BOSSASO, Somalia -- Puntland Government in northern Somalia has offered an amnesty to pirate kingpin Isse Mohamoud Yusuf (Isse Yuluh) who generated huge profit from the illicit profession, Garowe Online reports.
Isse Yuluh on Saturday arrived in Bari regional district of Armo which is situated 100km south of Gulf of Adan port city of Bossaso according to multiple independent sources.
Following over a month-long discussions between President Gaas' administration and senior pirate boss, Key presidential officials are said to have received Yuluh in Armo. Puntland Government officials declined to comment on the issue when contacted for details by GO.
Presidency sources further noted that the government lured Yulux into an agreement that would pave the way the informal handover of fighting vehicles and armed-trucks as well as integration of militiamen into Puntland Defence Forces (PDF). The military gears will be positioned on the front lines, sources stated.
Nothing so much helps a military as integrating in a bunch of pirates...
In March 2013, speaking on Pro-Puntland Government radio station, Daljir Isse Yuluh declared that he decided to quit piracy activities and slip back to development initiatives.
The latter being more lucrative...
"From now on, I tell Puntland Government, Federal Government of Somalia and International Community that I vacated pirates arena," said Yuluh."I am in extreme vicinity near the Indian ocean and I have been campaigning for the removal of young men from piracy industry".
Isse Yuluh alongside co-organizers and principal financiers reportedly involved in violent inter-clan feud in Bari region by arming militias and smuggling in small arms and pick-up trucks into peaceful areas.
Yuluh and his militia secured more than $12 Million from the capture of MV Royal Grace chemical tanker and the MT Smyrni oil tanker which were freed in March 2013. His militiamen held captive a Danish family consisting of father, wife and three teenage children in September 2011.
UN Monitoring Group reported the leading Somali pirates including Isse Yuluh to the security council. During former Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole's tenure of office, Puntland Marine Forces were in manhunt for the retired Yuluh and his gangs in pirate enclave areas in Bari region.
The counter-piracy unit clashed with Isse Yuluh militia in the outskirts of Bali Dhidin village in late 2012 as part of intense campaign against high seas crimes.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Integrating Pirates does have an up side.
Wasn't that long ago folks wuz scared shitless of the US. Now not so much.
[VOA News] Libya's parliament has sworn in a new prime minister after a contentious vote.
Forty-two-year-old businessman Ahmed Matiq took the oath of office Sunday after a chaotic session of the General National Congress.
Initially Matiq secured the support of only 113 politicians, short of the 120 votes necessary for him to win. Reports say a second vote was held giving him the support of eight more politicians and beating his challenger, science professor Omar al-Hassi.
Matiq will replace outgoing prime minister Abdullah al-Thani who resigned earlier this month.
Trend Azerbaijan has more, calling it 'chaos' -- so there's one news outlet that sees Libya for what it is...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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[Dhaka Tribune] One year elapsed since the radical Islamist group Hefajat-e-Islam ...a madrassa-based false nose and mustache of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, formed in 2010 to protest against secular education. In 2011 demonstrated violentyly against women's rights and in 2013 held large rallies demanding capital punishment of Shahbag Square protesters and banning women working outside the home... Bangladesh had claimed that thousands of its activists were killed in a combined operation of law enforcers to drive them out of the capital, but not a single name of the dead had so far been revealed.
Hefazat men turned up in the heart of the capital's Motijheel area on May 5 last year to stage a rally in support of their 13-point demand.
Continued on Page 49
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05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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This is now a New York Times story. Nothing secret about it now! WASHINGTON -- In passing references scattered through once-classified documents and cryptic public comments by former intelligence officials, it is referred to as "Midwest Depot," but the bland code name belies the role it has played in some of the C.I.A.'s most storied operations.
From the facility, located somewhere in the United States, the C.I.A. has stockpiled and distributed untraceable weapons linked to preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of rebels and resistance fighters from Angola to Nicaragua to Afghanistan.
A House subcommittee on military personnel is backing the Pentagon's request for troop cuts next year but is not on board with making retirees pay more for healthcare.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel, said any changes to retirement or healthcare benefits needs to wait until the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission submits a report next February. For that same reason the subcommittee's budget also does not include a Pentagon requested cut in basic allowance for housing, or BAH, which Wilson said would translate into a 5 percent increase in housing costs for service members.
So we'll spend more on housing and perhaps buy one less LCS...
Even where the subcommittee conceded to the Defense Department's request to reduce end strength of the forces, it was not without "serious reservations," Wilson said.
"America remains at war today and will continue at some level of persistent conflict globally with a ruthless and committed enemy for the foreseeable future," he said.
The subcommittee's budget reflects the numbers requested by the service branches for 2015, including 490,000 soldiers, a reduction of 30,000, 184,100 Marines, making the Corps smaller by 6,100 leathernecks, and 310,900 airmen, which would be 16,700 fewer than in the active force now. The Navy's end strength, 323,600, would remain unchanged from 2014.
Wilson said the budget also authorizes an extension of bonuses and special and incentive pays designed to retain critical skills.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
If the Services were really concerned about money, especially the Army and Air Force, the wouldn't be trying to gut the National Guard and Reserves. Especially on the Air side (Air National Guard and Reserves) as they have some of the best trained pilots/troops and equipment maintenance in the Services.
[DAWN] Taliban Committee member Maulana Yousaf Shah says a list of 765 non-combatant Taliban prisoners has been handed over to the government out of which 13 inmates will be release in a couple of days.
How can jihadis be non-combatant? That's as inconceivable as a hudna lasting longer than ten years.
Addressing a presser here on Saturday, Shah said military and Taliban were attacking each other after end to ceasefire.
Putting the responsibility for discontinuity in ceasefire on dialogue committees, he said if members of both committees would have played their role actively the ceasefire would not have ended. "Now the committees are making sincere efforts for ceasefire as war is not in favour of anyone."
He said: "Taliban and the government are sincere in peace dialogue and those who are demanding military operation are enemies of the country and peace."
He said the Taliban and the government should exchange their demands in the form of drafts to continue peace dialogue.
"A list of 765 non-combatant prisoners was provided to the government out of which 13 will be released in a couple of days as a good gesture," he said.
Yousaf Shah said the government had informed the Taliban Committee that neither women nor children were in government custody. He said former PM Gilani visited Akora Khatak to seek help for the release of his son Haider Gilani; however so far there was no clue to the effect despite the efforts.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Former president retired General Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... on Saturday moved a local court, seeking acquittal in the murder case of Lal Masjid holy man Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
Advocate Akhtar Shah, the counsel for Gen Musharraf, moved the application before Additional District and Sessions Judge (ADSJ) Wajid Ali.
Continued on Page 49
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05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Iraqi Kurds have a "right" to the federal presidency, the country's autonomous Kurdish region said on Sunday, signaling the start of public jockeying for positions following parliamentary polls.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has held the position since 2006, but his term is at an end, leaving the question of who will succeed him in doubt.
In recent years, a de facto agreement has emerged whereby the president has been a Kurd, the premier a Shiite Arab and the speaker of parliament a Sunni Arab.
The federal presidency "is a right of the people of Kurdistan, and we affirm this right to the Kurdish people," the region's presidency said in an online statement.
And it said that any nominee for the post must be approved by the Kurdish regional parliament -- a demand almost certain to draw the ire of Arab politicians.
The claim over the post is seen by Kurds as an important symbol after decades of central government oppression before the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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At Remembrance Day ceremony for fallen soldiers at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl, PM says "the IDF is the only thing that separates us from the massacres that our people knew in the past."
Life is hard. It's harder when you aren't as smart as your target.
[IsraelTimes] Foresight, an Israeli cyber-security firm, last week started to offer a new service, called Defacement Mitigator, which replaces a site with the original content as soon as the site is compromised. This means that, even if hackers breach a site and plant their messages, nobody will ever know about it, thereby eliminating the "reward" hacktivists seek -- attention.
For hackers trying to make a political statement, commonly known as "hacktivists," compromising a site is not enough. The objective is to spread the statement, as well as show other hackers what they've done. The site administrator's savvy and the site's popularity are among the factors which determine how long a hacked site will stay online. Most administrators will replace the hacked content with a backup of the content that is supposed to be there as soon as they know about the breach.
Thanks to hacker archive sites such as Zone-H, hackers only need a few minutes to cash in on fame and glory. Hackers submit screenshots of their "work" to Zone-H, which duly records the name of the hacker crew, their country of origin and a copy of the hacked site. The archive records hackers' accomplishments for posterity, preserving them online after the hacked site is fixed. In March 2014, a typical month, said Zone-H, more than 150,000 defacement attacks took place.
Defacement Mitigator denies hackers the reward of recognition for their accomplishments altogether. The system is based on Foresight's web security solution, which classifies elements of a web site according to the likelihood of their being breached, creating clones of the site that most users utilize. Compromised versions of a site are instantly replaced with a clean version, with users and hackers none the wiser as to what happened behind the scenes, the company said.
The Foresight platform analyzes and maps a website in order to understand content and how transactions are conducted. The system differentiates between a site's "business logic" -- data such as names, credit card numbers and passwords that could comprise anything -- and its "presentation layer" -- the static content and the predictable requests, such as the choices on a drop-down menu. With the site's characteristics thus separated, the system develops a security policy based on a "smart white list" of easily duplicated safe actions.
Clones of the presentation layer, which constitutes the vast majority of the content for most sites, are created and placed in Foresight's security cloud. When users visit the site, they are presented with one of the clones. The system checks all transactions to see if they are legitimate and blocks suspicious requests. If a hacker finds a back door to a site, the Foresight system will detect it, instantly drop the now-compromised version of the site and replace it with one of the clones.
The only time a user engages with the "real" site is when a business logic transaction is attempted -- when a user tries to enter a username and password, for example. Because they connect with databases, those requests need to be directly on the site, but they still have to go through Foresight's tough exhaustive mitigation technology before being allowed to proceed. Here, too, the system is ready with an instant backup if anything seems out of place.
With the Defacement Mitigator, Foresight extended its services to cover all sites, even those that do not require user interaction. The system is installed in dozens of mid-to-large size organizations in the retail, financial services, government and other sectors around the world.
According to Netanel Otni, head of IT infrastructure for the Weizmann Institute of Science, "Our site was hit by attack shortly after Foresight was up. Our site manager pressed a button to change the DNS and the site was automatically redirected to the cloud replica. At that point, traffic and visitors were directed to the replica versus the defaced site, which performed at optimal levels given its cloud elasticity. After seeing the success of Defacement Mitigator, we have upgraded to Foresight's complete web security platform."
The bottom line for site owners is that they are insured against breaches because breached sites are immediately replaced, so no one knows that the breach happened. For hacktivists, the system is the ultimate nightmare; if a hacktivists vandalized a site and no one saw, does it count? Not as far as Zone-H is concerned. With Defacement Mitigator, hacktivists might have to figure out another way to get their names in lights.
#2
Anyone tried to hack or take down the Zone-H site? Since they seem to be complicit with the hacks I would think they would be a prime target for "action" unless enforcement uses them to track hackers.
Long piece at the AP that describes the "Israeli Spring" amongst the ultra-orthodox haredim. Actually does a reasonable job of laying out the tensions between those who see this as an assault on a needed, traditional way of life, versus those who see it as a necessary response to the threat to the Jewish state. Recommended.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, will never recognize Israel and will not accept the conditions laid out by the Middle East peacemaking Quartet ... The Quartet are the UN (xylophone), the United States (alto), the European Union (soprano), and Russia (shortstop). The group was established in Madrid in 2002 by former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Tony Blair is the Quartet's current Special Envoy.... , according to the Islamist movement's deputy leader.
Speaking late on Saturday, Moussa Abu Marzouq said Hamas, which recently signed a reconciliation deal with the Western-backed Paleostinian leadership in the occupied West Bank, would never agree to recognize Israel.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Sniff, sniff, is there no love for Baritone or Base???
[An Nahar] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday moved to defend his plans to enshrine Israel's status as the national homeland for the Jewish people in law.
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the aim was to "anchor" in law Israel's status and ensure it would remain a Jewish state following any peace deal with the Paleostinians.
"There are those who do not want Israel to be defined as the national homeland for the Jewish people," he said in remarks broadcast on public radio.
"They want a Paleostinian national homeland to be established here next to us, and that Israel be gradually turned into a bi-national Jewish-Arab state within our reduced borders," he told ministers in a reference to Israel's Arab minority who number just over 20 percent of the population.
Netanyahu and others in the rightwing camp have long expressed fears that following the establishment of a Paleostinian state, Israel's Arab citizens would seek to press their own claims for territory in the northern Galilee and southern Negev regions.
"You cannot say we want to break away from the Paleostinians to prevent a bi-national state -- something which has a certain logic -- and at the same time give your blessing to a bi-national, Jewish-Arab state within Israel's permanent borders," he said.
"Israel gives full equal rights to all of its citizens but it is the national homeland of just one people -- the Jewish people."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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A few new facts and a welter of speculation. Enjoy!
[DailyMail] o Suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and the state of Kedah
o Said to members of violent new terror group said to be planning attacks
o Interrogations came after demands from agencies including FBI and MI6
o Manifest revealed presence of consignment but did not reveal its contents
o Airline has admitted 200kg of lithium batteries was among the items
o It refused to say what else, citing 'legal reason' related to 'ongoing' probe
A group of 11 gunnies with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning kabooms in Moslem countries.
The interrogations come after international Sherlocks, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the myrmidons, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, odd-job workers, a young widow and business professionals, to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370.
Nearly two months after the Beijing-bound plane vanished soon after take-off from Kuala Lumpur, no trace has been found despite a huge sea search costing hundreds of millions of pounds. It is thought to have crashed into the Indian Ocean with 239 people on board.
An officer with the Counter Terrorism Division of Malaysian Special Branch said yesterday the arrests had heightened suspicion that the flight's disappearance may have been an act of terrorism.
In interviews conducted so far, some suspects have admitted planning 'sustained terror campaigns' in Malaysia but denied being involved in the disappearance of the airliner, he added.
During the trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now beyond all cares and woe... 's son-in-law, Saajid Badat, a British-born Moslem from Gloucester, said he had been instructed at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan to give a shoe bomb to the Malaysians.
He said: 'I gave one of my shoes to the Malaysians. I think it was to access the cockpit.'
Badat, who spoke via video link and is in hiding in the UK, told the New York court the Malaysian plot was being criminal masterminded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of 9/11.
A mystery surrounding the cargo being carried by the missing Malaysian Airlines plane emerged on Friday when it was discovered that it had been loaded with items not specified on the manifest.
The aircraft was carrying 4.566 tonnes of mangosteens - an exotic fruit - and a shipment of lithium batteries, which were part of a separate consignment.
The batteries weighed 200kg, but that separate consignment totalled 2.453 tonnes. So what was being carried to make up the 2.253 tonnes in that separate shipment?
The mystery was sparked by a front man for the company that shipped the batteries telling a Malaysian newspaper that he would not reveal what the remaining 2.253 tonnes of cargo were.
'I cannot reveal more because of the ongoing investigations,' the front man told The Star newspaper. 'We have been told by our legal advisers not to talk about it.'
The front man said he could not even name the company which manufactured the batteries, insisting that the matter was confidential.
Questioned about the fact that a mystery cargo was not stated in the manifest, Malaysian Airlines told the paper that the rest of the consignment was 'radio accessories and chargers.'
A statement from the airline said that the freight not specified had been 'declared as radio accessories', despite there being no reference to this in the manifest released publicly last Thursday.
What the manifest does say is that NNR Global shipped 133 pieces of one item weighing 1.99 tonnes and 67 pieces of another item weighing 463kg for a total 'consolidated weight' of 2.453 tonnes.
Just how many lithium batteries had been loaded, or their weight, are not specified in the manifest, although Malaysian Airlines boss Ahmad Yahya told a media conference in Kuala Lumpur on March 24 that the batteries weighed a total of 200kg.
What the manifest does say, in respect of the lithium batteries, is that 'the package must be handled with care and that a flammability hazard exists if the package is damaged.
'Special procedures must be followed in the event the package is damaged, to include inspection and repacking if necessary.'
There has been earlier speculation that a fire involving the batteries might have been the cause of the aircraft's fate.
According to The Star, shippers NNR Global are located at an air freight forwarding warehouse located less than 100 yards from the Penang International Airport.
'The complex is guarded by the police and only those with passes are allowed entry,' the newspaper said, following its investigation into the unspecified cargo.
A consolidated shipment combines several individual consignments to make up a full container load.
At the port of destination, the consolidated shipment is separated back into individual consignments for delivery to their respective consignees.
The lithium batteries and the other mystery items that are said to be radio parts were addressed to NNR Global Logistics in Beijing, but a company named JHJ International Transportation Co.Ltd of Beijing was to collect the cargo on its behalf.
Among the conspiracy theories that have already emerged following the Boeing 777's disappearance on March 8, is that its fate was linked to 20 of the 239 people on board - they were employees of a semi-conductor manufacturing firm which develops components for hi-tech weapons systems and aircraft navigation.
They were employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a Texas technology firm, working in several manufacturing sites in Kuala Lumpur and Tianjin, China, a fact confirmed by a spokeswoman for the company.
The citizens news site Beforeitsnews, said earlier that it was conceivable that MH370 was 'hiding' with its high-tech electronic warfare weaponry.
'In fact, this type of technology is precisely the expertise of Freescale, that has 20 employees on board the missing flight,' said the website.
However, a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... until a detailed description of the 'radio parts' that have not been itemised in the MH370 manifest has been made available, the conspiracy theories are likely to be given an added thrust.
[An Nahar] Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate on Sunday set its conditions to stop battling the rival Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... , despite an order by the al-Qaeda chief to quit fighting.
Al-Nusra Front and ISIL have in recent months fought intense, bloody battles against each other, particularly in eastern Syria on the border with Iraq.
"We will follow the orders of... Ayman al-Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area. That is not a horn growing from the middle of his forehead, but a prayer bump, attesting to how devout he is... ... to stop any attack from our side against ISIL, while continuing to respond whenever they attack Mohammedans and all that is sacred to them," Al-Nusra said in a statement.
"As soon as ISIL announces the end of its attacks on Mohammedans, we will spontaneously stop firing," said the jihadist group, adding it had only fought ISIL in areas "where it was on the attack".
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... is to face two challengers in Syria's June 3 presidential election, which he is assured of winning, the constitutional court said Sunday.
"The supreme constitutional court announces... the acceptance of candidacy bids registered by... Maher Abdel Hafiz Hajjar, Hassan Abdallah al-Nouri and Bashar Hafez Assad," a court official said.
Twenty-three candidates had initially registered to run against Assad, but most did not meet election criteria to run for office in a vote that has been mocked by the opposition and the West as a "farce."
Both Hajjar and Nouri are largely unknown to the Syrian public.
Candidates whose bids were rejected have until May 7 to appeal the court's decision, said Majed al-Khadra of the constitutional court, whose statement was carried by state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
.
While the election is the country's first multi-candidate vote, the rules effectively rule out any opponents to Assad's regime from running.
Among them is the stipulation that anyone who has lived outside Syria in the past decade is excluded, effectively barring most prominent opposition figures, who live in exile.
At the same time, the vote will only be held in areas under government control.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/05/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
I hope it comes down to a floor fight. Imagine the spontaneous demonstrations.
The brave martyrs of Aleppo and assorted zones there in cast their votes unanimously for
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
BOSSASO, Somalia -- Puntland Government in northern Somalia has offered an amnesty to pirate kingpin Isse Mohamoud Yusuf (Isse Yuluh) who generated huge profit from the illicit profession, Garowe Online reports.
WASHINGTON -- In passing references scattered through once-classified documents and cryptic public comments by former intelligence officials, it is referred to as "Midwest Depot," but the bland code name belies the role it has played in some of the C.I.A.'s most storied operations.
Pervez 
Quartet
Zawahiri
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
