Sunday, Jan 11th
Last update07:54:46 AM GMT
A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Friday.
"The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile" the agency said.
But past persecution of the Jews cannot be a license to subjugate another people, the Palestinians. Nor can the solemn U.S. promise to stand by Israel be a blank check to the Jewish state when its policies undermine stated American aims.
One such Israeli policy is the relentless settlement of the West Bank. Two decades ago, James Baker, then secretary of state, declared, “Forswear annexation; stop settlement activity.” Fast-forward 20 years to Barack Obama in Cairo: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” In the interim the number of settlers almost quadrupled from about 78,000 in 1990 to around 300,000 last year.
Attorney General Eric Holder is leaving open the possibility of trying professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission instead of the civilian trial originally planned for New York City.
"At the end of the day, wherever this case is tried, in whatever forum, what we have to ensure is that it's done as transparently as possible and with adherence to all the rules," Holder told The Washington Post in an interview published in Friday's editions. "If we do that, I'm not sure the location or even the forum is as important as what the world sees in that proceeding."
Israel believes that the report it gave UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this month on the investigations it is conducting into Operation Cast Lead is sufficient, and there is no need to set up an independent inquiry committee, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The report dismissed four of the 36 allegations of war crimes found in the Goldstone Commission report, but also revealed that disciplinary action had been taken against two top officers – a brigadier-general and a colonel – for permitting artillery fire near a UN compound in a neighborhood in Gaza City.
The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition this week against a decision to lease land in Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood for the exclusive use of members of the religious Zionist community.
The petitioners said the decision was discriminatory, because it would exclude anyone other than members of the religious Zionist community from purchasing an apartment in the complex, which is situated in a neighborhood where a majority of the residents are Arab. This is especially unfair given the shortage of available housing in the neighborhood, they argued.
TVNL Comment: Why is Israel referred to as a democracy rather than a theocracy? Just asking....
Lawyers in the legal battle over Ground Zero worker compensation could bag up to half of the billions available to pay 9/11 recovery workers for toxic injuries.
Defense firms hired by the city to fight some 10,000 claims have already raked in close to $200 million, and about $75 million has been spent on administrative expenses.
Lawyers for the workers -- who have yet to be paid -- stand to reap 30 percent to 40 percent of all settlements or judgments, based on their retainer agreements with World Trade Center responders.
A Republican gubernatorial candidate said Thursday she has questions about whether the U.S. government was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - a statement she swiftly backed away from and one that drew immediate criticism from her better-known rivals in the race.
Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison dismissed the comments made by Debra Medina on the Glenn Beck Show that there were "some very good arguments" that the U.S. was involved in bringing down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
TVNL Comment: Medina backed down as soon as master liar Glenn Beck accused her of beijng a 'truther.!' Truth alwayes will end any political career.
A former Goldman Sachs Group programer was indicted on charges he stole computer code for the investment bank's high-frequency trading platform, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.
The former programer, Sergey Aleynikov, 40, was arrested and charged in July. The three-count indictment alleges that Aleynikov, who worked at Goldman from May 2007 to June 2009, illegally transferred and downloaded "hundreds of thousands of lines of source code for Goldman's high-frequency trading system" on his last day at the firm.
Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a base-building boom that began last year.
Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive.
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