A man stands near the national flags of the U.S. and Cuba (R) on the balcony of a hotel being used by the first U.S. congressional delegation to Cuba since the change of policy announced by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 17, in Havana, January 19, 2015. REUTERS/StringerYahoo News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to act quickly once he receives a State Department recommendation on whether to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, a remaining obstacle to the restoration of relations between Washington and Havana.

With just days to go before a hemispheric summit in Panama where Obama will come face-to-face with Cuban President Raul Castro, he offered no clear sign of how he was leaning or the timeframe for his decision. He ordered the review immediately after announcing a diplomatic breakthrough with Havana on Dec. 17.   Continue reading “Obama says would move fast to take Cuba off terrorism sponsor list”

635640271474399790-home-frontpicUSA Today – by Brad Heath

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America. Continue reading “U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades”

Capture111aBreitbart – by Lana Shadwick

DREAMers and their supporters were on the Texas Capitol steps early this morning in preparation for lobbying legislators on S.B. 1819. They are in Austin to speak to the Texas Senate’s Sub-Committee on Border Security. The sub-committee is part of the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs and Military Installations. The bill would remove in-state tuition eligibility for certain children who came to America illegally.   Continue reading “Texas: DREAMers And Supporters Descend On Austin To Lobby Legislators”

A soldier stands guard among marijuana plants at an illegal plantation found during a military operation on Friday at the Culiacan mountains, northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. The drought in northern Mexico is so bad that it has hurt even illicit drug growers and their normally well-tended crops of marijuana and opium poppies, Gen. Pedro Gurrola, commander of army forces in the state of Sinaloa, said Monday.Breitbart – by Brandon Darby

U.S. law enforcement discovered a two million dollar marijuana field in Texas linked the Mexican Los Zetas cartel. The field was discovered in Webb County, near the border city of Laredo, Texas. The cartel link was confirmed by Border Patrol agent Hector Garza, speaking to Breitbart Texas in his role as president of National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) Local 2455. Agent Garza declined to name the specific Mexican transnational criminal organization involved in this case, though he did acknowledge that both the Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and the Laredo, Texas regions are controlled by the Los Zetas cartel and that they ruthlessly deny competition in their territory.   Continue reading “Mexican Los Zetas Cartel Grew $2 Million Drug Field on Texas Soil”

CBS SF

BERKELEY (CBS SF) – Residents living in some Berkeley neighborhoods have been kept up at night over mysterious booms heard in the area over the past few weeks. It’s an unsolved mystery that even has police scratching their heads.

Rachael Marzoline told KPIX 5 about the boom she heard two nights ago. “I’d say it was around one in the morning, scared the hell out of me. I jumped out of bed,” Marzoline recalled.

Joel Bryant said he heard the booms at least eight different times in the last month. “We’re puzzled by it,” he said. “It’s not as crisp as a gunshot. It sounds like an aerial bomb explosion.”   Continue reading “Mysterious Booms heard in California and New Jersey”

A religious cross is seen as the moon is illuminated by sunlight reflected off the Earth during a total lunar eclipse, one of four so-called 'blood moons', on October 8, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. The first in the current tetrad of blood moons fell on Passover and the current eclipse occurs on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the fifth day after Yom Kippur, leading some religious people to believe that it is a prophetic sign of the end times of civilization. This blood moon appears 5.3% larger than the last one on April 15 because it occurs right after the perigee, the closest point in its orbit to the Earth. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)CBS San Fransisco

(CBS SF) — Get ready to feast your eyes on an extra special and rare total lunar eclipse Saturday morning that has some Christians worried this Easter weekend.

For the third time in less than a year, the moon will dip into Earth’s shadow, turning its bright white globe a deep coppery red in a matter of minutes.

The action begins at 3:16 a.m. PST on the morning of April 4 when the edge of the moon first enters the amber core of Earth’s shadow.   Continue reading “Blood Moon With Total Lunar Eclipse & Eerie Biblical Message Rising Over U.S. Easter Weekend”

Concord Monitor – by CASEY McDERMOTT and JEREMY BLACKMAN

The federal resettlement program began 35 years ago, and today includes some 190 sites across the country.

In New Hampshire, four cities – Nashua, Manchester, Laconia and Concord – take in refugees, but the numbers are not evenly distributed. Nationally, nearly 70,000 refugees immigrated to the U.S. in the last fiscal year; 373 of those came to New Hampshire, and 189 of those came to Concord.   Continue reading “Communities have little say about the amount of refugees they receive”

APBreitbart – by Ildefonso Ortiz

A group of robbers on the south side of Chicago appear to have taken a page out of the Gulf Cartel or Los Zetas manual for setting up roadblocks in order to carry out violent robberies. Just last week a group of three or four robbers have used a construction area in the city’s south side to set up roadblocks as a trap for motorists.

Once the motorists stop, they were assaulted and robbed, UPI news reported.   Continue reading “Chicago Robbers Appear to Copy Mexican Cartel Roadblock Tactics”

flag-boysBreitbart – by  William Bigelow

The U.S. Supreme Court, prompted by the May 5, 2010 incident at Live Oak High School near San Jose where several students were punished after they wore shirts emblazoned with the American flag on Cinco de Mayo, may institute new standards for free speech.

On Cinco de Mayo 2009, Mexican-American students at the school raised a Mexican flag and marched around the campus, some white students responded by chanting, “USA! USA!” The white students answered one year later with the shirts adorned by American flags; the Mexican-American students then called them racists and protested to Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez.   Continue reading “Supreme Court May Hear Case on Banning US flag on Cinco de Mayo”

AP Photo/Elizabeth WilliamsBreitbart

NEW YORK (AP) — A mentally ill British man pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. charges he plotted to set up an al-Qaida training camp on a ranch in a remote part of Oregon that was likened to Afghanistan.

Haroon Aswat admitted he traveled to Bly, Oregon, in 1999 at the direction of Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, a double-amputee and radical cleric based in London. His orders were to help train recruits “who wanted to participate in jihad on behalf of a terrorist organization,” he said in a barely audible voice at the sentencing in federal court in Manhattan.   Continue reading “Briton Pleads Guilty to Plans for Jihadist Training Camp in Rural Oregon”

Forbes – by Richard Eisenberg

The AARP Public Policy Institute just released a survey of 2,492 people ages 45 to 70 who’d been unemployed at some point during the past five years. Its chief finding: Many are now back at work, but about half of them (48%) are earning less than they did in their former jobs.

“A lot of them are in their pre-retirement years, when their earnings are supposed to be the highest in their lives,” Lori Trawinski, Director of Banking and Finance at the AARP Public Policy Institute and one of the report’s authors, said at the American Society on Aging’s annual conference I attended in Chicago last week.   Continue reading “Older Job Seekers: You’re Hired (For Less)”

McGlone Elementary School teachers are in the Language Acquisition and Cultural Understanding class in Denver Public Schools. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)Denver Post – by Yesenia Robles

Colorado policies around teaching non-English speakers should include teacher preparation requirements and funding for pre-school aged English learners, according to a report released Tuesday by the .

The report, the ECS and National Experts Examine: State-level English language learner policies, outlined recommendations for state and federal policies.   Continue reading “New report suggests more teacher preparation for English learners”

Photo - Protesters participate in a display of civil disobedience as labor organizers escalate their campaign to unionize the industry's workers. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)Washington Examiner – by Sean Higgins

The federal government has signed agreements with three foreign countries — Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines — to establish outreach programs to teach immigrants their rights to engage in labor organizing in the U.S.

The agreements do not distinguish between those who entered legally or illegally. They are part of a broader effort by the National Labor Relations Board to get immigrants involved in union activism.   Continue reading “U.S. signed agreement with Mexico to teach immigrants to unionize”

Alex Younger said his main priority was to keep the service 'in the premier league of intelligence services'The Telegraph – by Con Coughlin and Ben Farmer

Britain’s intelligence services are involved in a “technology arms race” as they attempt to tackle threats posed by the “dark side of globalisation”, the head of MI6 has warned.

Intelligence officers and the agents they run are increasingly being put at risk “byterrorists, malicious actors in cyberspace, and criminals” as they seek to exploit new technology that allows them to see how Britain’s intelligence agencies operate.

Continue reading “Intelligence agencies in ‘technology arms race’”

Yahoo News

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – At least one person was killed and several others injured when a truck hit a beam on a highway bridge under construction above Interstate 35 in central Texas, causing a collapse that rained debris on vehicles, officials said.

The accident took place in Salado, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Austin, on the major highway that runs through the center of the United States from Texas to Minnesota.

At least three of the injuries are serious, said Texas State Trooper Harpin Myers, who also said there had been a fatality.   Continue reading “One killed, several injured in Texas highway beam collapse”

Gutierrez and Cardenas (Michelle Moons / Breitbart News)Breitbart – by Michelle Moons

U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has been traveling the country on an “Immigration Action National Tour,” gathering foreign nationals illegally present in the United States, organizing them to rally for comprehensive immigration reform, and guiding them in applying for legal status under President Obama’s executive amnesty plans–DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parental Accountability).

On Saturday in Los Angeles, following an earlier, similar event at the University of Southern California, Gutierrez joined U.S. Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA) at Panorama High School in what was the last event listed on his cross-country tour.   Continue reading “Rep. Cardenas Tells Illegals: ‘I Represent All of You’ in Congress”

John Frederick Foerester - Texas TDCJ MugshotBreitbart – by ILDEFONSO ORTIZ

MCALLEN, Texas — In a surprise move, a member of the Texas border militia group Rusty’s Rangers pleaded guilty to a weapons charge of being a felon in possession of a weapon. The surprise plea came just one day after John Foerster went before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen for a competency hearing to determine if the so-called militia member was competent enough to understand the charges and face trial, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.

Soon after being deemed fit to stand trial Foerster went before Hanen for a re-arraignment hearing to plead guilty to the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. His sentencing hearing is set for late June.   Continue reading “Texas Border Militia Member Pleads Guilty To Federal Weapons Charge”

Immigration ShowdownMy Fox Houston – by Kristine Galvan

HOUSTON (FOX 26) – Pedro Rivera is 53 years old, Hispanic, and a retired military man. He’s also part of a growing number of Hispanic Texans pushing for stronger immigration enforcement, including the passage of SB 185, which would stop cities from implementing policies banning local cops from asking immigration-related questions.

“I’m an American citizen and I believe in the rule of law,” Rivera said. “And being Hispanic, I should not be granted special privilege in avoiding the law. We need officers to have all the tools available to them to keep us safe. That includes asking the question, when you’re being detained for a crime or being arrested for an offense, ‘ are you here illegally? Are you a US citizen?’”   Continue reading “Hispanic activists organizing In support of tougher immigration laws”

ShootingUh-oh. Back to the boring TSA/Airport false flag games again. Guess it’s time to ban machetes and wasp spray. Once again, no blood at the scene anywhere. I mean, they aren’t even making it challenging anymore. It’s pathetic. By the way, since when did the TSA start carrying guns?

Yahoo News

KENNER, La. (AP) — A man sprayed wasp killer and swung a machete at TSA agents and passengers at the New Orleans international airport before an officer shot the man several times as people frantically scrambled away, authorities and passengers say.   Continue reading “Police: Man swinging a machete shot at New Orleans airport”