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President Obama is considering a strike on Syrian military targets involving sea-launched cruise missiles or possibly long-range bombers that would last no more than two days, according to senior administration officials and reported by Karen DeYoung and Anne Gearan of The Washington Post. Reuters reports that the West has told the opposition to expect a strike "within days." The limited strike would seemingly be a response to allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its own people before dawn on August 21. Hundreds were killed and thousands suffered "neurotoxic symptoms." The design of the potential attack implies sending...

AFP - Al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on Europe's high-speed rail network, German mass circulation daily Bild reported on Monday, citing intelligence sources. The extremist group could plant explosives on trains and tunnels or sabotage tracks and electrical cabling, said Bild, Europe's most widely read daily. Bild said the information came from the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, which had listened in to a conference call involving top Al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks on Europe's rail network was a "central topic" of this call, Bild said.

SINGAPORE, Aug 3 — Malaysia has finalised its full report on the proposed high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Local television Channel NewsAsia reported Mohd Nur Ismal Mohamed Kamal, chief executive officer of the Malaysia Land Public Transport Commission, as saying that the two sides will meet after the Aidil Fitri celebrations at the end of the month. He said: “The base line alignment and all that is done. But of course, minor changes can still happen. We are just starting the process of engagement and discussion with the Singapore side, with the joint ministerial committee meeting up...

<p>According to FEC records, the campaign has missed its last three report deadlines and has not filed a disclosure since December, a few weeks after Jackson resigned from office.</p> <p>The FEC's warning letters have gone to Jackson's treasurer, Vickie Pasley, a Chicago attorney. "It is important that you file this report immediately," a commission official wrote her Friday when it sought financial information for this year's second quarter.</p>

House Republicans, in a lengthy report on the Justice Department's leak investigations, formally accused Attorney General Eric Holder of misleading Congress with "deceptive" testimony that he knew nothing of the "potential prosecution" of the press. The 70-page report was released late Wednesday by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. To coincide with the release, lawmakers also wrote a letter to President Obama calling for a "change in leadership" at the Justice Department. "The deceptive and misleading testimony of Attorney General Holder is unfortunately just the most recent example in a long list of scandals that have plagued the Department," House...

Not only did former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta leak the name of the Navy SEAL group responsible for the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011, but the release of the Pentagon Inspector General’s (IG) report revealing the incident, which was ready in July 2012, was delayed until now. In the spring of 2012, GOP members accused Barack Obama’s administration of leaking national security secrets to help Obama get reelected, but the administration denied it. At a CIA awards ceremony on June 24, 2011, Panetta named the SEAL group and its commander. Among those present were 1300 military and...

A review by the Treasury Department’s inspector general found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spent $50 million dollars on conferences for employees between 2010 to 2012, according to reports. The audit, set to be released on Tuesday, says the agency spent the funds on more than 200 employee conferences, including an August 2010 meeting in Anaheim, Calif., which cost taxpayers $4 million. According to a statement from the House Oversight Committee, 15 outside speakers at the event were paid a total of $135,000 and many attendees were given perks including baseball tickets and suites at the hotel, the AP...

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, a bulldog on the DOJ/Fox News secret subpoena story, reports that the effort by the Justice Department to obtain the controversial court order was arduous, contentious and unsuccessful until finally a third judge acquiesced.

Inspector General report paves way for Burke disbarment gun rights May 20, 2013 By: David Codrea Subscribe Per the OIG report, "Burke's Law" could be a thing of the past if his "professional conduct" catches up with him at the bar. Per the OIG report, "Burke's Law" could be a thing of the past if his "professional conduct" catches up with him at the bar. Credits: United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona 0 Email Policy & Issues newsletter A report released today by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General pronounces a harsh assessment of former...

The Syrian army has begun deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles and has aimed them at Tel Aviv, the British Sunday Times reports. According to the report, Syria is preparing to strike Israel in case the Jewish State launches another attack on its territory. The army has received orders to strike central Israel in case additional attacks against Syria are carried out, according to the Sunday Times. The information was reportedly obtained by reconnaissance satellites that were tracking the Syrian forces. According to the report, Syria was deploying advanced Tishreen missiles, which are capable of carrying a warhead of a half a...

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation of whether Internal Revenue Service employees broke the law when they targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status — the latest setback for an agency that is the subject of withering bipartisan criticism and multiple congressional inquiries. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday that the Justice Department and the FBI began the probe after the IRS acknowledged that it selected conservative groups with the words “tea party” and “patriot” in their names for special reviews. “We are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations,” Holder said at a news...

As predicted, the House GOP’s release of an interim report on their ongoing investigation into last September’s Benghazi attack — offering a rather scathing assessment of Hillary Clinton and the White House’s handling of the situation before, during, and after — was not particularly well received in all circles, and several House Democrats are already up in arms about it. In a letter to Speaker Boehner: We are concerned that by issuing this staff report with only five Republican Committee Chairmen, you are sacrificing accuracy in favor of partisanship. You have stated repeatedly over the past several months that “It’s...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday unveiled a report on last's year attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that blames then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for lapses in security. The 46-page report by the five committees of jurisdiction concludes that reductions in security levels prior to the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, including by Clinton herself. The report also concludes that talking points from the intelligence community were altered to protect the State Department from criticism of inadequate security levels.

The historic drought that blazed across America's corn belt last year was not caused by climate change, a federal government study found. The summer of 2012 was the driest since record-keeping began more than a century ago, as well as one of the hottest, producing drought conditions across two-thirds of the continental United States. **SNIP** But the report released on Thursday by scientists at five different government agencies said that was not the case. The drought was "a sequence of unfortunate events" that occurred suddenly, the report said. The circumstances were so unusual the drought could never have been predicted....

Anti-Semitic attacks in Russia remained rare in 2011 and 2012 amid rising anti-Muslim vitriol, according to a new report by a Russian-Jewish group. “During the reviewed period, the number of attacks of anti-Semitic character in Russia has remained relatively low,” according to the report published last week by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. The report lists five physical assaults and 38 instances of anti-Semitic vandalism. The report’s authors wrote that the low level of anti-Semitic attacks correlates with an increase in anti-Muslim vitriol connected to religious tensions in the country’s South.

Al Arabiya is a Saudi-owned television news channel launched in March 2003 the channel is based in Dubai. It claims to have conducted the first media interview of Barack Obama after he became President. As I noted earlier this evening, Obama spoke last week under a banner of Yasser Arafat, "the father of modern terrorism." That move is being seen as a gaffe by the very few, almost none of whom are in the establishment press, who have even noticed it. What if it's not a gaffe, but rather an intentional move? That may be the case if what Al...

When President Barack Obama was heckled during a speech to Israeli students in Jerusalem on Thursday, the U.S. media reported that the heckler was a student calling for the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer even devoted an entire segment to the issue. However, Israeli media reported that the hecker was apparently an Israeli Arab student, shouting at Obama about the Palestinians rather than about Pollard. Israeli website Ynetnews.com reported that the heckler was Rabea Id, who had shouted: "Have you really come to promote the peace process or to provide Israel with more weapons to...

Today the Department of Justice inspector general released a report on potential Labor secretary nominee Tom Perez’s DOJ Civil Rights Division. The timing of the release to coincide with his nomination was certainly accidental, because the report paints a damning portrait of the DOJ unit he managed. The full report is here. The 250-page report offers an inside glimpse of systemic racialist dysfunction inside one of the most powerful federal government agencies. The report was prepared in response to Representative Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) outrage over the New Black Panther voter intimidation dismissal. In response to the report, Rep. Wolf said...

Workers who blow the whistle on violations of the healthcare law will be protected from retaliation by the federal government, according to new rules issued on Wednesday. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is encouraging people to turn in employers who fail to abide by the rules set in the Affordable Care Act. Specifically, the rules would shield whistleblowers who report employers who are blocking access to healthcare tax credits or denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. In the 58-page interim rule, OSHA notes that the healthcare law could “create an incentive for an employer to retaliate against...

LIVE: Thousands Of Companies Around The World Reveal The Truth About The Economy Sam RoJanuary 31, 2013HEADS UP! The world's biggest economies are releasing their January manufacturing PMI reports. This is our live scorecard. Once again, the world will want to see if the emerging Asian economies are continuing the improvement they saw in their recent PMI reports. And they'll also want to see if Europe's manufacturing downturn is slowing. People will also want to know what's up with Japan. A political dispute with China has been a serious problem for exports. Meanwhile, new leadership has been explicit about their...