WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army on Wednesday will test missile technology that could eventually be incorporated into the development a conventional "prompt global strike" weapon, according to Defense Department officials (see GSN, Dec. 14, 2010).
EDWARD F WILLIAMS.COM
U.S. Army to Test “Global Strike” Technology This Week
Monday, Nov. 14, 2011
Global Security Newswire
(Nov. 14) - The U.S. Army is expected to test on Wednesday a potential technology under development for conventional prompt global strike. Another experimental technology for the mission, the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2, is shown separating from a rocket in an artist's rendition (AP Photo/U.S. Defense Adv
Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Army Forces Strategic Command will conduct a flight test of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, which is to use an advanced-technology glide body built to endure high-speed flight in the upper atmosphere en route to a target.
"This test is designed to collect data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies and test-range performance for long-range atmospheric flight," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan told Global Security Newswire last week by e-mail.
She said the test scenario would focus on "flight performance of aerodynamics; navigation, guidance, and control; and thermal protection technologies."
The test vehicle is slated to be launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, and is to fly to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, located more than 2,000 miles southwest on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The launch had been slated to take place on Tuesday but was delayed one day "due to scheduling conflicts with other events in the Pacific," according to Morgan, who did not elaborate.
The data gleaned from the test will be used by the Defense Department to develop future capabilities for conventional prompt global strike, she told GSN.
The Pentagon is interested in developing a nonnuclear, prompt-strike capability to attack a target anywhere around the world with just an hour's notice. This type of weapon might be used in the event that U.S. naval vessels or land-based aircraft are not located close enough to strike a target under urgent conditions, such as prior to an impending North Korean missile launch.
AHW technologies, if proven successful, might be incorporated into the Air Force Conventional Strike Missile, which could be the first such prompt-attack capability to be fielded (see GSN, June 24).
Russia Deploys ICBM Simulation Gear
Monday, Nov. 14, 2011Russia this year supplied over 50 Topol-M and Yars ICBM trainer units to its Teikovo missile division, a military official told ITAR-Tass on Friday (see GSN, Nov. 3).
The Teikovo division -- located in the Ivanovo region in central Russia -- encompasses a single Yars regiment as well as two Topol-M regiments, Russian strategic missile forces spokesman Col. Vadim Koval said. The branch is slated under the Russian Defense Ministry's schedule to receive 30 movable Topol-M and Yars firing units before 2012.
Seven types of fourth- and fifth-generation missiles -- four designed for firing from underground facilities and three from transferable launchpads -- are overseen by the strategic missile forces, according to ITAR-Tass. The subterranean missiles comprise 45 percent of the service's arsenal and hold 85 percent of its nuclear warheads (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 11).
Powerful Earth Quake Hits Turkey, 65 Dead!
Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) -- At least 65 people were killed Sunday when the most powerful earthquake in more than a decade struck eastern Turkey, Health Minister Recep Akdag said.
"We have a death toll between 65 and 70 and we hope this doesn't go up," he told reporters.
As night fell, citizens were using flashlights and shovels as they clambered over the rubble of collapsed buildings looking for survivors.
At least seven aftershocks rattled the region, one of the nation's poorest.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially reported the quake had a magnitude of 7.3, then revised it down to 7.2.
Some 25 apartment buildings and a student dormitory collapsed in the town of Ercis on the north shore of Lake Van, the Turkish Red Crescent said.
Local rescuers took many wounded people out of the dormitory, the Red Crescent statement said, without saying exactly how many.
A health services building also collapsed, along with part of a hospital, CNN sister network CNN Turk reported. At least two doctors were thought to be in the rubble of the health services building, the network said. The injured were being treated in the hospital's garden.
Official rescue efforts were under way in Ercis, said CNN Turk reporter Sevda Incesu, but residents were also conducting efforts of their own. Ambulances were having trouble getting into town because the roads were littered with rubble, she said.
Video footage from the scene showed survivors freed from the rubble being loaded onto stretchers amid a crush of rescue workers and bystanders. Heavy equipment was used to sift through rubble as residents gathered around small fires.
The Red Crescent called for rescue workers, heavy machinery and drinking water. A crisis center was set up by the country's Health Ministry in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said 10 buildings had collapsed in the center of the city of Van, citing local authorities.
Health Minister Akdag said an air ambulance and several helicopters would go to the quake zone.
Television pictures from Van province showed rescuers and members of the public climbing over massive piles of cinder blocks that had been a building before the earthquake hit.
Rescue teams of about 500 people were on the ground, according to the crisis center, and additional aid teams were dispatched from 29 surrounding cities. Medical helicopters were transporting the injured to hospitals in other provinces, the center said.
Two tent hospitals were being set up in Ercis, and two cargo planes were dispatched from the capital carrying medical teams and aid.
A seven-story building collapsed on Kazim Karabekir Street in the city of Van, and more buildings were reduced to rubble the village of Tabanli in Van province, the Anatolian news agency said. It was unknown how many people were trapped.
Video from CNN Turk showed the inside of shaking buildings, and people gathering outside on the streets.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Health Minister Akdag arrived in the area Sunday, according to the Ministry of Health's crisis center.
Israel offered Turkey "any help it may require" after the earthquake, Defense Minister Ehud Barak's office said. Israel and Turkey, once close allies, saw a deterioration in relations in a dispute over an Israeli naval commando raid on the Gaza-bound ship Mavi Marmara, in which nine Turkish activists were killed.
Other nations and organizations offered condolences and assistance to Turkey.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the brave men and women who are working to bring assistance to this stricken region," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement. "We stand shoulder to shoulder with our Turkish ally at this difficult time, and are ready to assist the Turkish authorities." U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a similar statement.
A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the country, while grateful for offers of aid, is prepared to handle the disaster on its own.
Turkey is "no stranger to having these seismic events," but Sunday's quake is considered major, CNN Meteorologist Reynolds Wolf reported.
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, killed more than 17,000 people in 1999, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 tremor in Duzce the same year killed 894 people, the USGS reported.
Sunday's major quake hit at 1:41 p.m. local time and was followed by at least seven aftershocks, American and Turkish monitoring agencies reported.
It took place about 12 miles from Van, the USGS said.
The USGS reported a depth of 4.5 miles, or 7.2 kilometers; the center in Turkey said the quake was about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, deep.
One concern is displacement of water along Lake Van, which could send water gushing into nearby areas, particularly along the west side, Wolf reported.
Muammar Gaddafi is dead.
Oct 15th 2011
Unverified footage of Gaddafi's body caught on camera phone. WARNING: contains graphic images. Link to this video
Muammar Gaddafi has been killed after his home town, Sirte, was overrun by fighters seeking to complete the eight-month uprising in Libya, the interim prime minister has announced.
The former dictator reportedly died from wounds to his head and legs. It was unclear whether he was hit in a Nato air strike on a convoy fleeing Sirte, a firefight on the ground, or in concrete tunnels in the town itself.
Later, Libya's UK representative said Gaddafi was alive when captured and had died in an ambulance on the way to the city of Misrata.
The Libyan prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, told a news conference in Tripoli: "We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Gaddafi has been killed."
A US official said Libyan leaders had confirmed his death to Washington, the AP agency reported at 3.15pm UK time.
In London, the Libyan charge d'affaires, Mahmud Nacua, told a press conference it was "a glorious and momentous victory".
"Today, Libya's future begins. Gaddafi's black era has come to an end for ever," he said. "The Libyan people are looking forward to a very promising future where they can finally start building the free democratic state for which they have fought for about eight months now.
"Our people have paid a high price. About 40,000 martyrs have given their lives for the freedom of their country.
"We very much appreciate the help of the international community to get rid of Gaddafi and his crimes."
Earlier, pictures showing what was said to be the body of the dead and bleeding Gaddafi appeared on television as Nato and US officials tried to confirm his death. Some showed the body being dragged through the streets of Sirte.
Gaddafi's son Muatassim was also reported to have been killed or captured in Sirte, the stronghold of pro-Gaddafi forces. Later, he was said to have been seen covered in blood but alive. Another son, Saif al-Islam, was said to be have been surrounded after fleeing Sirte.
Gaddafi's body was reportedly transferred to Misrata. A large crowd surrounded the vehicle as it arrived, chanting: "The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain".
The first reports of Gaddafi's capture came soon after noon UK time, and within an hour there were claims that he was dead.
The convoy in which Gaddafi might have been travelling was hit by a Nato airstrike at 6am British time. Two Nato aircraft bombed the vehicles as they fled Sirte. Neither were British planes, although two Tornado ground attack aircraft were on surveillance and reconnaissance missions at the time.
A National Transitional Council (NTC) official, Abdel Majid Mlegta, told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."
The NTC spokesman in Misrata, Abdullah Berrassali, told Sky News: "Gaddafi is dead, absolutely dead. He was shot in both legs and a bullet in the head. The body will be arriving in Misrata any minute now."
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said that, if the reports were true, she would breathe a sigh of relief as one more obstacle was removed. Even before confirmation that Gaddafi, who ruled Libya for 42 years, was dead, Senator John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in the last presidential election, called it "an end to the first phase of the Libyan revolution".
Gaddafi was wanted by the international criminal court on charges of ordering the killing of civilians.
He was at one time believed to be hiding deep in the Sahara desert. His wife, two sons and a daughter fled to neighbouring Algeria shortly after Tripoli fell to rebel forces in August. On Wednesday, a day before his death, Gaddafi was said by Jibril to have been recruiting fighters from other countries in an effort to destabilise the regime that replaced him.
David Cameron said he was proud of the role Britain had played in Gaddafi's downfall. "I think today is a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi's victims, from those who died in connection with the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie to Yvonne Fletcher in a London street and obviously all the victims of IRA terrorism who died through their use of Libyan Semtex," he said.
"We should also remember the many, many Libyans who died at the hands of this brutal dictator and his regime. People in Libya today have an even greater chance, after this news, of building themselves a strong and democratic future.
"I'm proud of the role that Britain has played in helping them to bring that about and I pay tribute to the bravery of the Libyans who have helped to liberate their country. We will help them, we will work with them, and that is what I want to say today."
Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the Lockerbie bombing, said an "opportunity has been lost" to find out the truth about the atrocity.
He told Sky News: "There is much still to be resolved about that issue and Gaddafi, whether he was involved or not, might have been able to clear up a few points about that … now that he is dead, we may have lost an opportunity for getting nearer to the truth.
"Although we have not a scrap of evidence that Gaddafi himself was involved in causing the Lockerbie atrocity, my take on that was that he would have at least known who was.
"I would have loved to have seen Gaddafi appear in front of the international criminal court, both to answer charges against his gross treatment of his own people and of citizens murdered abroad by his thugs."
Russia's presidential envoy to Libya warned that Gaddafi's death might not end the fighting in Libya.
"Today's problem of Libya is not the problem of Gaddafi's life or death," Mikhail Margelov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "This is a problem of consolidating fragmented Libyan society and of strengthening the armed forces."
Cocaine cut with the veterinary drug levamisole could be the culprit in a flurry of flesh-eating disease in New York and Los Angeles.
The drug, used to deworm cattle, pigs and sheep, can rot the skin off noses, ears and cheeks. And over 80 percent of the country's coke supply contains it.
"It's probably quite a big problem, and we just don't know yet how big a problem it really is," said Dr. Noah Craft, a dermatologist with Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.
In a case study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Craft describes six cocaine users recently plagued by the dark purple patches of dying flesh. And while they happened to hail from the country's coastlines, the problem is national.
"It's important for people to know it's not just in New York and L.A. It's in the cocaine supply of the entire U.S.," Craft said.
Craft is one of several doctors across the country who have linked the rotting skin to tainted coke. The gruesome wounds surface days after a hit because of an immune reaction that attacks the blood vessels supplying the skin. Without blood, the skin starves and suffocates.
Eighty-two percent of seized cocaine contains levamisole, according to an April 2011 report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Why dealers would stretch their stash with levamisole instead of the more traditional fillers, like baking soda, is unclear, although studies in rats suggest the drug acts on the same brain receptors as cocaine. So it might be added to enhance or extend the cocaine's euphoric effects on the cheap.
Despite the widespread contamination, not all of the country's cocaine users experience the flesh-rotting reaction. It appears that some are more vulnerable to the tainted cocaine's effects.
"We don't know who this is going to happen to," said Dr. Lindy Fox, the University of California, San Francisco, dermatologist who first connected the gruesome lesions on cocaine users to levamisole. Similarly, some patients have more extreme reactions than others. Fox said she once saw a photo of a man whose entire body, face included, was black with dying flesh.
Once the drug is cleared from the body, the wounds do heal, leaving behind a shiny scar.
Although some people might be more vulnerable to the effects of levamisole, the drug doesn't discriminate based on race or socioeconomic status.
"Rich or poor, black or white," anyone who uses cocaine is at risk, Craft said.
As if rotting skin wasn't enough, levamisole also prevents the bone marrow from producing infection-fighting white blood cells.
"It's a little bit like having HIV," said Craft, adding that without medical attention, the condition can be fatal. "About 10 percent of those patients will die from severe infections. They may be walking around like a time bomb."
Sweden fails to warn users of 'tainted' cocaine
Published: 22 Jun 11 10:21 CET
Swedish health officials have neglected to issue warnings about contaminated cocaine circulating in the country, despite evidence suggesting that around two-thirds of cocaine in Sweden may contain an antibacterial agent primarily used to rid animals of parasites.
Last week six men in Gothenburg were charged after a police raid showed them to be in possession of a kilo of cocaine.
The drugs turned out to be cut with the substance tetramisole, commonly used by vets to treat worms in animals.
"It is not unusual that we find tetramisole and other substances in the cocaine when we do a raid. And it is becoming more common," said Lotta Rapp of the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science (Statens kriminaltekniska laboratorium - SKL) to daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).
In 2007, tetramisole turned up in 7 percent of the cocaine dealt on Swedish streets.
In 2008 it had increased to 15-20 percent. And since then it has tripled to close to 65 percent, according to the laboratory statistics.
Despite warnings from the EU issued three years ago that cocaine cut with tetramisole was being circulated in Europe and cautions from the United States where two people have reportedly died of the side effects, Swedish authorities have failed to issue warnings.
In the US, a public warning was issued in 2009 after the Drug Enforcement Administration sounded the alarm.
According to Björn Beerman, a professor at the Medical Products Agency (Läkemedelsverket), the presence of tetramisole makes an already dangerous drug more hazardous.
Although the side effects are fairly uncommon they are nevertheless very serious.
According to Beerman, side effects are fatal for around 10 percent of affected users.
But officials with the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (Folkhäsoinstitutet), the Swedish agency that generally issues health warnings, don't think it is their responsibility to inform the public of this danger.
“In this case it is more a question of acute poisoning and because it is a drug related issue, I wonder if this shouldn’t be a question for the Swedish poisons Information Centre (Giftinformationscentralen) which is part of the Medical Products Agency,“ said Anders Persson of the National Institute of Public Health to SvD.
But at the Medical Products Agency, they pass the buck back to the Institute.
“It is if it was a registered drug with side effects that we have a responsibility, but even so there is nothing that says we couldn’t say something. However, I think that this is more a question for the National Institute of Public Health, they have a broader assignment,” Per-Åke Sandvold of the narcotics unit at the Medical Products Agency told the newspaper.
But according to Berne Stålenkrantz, the chairman of the Swedish Drug Users Union (Svenska Brukarföreningen) the practice is in line with Swedish policy not to inform addicts about such dangers.
“But the way we see it is that those that use must have a right to information and in this case we feel it would be appropriate to inform them,” he told SvD.
JUNE 23RD 2011 The arrest comes days after the FBI unveiled a new series of public service announcements aimed to appeal to women that focused on Bulger's girlfriend and traveling partner Catherine Greig. The ads highlighted Greig's frequent visits to the dentist (she used to be a dental hygienist and got cleanings once a month) and fondness for plastic surgery. She had breast implants, a facelift and a nosejob before disappearing with Bulger (pictured above in a 1984 mug shot) just before he was indicted on racketeering charges in Boston in 1995. So far there aren't too many details about the actual arrest itself. "Recent publicity produced a tip that led agents to a residence in Santa Monica, California, where they located Bulger and Greig Wednesday evening," said the FBI's Boston and Los Angeles field offices in a statement. The Boston Globe reports that when agents showed up at the apartment "neither resisted arrest" and that the police seized "cash and guns found hidden in the apartment." An FBI official also told the Globe that the 81-year-old Bulger "did not appear to be in good health." The FBI, which first announced the arrest via Twitter, issued a statement last night saying that the fugitives were "in custody and scheduled to appear Thursday in federal court in downtown Los Angeles." This isn't the first time the fugitive couple has been spotted in Southern California, notes the Los Angeles Times. "In 2000, a tipster reported seeing Greig having her hair done at a salon in Fountain Valley" and "in 2005, the FBI investigated whether Bulger may have been the elderly man who robbed three Orange County banks." When Bulger left Boston in 1995, several of his former associates were informed he was an FBI informant. As an act of retribution, they led authorities to 19 graves holding bodies of people Bulger is believed to have murdered. Bulger entered the FBI's Most-Wanted list in 1999, and the reward for information leading to his capture was recently upped to $2 million, the most ever for a domestic fugitive. Bulger's brother William, the former president of UMass and head of the Massachusetts State Senate, whose close relationship with his brother during his fugitive days contributed to his UMass ouster, had no comment when reporters knocked on his door Thursday morning. Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly stated Whitey Bulger's age to be 88 and the mug shot to have been from 1953.
FBI agents arrested South Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger last night in Santa Monica, ending a 16-year manhunt for the fugitive Winter Hill Gang leader wanted in connection with 19 murders.
USAMA BIN LADEN
May 3rd, 2011
NEW YORK — Prosecutors on Thursday charged a financial adviser who has worked for Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone and Martin Scorsese with stealing $30 million from clients and accused a former city council president of lying about his own finances during the probe.
Kenneth Starr, 66, was ordered held without bail on charges of wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering after a prosecutor said Starr hid behind coats in a closet at his home when agents came to arrest him, forcing them to yank him out by the collar.
Also arrested in the probe was former New York City Council President Andrew Stein, 65, who was charged with making false statements in a filing with the Internal Revenue Service and making false statements to a federal officer.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a news conference that Starr stole money in a Ponzi-like scheme from January 2008 through April after gaining the trust of wealthy and influential clients and sometimes controlling their finances.
"He made it a point to seem like it was a very exclusive thing, creating a mystique about what it means to be a client of Mr. Starr," Bharara said.
There's no indication Snipes, Scorsese or Stallone were victims. An IRS criminal complaint said cheated clients included a former hedge fund manager and well-known philanthropist, an actress who was a longtime friend of Starr's, a former talent agency executive and his wife, an heiress and a prominent jeweler with a flagship Manhattan store. They were not identified by name.
The jeweler learned some of his money was invested with a company owned in part by a retired prominent basketball player in Georgia, IRS agent Robert Beranger said in a complaint.
Close associates who benefited from Starr's schemes included his son, a former national official of a major political party, Stein and a partner at a prominent national law firm, Beranger said. However, Stein was not charged in connection with Starr's alleged fraud, Bharara said.
Starr's lawyer, Josh Klein, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra C. Freeman that his client's $7.6 million Manhattan apartment was not bought with investors' money. The five-bedroom, 6 1/2-bath apartment includes a 32-foot granite lap pool and a 1,500 square-foot garden.
Libya: civil war breaks out as Gaddafi mounts rearguard fight
Forces loyal to Col Muammar Gaddafi made good on threats to trigger a civil war in Libya on Wednesday night, by taking up positions across the capital, Tripoli and launching a rearguard fight against rebels in major cities.
Residents of parts of the capital were trapped in their homes as "thousands" of soldiers patrolled the streets accompanied by African mercenaries.
Tanks took up positions around public buildings including government offices, while sandbag defences were also being built.
"We will fight until death," a pro-Gaddafi soldier in his early 20s said outside a military compound close to Tripoli's Green Square, which had been cleared of demonstrators by yesterday morning.
"The country needs stability at a time like this, and this is what we are providing. The people are on our side."
Residents said bodies were still piling up in hospitals from the shootings of the previous two days.
10:23PM GMT 10 Feb 2011
Protesters in central Tahrir Square, waved their shoes in dismay after a late night televised speech by the 82-year old leader and pledged to march on the presidential palace, enraged by the fact that the president had not stepped down.
Earlier in the day, the army appeared to be enacting a military coup and announced that the people’s wishes would be met. The main demand of the crowds, however, has been the departure of Mr Mubarak.
When they gathered around the television in Tahir Square not long before midnight, the democracy protesters were sure Mr Mubarak was about to step down. Most had been celebrating for hours, and many had brought their children to witness history being made.
Arabic television had already told them that the army would step in to provide an interim president.
But in a long statement the president ceded unspecified control to his vice-president and repeated that he would remain in his post until elections could be organised in September.
Febuary 10th 2011
Bomber in school uniform slays Pakistan troops
MARDAN, Pakistan — A suicide bomber in a school uniform attacked soldiers during morning exercises at an army training camp in the northwest Thursday, killing 31 troops and wounding 42 others.
The army and police said the bomber was a teenager in a school uniform, but the Pakistani Taliban claimed he was a soldier at the camp in Mardan town who volunteered for the attack. Officials told Reuters that the attacker was as young as 12 years old.
The bombing showed that despite years of army operations against their hideouts along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, Taliban and al-Qaida-linked fighters retain the ability to strike back. It was one of the worst attacks on security forces in recent months. Senior police official Samad Khan said 31 soldiers died and 42 were wounded, some critically. The army, which tends to release information much slower, put the death toll in an earlier statement at 20. All of those killed were cadets except for one, who was a drill instructor, said the army. An examination of the body parts at the scene indicated the bomber was a teenage boy, which is a common finding in suicide bombings in Pakistan, said Khan. The army also confirmed he was a teenager in a school uniform. But Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone that the bomber was a soldier in Mardan who approached them and said "he wanted to sacrifice his life for Islam." "We accepted his offer and told him to target his fellow soldiers in Mardan," said Ahsan. Former army soldiers have been suspected in attacks in Pakistan, but a suicide bombing by an active duty soldier would be rare, if not unheard of. Increased security: In a sign of how nervous the government is about security, soldiers at the gates of the military compound searched drivers before allowing them to transport coffins inside. Former army soldiers have been suspected in attacks in Pakistan, but a suicide bombing by an active duty soldier would be rare, if not unheard of.
Troops quickly cordoned off the area after the bombing and even police had a difficult time getting through. The same training facility was attacked by a suicide bomber in 2006 who killed 35 soldiers.
Febuary 9th 2011
Anyone who expected to see a big jump in foreclosure numbers—especially since banks are supposedly ramping up the process after the "robosigning" faulty paperwork scandal—got a big surprise today.
Total foreclosure activity increased a mere one percent in January month-to-month, according to RealtyTrac. More importantly, the final stage of foreclosure, bank repossessions (where most of the robo-issues allegedly lie) actually fell 11 percent in judicial foreclosure states and rose 23 percent in non-judicial states. Judicial foreclosure states require the loan paperwork to be filed in court for a judge's ruling; non-judicial states simply require the foreclosure paperwork to be filed with the county records. There are 23 judicial foreclosure states. Clearly the servicers aren't ramping up as we thought. "I think the poster child for everything that’s going wrong with foreclosures right now is probably Florida," notes RealtyTrac's Rick Sharga. "The state's numbers are off 54 percent year-over-year and there's no empirical data that suggest that the market conditions have improved even a little bit, much less 54 percent." Sharga blames not only a backlog of troubled loans at the banks, but in the courts. They just can't handle the volume. In non-judicial states, the numbers are up, but not as high as you might expect. But wait, there's more. Notices of Default, the first stage of the foreclosure process, are at their lowest level in years in January, "which indicates servicers are unwilling or unable to start and finish foreclosures on all properties at will, like they used to," says mortgage consultant Mark Hanson. "More importantly, the drop in NOD and NTS (notice of trustee sale) were 1 percent and 4 percent in January m/m respectively. But because December was a holiday impacted month — with holiday days and moratoriums, January average daily NOD and NTS results were horrific i.e., January had far more days and there were no holiday moratoriums impacting the servicers filing NOD and NTS," Hanson adds. All of this just means a bigger backlog of distress clogging up the system and weighing on the housing recovery. "The worst thing that could happen for the housing market in terms of a recovery is that this procedural issue becomes more and more pronounced, and we have a longer drag out of processing foreclosures." Foreclosed properties are in great demand now, as wary home buyers and thirsty investors look for the best possible deals. If the banks don't serve up the REO's, and organic home prices are still too high for some, well, you do the math. America's home ownership rate, after holding steady for a while, took a pretty big plunge in Q4, from 66.9 percent to 66.5 percent. That's down from the 2004 peak of 69.2 percent and the lowest level since 1998. Homeownership is falling at an alarming pace, despite the fact that home prices have fallen, affordability is much improved and inventories of new and existing homes are still running quite high. Bargains abound, but few are interested or eligible to take advantage. More concerning than the home ownership rate is the vacancy rate. The Census tables don't tell the entire story, but they tell a lot of it. Of the nearly 131 million housing units in this country, 112.5 million are occupied. 74.8 million are owned, and that's only dropped by about 30 thousand in the past year. 38 million are rented, but that's up by over a million year over year. That means more new households are choosing to rent. Now to vacancies. There were 18.4 million vacant homes in the U.S. in Q4 '10 (11 percent of all housing units vacant all year round), which is actually an improvement of 427,000 from a year ago, but not for the reasons you'd think. The number of vacant homes for rent fell by 493 thousand, as rental demand rose. 471,000 homes are listed as "Held off Market" about half for temporary use, but the other half are likely foreclosures. And no, the shadow inventory isn't just 200,000, it's far higher than that.
Monday, 31 Jan 2011 | 3:34 PM ET
(NECN: Brian Burnell) - Jury selection begins next month for the second man charged in the Cheshire, Connecticut home invasion and murders. The case is likely to color the debate over whether to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut. That man is Joshua Komisarjevsky. He faces the death penalty in the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters.
Dr. William Petit survived the attack and wants Komisarjevsky convicted and executed. He wishes are likely to influence this debate.
Pamela Joiner, Son Murdered: "In 2008 my son Jamar was shot and killed."
Elizabeth Brancato, Mother Murdered: "She was brutally beaten, raped and bludgeoned to death."
These are the other victims. Family members of people who were murdered joining together to call for an end to the death penalty in Connecticut. They say the state's capital punishment law doesn't punish criminals. It celebrates the criminal and re-victimizes the families of those murdered.
Dr. Gail Canzano, Brother-in law Murdered: "We elevate the murderer, we put families through years of agony and, in the end, we execute no one."
It is true that the only man executed in Connecticut in the past 50 years, Michael Ross, waived further appeals. But the most influential relative of murder victims is on the other side. In 2007 Dr. William Petit's wife, Jennifer, and daughters Hayley and Michaela were murdered during a home invasion. Stephen Hayes has already been convicted and sentenced to death. Joshua Komisarjevsky's trail for his part in the crimes starts next month. Dr. Petit wants them both executed.
Dr. Gail Canzao, Brother-in-law murdered: "I have no advice to Dr. Petit except to tell him that he is in our hearts and our prayers."
Every death sentence that's handed down in Connecticut is appealed here, to the State Supreme Court. The bill that's likely to be considered would be prospective. In other words if the death penalty is abolished it would still be in effect for the people on death row or who are facing capital felony charges. Read that Hayes and Komisarjevsky. The question is would abolishing the death penalty under those circumstances just open up another avenue of appeal for all those people?
Dr. Gail Canzao, Brother-in-law murdered: "Those people have endless appeals in front of them I wouldn't worry about a prospective bill increasing that. They will be appealing forever."
, Mon, Feb 7, 2011
Defense Lawyers Want Blue Disqualified From Komisarjevsky Trial
Attorneys for Joshua Komisarjevsky want to disqualify Judge Jon Blue from hearing his case and the motion will go before another judge on Feb. 15.
Komisarjevsky is the second suspect accused in the home invasion murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11 in their Cheshire home. Jury selection was scheduled to begin this month, but was delayed to March 14.
Steven Hayes, the first of the two suspects tried in the case, was sentenced to death for the murders in December. Blue presided over his trial.
Komisarjevsky's lawyers cited "partiality, lack of objectivity and unsuitable temperament" as reasons they want the judge disqualified. They also brought up reporters tweeting from the courtroom and the judge bringing chocolate chip cookies and giving them out at court.
"In the hypothetical event that the motion is granted, the case will be reassigned. In the hypothetical event that the motion is denied, I will retain jurisdiction of the cae and proceed to hear the remaining motions," Blue wrote in the order released on Monday.
Komisarjevsky faces the death penalty as well if he is convicted.
By Dana Hedgpeth Updated: Thursday, 16 Sep 2010, 1:11 PM EDT By: Annie Rourke New Haven, Conn. (WTNH) - A sergeant with the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad was the first witness called in the fourth day of the Steven Hayes trial. Sgt. Karen Gabianelli says she arrived at the Petit's home in Cheshire between 10:30am and 11:00am on July 23, 2007. By that time, the two suspects, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, were in police custody and fire had destroyed the home. Sgt. Gabianelli also testified that a K-9 found accelerants next to Hayley's bed, down the stairs, and in the hallway on the first and second floors. The prosecution also submitted photos of Michaela's burned t-shirt and shorts. The third day of testimony was a tough one for Dr. William Petit, whose wife and two daughters were allegedly killed by Hayes and Komisarjevsky, as well the jurors, who had to view graphic pictures of the three victims. Jennifer Hawke-Petit was found by firefighters, burned beyond recognition. A photo of 17-year-old Hayley Petit showed her at the top of the stairs, as if she almost made it out of the burning house. Firefighters found 11-year-old Michaela tied to her bed. The court didn't put the photos up on the big screen for everyone to see, just the jury. It brought some of those jurors to tears, especially that last one of Michaela. The jury's reaction brought Dr. Petit to tears as well. The pictures were so powerful, Judge Jon Blue sent the jury home early. Apparently it was a tough night for Hayes as well -- overnight he had a seizure and urinated in his pants. You may recall that Hayes tried to commit suicide in prison back in January of 2010. Prosecutors also released photos and audio of calls to 911 from the bank where Jennifer Hawke-Petit was last seen, and from a neighbor who found William Petit after he got out of the basement of his home. New Haven, Conn. (WTNH) - It's been a long time coming, and on Monday the trial of Cheshire home invasion suspect Steven Hayes is expected to begin. There has been intense media coverage of the Cheshire home invasion, which occurred in July of 2007, but as the trial of suspect Steven Hayes begins there is one story we will hear for the first time -- what Dr. William Petit saw and heard. Petit will testifiy about being beaten and left for dead, and the killings of his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit and daughters Hayley and Michaela. When asked last month about taking the stand, Dr. Petit said he would "try and think about doing the right thing and testify about what happened, being the face of my family since they can't be here to represent themselves." It's unclear how defense lawyers will handle Petit on the stand. Former Chef State's Attorney Christopher Morano expects they will tread lightly. "If they are overbearing on a victim such as Mr. Petit, they might win a legal battle but they could lose the heart of the jury so that's a very tough path," Morano said. Morano knows all about high profile cases, having prosecuted Michael Skakel, who was convicted of killing Martha Moxley of Greenwich. Morano says lawyers have shut out all the media coverage during the trial and focus on making the case to the jury. In this case its likely to include graphic photos from inside the Petit home. "The prosecutor is entitled to present those photos if they are relevant to the crime being charged and in most cases that means most of those photos are going to get in," Morano said. Hayes trial is expected to last more than two months. However, it is possible the trial could be delayed. Late Friday Attorney Jeremiah Donovan, the lawyer for Joshua Komisarjevsky, the other man charged in the Cheshire murders confirms he has filed a motion on behalf of his client to bar Petit from being inside the courtroom for the Hayes trial. Donovan says to be in the courtroom for all the testimony could "make his independent recollection less accurate." Donovan also said while Hayes lawyers have agreed to allow Petit inside, Donovan says they have made no such agreement and will ask the judge to sequester Petit during the Hayes trial, meaning he could not be in courtroom except when he testifies. By Tim Wright Air & Space Magazine, September 17, 2010 Seven years after her brother disappeared from Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport in Angola, Benita Padilla-Kirkland is trying to persuade the FBI to re-open his case. She believes she has the “new information” agents told her they require. But she suspects that the agency already has more information than agents will admit to. Kirkland’s brother, Ben Charles Padilla, a certified flight engineer, aircraft mechanic, and private pilot, disappeared while working in the Angolan capital, Luanda, for Florida-based Aerospace Sales and Leasing. On May 25, 2003, shortly before sunset, Padilla boarded the company’s Boeing 727-223, tail number N844AA. With him was a helper he had recently hired, John Mikel Mutantu, from the Republic of the Congo. The two had been working with Angolan mechanics to return the 727 to flight-ready status so they could reclaim it from a business deal gone bad, but neither could fly it. Mutantu was not a pilot, and Padilla had only a private pilot’s license. A 727 ordinarily requires three trained aircrew. According to press reports, the aircraft began taxiing with no communication between the crew and the tower; maneuvering erratically, it entered a runway without clearance. With its lights off and its transponder not transmitting, 844AA took off to the southwest, and headed out over the Atlantic Ocean. The 727 and the two men have not been seen since. Who was flying 844AA? Had something happened to make Padilla take that desperate chance? Or was someone waiting inside the airplane? Leased to deliver diesel fuel to diamond mines, the 727 carried 10 500-gallon fuel tanks and a few passenger seats in its cabin. Less than two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 727’s freakish departure triggered a frantic search by U.S. security organizations for what intelligence sources said could have been a flying bomb. Retired U.S. Marine General Mastin Robeson, commander of U.S. forces in the Horn of Africa when 844AA went missing, says word of the 727 “came up through the intelligence network.” According to Robeson, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) considered moving U.S. fighter aircraft to Djibouti on the Red Sea coast, where the Combined Joint Task Force shares a base with the French military. Robeson continues: “It was never [clear] whether it was stolen for insurance purposes…by the owners, or whether it was stolen with the intent to make it available to unsavory characters, or whether it was a deliberate concerted terrorist attempt. There was speculation of all three.” Speculation that the theft of 844AA posed a terrorist threat ended, though it’s unclear why. Perhaps National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency technicians saw signs of a crash in satellite imagery—debris or an oil slick in the Atlantic, for example—or evidence that a large aircraft had landed on one of a half-dozen unpaved, 8,000-foot runways in the Congo, north of Angola. Agency spokesperson Susan Meisner would not comment, saying that the NGIA was not the lead agency in the case. (A CIA spokesperson also declined comment, as did a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security. FBI agents also refused comment, citing national security concerns.) Perhaps the speculation ended more gradually, after weeks without clues or sightings stretched into months. The disturbed hornet’s nest of a global security alert—the searches, bulletins, and interrogations—quieted, and in 2005, the FBI closed its case. I have filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the CIA and FBI and have followed in at least some of the FBI’s footsteps, interviewing the people who flew 844AA to Angola and worked with it there, hoping to understand how a 727 could just disappear. “IT REALLY WAS in beautiful condition,” Keith Irwin says of the airliner he acquired in Miami in February 2002. Irwin, 57, a South African entrepreneur who ran a series of information technology companies and, until 2000, a small tourist airline with flights from South Africa to Mozambique, had come to Miami to pick up a different aircraft altogether. Representing a joint venture with a South African company called Cargo Air Transport Systems, Irwin had arranged to lease a 727 and two flight crews—pilot, first officer, and flight engineer—for a year. The air transport company had signed a contract to supply fuel to diamond mines in Angola, where a long civil war had made transporting goods by road almost impossible. The 727, therefore, was to have been delivered with fuel tanks installed in the cabin. The joint venture was backed by a single investor, who had deposited $450,000 in a U.S. bank. Irwin’s job was to manage the flight operations, but the deal for the airplane fell through. Irwin ended up with fuel tanks and no airplane. That failure stranded six crewmen who had assembled in Miami. “The guys then were desperate for work,” says Irwin. “Most of those guys had not flown in a long time because of the 9/11 story. I said, ‘Look, I can take you on if we can find another aircraft.’ ” And Irwin met Maury Joseph, president of Aerospace Sales and Leasing, Inc. Joseph owned three 727s that had recently been retired by American Airlines. “All three aircraft were almost in mint condition,” says Irwin. “American Airlines had a very good maintenance program.”
New deal: Joseph sold 844AA to Irwin for $1 million and change. According to his records, he received a down payment of $125,000, and says he stipulated that the balance be paid within 30 days. He agreed to remove the passenger seats from the cabin and to allow Irwin to take the airliner to Africa. Irwin says he cannot remember the details of the agreement, but recalled it to be a lease arrangement. In any case, the joint venture made only two payments and defaulted. Though the two men now differ over the terms of the contract, they agree on one detail: As a condition of the agreement, Irwin was required to take along one of Joseph’s employees, Mike Gabriel, whose job was to make sure that the deal was concluded. “I gave Mike $10,000 and told him to fly with them,” says Joseph. “Stay with the plane till you get the money, and then come on home, and if not, bring the plane home.” On February 28, 2002, with most of the passenger seats removed and the 10 fuel tanks loaded, 844AA, still in the livery of American Airlines, with a blue stripe down the side and an AA logo fading on its tail, took off for Africa. Because Irwin’s partners had not arranged a landing permit, it took two weeks for the crew to make their way to Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport, where they arrived on March 14. Irwin, who had not worked in Angola before, realized immediately that the deal was in trouble. The company hiring his partners for deliveries, Kuwachi Dundo, was supposed to pay $220,000 when the airplane and crew landed, but instead the company’s representative made excuses. (Irwin lost almost $140,000 in the first deal and had burned through the rest of the $450,000 by March.) The crew endured accommodations in a dismal apartment without electricity or drinkable water, near an open sewer. (Gabriel and Irwin didn’t stay with the crew; they had rented an apartment in the back of a house owned by an Angolan air force general.) The only one of the men not troubled by the circumstances they found in Angola was Mike Gabriel. Gabriel, a dealer in aircraft parts and engines, had spent a considerable amount of time in West Africa, and was accustomed to the AK-47s the men saw everywhere, including stacked up behind the bar of a club they frequented. Most worrisome to the crew was that they were required to surrender their passports on arrival. Irwin explains that Kuwachi needed the passports to obtain Angolan licenses for the pilots and flight engineers. “I was scared to death. I really thought I was going to die,” says Art Powell, one of the flight engineers with the project. Powell had been to Angola before and had spent a year working in Nairobi, Kenya, but this experience was different. He felt intimidated by the people who had hired the crew for the fuel-delivery job. His anxiety was intensified by the presence of a local “helper” who toted an AK-47. The helper was a guard whom Mike Gabriel says he hired because the crew repeatedly voiced concerns about safety. When Kuwachi got wind of the crews’ unrest (several crew members have admitted that they were planning to steal the aircraft to escape to South Africa or return to the States), the company refused to return the passports. Irwin and members of the crew went to the U.S. Embassy; only then were the passports returned. By Angolan regulations, Irwin says, 844AA was controlled by the clients who hired it. Prohibited from flying the aircraft out of the country, Irwin booked airline seats and flew the crew members to South Africa. From there, two of the men immediately flew home to the United States. One says he is still owed $17,000. The other four crewmen, still hoping for the money they’d been promised, stayed on. By April, Irwin was extricating himself from the deal made by Cargo Air Transport Systems and had found a new backer, an Angolan who arranged deliveries for a different client. Irwin and the remaining crew returned to Luanda and began flying the shipments for the new company. Mike Gabriel placed the total number of flights made at 17. “It’s the most dangerous flying in the world,” says a crewman who asked that his name be withheld because he fears for his career. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he likened the deliveries to flying into a combat zone. When they approached the airfields, the crew tried to stay at an altitude above small-arms fire for as long as possible, then spiraled down to land. “I’ve been a [flight deck crew member] for 30 years,” he says. “For me, it was an opportunity to make a couple of bucks... and when everything started falling apart, I probably hung on twice as long as common sense dictated. But I had too much invested at that point to bail out.” Many of the runways, says Mike Gabriel, aren’t paved and aren’t like the ones U.S. crews are accustomed to. “On some, you land uphill, then go downhill, then uphill again,” he says. At one airstrip, the anonymous crewman says, just before 844AA arrived, a 727 flying for a competing company crashed on landing and skidded off the runway. Although the crew survived, he says, some local residents were killed. “We gave [the other flight crew] a lift out of there but not before going over to their airplane and stealing some parts that we needed. That’s when I decided it was time to go home.” Before he left, he says, a “big African showed up with a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills. It was payday.” Besides paying the crew, the money was supposed to pay off accumulated airport fees and fuel costs. “After that,” the crewman says, “I created a family emergency…. I said, ‘My mother is sick.’ ” He promised he’d return in two weeks and left. “I had no intentions of going back, of course. I didn’t get anywhere near full pay, but I got enough that I could pay my bills and make it not completely worthless.” By the end of April, all of the Americans except Mike Gabriel had left. Irwin hired a local crew and continued to deliver fuel to the mines, but he was ready to leave too. The civil war in Angola had ended. Competition among fuel haulers, Irwin says, had intensified, and he was growing more uncomfortable with the delivery deals. His partners were claiming part ownership of the aircraft, but Maury Joseph had not been paid. Joseph, meanwhile, sent a crew to swap an engine from the 727. Finally, Irwin says, he was being followed—by a local man named Antonio, who, Irwin believes, was working for one of his partners. “I would turn around,” Irwin says, “and spot Antonio watching me from a car.” Irwin began wedging a chair under the door handle of his hotel room “just like you see in the movies.” One night, he heard a key card slide into the slot on the door. The lock released. “I started yelling and whoever it was ran,” he says. The hotel security guards questioned the night clerk and learned that he had accepted a bribe to provide the key card. Irwin left the country the next day and didn’t go back. Maury Joseph fired Mike Gabriel some time that spring. “He kept convincing me that next week, next month…,” Joseph says, referring to the outstanding balance owed on the airplane. In May 2002, the only part of the original 844AA project left at the Luanda airport was 844AA. THE SON OF A FLORIDA MILLWRIGHT, Ben Charles Padilla Jr. was always mechanically gifted, says sister Benita Padilla-Kirkland, and from the time he was a boy, he loved airplanes. In his mid-20s he learned to fly and became certified as an airframe-and-powerplant mechanic. He lived in south Florida with two children, one his own, and a fiancée of 15 years. (Efforts to contact her were unsuccessful.) Though the two weren’t married, Padilla gave her power of attorney in his absence and made her the executor of his estate, according to Padilla-Kirkland, and left her almost everything in his will. “He certainly knew the airplane,” says Maury Joseph. Padilla was a freelancer, who had worked for Joseph on two jobs before traveling to Angola to repossess 844AA. Padilla had worked extensively in Africa. He helped Joseph ferry a 727 to Nigeria for a sale and during the negotiations stayed to explain the aircraft systems. “If you said, ‘Go to Cambodia and do this’ or ‘Go to Indonesia and do this’ or ‘Go to South America and do this’ he would do it. [When in Nigeria] I was with Ben daily for a month or more,” says Joseph. “You become fairly close to somebody when you’re with them day and night.” Joseph trusted him. But another employer formed a different opinion. Jeff Swain, who works near Miami in international aircraft sales and leasing, had hired Padilla in the late 1990s for an airline he was operating in Indonesia—and fired him. “We had certain standards of conduct we expected from flight engineers,” Swain says, adding, when pressed, “He was too involved in chasing the local girls. It was an unstructured environment, and he just went bad.” Swain says that after Padilla was fired, he stayed on in Indonesia for two months and racked up a $10,000 bill that he told the hotel the airline would pay. “We finally had him deported,” says Swain. Padilla once showed Swain a photograph of a woman with small children and told him it was his wife in Mozambique, but Swain says, “I never believed it was real. Ben was always marveling everyone with his bullshit stories.” One of Padilla’s friends also saw a photograph of a wife, but insists that she lived in Tanzania. Another acquaintance was told that Padilla had a wife in Indonesia. Benita Padilla-Kirkland says she’s heard the stories, but believes her brother would have told her if he’d had another family. She doesn’t doubt the relationships, but is convinced that Padilla was helping to support people he’d befriended. “There might have been more than one of those situations,” she says. WHAT IN FEBRUARY 2002 had been a retired airliner in excellent condition had by fall become a junker worth only the price of its engines. And Maury Joseph found a buyer for them: Jeff Swain. Swain says that Irwin and the crews had ruined the airplane. “It would never be of any value again,” he says. “You can’t put water tanks full of fuel in an airplane and expect it to be good. Totally stupid. But it had really good engines on it—maybe 1,000 cycles since new.” In November 2002, Joseph and Ben Padilla flew to Nigeria to deliver a 727, and Joseph hired Padilla to fly to Angola the following April to pay the outstanding fines and hire mechanics to return the 727 to service. “If [the company that contracted for fuel deliveries] wasn’t paying Mr. Irwin, you can assume he wasn’t paying anybody,” says Joseph. “He probably hadn’t paid the fuel bill. He didn’t pay the navigation fees, the landing fees, and certainly wasn’t paying the parking fees at the airport. So all of those became things that we had to resolve and I had to pay all those.” Padilla worked with Air Gemini, a Luanda-based airline that operated a repair station. The return-to-service process was progressing steadily, according to Joseph, and in May 2003, acting as Joseph’s agent, Padilla hired a pilot and copilot from Air Gemini to help him deliver the aircraft to Johannesburg, South Africa, where Joseph was waiting with his new customer. A day or two before the aircraft was to leave Luanda, Padilla made plans with Air Gemini to take the aircraft from the company hangar out to the main runway, where he intended to run the three engines up to full power for a systems check. Late in the morning on May 26, when Joseph and Swain were expecting 844AA to land, Joseph took a call from an Air Gemini employee, who demanded to know why another crew had flown the airplane out of Luanda. “He was kind of hard on me,” Joseph says. After the shock wore off, he telephoned the U.S. Embassy in South Africa to report the disappearance, then called his wife back in Florida to tell her to call the FBI. From Washington, D.C., the Department of State, notified by the U.S. Embassy in Angola, sent a message to every American embassy in Africa: Alert aviation officials that an airliner has been stolen, and call every airport with a runway long enough to handle a 727. For the U.S. government, fraud was one theory that could explain the aircraft’s disappearance. “Part of the intelligence was that the airplane was in a bad state of repair,” says General Robeson. “That was one of the speculations, that it was an insurance fraud situation. You know, ‘Oops, my plane was hijacked/stolen by terrorists and now I can do an insurance claim on it.’ So, that was probably as valid of an explanation when all was said and done as anything. But we just left it as an unknown.” Among intelligence officials, the suspicions of fraud may have been aroused by knowledge of an incident in Maury Joseph’s past. During the 1990s, Joseph was CEO of a cargo airline named Florida West (which later went bankrupt). The Securities and Exchange Commission charged him in a civil case with falsifying financial statements and defrauding investors. The court imposed a fine and barred Joseph from acting as an officer in a publicly held company. But Joseph, when contacted by the FBI, volunteered to take a lie-detector test, and Swain, who was there when Joseph took the call from Air Gemini, is certain that Joseph had nothing to do with the airplane’s disappearance. “Look, nobody was more amazed by this situation than Maury,” Swain says. He describes Joseph as utterly confused by the information that the airplane was gone. The suspicion that Ben Padilla could have played any part in an insurance fraud angers his younger brother. “If anybody would say to me that my brother was involved with this,” says Joe Padilla, his voice tightening, “they’re full of it. ’Cuz I know my brother. He’s not gonna do nothing crooked. I know that for a fact.” He is convinced that more than one person was already on board, waiting, and that they forcibly took the aircraft, and killed Ben and John Mutantu. “I keep hoping against hope that maybe he’s tucked away somewhere,” says Benita Padilla-Kirkland. The new information she passed along to the FBI was a possible sighting of the aircraft, one of many reported over the years. Mike Gabriel believes the airplane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean soon after takeoff. One crew member from the fuel delivery operation thinks the Angolan air force shot it down with a missile. A Luandan pilot says the word there is that the aircraft went north and vanished near Kinshasa, Congo. One of Ben Padilla’s friends says the airplane was disassembled for parts in Bujumbura, Burundi, on Tanzania’s western border. Picking through the fragments of 844AA’s history, I found a story of broken deals, disappointments, and betrayals, but no real clues to the aircraft’s destination that day in 2003. We may never know for sure where it went. It is the largest aircraft ever to have disappeared without a trace. The Obama administration is seeking to sell Saudi Arabia advanced aircraft worth up to $60 billion in what Pentagon officials say would be the largest-ever single foreign arms deal. A senior Defense Department official said the administration is prepared to authorize the sale to the Saudis of as many as 84 new F-15 fighter jets and three types of helicopters: 70 upgraded F-15s, 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds. The deal could be done over five to 10 years, depending on production schedules and training needed. By law, the president has to give Congress a 30-day notice before making a formal offer to sell arms overseas. Congress can review the plan and pass legislation to block the sale. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has not yet received formal notification of the possible sale. Bret Funk, a spokesman for Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R) of Missouri, where parts for the F-15 are made, said that the deal is important to the country's "strategic, national interests in the Middle East" and that Bond hopes it will preserve jobs for the fighter-jet production lines in St. Louis. The talks between the United States and Saudi Arabia have been going on for months, but more details are coming out. The Wall Street Journal disclosed some details on Monday. According to the military, Boeing - maker of the F-15, the Apaches and the Little Birds - has estimated that the purchase would involve 77,000 direct and indirect jobs in 44 states. Some of those would be jobs that would be kept, but an unspecified number of new jobs would also be generated, officials said.
Another deal, the senior Pentagon official said, could include selling the Saudis naval and ballistic missile-defense weapons systems that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more. The official said the Saudis continue to have internal discussions about those purchases and are watching to see the outcome of a competition to build a new Littoral Combat Ship. The Navy is choosing between two contractors to build the small, maneuverable ship, which operates close to shorelines. Defense industry analysts said the sale of the aircraft is a key toU.S. efforts to boost support from Arab allies against Iran. "The U.S. is trying to create the strongest effort to deter and contain Iran," said Anthony Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you look at all of these sales, the U.S. is working to create a Saudi Air Force that is far more capable than Iran. These sales help give Saudi Arabia the capability to convince Iran that it can't use missiles or air power against Saudi Arabia or its neighbors." Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace industry analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, said the overseas weapons market has become more active in recent years. Last year, the U.nited States exported $3.2 billion in combat aircraft overseas, up from $2.4 billion in 2008. Among the biggest buyers in 2009 were Singapore for $1 billion worth of F-15 aircraft; Greece and Poland, receiving $1.9 billion worth of F-16s; and Australia, receiving $200 million worth of F-18s. Aboulafia said the F-15s are the most advanced aircraft the United States would probably be willing to sell to the Saudis. Another more advanced aircraft, the F-35, isn't ready and doesn't carry as much weaponry as an F-15, he said, and "it would be harder for political reasons to sell the Saudis the F-35." Although he said Israel has historically been uneasy with U.S. military sales in the Arab world, he noted that Israel got funding for anti-ballistic missile systems and is among the first customers for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant, said the aircraft and naval weapons sales would be boosts for U.S. defense contractors. They have been looking to increase overseas business, as defense spending by the Pentagon is expected to remain flat or decline slightly in coming years. "With domestic demand for weapons headed down, the big defense companies have been looking overseas to customers like Saudi Arabia to make up the difference," he said. "Those countries have money to spend at a time when the U.S. government is in dire fiscal straits." Sikorsky, which is owned by United Technologies, makes the Black Hawk helicopters. The Pentagon said on Monday that it would not discuss any details of the aircraft sales until the deals are complete.
WHAT'S IN THE NEWS!
4th day of Hayes trial underway
Graphic evidence submitted yesterday to jury
Published : Thursday, 16 Sep 2010, 6:12 AM EDT
September 16th 2010
The Trial of Steven Hayes has started today in Conn. Charged with the home invasion murders of the Petit family back in 2007 some horrific events have already started to unfold at this trial. The 3 woman of the Petit family were sexually assulted, tied to their beds doused with gasoline and set a blaze. The wife of Doctor Petit was driven to a local bank to withdraw $15,000 and was told if she complied with her abducters no harm would come to her husband, 17 and 11 year daughters. That was not the case. When they arrived back home they were beaten raped, strangled, and set on fire after being doused with gasoline. Mr Petit a doctor was able to free himself while tied up in the basement of their home. The defense attorney for Steven Hayes had the balls today in court to actually blame the police for taking 33 min to respond to the 911 call placed by the teller of the bank where Mr.s Petit was forced to withdraw the $15,000.00. The teller ran to her office and called 911 after Mrs. Petit pleaded for help inside the bank. Steven Hayes it has been reported has tried to take his own life while in custody.
The 727 that Vanished
A case pursued by the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security, CENTCOM, and the sister of Ben Padilla.
Saudis may get huge arms dealTuesday, September 14, 2010
"This gives [the Saudis] a whole host of defense capabilities to defend the kingdom," said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been completed. 
September 16th 2010
US drone attacks bombard Haqqani network in Pakistan
The latest US drone attack killed 14 suspected militants in Pakistan, bringing the number of people killed by drones in September alone to 75 as the US targets the Haqqani network. In this July 8 file photo, Pakistani paramilitary troops take position on a hilltop post in Khajore Kut, an area of Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border. The latest US drone attack, on Wednesday, killed at least 14 suspected militants in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, reported Al Jazeera. Mohammad Sajjad/AP/File
Samer Muscati traveled across Iraq to assess the human rights situation seven years after US and Coalition forces invaded the country. He found a country in flux and turmoil. Despite the fact that security for most Iraqis has improved, abuses remain commonplace.
Over a period of four weeks, Muscati's team crisscrossed Iraq, from Basra to Kurdistan, speaking with academics, activists, journalists, lawyers, political and religious leaders and victims of human rights abuses about violence against women and minorities, the plight of internally displaced persons, freedom of expression, torture, detention and other issues.
HRW found a country in flux and turmoil, and in the following slides, Muscati explains that despite the fact that security for most Iraqis has improved, abuses remain commonplace. Though some of the grievances Muscati heard were years old, many victims are still waiting for justice. More than one million Iraqis are internally displaced, many squatting in miserable conditions. Minorities and women say they are at risk of violence because of the lack of security and the rise of religious extremism. The few signs of a new democratic Iraq inching forward on human rights could not hide the fact that the country remains tethered by a legacy of political strife, wars, tyranny, sanctions and corruption.
Samer Muscati
Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live!
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, expanding the conservative court's embrace of gun rights since John Roberts became chief justice.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.
On its busy final day before a three-month recess, the court also ruled that a public law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join, jumped into the nation's charged immigration debate by agreeing to review an employer sanctions law from Arizona and said farewell to Justice John Paul Stevens, who is retiring after more than 34 years.
A short distance from the court, the Senate Judiciary Committee began confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Stevens.
In the guns case, Justice Samuel Alito said for the court that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."
The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Roberts voted with the majority.
Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess guns, at least for purposes of self-defense in the home.
That ruling applied only to federal laws. It struck down a ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement for other guns in the District of Columbia, a federal city with unique legal standing. At the same time, the court was careful not to cast doubt on other regulations of firearms here.
Gun rights proponents almost immediately filed a federal lawsuit challenging gun control laws in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill., where handguns have been banned for nearly 30 years. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence says those laws appear to be the last two remaining outright bans.
Lower federal courts upheld the two laws, noting that judges on those benches were bound by Supreme Court precedent and that it would be up to the high court justices to ultimately rule on the true reach of the Second Amendment.The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.
Monday's decision did not explicitly strike down the Chicago area laws. Instead, it ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling. But it left little doubt that the statutes eventually would fall.
US drone attacks are misguided
Not only are they illegal, but by killing civilians they also radicalise Pakistanis
Gulf News
Published: 00:00 June 29, 2010
The latest US drone strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, which killed six alleged militants, has refocused attention on this illegal practice. More than 900 people have been killed in over 100 such attacks carried out by the CIA since August 2008, including hundreds of innocent civilians. Earlier this month, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston said that weapons such as drone aircraft pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law and warned about a "Playstation mentality" developing among those operating these unmanned killing machines from the other side of the world.
The fact remains that this approach fuels more anger against the US in a region where anti-American sentiment is already running high. Such attacks are a violation of international law and also of Pakistan's sovereignty. Islamabad has often complained about these strikes to the US.
Besides, the huge number of civilian casualties means that there is a high probability of angry relatives joining the ranks of militants to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. It is ironic that the frequency of the drone killings has only gone up since Barack Obama took over the US presidency.
US drone strikes kill 18 in Pakistan Pakistani security officials say the latest attack has killed four people, adding that 14 others had been killed in the other two US drone attacks in the same volatile tribal district.
Wed Sep 8, 2010 7:2PM
Three US drone attacks on a single day have killed at least 18 people, injured several others in Pakistan's tribal district of North Waziristan.
The last drone attack targeted a building in a village five kilometers northwest of Miranshah town.
The United States claims its drone attacks target militants. However, hundreds of civilians have been killed in such imprecise attacks since 2008.
The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington, as statistics show that the US missile strikes have killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians over the past two years.
Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the strikes and considered them to be in clear violation of its sovereignty.
JR/PKH/MMN
There was a massive drone attack in Pakistan today — one involving multiple unmanned aircraft and “up to 18 American missiles,” according to the Associated Press. 14 people are dead.
This second robotic strike in three days is the latest sign that the American drone war in Pakistan has reached a new peak. There have been 34 reported attacks in Pakistan in the first 19 weeks on 2010. That’s almost as many as the 36 strikes carried out in all of 2008. And these strikes are no longer against specific, named terrorists. Signs of militant activity are enough to bring in the drones.
The latest target, according to AFP: a training camp “run by militants attached to Taliban-linked Afghan warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is reputed to control up to 2,000 fighters who attack U.S.-led forces over the border in Afghanistan.” CNN’s national security desk wonders whether the strike is in “retaliation” for the attempted Times Square bombing — which was allegedly inspired, at least in part, by the drone attacks in Pakistan.
American Reaper drones typically fly with four weapons stations. Each of those stations can carry two, 100-pound Hellfire missiles. Last month, however, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had begun outfitting their unmanned attackers with smaller, 35-pound glide bombs. So it’s tough to tell exactly how many drones were involved in the latest strike.
In Washington, there’s increased debate about the consequences of the drone strikes — whether they’re inspiring more militants than they are eliminating. Meanwhile, American officials are sending mixed messages to their Pakistani counterparts about whether local forces should join the drones in assaults on the militant haven of North Waziristan. On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of “very severe consequences” if a successful terror attack in the U.S. was traced back to Pakistan. Yesterday, an unnamed U.S. military official told CNN: “We believe right now the Pakistanis are doing everything they can.” Which means it’s up to the drones to keep up the attack.
Tea Party battles for 'soul of this country' By Kristi Keck, CNN
As Tax Day approaches, Tea Party activists are uniting to voice the message they've been honing for more than a year: It's time to reduce the size of government, honor the Constitution and return to fiscal responsibility in Washington.
The Tea Party Express' third cross-country tour brings activists to Boston, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, before culminating with an anti-tax rally at the nation's capital on Thursday.
The "Just Vote Them Out!" tour has weaved through areas represented by vulnerable Democrats, bringing thousands to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hometown in Nevada on its opening day. The tour's other top target -- Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan -- announced his retirement the same day the tour was in his turf.
Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin is the top draw at the Boston event. Republican Sen. Scott Brown, whose winning Massachusetts campaign was infused by the Tea Party, turned down his invitation to the event, although his office said he wished the rally success.
So far, the movement's success is in the eye of the beholder. Tea Party activists running for office have yet to make much impact in the Republican primaries, and Stupak rejected the notion that the Tea Party played a role in his decision to step down. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admitted Tuesday that the protests and rallies by the Tea Party across the country are having an impact on lawmakers' decisions about running for another term. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admitted Tuesday that the protests and rallies by the Tea Party across the country are having an impact on lawmakers' decisions about running for another term. "Do I think that negative atmosphere that's been created by the Tea Party and by others certainly goes into the thinking of members? I think it does. I think you honestly have to point out that it does," Hoyer said. The announcement by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich followed his meeting with President Obama before the start of a 47-nation summit on nuclear security. In an exclusive interview with CNN on Monday, Yanukovich said that most of his nation's highly enriched uranium would be gone by the end of 2010. "The Ukraine has quite a number of power plants and various universities and research institutes where we are trying to understand to best utilize nuclear in a peaceful means," Yanukovich told CNN foreign affairs correspondent Jill Dougherty. "We are working on it. However, we are already taking the necessary step to remove highly enriched uranium from the country. By the end of this year, Ukraine is going to have the larger part of this uranium taken out of the country." A White House statement said Obama "praised Ukraine's decision as a historic step and a reaffirmation of Ukraine's leadership in nuclear security and nonproliferation." "Ukraine joins the United States in the international effort to convert civil nuclear research facilities to operate with low enriched uranium fuel, which is becoming the global standard in the 21st century," the statement said. Yanukovich indicated that the final destination of the highly enriched uranium could be Russia. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the destination had yet to be determined, but he said Russia was likely to be one of the countries to receive such nuclear materials. The White House statement said the United States will provide financial and technical assistance to Ukraine to get rid of its highly enriched uranium. According to Gibbs, the uranium that Ukraine will give up is enough to construct several nuclear weapons. He said Ukraine would convert its nuclear energy facilities to operate on low-enriched fuel. Gibbs said similar announcements by other nations could come during the summit, which comprises 47 nations discussing how to secure nuclear weapons and materials old and new to prevent them from getting into the hands of terrorists and rogue states. The United States was prepared to help other nations take similar steps to Ukraine's, Gibbs said. "The goal is to do all that we can," Gibbs said, adding: "Our assistance and the assistance of our partners and our allies will be important, not just this week but in the coming years." A White House fact sheet on Monday's announcement called Ukraine "an international leader on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation and a valued partner in implementation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) since its historic 1994 decision (along with Kazakhstan and Belarus) to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory and to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." From 1994 to 1996, the document said, Ukraine eliminated all of the intercontinental ballistic missile silos and 5,000 nuclear munitions, including 2,000 strategic-range munitions, long-range cruise missiles and strategic bombers, that remained on its territory following the breakup of the Soviet Union. IS OBAMA SENDING A MESSAGE TO BP AND OTHER OIL COMPANY'S
Washington (CNN) -- Ukraine announced Monday that it will get rid of all its highly enriched uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons, within the next two years.
HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?
Good Riddance!
Check this technology out! You can zoom to any person in the crowd. The Picture was taken with a 1,746 pixel camera! How many movie stars and celebrities can you find in the crowd? I found plenty! Use the tool on the upper left hand side to navigate, or just double click on the image in any area to enlarge. Russian Jet SU-30MK
Wait a few seconds and focus will adjust. You can see in focus every single face in the crowd at
this inauguration INCREDIBLE!
JUST WHEN YOU THINK THE US LEADS THE FLIGHT RACE
ATTENTION AIRCRAFT ENTHUSIASTS!
PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE INFORMATIONAL PIECE BEFORE VIEWING THE VIDEO BELOW
If you don’t understand Isaac Newton’s theory of law, relativity, yaw or how gravity works
in accordance with lift involving an aircraft, this video may not mean much to you.
Russia now has #1 fighter plane in the world! SU-30- Vectored Thrust with Canards.
As you watch this airplane, look at the canards moving along side of, and just below the canopy rail.
The "canards" are the Small wings forward of the main wings.
The smoke and contrails provide a sense of the actual flight path, sometimes in reverse direction.
This video is of an in-flight demonstration flown by the Russian's-30MK fighter aircraft.
You will not believe what you are about to see.
The fighter can stall from high speed, stopping forward motion in seconds. (full stall).
Then it demonstrates an ability to descend tail first without causing a compressor stall.
It can also recover from a flat spin in less than a minute.
These maneuver capabilities don't exist in any other aircraft in the world today..
Take a look at the video with the sound up. This aircraft is of concern to U.S. and NATO planners.
We don't know which nations Will soon be flying the SU-30MK, hopefully China isn't one of them.....
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Note:
Friends worked with advanced aircraft flight control systems and concepts
for many years as an extension of stability control and means of control.
Canards and vectored thrust were among many concepts examined to extend our fighter aircraft performance. Neither our current or next generation aircraft now poised for funding & production
can in any way match the performance of this Russian aircraft NOW FLYING in any near combat situation.
Somehow the bankrupt Russian aircraft industry has out produced our complex
politically tainted aerospace industry with this technology marvel.
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Alizee in her signature performace Alizee Earlier Years 'width' is a duplicate attribute name. Line 1, position 38. A Tribute to Alizee by a hard core Fan no doubt. test
BOINC is supported by the National Science Foundation through awards SCI-0221529, SCI-0438443, SCI-0506411, PHY/0555655, and OCI-0721124 Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Welcome Alizee fans! My tribute to the queen!
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that launched her!
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She grows on you.
This is her signature song
same as above but the
video. "Im Fed Up"
Don't fall in love now!
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Technologic Video Very Creepy.
I'm thinking Technologic Vs. Chucky
A full Feature Film!
Did You Know? Right Here Right Now.
Very Cool Video if you can speed read.