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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine Corps' top aviator flew to an Arizona air base this week as part of a final effort to certify the combat-readiness of an initial squadron of 10 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35B fighter jets, their pilots and technicians. Marine Corps officials were due to brief Lieutenant General Jon Davis, deputy commandant for aviation, on a week-long review which included operational and simulator flights in five core mission areas, an inspection of the maintenance department, and academics for both pilots and technicians. If Davis is satisfied, he will brief Marine Corps Commandant General Joseph Dunford, who...

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=34138 Barack Obama smirked and laughed as a reporter at his Wednesday briefing after getting a critical question about the nuclear deal with Iran. CBS News’s Major Garrett pressed the president on the imprisonment of Americans in Iran. “As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran—three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration, one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, this strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?” Garrett asked. “I’ve gotta...

The 24-year-old named by the FBI as the killer of four U.S. Marines today in Chattanooga, Tenn. today so far does not appear to have been on law enforcement’s radar, two U.S. officials told ABC News. “They’ve run an initial check on him. Right now, there is nothing popping early in the system on him, but that could change,” a senior U.S. official briefed on the incident said. “They are still checking multiple other databases on him.” Authorities are investigating the life of Abdulazeez in an attempt to determine what may have prompted him to carry out the deadly attack.

Delays in the construction of the first two of three next-generation Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) guided missile destroyers at the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard are partially to blame for slowing work on two Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) destroyers being built at the Maine yard, USNI News has learned. Several sources told USNI News that due to myriad reasons — including the size of the yard, the composition of the workforce at BIW and continued setbacks in the delivery of the first two next-generation Zumwalts — production of the future Burkes Rafael Peralta (DDG-115) and Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) have been delayed by...

Three years behind schedule and some $200 billion over its original budget, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is finally set to become operational this month. The fighter jet has been in development for nearly 15 years, weathered half a dozen years of testing and experienced myriad hardware malfunctions and software glitches along the way. Once it's declared ready for combat, it will be the most expensive weapons system in world history. It will also be the most advanced in the sky. The F-35, also referred to as the Joint Strike Fighter, is touted as the most lethal and versatile...

Barack Obama scolded a reporter at his Wednesday briefing after getting a critical question about the nuclear deal with Iran. CBS News's Major Garrett pressed the president on the imprisonment of Americans in Iran. "As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran—three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration, one whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation, this strength of this nation, unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?" Garrett asked. "I've gotta give you credit, Major,...

When Kate Steinle was gunned down by an illegal alien in San Francisco, America received a shocking reminder of just how broken our system is. This wasn't just a failure of local policy. It was a failure of national policy, and the incident has garnered national attention. But where is Barack Obama? Question: What do Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray have in common? Their deaths all brought about responses from Obama and his team. Obama spoke out during the Trayvon Martin proceedings, saying Martin "looked like him." As it turned out, Trayvon Martin was the one to blame...

US Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's criticism of the nuclear deal reached with Iran as “comments that are way over the top" Tuesday. "What the critics of this plan never offer... is a realistic alternative," Kerry told MSNBC. "It's wrong for people to think this doesn't have long-term accountability." "Israel is safer" as a result of Tuesday's accord, Kerry insisted. "This is under attack by people who really don't know the terms of the agreement." Kerry said that if Iran fails to meet the requirements of the deal, all options remain on the table....

It’s the most expensive weapon in history, but the F-35 stealth jet has been outperformed by a 40-year-old F-16 jet in a dogfight. A mock air battle was held over the Pacific Ocean, between the cutting-edge F-35, the most sophisticated jet ever, and an F-16, which was designed in the 1970s. But according to the test pilot, the F-35, which has cost the US military more than $350billion, is still too slow to hit an enemy plane or dodge gunfire. The dogfight, staged in January near Edwards Air Force Base, California, was designed to test the F-35’s ability in close-range...

President Barack Obama leads mourners in singing "Amazing Grace" as he delivers a eulogy in honor of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney during funeral services in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 26.

A choked-up Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologized in court Wednesday to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, then was formally sentenced to die for the attack. "You told us just how unbearable it was, this thing I put you through," Tsarnaev said at a hearing in Boston. "Now, I am sorry for the lives that I have taken." "I ask Allah for his mercy for me and my brother and my family," he said. Tsarnaev stood as he spoke, and the courtroom was extraordinarily quiet. He paused at each sentence and appeared to tremble. Some victims had gathered in court to...

President Obama will tout his healthcare law Tuesday to a Catholic group that has consistently supported the law despite deep divides over its birth control requirement. In a speech to the Catholic Health Association — which represents hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes across the U.S. — the president will talk about the law's major tenets and make his case that it has improved health plans for virtually everyone, in addition to expanding coverage to millions. The address comes just days before the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling that could halt the healthcare law's insurance subsidies to...

Michelle Obama gave a candid view Saturday of the challenges and emotional toll of being the country’s first black first lady. Obama, speaking to graduates at Tuskegee University in Alabama, described insensitive media questions and derogatory remarks from political pundits that she said have kept her up at night. “You might remember the on-stage celebratory fist bump between me and my husband after a primary win that was referred to as a ‘terrorist fist jab,’ ” she said.

Even though the deadline for any type of support for Windows XP was up last April, many organisations are still using the venerable operating system to power their PCs and the applications that run on them. But XP was never a truly secure OS to begin with and despite numerous patches over the years, new vulnerabilities have been found. Of course, since April 2014, no more updates have been provided by Microsoft on general release and this has left anyone still running XP very much exposed to hacking and security breaches. According to figures from IT security firm Secunia taken...

WASHINGTON — The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated weapons systems ever developed, a sleek and stealthy fighter jet years in the making that is often called a flying computer because of its more than 8 million lines of code. The Joint Strike Fighter comes in three versions, including one that is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier and another that lands vertically, as if it were a helicopter. But to truly understand the most expensive weapons program in the history of the Pentagon, forget the plane for a minute. Consider the helmet....

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is being accused of groping a 22-year-old Italian model on the opening weekend of his Radio City “New York Spring Spectacular,” police sources said Monday. The model told cops that the Oscar-winning Hollywood producer sexually abused her after coaxing her to his Manhattan office on the pretense of talking business, sources told the Daily News. The woman told cops that Weinstein — a married, 63-year-old father of five — groped her private area and her breasts around 6 p.m. Friday in his third-floor office at the Tribeca Film Center on Greenwich St., the sources said. “He...

Engineers are trying to fix the F-35’s software package after it was discovered the sensors for the Joint Strike Fighter malfunction when detecting targets when the aircraft flies in formation. Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, Program Executive Officer, F-35, said he didn’t have a date when the correction would be made. However, he said the problem would not delay the declaration of the Marine variant of the aircraft, the F-35B, ready for combat. “When you have two, three or four F-35s looking at the same threat, they don’t all see it exactly the same because of the angles that...

General Dynamics Corp will deliver two Zumwalt-class destroyers a year later than planned, U.S. Navy officials said, blaming complications related to new technology. The Navy is adjusting its official baseline for the $22 billion DDG 1000 ship program to reflect the new delivery dates but the change will not trigger a mandatory review since the resulting cost increase will be under 15 percent, a defense official told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Rapper Snoop Dogg is part of new UnloadYour401K campaign aimed at getting hard-working Americans to call their financial advisers and get rid of any and all investments in gun companies. Snoop Dogg appears in a video for the campaign in which he says, “I’ve been affected by gun violence over the years, just through the deaths of friend and family members, and associates.” In another portion he appears again, this time holding a white sign with “#ImUnloading” emblazoned upon it. He says, “I’m unloading for my love ones that I lost.” Singer/Songwriter Jhene Aiko also appears in the #ImUnloading video....

SYDNEY - Chinese spies stole key design information about the F-35 Lightening II multirole fighter, set to join the air force fleets of Australia, Japan and other U.S. allies, according to documents disclosed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday. The report, citing new disclosures published by German magazine Der Spiegel, Chinese cyber spies stole huge volumes of sensitive military information, including "many terabytes of data" about the fighter such as details of its radar systems used to identify and track targets, according to a top secret U.S. National Security Agency presentation.