Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/313690325?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Thursday, 20 June 2013
Taliban: We killed 4 U.S. troops at Afghan air base
khou.com
Posted on June 19, 2013 at 9:20 AM
Updated today at 9:20 AM
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban claimed responsibility Wednesday for an attack in Afghanistan that killed four American troops just hours after the insurgent group announced it would hold talks with the U.S. on finding a political solution to ending the nearly 12-year war in the country.
The deadly attack underscores the challenges ahead in trying to end the violence roiling Afghanistan via peace negotiations in Qatar with militants still fighting on the ground.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the insurgents fired two rockets into the Bagram Air Base outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, late on Tuesday. American officials confirmed the base had come under attack by indirect fire -- likely a mortar or rocket -- and that four U.S. troops were killed.
The attack came as the Taliban opened a political office in the Qatari capital of Doha, and announced they were ready for peace talks. The decision was a reversal of months of failed efforts to start negotiations while Taliban militants intensified a campaign targeting urban centers and government installations across Afghanistan.
The Taliban announcement followed a milestone handover in Afghanistan earlier Tuesday, as Afghan forces formally took the lead from the U.S.-led NATO coalition for security nationwide. It marked a turning point for American and NATO military forces, which will now move entirely into a supporting role. It also opened the way for the withdrawal of most foreign troops in 18 months.
President Obama cautioned that the peace talks with the Taliban would be neither quick nor easy, but called their opening a political office in Doha was an "important first step toward reconciliation" between the Islamic militants and the government of Afghanistan.
In setting up the office, the Taliban said they were willing to use all legal means to end what they called the occupation of Afghanistan -- but did not say they would immediately stop fighting.
American officials said the U.S. and Taliban representatives will hold bilateral meetings in coming days. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's High Peace Council is expected to follow up with its own talks with the Taliban a few days later.
Source: http://www.khou.com/news/212139051.html
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Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Katie Price 'He's the One' Book Launch in London
Starpulse News 600 Katie Price 'He's the One' Book Launch in London
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Kenya shilling flat but vulnerable as investors exit stocks
NAIROBI (Reuters) - The Kenyan shilling traded little changed on Tuesday but looked vulnerable to pressure from foreign investors selling local stocks and demand for dollars from importers.
By 0723 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 85.75/85 per dollar per dollar, barely changed from Monday's close of 85.65/85.
"The shilling is weakening following the sell-off on the stock market. There are signs of importers coming in to buy dollars," said Sheikh Mehran, a senior trader at Kenya Commercial Bank.
The shilling has fallen 1 percent since June 6 as foreign investors took profits from a 20 percent rally in stocks this year. The currency is still up 0.7 percent against the dollar so far in 2013.
Kenya's finance minister said on Thursday that East Africa's largest economy planned to reintroduce a tax on capital gains, a move analysts say could deter foreign investors and put pressure on the shilling.
Traders said the shilling was also tracking weaker emerging markets due to uncertainty surrounding central bank monetary stimulus programs.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-shilling-flat-vulnerable-investors-exit-stocks-075457419.html
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Tuesday, 18 June 2013
U.S. says surveillance thwarted NYSE attack, Somali funding
By John Shiffman and Mark Hosenball
(Reuters) WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday identified two of the more than 50 classified cases in which they say National Security Agency eavesdropping helped thwart terrorist plots including a planned attack on the New York Stock Exchange.
The other, a San Diego money laundering investigation tied to financing for a Somali militia, is among the 27 cases cited in a Reuters report Tuesday in which the U.S. government filed public notice that it used a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant.
A defense lawyer involved in both cases criticized the government claims, suggesting the allegations were overblown.
General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, told Congress that he planned to provide classified details on 50 such cases to the Intelligence Committee by Wednesday.
In the NYSE case, Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce told Congress that as the NSA monitored a "known extremist in Yemen," the agency learned that the suspect was contacting Khalid Ouazzani, a Kansas City used-auto parts businessman. Joyce did not cite dates, but court records place the time between 2008 and 2010.
With that information, Joyce said, the FBI obtained a more tightly targeted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant and was "able to detect a nascent plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange." Joyce added that Ouazzani "had been providing information and support to this plot" but provided no further details.
Two law enforcement sources said that information led to the 2010 arrest of a New York accountant, Sabirhan Hasanoff, a dual U.S. and Australian citizen. Hasanoff pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda in connection with the NYSE plot.
Working with an unidentified American and two co-conspirators in Yemen, Hasanoff conducted surveillance of the stock exchange in 2008 as a potential attack site, prosecutors said.
An NYSE spokesman declined to comment. Ouazzani's lawyer, Robin Fowler, said they had no immediate comment.
Joshua Dratel, a New York defense lawyer who represented both Hasanoff and the lead defendant in the San Diego case, criticized government assertions about the value of NSA surveillance.
"It really is outrageous if this is how they justify their eavesdropping," Dratel told Reuters.
He said from his perspective, "there was no plot" in the Hasanoff case to attack the New York Stock Exchange.
Instead, he said, his client, through an intermediary, had forwarded to persons overseas information he got from public sources, including Google, and the overseas persons had replied that the information was worthless and "silly."
The public court file on Ouazzani does not mention a plot against the NYSE nor the use of a FISA warrant. The Hasanoff court file does not mention Ouazzani, but it does cite the use of classified evidence. Several records in both cases are sealed.
Ouazzani was arrested on February 8, 2010. He pleaded guilty three months later to bank fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. He pleaded guilty to providing more than $23,000 to al-Qaeda in 2007 and 2008.
According to his plea agreement, Ouazzani discussed plans with unnamed others to aid al-Qaeda by fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. Ouazzani provided $6,000 to al-Qaeda, the pleading said, from profits related to sale of his auto parts business. In the plea document, Ouazzani also admitted that he pledged an oath to al-Qaeda.
According to the 2010 plea hearing transcript, Ouazzani, a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he was born in 1977, completed some college and worked as a sales manager.
Ouazzani's sentencing, now set for July 25, has been delayed for nearly three years, a sign that his case is likely related to others. He faces a maximum prison term of 15 years.
Hasanoff is expected to be sentenced by July. The U.S. government has sought a 20-year sentence.
SOMALI MILITIA
In the San Diego case, four defendants were charged in 2010 with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists - taxi drivers Basaaly Saeed Moalin and Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud, Mohamed Mohamud who worked at a money transmitting business and Issa Doreh, a local imam.
Shortly after the indictment, prosecutors filed a brief motion disclosing that the government intended to use FISA evidence "derived from electronic surveillance." A subsequent similar motion disclosed FISA searches.
According to a Reuters nationwide review of court records, this case is one of 27 since 2007 in which prosecutors filed such a notice disclosing the use of FISA evidence.
At the San Diego trial in February, a jury found that the four provided money to al Shabaab, a Somali militia designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. Dozens of recorded calls were played for the jury, including conversations between Moalin and Aden Hashi Ayrow, an al Shabaab leader, prosecutors said. The U.S. government said Ayrow died in a 2008 drone attack.
Moalin, Mohamed Mohamud and Doreh are scheduled for sentencing on June 26. Ahmed Nasir Taalil Mohamud is scheduled for sentencing on September 30.
Dratel, who represents Moalin, said that in the San Diego case, the government had kept information about NSA eavesdropping "secret to protect their secret, illegal operations" and that, based on recent revelations about NSA, defense lawyers were likely to file new motions in the case before sentencing.
(Reporting by John Shiffman and Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Nate Raymond; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Cynthia Osterman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-says-surveillance-thwarted-nyse-attack-somali-funding-002815263.html
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People attribute minds to robots, corpses that are targets of harm
June 17, 2013 ? As Descartes famously noted, there's no way to really know that another person has a mind -- every mind we observe is, in a sense, a mind we create. Now, new research suggests that victimization may be one condition that leads us to perceive minds in others, even in entities we don't normally think of as having minds.
This research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that people attribute minds to entities they perceive as being targets of harm, even when the entity in question is a robot or a corpse.
"People seem to believe that having a mind allows an entity to be part of a moral interaction -- to do good and bad things, or to have good and bad things done to them," says psychological scientist Adrian Ward, who conducted the research at Harvard University.
"This research suggests that the relationship may actually work the other way around: Minds don't create morality, morality creates minds."
Ward, together with Daniel Wegner of Harvard University and Andrew Olsen of the University of Pennsylvania, conducted five studies that investigated the relationship between morality and mind. The results consistently revealed that participants attributed 'more' mind to entities portrayed as targets of intentional harm.
For example, participants who read a story about a nurse who intentionally unplugged the food supply to a patient in a persistent vegetative state attributed more mind to the patient than those who read that the nurse performed her job satisfactorily. Participants also attributed more mind to a corpse when they read that it had been the target of harm.
Participants even attributed more mind to a George, a "highly complex social robot," when they read that George had been stabbed with a scalpel by a research scientist.
Surprisingly, people attributed "full" minds to entities when they were the targets of moral harm -- minds capable not just of experiencing harm, but also capable of experiencing emotions, feeling hunger, exerting self-control, and planning for the future.
Ward believes that the findings may help to explain how two people can look at the same entity -- for example, a fetus, a comatose patient, a gorilla, or a lab rat -- and see completely different capacities for thinking, feeling, and general consciousness:
"When these entities are thought of in moral terms, they're attributed more mind -- it seems that people have the sense that something wrong is happening, so someone must be there to receive that wrong."
Importantly, the results of the final study suggest that the effects of harm may depend on the preexisting mental status of the victim in question.
Participants who read that Sharon, a fully conscious adult human, was physically abused by her boss attributed less mind to Sharon than participants who read that her boss behaved normally. They attributed less ability to experience pain and less mind overall to Sharon, falling in line with previous research on dehumanization.
"Victimization may cause people to dehumanize other entities -- but only when these entities have a mind to begin with; entities with absent or liminal minds, in contrast, seem to gain minds as a result of victimization," the researchers write.
The research may have implications for hot-button issues centered on morality and mind, including issues surrounding animal rights, abortion, and end-of-life decisions. If moral intuitions lead to subjective perceptions of minds, investigating the objective realities of mental capacities is unlikely to resolve moral disagreements over what the 'right' course of action is.
Ward hopes to further explore how the so-called harm-made mind might influence actual decision making:
"Exploring this relationship will allow us to understand how different ways of presenting and discussing information about minds and morality may help people see eye-to-eye on contentious issues, and potentially come to a place of mutual understanding."
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/rZ0wLBNK17w/130617122405.htm
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Monday, 17 June 2013
Attack on Afghan convoy kills 3 drivers
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns into a convoy carrying goods to the Afghan capital on Monday, killing three drivers and wounding two others, an official said.
Two of the container trucks caught fire and burned from the grenade blasts at about 2:30 a.m. on the main highway about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of Kabul, said Sarhadi Zwak, spokesman for Laghman province where the attack took place.
It was unclear if the trucks were carrying supplies for the U.S.-led military coalition or if they had commercial goods, Zwak said, but he added that no international troops or military vehicles were in the convoy. He said the drivers were Afghan.
Attacks on supply trucks coming to Kabul are relatively common, as Taliban and other militants seek to disrupt both flow of the military goods and sow fear among the population.
The latest attack comes in a period of intense violence, with the Taliban targeting police and civilian officials and attacking government positions around the country as Afghan police and army prepare to officially take over full responsibility for security from international troops.
Insurgents are also waging a campaign of assassinations of government officials. On Monday, the police chief of the southern province of Helmand survived a suicide car bomb attack on his convoy that wounded three officers.
Police Chief Mohammad Nabi Elham sustained only minor injuries when the car bomber struck as he was on his way to his office at about 7 a.m.
Broken glass and the charred remains of the bomber's car were strewn in a main road in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah after the attack. The force of the blast tore off the door of Elham's vehicle. Three police officers traveling in the convoy were wounded, provincial spokesman Ummar Zawaq said.
"Thanks be to God that it was so early in the morning," Elham said later in an interview. "If it had been 8 or 9 in the morning, there would have been laborers here who are building a road for a mosque. Shopkeepers would have been here, and how many people might have been killed?"
With Afghans for the first time taking the lead in fighting the Taliban in most of the country this year, the toll on Afghan forces has been high, more than doubling from last year's spring and summer fighting season. In May alone, at least 271 police were killed in attacks, and total deaths for all security forces including the army and community-based forces known as the local police was 400 for the month.
At the same time, casualties among the U.S.-led military coalition have been reducing as the international forces pull back to let the Afghans take the lead. In May, 21 NATO troops were killed in the country, down from 44 during the same month last year.
The coalition said that one of its service members died in a non-battle-related incident in southern Afghanistan on Sunday but released no further details. The death brings June's toll for international troops to 20.
___
Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/attack-afghan-convoy-kills-3-drivers-083630806.html
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