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U.S. officials consider removing Castro regime from terror listU.S. officials are considering removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even as Cuban allies continue to launch military attacks and trade for weapons. As part of President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba’s terror designation and issue a report in six months. While reports indicate that the administration is leaning toward removing Cuba from the terror list, such an action would conflict with the Cuban regime’s support for Colombian militants, Iran, and...

Former state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty Thursday to an expanded indictment in his corruption case that included two new charges of money-laundering. The San Francisco Democrat was first charged in April, along with more than two dozen other defendants, of accepting $62,000 in bribes from FBI agents posing as contributors in exchange for legislative favors, and for illegally importing firearms from the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines – More than 30 police commandos were killed in a clash with Muslim insurgents Sunday in the southern Philippines in the biggest single-day combat loss for Philippine forces in many years, officials said.

Former state Sen. Leland Yee’s campaign committee for last year’s secretary of state race has spent $128,000 on attorney's fees since he was indicted on federal corruption charges, he reported this week. The practice is legal, but one ethics expert said it should be restricted. "Unfortunately California’s relatively weak restrictions on the use of surplus campaign funds mean that politicians can turn these accounts into personal slush funds," said Sarah Swanbeck, an advocate for the group Common Cause.

Tensions between Russia and the UK have heightened after it was revealed that the Russian bomber intercepted by RAF fighter jets was carrying a nuclear missile designed to destroy Trident submarines. The TU-95 aircraft were spotted on long range radar flying down from Scotland towards the English Channel, where they were close to entering British airspace, the Sunday Express report. >Ministry of Defence sources revealed the ‘seek and find’ nuclear warhead missile which can destroy the British Vanguard submarines which form the country’s nuclear deterrent.

Rep. Trey Gowdy came out swinging at Tuesday’s hearing of his Select Committee, laying into Democrats for playing political games and blasting the State Department for refusing to produce documents and for preventing witnesses from testifying before the committee. ... At the hearing, the State Department’s liaison officer to Congress said that more documents would be produced in the coming days, including emails from Secretary of State Clinton – giving the lie to oft-repeated Democrat claims that everything relating to Benghazi was already on the public record. ... two very real stand-down orders were issued that night by Secretary Clinton,...

Column one: Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe. On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM. On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before. The missile and the launch pad indicate...

Israel Hits Pay Dirt with Strike on Iran & HezbollahPosted By Ari Lieberman On January 22, 2015 @ 12:44 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi As Congress gets set to impose new sanctions on Iran and the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, Argentina’s indefatigable prosecutor, once again sheds the unwanted spotlight on the Islamic Republic’s overseas terror activities, the mullahs have been hit with yet more bad news. On January 18, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a convoy of military vehicles traveling on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights with devastating effect.The missile strike...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Leland Yee: An Anti-Gun Democrat Jihadists Can LovePosted By Robert Spencer On March 28, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments California State Senator Leland Yee is the very model of a modern public servant.Yee, a Democrat, has amassed a well-deserved reputation as an anti-gun crusader: shortly after Adam Lanza’s murderous rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, Yee helped spearhead one of the toughest gun laws in the entire nation, banning the “bullet button” that allows shooters to change magazines on assault weapons quickly and easily. California Governor...

As Iran allegedly negotiates an agreement with the P 5+1 with respect to its nuclear program, Israel's Channel 2 showed a satellite image (above) in which a new Iranian missile 'that can reach far beyond Europe' is shown. Iran has built a 27-meter-long missile, capable of delivering a warhead “far beyond Europe,” and placed it on a launch pad at a site close to Tehran, an Israeli television report said Wednesday, showing what it said were the first satellite images of the missile ever seen in the West. It stressed that the missile could be used to launch spacecraft or satellites, but also to...

Washington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released the following statement on California State Senator Leland Yee:“The allegations against Senator Yee are shocking. It has become clear he has lost the confidence of his colleagues and for the good of his constituents should step down.”###

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A story that sounds like a movie script is slowly grinding its way to trial. All of the 29 defendants in the massive corruption case involving suspended State Senator Leland Yee and reputed gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow appeared in federal court Thursday. With so many defendants, lawyers, and documents, the judge is trying to set up a system to manage what could be an unwieldy trial. What makes it even harder is that not everyone's on the same page. The frustration is beginning to show. There are 29 defendants, even more lawyers, a 137 page...

Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism. Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper. His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally...

CHICAGO - A community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents in the United States was found guilty Monday of serving as an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein. The jury took less than two hours to convict Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi after the weeklong trial. "This sends an important message that people can't come to our country and spy on their fellow residents," U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said. Dumeisi, 61, was convicted of failing to obey a federal law that requires agents of foreign governments to register with the Justice Department. Prosecutors maintained that the Palestinian-born Dumeisi spied on...

**SNIP** The San Francisco Democrat was a fairly high-profile member of the California Legislature, but not a flamboyant one or one who was the subject of gossip and rumor. And that’s probably why the news in March landed with such a bombshell, when the 66-year old former psychologist was arrested and charged with not only corruption, but also with allegedly participating in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons into the United States. The irony was impossible to miss: gun trafficking charges against a Democrat who made a name for himself as a fierce advocate of gun control, a politician who...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

One of the U.S. Army’s giant surveillance blimps will rise to 10,000 feet above Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland on Friday for a three-year test. A second aircraft will begin testing in January. The Army’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS), which is built by Raytheon, will be tested for its ability to identify incoming enemy aircraft. “This will enable senior defense officials to support a determination whether to transition JLENS capabilities to an enduring mission at the conclusion of the three-year operational exercise,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement on...

Turkey could scrap a controversial plan to buy missile defense systems from China that alarmed the United States and its Western allies, Turkish and European sources said on Nov. 12. Key NATO member Turkey said in September last year that it was entering negotiations with the China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corporation (CPMIEC) to acquire its first long-range anti-missile systems. However, the plan has deeply concerned the United States, which has already imposed sanctions on the Chinese company for supplying arms to Iran and Syria in defiance of an embargo. "Several options are on the table, including a cancellation of the...

State Senate Democrats have decided to resume the annual Pro Tem Cup golf fundraiser in 2015, a year after the event was canceled in the wake of criminal charges filed against three Democratic Senators. The event at Torrey Pines golf course in San Diego is the Senate Democrats' largest political fundraiser for the state party and has been criticized for allowing special interests to mingle with lawmakers in exchange for tickets costing between $15,000 and $65,000 per person. The indictment of Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) on public corruption charges a week before this year's event was to be held...

Brian P. McKeon, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said U.S. cruise missile deployments are among a range of options being considered if Russia fails to return to compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.