Thursday, June 25, 2015
First Quarter GDP Revised Higher, But Still Negative
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Why can cops tote guns into WI schools now? The NRA called for that after Sandy Hook
Early video of 2-alarm house fire in Safety Harbor, FL
Early video with citizen commentary from kevhines57 of a two-alarm house fire yesterday (Tuesday) in Safety Harbor, Florida. Some reports indicate it was two homes burning. Witnesses told reporters a 17-year-old boy rescued his grandfather from the fire. News coverage here and here. Second video from Brett Shemansky.
With policy shift, hostage family hopes to be last ‘that fails to receive’ government support
Warren Weinstein, pictured here with his daughter in Pakistan in 2005, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in January 2015, the White House said on April 23, 2015. Photo courtesy of the Weinstein family
President Barack Obama announced a retooled hostage policy aimed at correcting the sense many families have that the government has let them down, he said Wednesday.
The president said the families with loved ones held by terrorist networks told him they felt like a distraction to government agency officials and that they received information “begrudgingly.”
“This ends today,” he said. “These families are to be treated like what they are – our trusted partners, active partners in the recovery of their loved ones.”
Warren Weinstein, who was working for a Virginia-based consulting firm in Pakistan, was abducted in 2011 and held by members of al-Qaida until his death earlier this year.
In January, Weinstein and an Italian hostage were accidentally killed in a drone strike on what U.S. intelligence determined was an al-Qaida compound in Pakistan.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Weinstein’s wife Elaine reiterated her appeal to the government that it offer a coordinated and consistent approach to all hostages and their families.
“We hope to be the last family that fails to receive the level of coordinated government support that those who serve abroad deserve when trouble finds them. As Warren’s case makes painfully clear, the people who take American citizens working abroad as hostages do not discriminate based on their job or employer, and neither should our government.”
While calling the newly created Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell a “good idea” she said the person with sole responsibility for safe hostage recovery policies would be better positioned at the National Security Council “since that would not only give the position more inter-agency coordinating authority but also ensure that those debating counterterrorism activities and hostage recovery efforts were sitting in the same room.”
“This review will not bring Warren back,” she concluded. “It is our most sincere hope that it was conducted fully and frankly so the U.S. government can have an honest conversation about the areas where it falls short. Our benchmark for this review’s success will be the actions arising from it more than its specific findings.”
Weinstein would have turned 74 on July 3.
Read the administration’s full report on U.S. hostage policy.
The post With policy shift, hostage family hopes to be last ‘that fails to receive’ government support appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Report: Right-wing radicals now a larger threat than Jihadists in U.S.
Members of the National Socialist Movement “salute” a speaker during a neo-Nazi rally at the Jackson County Courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri, Nov. 9, 2013. Thedate was the 75th anniversary of Kristallancht, when Nazi Storm Troopers and others killed almost an estimated 91 Jews, destroyed synagogues, Jewish homes and shops and began the process that became the Holocaust. Photo by Dave Kaup/Reuters
When most people think of terrorism, they often conjure images of Islamic extremists huddled in far-away caves plotting intricate plots to harm non-believers of their faith.
But since Sept. 11, a new face of terrorism has emerged: the right-wing extremist. White supremacists, anti-government crusaders and other extremist groups have killed nearly twice as many people during that time than radical Muslims in the U.S., according to a report by New America, a Washington research center. Non-Muslim extremists killed 48 people in the U.S. while Jihadists claimed 26 lives.
Last week’s massacre of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina, church was a particularly heinous crime reflective of the wave of hate-motivated violence echoing across the country.
“Law enforcement agencies around the country have told us the threat from Muslim extremists is not as great as the threat from right-wing extremists,” one of the researchers, Charles Kurzman, told the New York Times.
The study found that these right-wing extremists were largely white males who used personal firearms a majority of the time to carry out their attacks.
“On a federal level there is no agency that is working specifically on domestic terrorist threats, almost all of them are looking at foreign-oriented threat,” Ryan Lenz, a writer at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Vice News.
The post Report: Right-wing radicals now a larger threat than Jihadists in U.S. appeared first on PBS NewsHour.