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The University of the Incarnate Word is a highly-rated Catholic college in San Antonio, Texas. It is hardly a hot bed of campus violence. When senior Robert Cameron Redus was pulled-over last Friday by campus police for “erratically speeding,” it is unlikely he had any clue of how tragically the stop would end. The campus police department contends Redus, an honors student set to graduate in May, grabbed the officer’s steel baton during a struggle. Not in dispute, however, is that Redus was shot five times by the officer, at close range, leaving him dead and the University scrambling to...

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that President Barack Obama had shaken hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. However, the UK Telegraph's Josie Ensor reported that Obama "was asked to take his seat just before reaching Mugabe." Complicating matters, another article in the UK Telegraph also claimed that Obama had shaken hands with Mugabe--in very similar terms to those used in the NBC article. Breitbart News caught the discrepancy--and suddenly the NBC News article was corrected, with no notice. Before: On his way to the rostrum, Obama also shook the hand of Robert Mugabe, the strongman ruler of Zimbabwe, and hugged...

Crowd of Protesters Appears to Be GrowingSecurity forces pulled back Wednesday from the Ukrainian capital's main square and government buildings after a failed effort overnight to end the weekslong protest that has left the country in its worst political crisis in nearly a decade. Riot police wearing black helmets and carrying shields had pushed through makeshift barricades early Wednesday and were met by hundreds of protesters, some wearing orange hard hats, who had hastily gathered to defend the encampment. While scuffles broke out between police and some demonstrators and opposition lawmakers, the security forces kept their clubs at their sides...

Russia’s supreme law should specify that marriage is “a union between a man and a woman,” one of the authors of the Russian Constitution has said. He then criticized proposals to drop Article 13 that bans any state ideology. “In 1993, it wouldn’t have occurred to us, to write down in the Constitution that a marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” said Sergey Shakhray, former Deputy Prime Minister and one of the authors of the Russian Constitution. Now, speaking at the National Civil Rights Congress in Moscow 20 years since the modern Russian Constitution was created,...

Peshawar, The lawyer of the Dr Shakeel Afridi escaped from the Pakistan and run in Dubai on Wednesday. Unknown people threaten him because of the counseling of Dr Shakeel Afridi. Who’s behind the prison in the linked with Lashker Islam (Banned organization) in Khyber agency (tribal area of Pakistan). The lawyer for a Pakistani doctor – Shekel Afridi – who helped the US to track down Osama bin Laden has fled the country after receiving threats from militants, relatives said. Lawyer Sami Ullah Afridi went abroad after militants threatened to blow up his car and kill his family, a relative...

A Russian Cabinet member says Moscow has reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional strike. Wednesday's comments by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin carried by Russian news agencies reflected Moscow's concern with prospective U.S. weapons. Weapons that have been developed in the U.S. under the so-called "prompt global strike" program would be capable of striking targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision. Russia, which has lagged far behind in developing such weapons, has described them as destabilizing. Without naming the U.S., Rogozin said that those who "experiment with...

The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight". Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other. If properly exploited, games could produce vast amounts of intelligence, according to the NSA document. They could be used as a...

China hacked computers in the foreign ministries of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Portugal in summer 2013, The New York Times reports, citing own research and work by IT firm FireEye. It said officials triggered malware by clicking email links to naked pictures of French celebrity Carla Bruni.

The Red Cross warned against aid dependency in the Philippines Tuesday as the United Nations urged donors to double their assistance to millions of victims of the country's deadliest-ever typhoon. The secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Bekele Geleta said that, a month after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the islands, longer-term recovery needs should begin to take precedence over food aid. "There are still needs and gaps in delivery of food and emergency shelter materials to some areas, but we must look towards gradually reducing people's dependency on food aid," he said in...

The United Nations said Tuesday it would for the first time begin airlifting aid items across the border from Iraq to Syria, after receiving the go-ahead from both governments. "Our colleagues on the Iraqi side, with the permission of the Syrian government and also the cooperation of the Iraqi government, (are preparing for the) airlifting of supplies for winter from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan to Qamishli and Hasakeh in north and northeast Syria," Amin Awad, who heads the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Syria response, told reporters in Geneva. The supplies are desperately needed in the hard-to-reach areas as the war-fatigued...

President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's military on Tuesday to step up its presence in the Arctic after Canada signalled it planned to claim the North Pole and surrounding waters. The tough and rapid response to Canada's announcement reflected Russia's desire to protect its oil and natural gas interests in the pristine but energy-rich region amid competing claims there by countries that also include Norway and Denmark. Putin told an expanded defence ministry meeting that Russia's national interests and security lay in a bolstered Arctic presence after a brief post-Soviet retreat. "I would like you to devote special attention to deploying...

Over the course of the day Monday, riot police cleared protesters from a number of Ukrainian government buildings including those housing the presidency, cabinet offices and parliament. The lack of violence now, compared to the brutal attacks two weeks ago, should not overshadow the fact that Ukraine remains firmly locked in a worsening political-economic crisis from which an exit is increasingly unlikely. To simplify things a bit: All of the politically realistic plans won’t do anything to solve the crisis and all of the plans that would solve the crisis are politically unrealistic. You can see this very clearly in...

Deep-sea study reveals cause of 2011 tsunami by Staff Writers Montreal, Canada Dec 11, 2013 An international team of scientists has concluded that an unusually thin and slippery geological fault where the North American plate rides over the edge of the Pacific plate caused a massive displacement of the seafloor off the coast of Japan in March 2011, touching off the devastating tsunami that struck the Tohoku region. The devastating tsunami that struck Japan's Tohoku region in March 2011 was touched off by a submarine earthquake far more massive than anything geologists had expected in that zone. Now, a team...

If Mohammed Ibrahim Caravan smells fear about Afghanistan's future, he doesn't show it. He strolls around like a country squire in the glittering new gated community he helped build, dressed in a spotless white shalwar kameez tunic, stylish shades and polished wingtips. "Worried?" the 28-year-old asked. "Hah — not me. I'm confident in the future. If you don't invest in your own country, who will?" Caravan's company is plunging $160 million into the family-run Saleem Caravan City, with its rows of salmon-colored villas with balconies and rose gardens, like some ersatz Miami Beach condo community. He's moved his family into...

Call it the selfie seen 'round the world. Among the enduring images from Nelson Mandela's massive memorial service in Johannesburg Tuesday will be one of a jovial President Obama taking a cell phone pic with his seat-mates, Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Britain's David Cameron. As the three of them smile for the camera, a stern-looking Michelle Obama can be seen staring straight ahead, hands clasped. As if to remind anyone who sees this photo years from now that it was, after all, a memorial service for one of the great human rights leaders. The tsk-tsk-ing could be heard...

General Motors Co. said Wednesday it will stop making cars and engines in Australia by the end of 2017, with nearly 2,900 jobs to be lost, because of high production costs and competition. The decision could spell the end of car manufacturing in Australia as the industry will be too small for supporting businesses such as parts makers to remain economic. Toyota Motor Corp. announced it is reassessing its future in Australia. A union said 50,000 jobs in the auto industry are in jeopardy. GM's Australian subsidiary Holden once dominated Australian auto sales, but lost market share to imported cars....

I am one of the countless millions who drew inspirations from Nelson Mandela’s life…I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set. So long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him.” – Barack HUSSEIN Obama on learning of the death of Nelson Mandela Rick Clark, sheriff of Pickens County South Carolina, is one brave man as he is defying Obama’s executive order to fly our country’s flag at half-staff until tonight in memory of former South African President Nelson Mandela. And how right he is. Barack HUSSEIN Obama loves...

The fake interpreter gestured during speeches by Mandela's grandchildren.The sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial "made up his own signs," according to South Africa's deaf federation."He's a complete fraud," Cara Loening, director of Sign Language Education and Development in Cape Town, said according to ITV News. "He wasn't even doing anything, There was not one sign there. Nothing. He was literally flapping his arms around."Delphin Hlungwane, an official South African sign language interpreter at DeafSA, told Reuters: "Nobody knows who he is. Even at this hour we still don't have his name," Hlungwane said.People on Twitter were calling for him to be...

Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.) at a town hall meeting refused to answers questions about last year’s deadly terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The New Hampshire representative appeared to try to dodge the question by saying Benghazi isn’t in the Middle East, and therefore not pertinent to the discussion at hand. “I’m certainly not here to talk about it, we’re here to talk about the Middle East,” Kuster said in response to an attendee’s written question. Libya is located in north Africa. Differing definitions place it either inside or outside the Middle East. Regardless, the crowd...

SNIP The atmosphere was totally relaxed – I didn’t see anything shocking in my viewfinder, president of the US or not. We are in Africa. I later read on social media that Michelle Obama seemed to be rather peeved on seeing the Danish prime minister take the picture. But photos can lie. In reality, just a few seconds earlier the first lady was herself joking with those around her, Cameron and Schmidt included. Her stern look was captured by chance. I took these photos totally spontaneously, without thinking about what impact they might have. At the time, I thought the...

The lengths Ted Cruz went to make the life - and passing - of Nelson Mandela about Ted Cruz is really astounding.— Michael Czin (@MikeCzin) December 11, 2013 We’re used to President Selfie having a complete lack of self-awareness, but sometimes it trickles down and infects everyone downstream. Exhibit A: Mike Czin, national press secretary for the Democratic Party. Apparently he’s been spending the last 24 hours under a rock, and missed how Obama makes everything about himself, to the point of taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Not everyone on Twitter was as oblivious: RT @MikeCzin...

Once there was a boy so meek and modest, he was awarded a Most Humble badge. The next day, it was taken away because he wore it. Here endeth the lesson. How do you practice humility from the most exalted throne on earth? Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly—young and old, faithful and cynical—as has Pope Francis. In his nine months in office, he has placed himself at the very center of the central conversations of our time: about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalization, the role of...

www.tedcruz.orgWhen Cuban leader Raul Castro, brother to Fidel Castro, began speaking at the service memorializing Nelson Mandela, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas walked out. “Senator Cruz very much hopes that Castro learns the lessons of Nelson Mandela,” said Sean Rushton, Cruz’s communications director, according to National Review Online. “For decades, Castro has wrongly imprisoned and tortured countless innocents. Just as Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, Castro should finally release his political prisoners; he should hold free elections, and once and for all set the Cuban people free.” President Obama had earlier shook Castro’s hand, which stirred...

One of the most startling revelations of late was that Congress has not seen the videos made by the Predator/Reaper remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) that were flying during that event we now call Benghazigate. This detail is one of many arising from the recent classified hearings held by the House Intelligence Committee in which five eye-witnesses to the event gave testimony for the first time (A discussion of the apparent impetus for these hearings may be found here.) Early reports on the event do not reference overhead aircraft (Including the first "official" briefing and the first [pdf] "official" testimony.) Sharyl...

The NYPD believe just four men may have been behind the attack on a Kenyan mall that killed more than 60 civilians in September and they all probably escaped alive. The report, released on Tuesday, contradicts many of the claims made by Kenyan authorities, who had previously said that as many as 15 attackers were involved, including possible foreign nationals, and that they held hostages. More than 60 civilians and six soldiers died in the Sept. 21 assault by terrorists from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab terror group on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The victims aged eight to 78, from 13...

On Saturday, Nov. 16, approximately a dozen Chinese police officers walked into the Nanle County Christian Church in Henan province, a government-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic church, and "tied up" the church's pastor, Zhang Shaojie. Authorities then spirited him away to a secret location. Three weeks later, no one is quite sure where exactly pastor Shaojie is or if he's even still alive. The pastor's arrest sparked an immediate outcry from family and church members, who proceeded to gather in front of the local police station in protest. According to ChinaAid, a religious rights group based in Texas, authorities reportedly threatened the...

...A good atmosphere and the active involvement of regulators from both sides meant significant progress was made, the EU said in statement. The third round of talks is set for the week of December 16 and will take place in Washington DC. TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] will help the European and American economies by cutting down on expense, trade barriers and duplication. Studies suggest that between two-thirds and four-fifths of the gains from an agreement would come from cutting red tape and having more coordination between regulators.

KIEV, Ukraine — Battalions of Ukrainian security forces early Wednesday stormed Independence Square, the central plaza in Kiev where protesters had been rallying against the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovich for more than two weeks. By dawn, the police had taken control of a large section of the square and brought in front-end loaders and other heavy equipment to clear it. Tents and other remnants of the protest encampment were bulldozed, scooped up and lifted into a dump truck. Then, shortly after 9 a.m., the authorities began an effort to retake the occupied Kiev City Hall building, setting off...

...At the main protest camp on Independence Square, pop stars, politicians and priests pleaded with police not to shed blood. Opposition politicians called for mass demonstrations to protect the square and predicted that Yanukovich would soon be toppled. The interior minister called for calm and said the square would not be stormed. Police had been bussed in to the city centre to shouts of "Get out criminal" - a reference to Yanukovich, who suspended plans to sign a trade pact with the European Union last month and instead embraced closer ties with Russia.

The EU is knowingly paying Palestinian civil servants who have not worked in years, its spending watchdog says. The Luxembourg-based European Court of Auditors published its findings in a report, out on Wednesday (11 December), on the EU’s “Pegase” program. It noted that the Union has paid the Palestinian Authority (PA) around €200 million a year between 2008 and 2012 to cover public sector salaries. The money has funded approximately half of the PA’s 170,000 civil servants and pensioners. Beneficiaries are supposed to meet basic EU criteria. But in Gaza, up to 24 percent of people on the payroll of...

The Romanian parliament on Tuesday (10 December) exempted top politicians and lawyers from corruption crimes, in a move which flies in the face of agreements with the EU. The snap amendments, voted without parliamentary debate, say that the country’s President, senators, members of the lower chamber, as well as lawyers, are no longer to be considered “public officials.” This in turn means they can no longer be held to account for abuse of office, bribery, conflicts of interest and other corruption crimes. …

KIEV (Reuters) - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland visited Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Wednesday, the U.S. embassy said, and an opposition leader said she talked to protesters.

An international incident was touched off yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa, when a goodwill appearance by President Obama was interrupted by an impromptu funeral. Mr. Obama was generously posing for souvenir pictures of himself with fawning admirers at the FNB Stadium (Soccer City), when security people rolled in Nelson Mandela's casket and demanded to have a memorial service. When questioned as to why they were disrupting Mr. Obama's appearance, the security men offered no explanation aside from "we reserved the stadium last week for this." "This kind of thing is a constant problem for Mr. Obama" said one of his...

Do you think President Obama was wrong to shake hands with Cuba's Raul Castro? Currently: 35% YES 64% NO Poll Here

The South African Communist Party is admitting Nelson Mandela was a high-ranking member. Will the media report these facts? Or will the “myth” continue to prevail? My friend Victor Lasky used to write books about liberal or left-wing figures that carried the name of the person and the subtitle, “The Man and the Myth.” He would compare the coverage of a political figure with the truth. The coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela has focused mostly on the myth. Key facts are being omitted, including Mandela’s secret membership in the South African Communist Party (SACP), which may shed light...

SEOUL, Dec. 11 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has begun to sell large amounts of gold to China in a bid to tide over its economic crisis, multiple sources familiar with North Korea affairs said Wednesday.

The Navy initially told the LaLoups that parts of their son’s scalp were missing. Only when Beverly LaLoup inquired what would happen if they were later recovered did an official “accidentally” let slip that the scalp was intact but the heart was missing. Why was he (Brian LaLoup), encouraged to keep drinking the night of his death, despite talk of suicide? How was a weapons room left unlocked? And why was his body left in Greek custody when Marine and diplomatic protocol called for it to be returned to U.S. soil before any autopsy?

December 10, 2013, 05:37 pm Kerry: Iran deal likely to allow enrichment By Julian Pecquet Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday said a final nuclear deal with Iran would likely allow that country to enrich uranium in some capacity, a nonstarter for many lawmakers. The Obama administration is seeking to convince Congress to delay new sanctions on Iran, arguing they could derail diplomatic talks. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told Kerry he could assuage the concerns of Congress and Israel by making sure a final deal precludes Iran from enriching uranium on its own soil. “That deal was on the...

Given that the entire planet seems to be of one voice in both mourning the loss of Nelson Mandela and celebrating his life, most will find it inconceivable that anyone would think to so much as suggest that Mandela was anything less than the saint that his admirers are working tirelessly to depict him as. But truth is truth and Mandela was no saint. Mandela was a proponent of “democratic socialism” who, along with the South African Communist Party, unleashed a torrent of violence against his political opponents that included the bombing of government sites. He was convicted of “sabotage”...

With the death of Nelson Mandela, the mythology continues that, under Ronald Reagan, the 1980s was the lost decade in dealing with South Africa. It’s the same old line — Reagan was insensitive to AIDS because he wasn’t gay. He was insensitive to racism because he wasn’t black. And he was not involved in policy, because he wasn’t very deep. All of that is just not true. During the recent Bush Administration, I served on the board of the National Defense University (NDU) and came to know two of my colleagues — Chester Crocker and Edward Perkins. Chet, an academician...

TORONTO (AP) — Canada plans to make a claim to the North Pole in an effort to assert its sovereignty in the resource-rich Arctic, the country's foreign affairs minister said Monday. John Baird said the government has asked scientists to work on a future submission to the United Nations claiming that the outer limits of the country's continental shelf include the pole, which so far has been claimed by no one. Canada last week applied to extend its seabed claims in the Atlantic Ocean, including some preliminary Arctic claims, but it wants more time to prepare a claim that would...

Newly declassified documents show that former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed secret information to "Zero Dark Thirty" scriptwriter Mark Boal, who was allowed to attend Panetta's speech at CIA headquarters marking the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Fourteen years after he made global headlines as the subject of a custody battle between Cuba and the United States, Gonzalez spoke to CNN on Tuesday during his first trip outside Cuba since 2000. Gonzalez, who turned 20 last week, was just 6 years old when he was found clinging to an inner tube after the tiny boat he was traveling in from Cuba sank on the way to the United States. Gonzalez's mother and nine other people in the boat drowned. He had harsh words for the United States on Tuesday as he recalled his mother's deadly journey. "Just...

Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under fire for missing Nelson Mandela’s memorial in Johannesburg on Tuesday. Although dozens of world leaders made the trip, she stayed in Berlin. Germany was represented by President Joachim Gauck, who took his place alongside world figures including US President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Although Merkel wrote in a book of condolence in the South African Embassy in Berlin on Monday, she did not travel to pay personal tribute, a decision which was criticized by some. …

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said yesterday that Iran has built up a terror infrastructure in Central and South America from which to attack Jewish and Israeli targets in the region and as a base for attacking inside the United States. “The Iranians use diplomatic mail in order to transport bombs and weapons,” he said in a meeting with visiting Guatamalan President Otto Fernando Perez Molina, himself a former intelligence chief in his country. “We know that there are states in South America like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia where the Iranians have terror bases, both in the embassies and...

At a memorial ceremony held in Johannesburg on Tuesday for late South African leader Nelson Mandela, US President Barack Obama made a surprise move on his way to the podium by greeting Cuban President Raul Castro with a long handshake and smile. Relations between the US and Cuba have been frozen since after Raul's brother Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959. The US has maintained sanctions on the communist regime throughout the decades, particularly given Cuba's poor human rights record. The handshake can be seen here: video .....

A sterling example of the maxim, no good deed goes unpunished. Former President George W. Bush was booed when he appeared on the video monitor at today’s memorial for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa, according to the White House pool report, which cited local press outlets. Meanwhile, when the images President Obama and Michelle popped up, there was a 30-second “deafening roar,” the pooler wrote. How sad. Bush has done an far greater amount for South Africa than Obama. But Obama is much better at crafting his public image and saying the right things. Bush personally saved the lives...

In the last two decades of his life, Nelson Mandela was celebrated as a model of how to liberate a country from the colonial yoke without succumbing to the temptation of dictatorial power and anti-capitalist posturing. In short, Mandela was not Mugabe, South Africa remained a multi-party democracy with free press and a vibrant economy well-integrated into the global market and immune to hasty Socialist experiments. Now, with his death, his stature as a saintly wise man seems confirmed for eternity: there are Hollywood movies about him — he was impersonated by Morgan Freeman, who also, by the way, played...

Lawmakers in the United States continue to show determination in passing new sanctions on Iran, despite the nuclear deal that was reached with it several weeks ago. Reuters reported on Monday that two senators are preparing legislation to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic in six months if the interim deal on its nuclear program goes nowhere. The Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, and Republican Senator Mark Kirk are close to agreeing on legislation that would target Iran's remaining oil exports, foreign exchange reserves and strategic industries, their aides said on Monday, according to...

David Cameron and Barack Obama were caught posing for a mobile phone “selfie” at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. The two men were sat either side of Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and smiled as she took the snapshot of the three leaders at the FNB Stadium in Soweto. … Twitter user @jamesarmitage3 wrote: “What selfish morons take a ‘selfie’ at a memorial service? Oh yeah that’s right, Barack Obama and David Cameron.” …