracks every piece of mail sent in the US
The first of the three letters, addressed to mayor Michael Bloomberg, was opened four days later at a mail center in Lower Manhattan. The second was opened two days later in Washington, D.C., by a staffer at The Raben Group, the Bloomberg-sponsored gun control lobbying firm. The third was intercepted on May 30 before reaching President Barack Obama, having been opened at the White House mail facility, the complaint detailed.
Shannon Richardson met in Shreveport with investigators later that day, accused her husband of sending the letters and turned over a book of stamps, which investigators determined on June 3 to be the same book of stamps the ricin letters postage came from, said the complaint posted on the Smoking Gun.
Further investigation led to warrant-less searches of the couple’s New Boston home, turning up castor beans – which contain the toxic ricin poison, saved letters matching those mailed and other physical evidence, according to the report.
The nail in Shannon Richardson’s accusatory coffin was that her husband, Nathaniel Richardson, was found to have been working a 10-hour shift starting 6:30 a.m., which was corroborated by coworkers, the day the letters were postmarked, the complaint states.
Shannon Richardson’s alibi in shambles, she confessed to trying to set her husband up, she mailed the letters – a photo finish to a lie and, perhaps, her marriage.
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President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have ended a two-day summit in California, which was described by US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon as “unique, positive and constructive”.
Tom Donilon said Barack Obama had warned Xi Jinping that cyber-crime could be an “inhibitor” in US-China relations.
He also said that both countries had agreed that North Korea had to denuclearize.
The talks in California also touched on economic and environmental issues.
The two leaders spent nearly six hours together on Friday and another three hours on Saturday morning at the sprawling Sunnylands retreat in California.
While briefly appearing for a stroll together on Saturday, Barack Obama described their progress as “terrific”.
After the talks concluded, Tom Donilon told a press conference that President Barack Obama had described to Xi Jinping the types of problems the US has faced from cyber-intrusion and theft of intellectual property.
He gave no details but said Barack Obama underscored that Washington had no doubt that the intrusions were coming from inside China.
Earlier, Xi Jinping’s senior foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi told reporters that China wanted co-operation rather than friction with the US over cyber-security.
“Cyber-security should not become the root cause of mutual suspicion and friction, rather it should be a new bright spot in our co-operation,” he said.
On North Korea, Tom Donilon said the two leaders had achieved “quite a bit of alignment”.
President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have ended a two-day summit in California
“They agreed that North Korea has to denuclearize, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and that we would work together to deepen co-operation and dialogue to achieve denuclearization,” he said.
Immediately after the summit ended, the White House issued a statement saying the two nations had agreed to work together for the first time to reduce hydrofluorocarbons – a potent greenhouse gas.
The White House appears to be delighted by the summit, with Tom Donilon repeatedly calling it “unique”.
The summit was the first meeting between the two leaders since Xi Jinping became China’ president in March.
It was billed as a chance for the two to get to know each other.
Speaking after his first session of talks with Xi Jinping on Friday, Barack Obama described cyber-security as “uncharted waters”.
On Friday, the Guardian newspaper published what it described as a US presidential order to national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks.
The White House has not commented on the report.
The US and China are the world’s two largest economies. The US runs a huge trade deficit with China, which hit an all-time high of $315 billion last year.
Last week, the Chinese firm Shuanghui agreed to buy US pork producer Smithfield for $4.7 billion – the largest takeover of a US company by a Chinese rival.
The deal highlights the growing power of Chinese firms and their desire to secure global resources.
US producers want China to raise the value of its currency, the renminbi, which would make Chinese goods more expensive for foreign buyers and possibly hold back exports.
Beijing has responded with a gradual easing of restrictions on trading in the renminbi.
Intellectual property is also an area of concern for US firms.
A report last month by the independent Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property put losses to the US from IP theft at as much as $300 billion a year. It said 50-80% of the thefts were thought to be by China.
Ahead of the summit, White House officials told reporters hacking would be raised, amid growing concern in the US over alleged intrusions from China in recent months.
Last month the Washington Post, citing a confidential Pentagon report, reported that Chinese hackers had accessed designs for more than two dozen US weapons systems.
The US also directly accused Beijing of targeting US government computers as part of a cyber-espionage campaign in a report in early May.
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Barack Obama snapped at staffers as he realized they forgot to put his remarks on the podium moments after he tried to begin health care speech in San Jose, California.
“It is wonderful to see all of you, and I want to thank everybody who is here,” Barack Obama began.
“I think there’s only one problem, and that is that my remarks are not sitting here.”
“People!” Barack Obama barked, half-smiling.
“By Friday afternoon, things get a little challenged.”
Barack Obama was in San Jose to remind California journalists and Obamacare-watchers about a partnership between his administration and Spanish-language media networks like Univision, La Opinión and Telemundo.
The White House hopes to leverage those networks’ reach into Spanish-speaking households in California, Texas and Florida in order to encourage millions of Americans in Hispanic households to enter health care exchanges that will open for enrollment in October.
Overall, an administration official said during a background conference call Thursday, the president’s staff hopes to enroll 7 million Americans, including 2.6 million young people.
Nearly 6 million Californians will be eligible for their state’s Obamacare marketplace, 2.6 million of whom will be eligible to receive tax credits or other subsidies to pay their premium.
Nearly half of that subsidy-eligible group is Hispanic, and without their participation the effort will likely fall flat.
So what might have been a victory lap in politically comfortable territory quickly became an embarrassment.
While the president waited for a staffer to deliver his speech, a reporter in the crowd asked if he would answer a question.
“I’m going to have a – I’m going to answer a question at the end of the remarks,” Barack Obama said, seemingly unwilling to improvise, “but I want to make sure that we get the remarks out.”
“People!” he shouted again.
Barack Obama snapped at staffers as he realized they forgot to put his remarks on the podium moments after he tried to begin health care speech in San Jose
“Oh, goodness. Oh, somebody is tripping. Folks are sweating back there right now.”
After the requisite amount of laughter from the comic-in-chief, the speech arrived. But moments later the National Republican Congressional Committee tweeted: “There’s never a teleprompter around when you need one.”
The group standing behind Barack Obama, representing the Spanish-language networks and the California Endowment, which has pumped millions into a campaign to enroll low-income Californians, seemed uneasy at the outset because their issue became a secondary concern after a new scandal brewed overnight related to a U.S. digital eavesdropping program.
“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” the president said in defense of the longstanding snooping program.
“We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”
And minutes after protesters shouted at Barack Obama’s motorcade about the Keystone XL fuel pipeline, reporters’ interest was clearly more focused on the eavesdropping scandal than on his health care initiative.
Making matters worse for the second-term president, Obamacare itself is reaching new levels of unpopularity in the final months before it fully goes into effect.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released this week shows 49% of Americans say they believe the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea, compared to 37% who support it.
Barack Obama’s troubles speaking off-the-cuff have been well-documented since the days of his first presidential campaign. During one 2008 appearance in Bristol, Virginia, Barack Obama fumbled over a hypothetical description of a small child with asthma who didn’t have proper preventive health care.
“Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma,” then-candidate Barack Obama explained, “they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer – or inhalator, not a breathalyzer.”
“I haven’t had much sleep in the last 48 hours.”
“What they’ll say is, <<Well, it costs too much money>>,” Barack Obama continued, “but you know what? It would cost, about… It – it – it would cost about the same as what we would spend – It – Over the course of 10 years it would cost what it would cost us – All right. Okay. We’re going to – It – It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about – hold on one second. I can’t hear myself. But I’m glad you’re fired up, though. I’m glad.”
Observers at the event noted that few in the crowd were cheering, yelling or otherwise interrupting Barack Obama.
The president later made history when his handlers persuaded the Indian government to allow him the use of a teleprompter when he addressed that nation’s parliament in November 2010. The device had never been permitted there before.
“It looks like a podium,” one mystified Indian lawmaker said, according to a Washington Post reporter on the scene.
“Where do they place the paper?” asked another.
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Texas actress Shannon Richardson has been charged with threatening President Barack Obama after allegedly posting ricin-laced letters to him.
Shannon Richardson, 35, a pregnant mother of five, first accused her husband Nathaniel of sending the letters, but authorities say she sent them.
Agents in protective suits searched her home in New Boston on Wednesday.
Shannon Rogers has had small roles in The Vampire Diaries and The Walking Dead, according to the film database IMDB.
On Friday, Shannon Richardson made a brief appearance in a courtroom in Texarkana, Texas, accused of sending a threatening communication to the president.
The federal charge carries up to 10 years in prison, according to US attorney’s office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston.
Officials say Shannon Richardson contacted the FBI on May 30 to implicate her estranged husband in the letters, which were also sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
But investigators found a number of inconsistencies in her story and she failed a lie-detector test, according to an FBI affidavit.
During an interview with authorities on Thursday, Shannon Richardson is said to have admitted posting the letters, knowing they contained ricin.
Shannon Richardson has been charged with threatening President Barack Obama after allegedly posting ricin-laced letters to him
But she claimed her husband Nathaniel Richardson had typed them before making her post them, the affidavit states.
Three letters were sent from Shreveport, Louisiana, on May 20, without a return address.
No charges have been filed against her husband, Nathaniel Richardson.
His lawyer, John Delk, told the Associated Press news agency on Friday his client was innocent and pleased with his wife’s arrest.
John Delk said his client, a 33-year-old military mechanic at a Texarkana Army depot, was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife, whom he married in October 2011.
The lawyer said the couple were expecting their first child this October and that Shannon Richardson has five other children from previous relationships.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a statement on Friday thanking investigators “for their outstanding work in apprehending a suspect”.
The letter sent to him referenced his support of stricter gun control, reportedly containing a threat to “shoot in the face” anyone who came for the sender’s guns.
In a separate case, a Mississippi man was charged earlier this month with sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama, a judge and a state senator.
In that case, James Dutschke is accused of sending the letters to frame a local Tupelo Elvis impersonator, with whom he had reportedly fallen out.
Another man has been arrested in Washington state in connection with letters sent to a judge, a local air force base, a post office and the president.
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China’s President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama have begun a two-day summit in Palm Springs, California.
The two leaders spoke of overcoming differences and forging a new relationship between their countries.
Barack Obama spoke of “areas of tension” and mentioned their rivalry in the Pacific, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and cyber espionage.
The meeting is the first between the two since Xi Jinping became president in March.
The informal setting is seen as a chance for the leaders of the world’s largest economies to build a rapport amid a slew of high-stakes issues.
The two men – looking relaxed and informal – met and shook hands under a shaded walkway at the Sunnylands estate just outside Palm Springs.
“Our decision to meet so early [in Xi Jinping’s term] signifies the importance of the US-China relationship,” Barack Obama said.
He said the US welcomed the rise of a peaceful China and wanted “economic order where nations are playing by the same rules”.
He also called for both countries to work together to tackle cyber security.
“Inevitably there are areas of tension between our countries,” he added.
Xi Jinping said he and Barack Obama were meeting “to chart the future of China-US relations and draw a blueprint for this relationship”.
He added: “The vast Pacific Ocean has enough space for two large countries like the United States and China.”
China’s President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama have begun a two-day summit in Palm Springs
US lawmakers and human rights groups have also urged Barack Obama to call for the release of 16 high-profile prisoners, including jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Xi Jinping’s US stop is the fourth leg of a trip that has taken him to Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica and Mexico.
Accompanied by his wife – folk singer Peng Liyuan – President Xi Jinping arrived at California’s Ontario International Airport on Thursday.
The summit, at the sprawling estate in Rancho Mirage, begins with a bilateral meeting followed by a working dinner. Additional talks will take place on Saturday morning.
The meeting comes months earlier than expected – Barack Obama and Xi Jinping had been expected to meet at an economic summit in Russia in September.
“I have the impression that both sides are willing to re-examine their premises, and to see whether they can achieve a relationship based on some perspective that goes beyond the moment – in other words that goes beyond solving immediate problems,” said former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Ahead of the summit, White House officials told reporters hacking would be raised, amid growing concern in the US over alleged intrusions from China in recent months.
Last month the Washington Post reported that Chinese hackers had accessed designs for more than two dozen US weapons systems, citing a confidential Pentagon report. The US also directly accused Beijing of targeting US government computers as part of a cyber espionage campaign in a report in early May.
China denies any role in state-sponsored hacking – earlier this week its internet chief said China had “mountains of data” pointing to US-based cyber attacks.
Trade issues are also expected to be a priority, as is North Korea – which conducted its third nuclear test in February. Beijing – Pyongyang’s nominal ally – is seen as the only nation capable of bringing meaningful pressure to bear on the communist state.
Other topics up for discussion may include territorial disputes in Asia and human rights in China.
Activists and relatives have urged the US president to raise the issue of the “China 16” – a group of individuals detained on political or religious grounds.
Analysts see the informal talks as a welcome departure from the more formal protocol adopted in US talks with former Chinese leaders.
Xi Jinping is said to have developed a warm relationship with Vice-President Joe Biden after the latter’s China visit in 2011. He also has ties to the US, having spent time in an Iowa town in 1985 as a part of a Chinese farming delegation.
During his US visit in February last year, the then vice-president called for deeper “strategic trust” with the US in a speech.
Observers will be waiting to see whether the summit with Barack Obama will be a first step in that direction.
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At least five people were killed and several others injured after a gun rampage in the beachfront city of Santa Monica, California, police say.
The attack began at a house and ended on a college campus where police say they shot the gunman in the library.
Police initially put the death toll at six, but later revised it to five people dead, including the shooter.
The gunman was in his late 20s and had been carrying an assault-style rifle, say witnesses.
President Barack Obama was at a fundraiser not far from where the shooting unfolded just before noon on Friday.
The gunman, dressed in black and wearing an ammunition belt and bullet-proof jacket, began by firing shots at the house, witnesses said.
The property was then engulfed by fire although it is not clear how the blaze started.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the first two victims were the gunman’s father and brother.
Neighbor Jerry Rathner said she witnessed the shooting from her veranda, the Associated Press reported.
The gunman then walked to the street corner, pointed his gun at a driver and told her to pull over.
He signaled to another car with a female driver to slow down and fired into the car several times.
At least five people were killed and several others injured after a gun rampage in the beachfront city of Santa Monica
Authorities say the violence then moved to a street corner near Santa Monica College where the suspect fired at passing vehicles.
The gunman then entered the campus where he is said to have shot a woman as he made his way toward the college library, where students were studying for final exams.
“We saw a woman get shot in the head,” administrative assistant Trena Johnson told the Associated Press.
“I haven’t been able to stop shaking.”
Witness Lisa Peters said she was at the campus radio station when they received a call that shots had been fired.
“We were on lockdown and we all tried to remain calm. I was there for about two and a half hours, but it seemed much longer than that,” she said.
“Suddenly I heard police and swat teams yelling and saying to us that we had to evacuate.
“It was very dramatic. On leaving the campus, we walked right passed a body which we think was the gunman.”
Police Chief Jaqueline Seabrooks said the gunman entered the college library and fired at people but did not hit anyone.
“The officers came in and directly engaged the suspect and he was shot and killed on the scene,” she said.
Student Jimes Gillespie, 20, said he saw a car riddled with bullet holes, shattered glass and a baby seat in the back.
Authorities also took into custody a second man dressed in black with the words “life is a gamble” on the back of his shirt.
“We are not convinced 100% that the suspect who was killed operated in a solo or alone capacity,” Chief Jaqueline Seabrooks added.
Three women were taken to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where a doctor said one patient had died, one was undergoing surgery and the third was in a serious condition.
Three more patients were taken to the UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica to be treated for minor injuries.
The shooting unfolded a few miles from where President Barack Obama was speaking at a political fundraiser.
The Secret Service, which protects Barack Obama, said the incident did not affect his schedule.
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Michelle Obama snubbed China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan after she announced that she would not be attending the summit with the Chinese leading couple when they meet with President Barack Obama.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan are on a tour of the Americas, which is capped off with a meeting with President Barack Obama in California before they head back to China.
Peng Liyuan, however, will likely be making very few public appearances because Michelle Obama opted out of attending, saying that she needs to be in Washington as her daughters finish up the school year.
The move comes as a slight in the eyes of the Chinese, who are reportedly big fans of Michelle Obama and feel her presence would have given more significance to the visit.
Cheng Li, a Chinese policy expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institute, told The New York Times that Michelle Obama’s decision to stay at home will leave the Chinese “disappointed”.
“They certainly have very high expectations for this meeting…There will be more coverage in China than in the United States.”
Part of that comes as the US and China are at odds on a number of issues over accusations of cyber-hacking, disputes over intellectual property and mounting regional tensions over North Korea and the South China Sea.
As a result of the tense relationship, the meeting is being held in California at Sunnylands, a sprawling desert estate built by billionaire philanthropists Walter and Leonore Annenberg is a place where political powerbrokers once discussed critical issues of the day and where royalty – real and Hollywood – soaked up sun and golfed on a private, nine-hole course.
Michelle Obama snubbed China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan after she announced that she would not be attending the summit with the Chinese leading couple when they meet with President Barack Obama
Even though it was meant as a cushioning factor, the location selection apparently backfired by preventing Michelle Obama from attending.
“First lady diplomacy is also very important and the US side has failed to cooperate,” Chinese political scientist Zhang Ming told The Telegraph.
“According to normal diplomatic etiquette this is very strange. It shouldn’t be like this.”
More than one expert has called for Michelle Obama to provide more of an explanation- and justification- for missing the meeting aside from just pointing to her duties as self-proclaimed “Mom-in-Chief”.
Aside from the slight from the Americans, Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan has received seemingly glowing reviews from the other world leaders that she met during her tour of Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico and Costa Rica.
“She’s a very beautiful person, very warm, and to chat with her in English was very wonderful,” said Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
Though this visit gained her a wider international audience, Peng Liyuan is used to greeting screaming throngs of crowds.
Prior to her 1987 marriage to the man who is now the Chinese president, Peng Liyuan made a name for herself as a folk singer.
Her music is very popular in the country and she spent years performing for the state’s military during her youth.
Peng Liyuan also regularly appears on a broadcast New Year’s program .
Set up by President Harry S. Truman in 1953, the National Security Agency (NSA) is the eyes and ears of America across the globe, intercepting 1.7 billion emails, phone calls a day.
The NSA is a secretive body that serves the military and intelligence communities by collecting all forms of foreign communications to prevent attacks on the US.
The agency was prohibited by law from intercepting domestic communications without a warrant until George W. Bush issued a caveat in the wake of 9/11 under the controversial “terrorist surveillance program”.
Nonetheless, over the years the NSA has been engulfed in a number of wiretapping scandals.
President Harry S. Truman set up the National Security Agency in 1953
They include President Richard Nixon’s illegal wiretapping, through the NSA, of five members of his national security staff, two newsmen, and a staffer at the Department of Defense in a bid to uncover who was leaking information about his plans for the Vietnam War.
In 2005 it was revealed George W. Bush had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans calling abroad without warrants in a bid to thwart terrorism. He strenuously denied the allegations until he finally conceded he had committed an impeachable offense.
In 2009, under President Barack Obama, the US Department of Justice acknowledged the NSA had gone beyond its remit in tapping the phonelines of American citizens, including a Congressman but claimed that the acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.
Last month, it was accused of building an $1.2 billion cyber base to keep tabs on American citizens.
The state-of-the-art data centre in the Utah desert – codenamed Bumblehive – is intended to bolster online security efforts.
But former employees say it could be used to monitor people’s private emails.
The NSA branded the allegations “unfounded”, adding that it remained “unwavering” in its respect for U.S. laws and American citizens’ civil liberties, and noted that it was subject to broad oversight by all three branches of government.
President Barack Obama delivered a passionate defense on Friday of National Security Agency (NSA) programs that secretly acquire information about Americans’ phone calls, saying criticism of them is all “hype”.
“My assessment and my team’s assessment was that [the programs] help us prevent terrorist attacks and that the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration [of calls] without a name attached… It was worth us doing.”
Barack Obama made the remarks at a press conference in response to revelations about two separate programs used to spy on American citizens and foreign nationals. One program involves the collection of U.S. Verizon customers phone records. The other program – dubbed PRISM – allows the government to scour the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine U.S.-based internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.
“I think it’s important to understand that you can’t have 100% security and then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience,” the president said.
“We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”
Barack Obama said the PRISM program does not involve monitoring the email content of U.S. citizens or anyone living in the U.S., and he repeatedly stated that both programs – the phone spying and PRISM – have been approved by Congress.
“You can complain about <<big brother>> and how this is a potential program run amuck,” Barack Obama added.
“But when you actually look at the details, then I think we’ve stuck the right balance.”
Barack Obama said the programs have plenty of checks in place, including repeated authorizations by Congress and approval by the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court, to assure no abuses by the government.
“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” he said.
“That’s not what this program’s about.”
Barack Obama delivered a passionate defense of NSA programs that secretly acquire information about Americans’ phone calls
If U.S. citizens decide they want to axe the programs, Barack Obama “welcomes” that debate, he said. But at the same time, he expressed concern over the fact that the classified programs were leaked to the media.
“I don’t welcome leaks, because there’s a reason why these programs are classified,” the president said.
The Washington Post reported Friday that for the past six years, U.S. intelligence agencies have been extracting audio, video, photos, e-mails, documents and other information to track people’s movements and contacts.
The Silicon Valley companies involved in the PRISM program are Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, AOL and the lesser known Internet company PalTalk, which has hosted a lot of traffic during the Arab Spring and the on-going Syrian civil war.
The scandal deepened after it emerged that the Silicon Valley Internet giants have been passing the acquired information on to the UK.
The Guardian reported that GCHQ, the UK’s communications intelligence agency, has had access to data collected through PRISM program since at least June 2010, and last year generated 197 intelligence reports from it.
The newspaper also first reported the phone-spying program, through which the NSA has been collecting information on Verizon customers’ phone calls, including call duration and frequency.
The revelations – which are the largest anti-terror intelligence-gathering operation since 9/11 – have placed massive pressure on Barack Obama, who is already reeling from the recent IRS scandal.
In addition to the names already on the list, the cloud-storage service Dropbox was described as “coming soon” to PRISM.
Twitter, which is known for zealously protecting its users’ privacy, is conspicuous in its absence from the list of Internet companies involved in the data-mining program.
PRISM was launched in 2007 with the blessing of special federal judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Post said that several members of the U.S. Congress were made aware of the classified data-gathering program, but were sworn to secrecy.
All forms of wiretapping of U.S. citizens by the NSA requires a warrant from a three-judge court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed in 1978.
But former President George W. Bush issued an executive order shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York that authorized the NSA to monitor certain phone calls without permission.
The warrantless wiretapping program remained a secret until 2005, when a whistleblower went to the press to reveal the extent of the surveillance.
And although the NSA has strenuously denied acting beyond its surveillance powers, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have warned that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) – a bill currently passing through Congress – could dramatically increase the amount of personal data that government agencies have legal access to.
The particulars of today’s revelation were outlined in a top-secret PowerPoint presentation for senior intelligence analysts, which ended up being leaked to The Post and UK’s The Guardian.
According to The Washington Post, the tech companies are knowingly taking part in PRISM, but The Guardian reported than all nine pleaded ignorance of the program.
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Susan Rice, the US ambassador at the UN, is to become President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, officials say.
Susan Rice will replace Tom Donilon, who is set to announce shortly he is resigning after almost three years in the post.
She was once seen as a contender for the job of secretary of state, but was forced to withdraw after opposition from Republicans in Congress.
Susan Rice, 48, was criticized for her remarks after Benghazi attack on diplomats in Libya.
Susan Rice is to become President Barack Obama’s national security adviser
She suggested the assault by armed men on the US embassy in the city of Benghazi in September 2012 sprang from a spontaneous protest over a US-made film depicting the Prophet Muhammad – an account which was later proven to be incorrect.
The attack left four Americans dead, including the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
Susan Rice is seen by analysts as a close political ally of Barack Obama.
Her new post as national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. Tom Donilon is expected to remain in the role until July.
President Barack Obama is also expected to announce who will replace Susan Rice as Washington’s envoy to the UN at its headquarters in New York.
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Nathaniel Richardson, a Texas Army veteran, is being questioned in connection with poison letters sent to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg after his wife found a container in their refrigerator filled with what appeared to be ricin.
Father-of-five Nathaniel Richardson is a civilian employee of the Department of Defense who works at the Red River Army Depot. Sources said he is being treated as a person of interest.
His wife, actress Shannon Glass, told officers that as well as the container in the fridge, she also found internet searches related to ricin production, Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg on their computer.
The development comes two days after it emerged that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his anti-gun group were sent two ricin-laced letters. On Thursday, it was revealed that another, identical letter was sent to President Barack Obama.
Nathaniel Richardson, 37, was taken into police custody but has not been arrested. He is not considered a suspect at this time, reports the New York Post.
Neighbors said he worked at the Red River Army Depot, which was once used as an ammunition storage facility, and which now repairs Humvees and other military vehicles.
Shannon Glass, 35, is a model and actress who has had small roles in The Vampire Diaries and The Walking Dead. She is pregnant with her sixth child.
It comes after one of the ricin-tainted letters intended for Michael Bloomberg was pictured for the first time.
The envelope shows the letter, posted on May 20, was postmarked at Shreveport, Louisiana, where other letters intended for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama were also handled.
Sources said that Nathaniel Richardson has connections to Shreveport. The city’s postal center handles mail from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, KSLA reported.
The typed threat in the letter, splattered with the poisonous substance, is also shown. It tells the pro-gun control mayor: “You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns.
“Anyone wants to come to my house will be shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God-given right and I will exercise that right ’til the day I die.
“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”
The letter sent to Barack Obama contained the same chilling text, sources said on Thursday.
Army veteran Nathaniel Richardson is being questioned in connection with poison letters sent to Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg
The letter to the president was received at a mail screening facility and did not reach the White House, law enforcement sources told NBC4.
One of the letters sent to Michael Bloomberg was retrieved at the City Hall, and the second arrived at the headquarters of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which Bloomberg operates and personally finances.
They contained threats warning him to stay away from the gun laws debate, authorities said.
NYPD officials said the threatening letters were opened on Friday in New York at the city’s mail facility and on Sunday in Washington at the headquarters of the nonprofit.
Three members of the NYPD fell ill after being exposed to the letters, which contained a “pink, orange oily substance”, authorities said. Their symptoms have since subsided.
Michael Bloomberg, speaking Friday on his weekly WOR Radio show, shrugged off any specter of danger.
“There’s always threats, unfortunately. That comes with the job,” he said.
“I trust the police department and I feel perfectly safe. I’ve got more danger from lightning than from anything else and I’ll go about my business.”
On Wednesday, he said it would not scare him away from engaging in the debate over gun laws.
“There’s 12,000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19,000 that are going to commit suicide with guns, and we’re not going to walk away from those efforts,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
“And I know I speak for all of the close to 1,000 mayors in Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” he said.
“This is a scourge on the country that we just have to make sure that we get under control and eliminate.”
It is not yet known why it took the FBI and the NYPD five days to announce the discovery.
The matter is being investigated by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force which said that the letter sent to Manhattan for billionaire Michael Bloomberg arrived at 100 Gold Street – the home of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Both the New York and Washington D.C. notes were addressed to Michael Bloomberg and contained threats referencing the debate on gun laws.
The second letter to the mayor was opened by Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who has not been reported to have fallen ill.
The NYPD confirmed preliminary testing indicated the presence of ricin.
“The FBI has an investigation ongoing and so things like the exact wording and the postmarks, etc. we’re not going to disclose,” NYPD deputy commissioner Paul Browne told WCBS 880.
“It was a pink-orange oily substance that subsequently, in the preliminary tests, indicate the presence of ricin.”
Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans.
It’s not clear if the letters were related to other threatening, ricin-laced letters sent to other lawmakers recently.
Authorities are now “in the process of searching to determine if there may be additional letters”, according to the statement.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is an outspoken critic of current gun laws and has campaigned nationally and on Capitol Hill for stricter gun legislation – using his own considerable wealth to fund commercials.
The confirmation of ricin present in both letters came through on Wednesday from the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland.
Ricin symptoms depend on the amount of exposure and dose received, but within a few hours lead to cough, fever, nausea, tightness in the chest and heavy breathing.
Death follows through fluid buildup in the lungs.
Several ricin-laced letters have been sent to U.S. politicians over the past few months – including one addressed to President Barack Obama in mid-April.
The Shreveport postal hub handles mail from parts of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.
A Mississippi man, James Everett Duschke stands accused of making the poison ricin and sending those letters – which also went to Senator Roger Wicker and a Mississippi judge.
Initially, a friend of James Everett Dutschke’s, Paul Kevin Curtis was arrested, but he claimed he had been framed after he was released.
What do the poisoned letters say?
One of the ricin-tainted letters sent to Bloomberg has been pictured. It reads:
“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns.
“Anyone wants to come to my house will be shot in the face.
“The right to bear arms is my constitutional God-given right and I will exercise that right ’til the day I die.
“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”
A suspicious letter sent to President Barack Obama was intercepted by the Secret Service.
The Secret Service said the letter was “similar” to two ricin poisoned letters mailed to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg this week and was being tested by FBI investigators.
The letters to Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to his support for stricter gun control.
One was delivered to the Washington DC office of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
The other was addressed to the New York City mayor’s office but intercepted at a mail sorting facility.
Police have said preliminary testing of the letters sent to Michael Bloomberg indicated the presence of ricin, a poison extracted from castor beans.
A suspicious letter sent to President Barack Obama was intercepted by the Secret Service
One thousand times more toxic than cyanide, it can be fatal when inhaled, swallowed or injected, although it is possible to recover from exposure.
Law enforcement officials have told US media that all three letters were marked as having been sorted in a facility in Shreveport, Louisiana.
A Louisiana State Police spokeswoman said the Shreveport postal centre handled mail from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, so the letter could have come from any of those states.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters on Thursday he believed that the letter addressed to Barack Obama was identical to those sent to Michael Bloomberg.
According to Ray Kelly, the letters contained a threat to “shoot in the face” anyone who came for the sender’s guns.
Civilian personnel who came into contact with the letters experienced no symptoms. Minor symptoms in emergency workers who handled the letter at the sorting facility for the mayor’s office “have since abated”, the New York Police Department said in a statement.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is one of the most prominent proponents of stricter gun control laws in the US.
The firearms debate divides Americans and has leapt to the top of the political agenda since 26 people were killed in a school shooting in Connecticut in December.
In a separate case, a Mississippi man is charged with sending ricin-laced letters to Barack Obama, a judge and a Mississippi senator. Another man has been arrested in Washington state in connection with letters sent to a judge.
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President Barack Obama has paid tribute to America’s fallen soldiers in a moving Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery – as he urged the nation not to forget the thousands of troops still protecting the country.
“Let us never forgot to always remember the sacrifice they make in our name,” Barack Obama said in his Memorial Day address at the final resting place for many of America’s war heroes.
“Today most Americans are not directly touched by war, as a consequence not all Americans may always fully grasp the depths of sacrifice – the profound costs that are made in our name,” the president said.
“Our troops, our military families understand this and they mention to me whether the country fully appreciates what is happening. Let us never forget that our nation is still at war.”
President Barack Obama suggested fewer people are today touched by war due to the all-volunteer military force and advanced technology that allows the U.S. to accomplish some missions with far fewer personnel.
But he reminded the nation not to forget the 60,000 troops who are still fighting in Afghanistan.
In his speech, Barack Obama said that Arlington National Cemetery “has always been home to men and women who are willing to give their all … to preserve and protect the land that we love”.
He praised the character and selflessness that “beats in the hearts” of America’s troops.
Before his address, President Barack Obama honored the nation’s fallen military service members by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in a somber ceremony at the cemetery.
He rode by motorcade from the White House to the hallowed burial grounds in suburban Virginia on a sun-splashed, but cool spring holiday as cannon fire was heard in the distance.
Barack Obama has paid tribute to America’s fallen soldiers in a moving Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery
Surrounded by officials and families of service members, Barack Obama carried out the Memorial Day tradition before reflecting silently on the lives lost to battle as he held his hand held to his chest.
The president was joined by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, cemetery Executive Director Kathryn Condon and Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Army’s military district of Washington.
As Barack Obama attended the event at Arlington, families marked Memorial Day at cemeteries, memorials and monuments across the country.
The presentation came after First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a breakfast at the White House with “Gold Star” families of service members who have been killed.
The events come at a time when combat in Afghanistan approaches 12 years and the ranks of World War II veterans dwindles.
In one of several ceremonies honoring Americans killed in Afghanistan, the city of South Sioux City, Nebraska, planned to unveil a statue honoring Navy Petty Officer 1st Class John Douangdara, a dog handler for the SEALs killed in a 2011 helicopter crash.
His service dog was also killed in the crash and is memorialized beside him in the statue.
At the American Airpower Museum on Long Island, N.Y., a program was planned to honor Women Air Service Pilots, or WASPs, who tested and ferried completed aircraft from factories to bases during World War II.
Thirty-eight died during the war, including Alice Lovejoy of Scarsdale, New York, who was killed on September 13, 1944, in a midair collision over Texas.
“It’s very important that we recognize not only their contribution to American history, but women’s history,” said Julia Lauria-Blum, curator of the WASP exhibit at the museum.
“These women really blazed a path; they were pioneers for women’s aviation. And most important, they gave their lives serving their country and must be honored like anyone else on Memorial Day.”
Another wreath-laying ceremony was planned at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in New York City.
The park is a tribute to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous speech calling for all people to enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
In Atlanta, a dedication of the History Center’s redone Veterans Park was scheduled for early evening. Soil from major battlefields will be scattered by veterans around the park’s flagpole.
In suburban Boston, veterans gathered in a park to mark Memorial Day this year rather than hold a parade because of failing health and dwindling numbers.
The city of Beverly called off its parade because so few veterans would be able to march. The parade has been a fixture in the town since the Civil War.
The holiday weekend also marked the traditional start of the U.S. vacation season. AAA, one of the nation’s largest leisure travel agencies, expected 31.2 million Americans to hit the road over the weekend, virtually the same number as last year.
Gas prices were about the same as last year, up 1 cent to a national average of $3.65 a gallon Friday.
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President Barack Obama has visited the tornado-ravaged town of Moore in Oklahoma to comfort its victims saying that they “are not alone”.
Surveying the devastation, Barack Obama said it was “hard to comprehend”, adding: “Everywhere, fellow Americans are praying with you.”
The president visited the site of the school where seven children died.
The tornado ravaged the Oklahoma City suburb last Monday, killing 24 people and destroying some 1,200 homes.
About 33,000 people were affected and the damage has been estimated at $2 billion.
Some 377 people were also injured in the tornado, which was ranked an EF5 – at the top of the enhanced Fujita scale.
Barack Obama, alongside Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, said: “This is a strong community with strong character. There’s no doubt they will bounce back. But they need help.”
Standing on a block surrounded by debris, Barack Obama said: “Obviously the damage here is pretty hard to comprehend.”
Barack Obama has visited the tornado-ravaged town of Moore in Oklahoma to comfort its victims
“Whenever I come to an area that has been devastated by some natural disaster like this, I want to make sure that everyone understands that I am speaking on behalf of the entire country,” the president said.
In the past year Barack Obama has consoled the families of victims of Superstorm Sandy, the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting and the Boston Marathon bombings.
He said: “Everywhere, fellow Americans are praying with you, they’re thinking about you and they want to help. And I’m just a messenger here letting you know that you are not alone.”
Barack Obama’s first stop was the Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven of the 10 children who died lost their lives.
In front of the wreckage and surveying piles of rubble and upturned cars, he told one school official: “I know this is tough.”
Three makeshift American flags flew in the wind, attached to parts of the debris.
Caleb Sloan, 24, who lost his home, told Reuters: “[The president] has no choice but to live by his word. I hope and pray and think he will keep his promises.”
Barack Obama has signed a disaster declaration that quickens federal aid.
Some 450 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel are in Moore, with some $3.4 million in payments so far approved for 4,200 applicants for disaster assistance.
Governor Mary Fallin said: “We’re resilient. There’s already a big path of debris that’s been moved around. People are gathering their stuff.
“It’s been truly remarkable to see how our people have responded and how strong they are.”
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US President Barack Obama has defended the use of drones in a “just war” of self-defense against deadly militants and a campaign that had made America safer.
In a wide-ranging speech on a programme shrouded in secrecy, Barack Obama said there must be “near certainty” that no civilians would die in such strikes.
In a renewed push to shut Guantanamo Bay, the president said he had lifted a moratorium on prisoner transfers to Yemen.
Barack Obama also defended the use of drones to kill four US citizens.
“We are at war with an organization that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first,” he said in Thursday’s address at the National Defense University in Washington DC.
“So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defense.”
He added: “And yet as our fight enters a new phase, America’s legitimate claim of self-defense cannot be the end of the discussion. To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance.”
Declaring America at a “crossroads” in its efforts to combat militancy, Barack Obama also said his administration would be willing to accept increased oversight of drone strikes outside war zones like Afghanistan.
Human rights groups have long condemned the use of unmanned drones to carry out killings.
Barack Obama warned that a “perpetual” US war on terror, whether through drone strikes, special forces operations or troop deployments, would be “self-defeating”.
In a Republican rebuttal later, Senator John McCain argued the US remained at war with al-Qaeda.
“Al-Qaeda will be with us for a long time,” John McCain said.
Barack Obama has defended the use of drones in a “just war” of self-defense against deadly militants and a campaign that had made America safer
As the president addressed efforts to close the detention centre at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he was interrupted by a protester shouting about the current hunger strike at the prison.
“I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it’s worth being passionate about,” he said.
Barack Obama told his audience: “Guantanamo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”
The Democratic president made shutting the prison a top priority at the beginning of his first term, but his effort foundered amid strong bipartisan opposition in Congress.
Calling on Congress not to block his efforts to transfer the facility’s inmates to American high-security jails, he added: “No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States.”
Barack Obama said he was appointing envoys from the defense and state departments to negotiate transfers of detainees to other countries, and said he would lift a moratorium on transfers to Yemen.
After the speech, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss told reporters Barack Obama was wrong to lift the Yemen moratorium because Yemeni authorities could not be trusted to “handle them”.
“We’ve got 166 of the meanest nastiest killers in the world located at Guantanamo Bay today,” he said.
“If we were to transfer them to Yemen, it would be just like turning them loose. We should try those individuals at Guantanamo in the courtrooms and then make a decision about what to do with them.”
Meanwhile, Yemen welcomed the move, a spokesman at the country’s Washington embassy said.
Barack Obama’s speech coincides with the signing of new “presidential policy guidance” on when drone strikes can be used, the White House said.
The policy document curtails the circumstances in which drones can be used in places that are not overt war zones, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
In an outline of the new policy released to the news media, the administration said it preferred to capture terrorist suspects, with drone strikes used only amid a “continuing, imminent threat” to the US.
Beyond that, the administration listed criteria for the approval of a drone strike:
- “Near certainty” the target was present and that civilians would not be injured or killed
- Capture would not be feasible
- Authorities of the country in question could not or would not address the threat
- No other reasonable alternatives were available
On Wednesday, the US disclosed that four Americans had been killed in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan since 2011, marking the first formal public acknowledgement of the US citizen deaths in drone strikes.
In a letter to the Senate judiciary committee, US Attorney General Eric Holder defended the targeted killing in 2011 of Anwar al-Awlaki, whom he described as a “senior operational leader” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in the US state of New Mexico, was killed in a missile strike from an unmanned plane in Yemen in September 2011 along with Samir Khan, a naturalized US citizen who produced an online al-Qaeda magazine.
Anwar al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, born in Colorado, was killed in Yemen a month later.
Eric Holder also confirmed Jude Kenan Mohammad, a North Carolina resident, had been killed in a drone strike. He is thought to have died in a strike in November 2011 in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region.
Eric Holder said only Awlaki had been “specifically targeted and killed”, and that the other men “were not specifically targeted by the United States”.
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Michelle Robinson, the future first lady of the United States, may have dated Treasury Department Inspector General J. Russell George at Harvard Law School, a new report claims.
J. Russell George, 49, has testified in two congressional hearings about the IRS’s unethical targeting of conservative organizations with special scrutiny after they applied for tax-exempt status.
The revelation of a previous link to Michelle Obama came in a lengthy interview with J. Russell George – published a week after the IRS scandal was brought to light.
Michelle Obama has never spoken publicly about her boyfriends during the years before she met Barack Obama – the future president – at a Chicago law firm where they were both associates.
J. Russell George and Michelle Obama, then Michelle Robinson, graduated together from the university in 1988.
He told the National Journal that the two shared social circles at Harvard, and were both active in the Black Law Students Association.
But Virginia Republican Rep Tom Davis, who worked with J. Russell George as staff director of the House Oversight committee in the late 1990s and early 200s – the same committee that questioned George on Wednesday, said the relationship was more than just friendly.
“I think he actually dated Michelle at one point,” Tom Davis told National Journal.
Pressed about his purported love interest from a quarter-century ago, J. Russell George said that conclusion “is overstating it”.
“Michelle was a lovely person, and down to earth,” he said, recalling times when Black Law Student Association members “went out for pizza; we would go out together”.
Michelle Robinson, the future first lady of the US, may have dated Treasury Department Inspector General J. Russell George at Harvard Law School
“Don’t get me in trouble,” J. Russell George told the Washington newspaper, after “pausing for a beat”.
From Harvard, the future Michelle Obama got a job at a law firm in Chicago, one of just 14 black lawyers in an office of hundreds.
It is at that firm of Sidley & Austin that she met Barack Obama, who arrived as a summer associate in 1988.
For their first date in 1989, Barack Obama took her to the Art Institute of Chicago and to see the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing.
After stopping for ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, the two shared their first kiss. A plaque now marks the location.
Barack and Michelle Obama married in 1992 at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
J. Russell George, who was born in New York City, attended Harvard Law in between stints working for then-Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and serving in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans.
In 1995, he returned to Washington for good after he took a job at Committee on Government Reform, among other high-profile positions in government.
J. Russell George was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service before moving on to his current post in 2004.
Michelle Obama’s time at the prestigious Cambridge, Massachusetts law school put her squarely in the middle of the nationwide debates raging about race politics in the 1980s.
During her final year at Harvard, Michelle Robinson wrote an article for the Black Law Students Association’s newsletter in which she argued that the school was perpetuating “racist and sexist stereotypes” because it wasn’t hiring enough minority law professors based on the color of their skin.
The Daily Caller first reported on the essay, in which Michelle Robinson wrote that hiring on the sole basis of merit, instead of recruiting according to affirmative-action principles, “serve[d] to legitimize students” tendencies to distrust certain types of teaching that do not resemble the traditional images’ of law school.
The future first lady lauded the teaching styles of liberal academics Martha Minow and Charles Ogletree, who ignored the traditional question-and-answer “Socratic method” in favor of other habits.
She also praised critical race theory, the idea that powerful groups of people – including Caucasians – use the law as an instrument to oppress the powerless, including blacks.
Michelle Obama also wrote a message for the Harvard Law School’s yearbook in which she called for greater civility in American society.
“After three years,” wrote the graduating lawyer-to-be.
“I continue to be struck by the tremendous talent and energy among HLS students and faculty.
“The diversity of campus life challenges all of us to question our assumptions, listen to other viewpoints, and articulate our values in a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance.”
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