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BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) ? A man arrested in Connecticut in connection with the murder case against former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was being sent to Massachusetts on Friday, and investigators said a third suspect was arrested in south Florida.
Massachusetts State Police said local officers in Miramar, Fla., captured Ernest Wallace early Friday afternoon, hours after a Connecticut judge ordered Carlos Ortiz turned over to Massachusetts authorities.
New Britain State's attorney said investigators arrested the 27-year-old Ortiz in Bristol on Wednesday as part of the inquiry into the slaying of Boston semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd.
Hernandez is charged with murder in the slaying of Lloyd near Hernandez's home in North Attleborough, Mass. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.
Ortiz was charged in Connecticut as a fugitive from justice. His public defender, Alfonzo Sirica, declined to comment about the case.
Also Friday, Massachusetts authorities said officers had recovered a car linked to Wallace.
Authorities revealed Thursday night that they were seeking Wallace, who they said should be considered armed and dangerous, on a charge of acting as an accessory after Lloyd's murder.
Police arrested Hernandez on Wednesday at his Massachusetts mansion and charged the 23-year-old with orchestrating Lloyd's execution-style shooting, allegedly because the victim had talked to the wrong people at a nightclub.
A judge denied Hernandez' bail appeal Thursday in a Massachusetts courtroom, where a prosecutor said a Hummer belonging to Hernandez turned up an ammunition clip matching the caliber of casings found at the scene of Lloyd's killing.
Hernandez's lawyer argued his client is not a risk to flee and the case against him is circumstantial.
On June 16, the night before the slaying, a prosecutor said, Hernandez texted two unidentified friends and asked them to hurry to Massachusetts from Connecticut.
A few minutes later, he texted Lloyd to tell him he wanted to get together, the prosecutor said. Authorities say the three picked up Lloyd at around 2:30 a.m. June 17, drove him to an industrial park near Hernandez's home and shot him five times. They have not said who fired the shots.
Meanwhile, Lloyd's relatives were preparing for his funeral in Boston on Saturday. A relative said the service will be at Church of the Holy Spirit in the city's Mattapan section.
At Ortiz's court hearing in Bristol on Friday, there was no mention of any other allegations against him, no reference to Hernandez and no discussion of Lloyd's homicide. It remained unclear if Ortiz was one of the two friends whom authorities say were with Hernandez when Lloyd was shot to death.
A friend and a relative of Ortiz said outside the courthouse that they were surprised by his arrest. They said Ortiz is the devoted father of two girls and a boy, all under the age of 9. Ortiz was unemployed recently, but previously worked a long time at a Savers clothing store, they said.
They also said they couldn't believe Ortiz could be part of a murder.
"He's not that type of person. He has a good heart," said friend Milton Montesdeoca, 24, of Bristol, who added he didn't know Hernandez and never heard Ortiz talk about the football star.
The Patriots, who cut Hernandez following his arrest, drafted him in 2010 and signed him last summer to a five-year contract worth $40 million.
He could face life in prison if convicted.
___
Associated Press writers Michelle R. Smith in Fall River, Mass., and Bridget Murphy in Boston contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3rd-man-arrested-case-involving-ex-nfl-player-182953489.html
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Law enforcement officials have confirmed that Aaron Hernandez, who has been charged in the murder of Odin Lloyd, is also being investigated for two 2012 murders. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports and NBC legal analyst Lisa Bloom discusses the revelations.
By Richard Esposito and Erin McClam, NBC News
A third man was in custody Friday in Florida in an expanding murder investigation swirling around Aaron Hernandez, the star NFL tight end accused of orchestrating the shooting death of a friend.
Massachusetts State Police
Ernest Wallace, 41, known as ?Fish,? turned himself in in the Miami suburb of Miramar, police said. Massachusetts police had said they were seeking him as an accessory after murder, and that he was considered armed and dangerous. They were on their way to Florida to pick him up, NBC affiliate WHDH in Boston reported.
Hernandez, an All-Pro who was released by the New England Patriots after his arrest earlier this week, is charged with first-degree murder in the execution of the friend, Odin Lloyd. He was denied a second request for bail Thursday.
Sources told NBC News that he was being investigated in another case ? the drive-by killings of two men in Boston last year. The men were shot to death in an SUV after leaving a nightclub.
Hernandez, who is being held in a Massachusetts jail, lost a second endorsement deal Thursday. The Puma sportswear company, which signed Hernandez to a two-year deal in April, told CNBC it was ending the relationship ?in light of the current situation.? CytoSport, maker of the Muscle Milk supplement drink, dropped Hernandez as a pitchman last week.
Authorities have said Hernandez took part in Lloyd?s killing in the early hours of June 17 after summoning two friends from out of state. Lloyd?s body was found in an industrial park near Hernandez?s home in North Attleborough, Mass. Hernandez has pleaded not guilty.
Connecticut authorities said Thursday that they had charged another man in connection with Lloyd?s killing ? Carlos Ortiz of Bristol, the city where Hernandez grew up. He was charged as a fugitive and agreed to return to Massachusetts, authorities said.
Authorities have not spelled out the connection they believe Wallace and Ortiz have to the killing. They have said Lloyd was killed by two shots fired from someone standing above him, but they have not said who they believe pulled the trigger.
Ortiz was being held on $1.5 million bail. His public defender declined comment on Thursday.
Prosecutors say that text messages ? including from Lloyd to his sister when he was worried about his safety ? and surveillance video are part of their case against Hernandez. The judge who denied his second request for bail, Renee Dupuis of Superior Court in Fall River, described the state?s case as ?circumstantial but very, very strong.?
Prosecutors said they had uncovered four new pieces of evidence in less than 24 hours after searching a condo leased by Hernandez. They said they had found ammunition, a clip and a picture of Hernandez with a Glock handgun.
William McCauley, an assistant district attorney, also said that Hernandez had interfered with the investigation by home surveillance-camera video and instructing his girlfriend not to talk to investigators.
?The evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,? prosecutor William McCauley said.
Hernandez?s lawyers argued that he deserved bail because of his upstanding character and clean record, and because he was not a risk to flee. They noted that he stayed put last week, when rumors circulated that Hernandez was about to be arrested.
Related:?
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This story was originally published on Fri Jun 28, 2013 10:10 AM EDT
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To solve the debt crisis, Americans?who are already suffering in these tough economic times?will have to make even more sacrifices, Rep. Mike Coffman told his House colleagues last year. So, leaning on his military service, the 58-year-old Colorado Republican argued that members of Congress should take the first step and abolish their congressional pensions. ?If there?s one thing I learned in both the United States Army and the Marine Corps about leadership, it was leading by example,? Coffman lectured them, pointing to his chest at a committee hearing. ?Never ask anyone to do anything that you yourself would not be willing to do.?
What Coffman left unsaid that day in a speech about his bill?s ?symbolic? importance was that he was collecting a $55,547 state-government pension in addition to his congressional paycheck. Having spent two decades as an elected official in Colorado, he has received retirement benefits since 2009, the year he arrived in Congress.
?We did not want to double-dip on the taxpayers in a time of fiscal challenge.??Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., who declines his pension
Coffman is not alone. About 90 members from both chambers collected a government pension atop their taxpayer-financed $174,000 salary in 2012, National Journal found in an examination of recent financial records. Including a dozen newly elected freshmen who reported government pensions last year, the number now stands above 100. That?s nearly one-fifth of Congress. One lawmaker, freshman Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, received $253,323 from her government pension last year?a sum that, combined with her congressional salary, will make her better paid than President Obama this year.
Congressional pensioners span the ideological spectrum, from tea-party conservatives who rail against government waste to unabashed liberals. They are among the richest members (Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., with a net worth of at least $42.8 million in 2011) and the poorest (Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who reported between $15,000 and $50,000 in the bank and at least $600,000 in mortgage and loan debts). Overall, Democrats draw government pensions more often than Republicans?by a ratio of 2-to-1. Some lawmakers draw on multiple public retirement packages, including the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, who collected $65,000 from three different pensions in 2012.
All told, current members of Congress pocketed more than $3.6 million in public retirement benefits in 2012, the investigation found. The actual figure is almost certainly even higher because disclosure is uneven. Some lawmakers reported retirement earnings in ranges; others listed pensions but no amounts at all. This analysis, which included historical data from the Center for Responsive Politics, also does not include most military retirements, because lawmakers are not required to report them (although those who voluntarily did so were included). Members who served last year but are gone now were not included; freshmen who reported collecting pensions as candidates in 2012, such as Beatty, were included.
The practice of piling a pension atop a paycheck is legal, if unsavory to many. Taxpayer groups and some conservatives have condemned the practice as ?double-dipping?; they say elected officials shouldn?t simultaneously draw a public pension while cashing a government paycheck, because taxpayers ultimately foot at least part of the bill for both. ?You?re paying them twice,? says Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.Fixed pensions are a fading memory for most American workers, who are still smarting from losses to their 401(k)s during the credit crisis?even if those accounts have since recovered. The fact that federal lawmakers can draw large retirement payments atop generous taxpayer-funded salaries only helps fuel the widespread sense that the ruling class in Washington puts its own interests first.
Many states and municipalities forbid the practice of retiring and then taking a full-time job within the same governmental system. But those rules don?t apply to members of Congress when they are drawing a federal paycheck and, typically, a state or local pension. ?It?s a hard nut to crack as far as addressing it, because it?s different jurisdictions,? Ellis says. And federal lawmakers who have served before on the state level can garner gold-plated retirement benefits, because state legislators often write their own generous rules to allow earlier retirement or fatter pensions.
Take Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, 57, who has been collecting her Louisiana pension since late 1997, the year she joined the Senate. She was only 41. (Louisiana voters had passed a constitutional amendment to ban pensions for new state legislators in 1996, the year before. But Landrieu, who had spent eight years as a legislator, could withdraw hers because she was grandfathered in.) The average Louisiana state worker hired in recent years, by contrast, can?t retire with a full pension until age 60. Landrieu lists her annual pension payout as between $15,000 and $50,000. ?They?re two different levels of government, and it?s completely permissible,? says Landrieu, who served two terms as state treasurer after her time as a state legislator. ?I have every intention of maintaining it and continuing.?
Like Landrieu, most lawmakers collecting public pensions say they deserve the payout because they put in the time and contributed to their retirement from their own paychecks. ?I?m just saying I worked hard 33 years,? says Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., a former detective who helped hunt down the Green River serial killer and retired as King County sheriff. He earned a $109,101 pension in 2012?fourth highest in Congress. ?Anyone who looks at a 33-year career and watches someone retire and says they don?t deserve that retirement, I would vigorously disagree with that.?
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, accepted a $55,000 pension last year. ?I spent over 30 years working in state government and receive a pension just as all other qualified state retirees do,? he said in a statement. Clyburn, the state?s former human-affairs commissioner, has collected roughly $1 million in pension benefits since joining Congress in 1993.
Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, says such packages can erode public trust in an institution where it?s already in short supply. ?Retirement packages remain a concern for taxpayers because they naturally invite comparison to their own situations,? he says. And there aren?t many Americans earning a six-figure paycheck and a five- or six-figure pension.
Or, in Beatty?s case, a quarter-million-dollar pension. Beatty spent more than eight years in the Ohio Statehouse, including a stint as Democratic leader, before landing a job in 2008 as the senior vice president of outreach and engagement at Ohio State University. It was a plum post that came with a $320,000 salary, plus benefits, that vastly inflated her pension. At the time, Ohio used the three highest years of salary to calculate pension payouts; Beatty was in the university job for three years and 20 days. Beatty?s spokesman, Greg Beswick, says she began collecting the money last year, when she was a candidate.
Among Republicans, the biggest retirement package belongs to Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, who has cashed more than $300,000 in combined pay and pensions in each of the last five years. Poe is only 64. He was a Texas prosecutor and a judge, so he has received two pensions since his arrival in Congress in 2005. They were worth $139,382 in 2011. (An ?accounting error? that provided him only 11 months of payments from one pension dropped the total to $126,743 last year, according to Poe spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes.) ?Under the law of the State of Texas he has earned a pension for his public service to both the county and the state,? Hynes said in an e-mail. In his first eight years in Congress, Poe earned more than $1 million in retirement pay.
Some double-dippers occupy congressional leadership posts. Besides Cornyn and his three pensions, Sen. Roy Blunt, the Republican Conference vice chairman, collected $36,721 in retirement benefits last year from his previous service in Missouri. Records show that Blunt, 63, has collected a pension since 2005. In the House leadership, besides Clyburn, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat, received $20,481 from a pension last year. He has been collecting since 1999 from his dozen years in the Maryland Legislature.
Although the House Ethics Committee?s guidelines say ?you must disclose? pension payments as earned income, congressional disclosure is inconsistent. Some lawmakers, such as Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., list their pensions but not how much?or even if?they withdrew. (Brown?s office did not return calls for clarification.) Others leave their pensions off their forms entirely for years at a time. In a series of amended filings last year, for instance, Cornyn reported that he?d been receiving one of his three pensions as far back as 2006. During his failed Senate campaign, former Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., had to update a decade of disclosures to reflect a state pension he?d previously hidden from public view. He called it an ?unintentional oversight.?
Those collecting pensions range from some of the poorest in Congress to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., whom the Center for Responsive Politics ranked as the third-wealthiest senator in 2011. (His net worth was between $79.6 million and $120.8 million.)
That didn?t prevent Blumenthal from cashing his annual $47,000 state pension, even as Connecticut?s depleted pension fund has struggled. A 2012 study by the Pew Center on the States said the state had barely half the money it needed to pay its long-term retirement obligations, the third-worst ratio in the nation.
Blumenthal bristles when asked about whether his personal wealth and congressional salary allow him to forgo the pension. ?The benefits I?m receiving from the state were earned over more than two decades of public service, and they?re two separate entities, two separate governments, and ? they?re being paid according to law,? he says. ?I?m not going to comment as to any aspect of my financial disclosure. I would just say, I seek to give back through public service and other ways such as the charitable contributions that my wife and I make.?
Feinstein is the second-wealthiest lawmaker to draw a pension, according to CRP?s rankings, which estimate the California Democrat?s net worth at between $42.8 million and $98.7 million. Her pension, worth $54,925 in 2012, is from her time as mayor of San Francisco. She has collected about $850,000 in retirement benefits since she joined the Senate two decades ago. Feinstein declined to comment for this story.
Feinstein is hardly the longest-tenured congressional pensioner. That honor falls to 90-year-old Rep. Ralph Hall, the oldest member of the House, who spent a decade in the Texas Legislature before taking a seat in Congress in 1981. The Republican (who was a Democrat until 2004) has been collecting a Texas state pension ever since. In those 32 years he earned some $1.3 million in retirement benefits. (Many years in the 1980s he didn?t list specific amounts; this analysis presumes his pension remained flat during those years.) His 2012 pension was $65,748. ?I didn?t write the law,? Hall said in a statement. ?I complied with the law, and I contributed as was allowed under the law during my official service in Texas.?
Not every member of Congress who is eligible for a pension chooses to collect. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., a retired Army colonel who won his seat in 2010, says he writes a check every month for his full military pension, minus taxes owed, to the U.S. Treasury. It was a decision he came to jointly with his wife. ?The salary that we get as a congressman is very generous,? Gibson says. ?We did not want to double-dip on the taxpayers in a time of fiscal challenge.?
The Gibsons aren?t rich by congressional standards. They hold no stocks, bonds, or mutual funds?only a single bank account with between $100,000 and $250,000. It earned less than $1,000 in interest last year. Still, he declined to judge his better-off colleagues who are collecting twice. ?It?s a personal decision people have to make,? he says.
Rep. William Keating of Massachusetts, who pulled $110,743 from his pension in 2012?second-largest of any Democrat?donates all of it, after taxes, to a nonprofit that assists child-abuse victims. ?The work done by the caring professionals there is priceless,? Keating, a former legislator and district attorney, said in a statement.
Many states offer especially sweet pension packages for their elected officials.
Take the curious case of Rep. Trey Gowdy. The conservative Republican served for a decade as a district attorney in South Carolina, where the retirement system requires 24 years of service to qualify for a pension. But a controversial perk allows solicitors and judges to purchase extra years of service without actually working them. The practice, called ?airtime,? lets employees draw bigger pensions if they fork over a lump sum on the front end.
It appears Gowdy exercised this option. (His office refused multiple requests to clarify his activity.) His financial records report a loan in 2009 of between $250,000 and $500,000 for ?purchase of SC solicitors and judges retirement.? So, in 2011, the year after he rode the tea-party wave into Congress promising to slash government spending, he reported $88,432 in pension income?one of the 10 largest in Congress. He was 46.
Last year, Gowdy reported a far smaller pension. His spokesman, Nicholas Spencer, says Gowdy listed the package in a different section of the report ?because pensions are not reportable as outside earned income,? citing advice from ?Ethics counsel.? The House Ethics panel?s published guidelines, however, say pensions should be reported as income.
In Maine, special rules allow former governors to collect a pension no matter how many total years of state service they?ve accrued. That?s how Angus King, who served two terms as governor and now is the state?s independent U.S. senator, collected a $30,488 pension last year. ?It?s under the law, and it has no relationship to whatever I do after,? King says. As for the idea of forgoing it because of his $174,000 Senate salary, he says, ?I don?t quite see the argument.?
In Pennsylvania, former state legislators can start collecting their pensions a decade earlier than most other state workers. That?s how Republican Rep. Charlie Dent started collecting his $16,000 pension in 2010, the year he turned 50. And how Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Democrat, garnered her legislative pension beginning in 2005, the year she was sworn into Congress. She was 56 at the time. Schwartz is currently running for governor and would decline her $18,340 pension if elected, her spokesman Greg Vadala says.
In 2001, Pennsylvania state legislators boosted their own pensions by 50 percent. The same state law lifted teacher and rank-and-file state worker pensions by only half that. Both Dent and Schwartz were among those who voted against the Pennsylvania pension bump. But Republican Rep. Jim Gerlach, 58, voted for it, and now he?s a beneficiary. He has collected a legislative pension since 2003. It was worth $15,400 last year and became the subject of attack ads by his Democratic opponent. He e-mailed a statement: ?Again, this is information that has been shared with my constituents countless times and has been fully disclosed every year.? Gerlach noted that he paid into the system for 12 years.
?It?s really unconscionable?the fact that they?re collecting a pension while drawing a salary for service at the federal level,? says Leo Knepper, executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, a conservative group that fashions itself as a state version of the Club for Growth. ?Our pension system is $48 billion underfunded. Honestly, I don?t know how they can look voters in the eye.?
Knepper reserved his biggest rage for Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., who served in the Statehouse for 24 years, and brought home $90,867 in retirement benefits last year. A member of the conservative Republican Study Committee, Pitts has received $1.4 million from his pension since he joined Congress in 1997. His office says his pension tops $90,000 annually because he combined his service in the military and as a teacher. Knepper says he?s galled that Pitts ?really represents himself as a conservative? to voters while ?absolutely double-dipping.?
Not all tea-party activists are in agreement. Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express, one of the nation?s most active groups, doesn?t begrudge federal lawmakers who make use of the current pension system. ?An employee is going to take advantage of any benefits they?re provided?it?s just human nature,? Russo says. Instead, conservatives should focus on enacting broader change, he says. ?The person who gets the benefit didn?t create the system.?
Reforming that system, Coffman says, is the point of his legislation to eliminate congressional pensions. ?The part that I oppose is having a defined-benefit retirement plan for members of Congress?and have argued against a defined-benefit program when I was at the state level,? he tells National Journal.
But isn?t he taking part in a defined-benefit program?
?I am,? he replies. ?I am.?
Coffman?s $55,547 retirement benefit is a pittance in the scheme of the state?s pension-fund finances, but, as he argued when he presented his pension-axing bill in committee, symbolism matters. Colorado?s pension fund has been under duress in recent years. State workers there must now contribute more, work longer, and receive less after retirement under a 2010 law, says Katie Kaufmanis, a spokeswoman for Colorado?s retirement system.
A former state treasurer who had a seat on Colorado?s pension board, Coffman had previously taken on the most extreme cases of ?double-dipping? at the state level, in which state or school employees would retire, collect a pension, and then be rehired by the exact same employer. ?The state?s pension fund is bleeding red, and the little things like this are aggravating it,? Coffman told the Colorado Springs Business Journal in 2004. ?Maybe we should suspend pensions [when people go] back to work,? he added.
Coffman?s situation isn?t exactly the same: He?s collecting state benefits and a federal paycheck, not double-dipping with the same employer. (?I?m a military retiree too,? Coffman notes. He resigned his state treasurer post in 2005 to rejoin the Marines and serve in Iraq.) Still, he stumbles in defending his decision to draw both a paycheck and a state pension. ?I fought for reform when I was in state, and I?m fighting to reform the system now,? he says. ?At states, they ought to end the defined-benefit portion programs.? I?m certainly a beneficiary of it, but at the state level that?s unsustainable, too, and that?s going to have to change.?
Other Republicans, too, have introduced legislation to limit congressional pensions while collecting a public retirement benefit. Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., the former Hernando County sheriff, earned $72,339 from his pension last year; he introduced legislation in 2011 and 2013 to let House members opt out of their congressional pension (it?s currently mandatory) and titled it the Congress Is Not a Career Act. Nugent presented his measure to the same committee on the same day as Coffman made his proposal.
Nugent says he introduced the bill so he could decline a congressional retirement because ?as you point out, I already have a pension.? He further saves taxpayers money by declining federal health insurance coverage, he says. But he objects to the suggestion that he could or should bypass taking his local-government pension while in Congress. ?Why wouldn?t I? Why wouldn?t I?? he asks. ?After 38 years in law enforcement, I worked hard, stuck it out, and I retired, which is kind of what I signed up for.?
Nugent explains that while cops deserve a pension, members of Congress may not. So what about all his colleagues pulling in pensions for state legislative service? ?I don?t begrudge anyone. That?s a personal choice on their part,? Nugent says, adding, ?That?s between them and their constituents.?
Conservative solutions for America?s finances, in turns out, don?t always correlate with conservative solutions to lawmakers? personal finances. Cornyn, the triple-pension-collecting senator from Texas, has regularly railed against government waste. Rep. Bill Posey, a Florida Republican, touts on his official website his votes to reform and cut congressional pensions. He makes no mention of his $14,495 state pension. And Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican and a tea-party-style conservative long before the term existed, has railed against a bloated public sector?and the looming pension crisis in his home state?for years. Yet when he arrived in Congress in 2009, he began collecting two taxpayer-supported state pensions, worth $9,579 in 2012. Why didn?t he pass on them? ?You?d have to take up that question with Mrs. McClintock,? he says.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the spokesman for Rep. Allyson Schwartz. It is Greg Vadala.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nearly-one-five-members-congress-gets-paid-twice-060314402.html
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JERUSALEM (AP) ? Red tuna and sea bream with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A two-hour lunch of shish tawook and rice with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Back again with Netanyahu, it was hummus and mixed nuts. Secretary of State John Kerry's palate is getting a workout during his stepped-up rounds of Mideast diplomacy.
This is Kerry's fifth trip to the region to try his hand at helping craft a two-state solution, and his flurry of meetings between the Israeli and Palestinian camps have increased expectations that his latest chat 'n chews will yield progress in getting the two sides to reopen negotiations to end their decades-long conflict.
Kerry's initial plans to talk to both sides just once before traveling on to Brunei for a Southeast Asia security conference have turned instead into hurried shuttle diplomacy at a pace that is testing his aides ability to book the logistics of moving his delegation in tow.
His talks with Israel and the Palestinians head into a third day on Saturday. So far, they have amounted to talks about talks ? discussions to nail down what exactly each side needs to agree to resume negotiations, which broke down in 2008. There have not been any public statements of progress, yet Kerry's changing schedule has spawned rumors that progress has been made.
On Saturday, Kerry heads back to Amman for a second meeting with Abbas in two days. Then, instead of continuing his two-week swing through the Mideast and Asia, Kerry is returning to Jerusalem for a third time for additional meetings, the State Department said.
He began his shuttle diplomacy on Thursday night when he made the 90-minute drive from Amman to Jerusalem in a convoy of SUVs. Once in Jerusalem, he had four hours of talks with Netanyahu and a dinner, which included tuna sashimi with roots salad and wasabi cream, dried salted beef and salmon ceviche with chili, mint and pineapple.
On Friday, he had a two-hour-plus lunch with Abbas, and then returned to Jerusalem ? this time via helicopter ? to meet Netanyahu again. A table in a hotel suite where they talked was filled with trays of hummus, baba ghanoush, spiced pickles, tabouli salad, dates and nuts.
"So soon," Kerry said with a smile as he shook hands with the Israeli leader for the second time in less than 24 hours.
Kerry spokesmen were tight-lipped about how the talks went, saying only that he had a "detailed and substantive" three-hour conversation with Netanyahu.
Israeli officials also have declined to provide details about the talks. Palestinian officials could not be reached for comment despite numerous attempts.
So far, there have been no public signs that the two sides are narrowing their differences. No progress was publicly reported during Kerry's four earlier visits to the region either.
In the past, Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.
Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions ? though his predecessor conducted talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and the international community views the settlements as illegal or illegitimate.
People who have watched Mideast peace negotiations come and go are skeptical, but hold out hope that a deal can be crafted.
"There's no question that Kerry could be successful restarting negotiations," said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The real question is whether those negotiations can be successful.
"The problem is twofold: First, the parties don't trust each other, and each fears that the other will start negotiations only to pull out and blame the other for the collapse. Second, there's not much political support in either Israel or the Palestinian Authority for negotiations generally, let alone making any concessions to the other side."
State Department officials say that beyond trying to precisely ascertain their conditions for restarting talks, Kerry wanted to talk with them about the positive outcomes, such as enhanced economic growth, of a two-state solution. At the same time, they said he would remind them of what's at stake if the conflict is left unresolved.
Earlier this month, in a speech to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Kerry warned of serious consequences if no deal is reached with what he termed the current "moderate" Palestinian leadership. "The failure of the moderate Palestinian leadership could very well invite the rise of the very thing that we want to avoid: the same extremism in the West Bank that we have seen in Gaza or from southern Lebanon," he told the Jewish audience.
William Quandt, who was involved in negotiations that led to the Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, said Kerry might succeed in getting the two sides back to the table, "but that does not count for much." He said he doubts the two sides have agreed to an outline of territory for a Palestinian state. "I'm not very optimistic," he said.
Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, doesn't have high hopes for the two sides getting back into negotiations, but said that as long as Kerry continues to visit the region, his attempt won't be seen as a failure.
"As long as he keeps coming, people will have some hope," Inbar said. "He is very perseverant but the chances of him renewing negotiations are very slim."
Inbar said Abbas faces opposition to talks with Israel from within his own Fatah party as well as from its rival, the Islamic militant group Hamas. The Palestinians have been split since 2007 when Hamas overran Gaza ousting forces from the Fatah party led by Western-backed Abbas. Abbas has since governed only in parts of the West Bank, and Hamas rules Gaza.
"The Palestinians are not interested in negotiations because of domestic politics, Hamas pressure and with the whole region becoming more Islamic it's more difficult for them to make a deal," Inbar said. Within Netanyahu's own party, "there are those who are openly saying that negotiations go nowhere," he added.
After meeting with Netanyahu, Kerry visited Israeli President Shimon Peres, who received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in a landmark interim peace accord in 1003. Peres, who turns 90 in August, encouraged Kerry to soldier on.
"All of us admire your investment in creating really the right environment to open the peace," Peres said. "I know it's still difficult. There are many problems, but as far I am concerned, I can see there is a clear majority for the peace process and the two-state solution and the great expectation that you will do it and that you can do it."
___
Associated Press writers Ian Deitch in Jerusalem and Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerrys-palate-gets-workout-mideast-peace-talks-191410648.html
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By Peroshni Govender
PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africans protesting a visit to their country by U.S. President Barack Obama rallied on Friday a few blocks from well-wishers at a hospital in Pretoria where anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela is critically ill.
Obama, on a three-nation tour of Africa, was due to arrive in South Africa on Friday with White House officials saying they will defer to Mandela's family on whether the first African-American president of the United States will visit South Africa's first black president.
Mandela, 94, is fighting a lung infection that has left him in a critical condition and in hospital for nearly three weeks.
His fourth hospitalisation in six months has focused attention in South Africa and globally on the faltering health of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who is admired as a symbol of resistance against injustice and of racial reconciliation.
President Jacob Zuma has said Mandela's condition improved over Wednesday night but he remained critical.
About 200 trade unionists, student activists and South African Communist Party members gathered in the capital Pretoria to protest Obama's visit this weekend, calling his foreign policy "arrogant, selfish and oppressive".
"We had expectations of America's first black president. Knowing Africa's history, we expected more," said Khomotso Makola, a 19-year-old law student.
"He has come as a disappointment, I think Mandela too would be disappointed and feel let down," Makola said.
South African critics of Obama have focused in particular on his support for U.S. drone strikes overseas, which they say have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and his failure to deliver on a pledge to close the U.S. military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba housing terrorism suspects.
"TWO GREAT MEN"
A few blocks away at the Pretoria heart hospital where Mandela is being cared for, well-wishers paying tribute to the legendary retired statesman had words of praise for Obama, who met Mandela in 2005 when he was still a U.S. senator.
Nigerian painter Sanusi Olatunji, 31, had brought portraits of both Mandela and Obama to the wall of the hospital, where flowers, tribute notes and gifts for Madiba, as Mandela is affectionately known, have been piling up.
"These are the two great men of my lifetime," he said.
"To me, Mandela is a prophet who brought peace and opportunity. He made it possible for a black man like me to live in a country that was only for whites."
During his weekend trip to Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, Obama is scheduled to visit Robben Island, the former penal colony where Mandela passed 18 years of the 27 years he spent in apartheid prisons.
Starting off his Africa trip in Senegal on Wednesday, Obama praised Mandela as "a personal hero".
"If and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages," he told reporters in Dakar.
Obama, who has been in office since 2009, is making his first substantial visit to Africa following a short trip to Ghana at the beginning of his first term.
South Africans held prayer meetings and vigils outside the Pretoria hospital and at Mandela's former Soweto home through Thursday night.
But as his health has deteriorated this year, there is a growing realisation among South Africa's 53 million people that the man who forged their multi-racial "Rainbow Nation" from the ashes of apartheid will not be with them forever.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-protesters-rally-near-hospital-treating-mandela-111858124.html
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14 hours ago
EPA, The Guadian
At least one Hollywood filmmaker thinks actor Liam Hemsworth, left, would be the right man to play Edward Snowden in a movie.
Fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, charged with violating espionage laws, is in the transit zone of the Moscow Airport, presumably trying to find a way to get to the Ecuadorian Embassy to seek asylum. How his story will end no one knows, but one Hollywood director is already envisioning what it would look like on the big screen.
Phillip Noyce, a director best known for spy and thriller films like "Salt" and "Patriot Games," told NBC News that he is personally fascinated by the espionage thriller that is playing out in front of the world. As he reads every article available about the case, Noyce says he can easily picture it as a suspenseful film with some comedic elements. He's already identified a possible leading man, but what excites him the most is that the verdict on the story's central question may remain unrendered for decades.
"This is a movie that's playing out before our eyes, even though we can't see anything," Noyce said. "We can't see the hero or the villain -- the central character. Like my last big movie, 'Salt,' it's a story where you're not quite certain if you're dealing with a heroine or a villain. And we may not be certain until the end of the movie or even beyond that. That's a beautiful duality to deal with when you're making a story or watching a movie. You can speculate he's motivated by complete unselfish motives through belief in protecting worldwide public interests. Or you can speculate he was himself a victim of knowing that notoriety might bring him immortality."
Who would play the 29-year-old who revealed the existence of the Prism Program, which gives the NSA direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other Internet giants? Noyce thinks that's an easy one: Liam Hemsworth, the 23-year-old actor who starred in "The Hunger Games" and "The Expendables 2."
"He's perfectly positioned as a rising star," Noyce said. "I think he'll probably be one of the great ones. His older brother, Chris, could also play him but Liam looks more like an everyman. I think he'd be perfect."
Noyce's movie, which he described as just "chatter in my head" for now, would open with the The Guardian's disclosure of Snowden as the leak and an exciting chase.
"We'd have this wonderful Harold Lloyd comedy sequence which is the best part of the movie - -the chase," he said. "In this case, it's a chase that's both funny and serious. It involves some of the highest officials in the world, and their different points of view while Mr. Snowden is holed up presumably at the Moscow Airport. That's a great sequence as world leaders argue over this 29-year-old and the merits or otherwise of his actions. "
The story, he added, also would need to feature WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and deal with the gaps in American intelligence-gathering illuminated by Snowden -- which brings up another key question the film would address: how safe are our secrets?
"Although Assange was the original whistleblower and people feel he did commit a betrayal, he changed American policy and how people felt about the war and the legality of the war," Noyce said. "And as far as Mr. Snowden is concerned, he was a contractor who did not inherit the ethos of a permanent public servant, like a CIA or NSA employee. But he seems to have had access to the names of operatives around the world and could have betrayed that confidence. The issue is not whether he did or didn't but that he could have. That brings up the security of our operatives, the people that willingly give their lives fighting the intelligence wars. Why did a 29-year-old contractor know so much? He knew who they are and had the ability to reveal that to the nation's enemies."
As an observer of the quickly unfolding story and its would-be storyteller, Noyce said he hasn't made up his mind about how he feels about his protagonist, Snowden.
"I would need access to him to understand his psychology a lot better," Noyce said. "In his own mind, he's obviously a hero. But what is truly motivating him? Does he want to be a 15-minute celebrity? Is it fame or fortune? Or does he truly want to sacrifice himself Christ-like for the rest of mankind? We don't know how this will end and the end might not come for another 50 years. We haven't even finished Act 1 yet."
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BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) ? BP, the main developer of the huge Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, confirmed on Friday that the pipeline to Europe will go through Greece and then under the sea into Italy.
Regional BP president Gordon Birell said at an official ceremony in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, that the project was awarded to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP. The other option, the Nabucco West venture, would have run across Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.
TAP is comprised of Norway's Statoil, Axpo of Switzerland and the German firm E.ON. Its pipeline will run nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles) across northern Greece and into southern Albania before traveling under sea to Italy.
BP holds 25.5 percent of the Shah Deniz project, while Statoil holds another 25.5 percent. Azerbaijan's state oil and gas company, Socar, holds 10 percent, as do Russia's Lukoil, Iran's Nico and France's Total. The remaining 9 percent is held by Trao.
Birell said the consortium spent two years determining the best route for the pipeline that will carry Azerbaijan's first gas to Europe. The gas from Shah Deniz's second stage is to go into production in 2018, with the first supplies to be transported to Europe in 2019. Birell said 10 billion cubic meters of gas will be exported annually.
The choice of TAP was expected after Austrian power utility OMV said Wednesday that the Nabucco venture it was backing had not been selected.
Socar president Rovnaq Abdullayev said at Friday's ceremony that Azerbaijan and the European Union are still discussing other possible routes for an additional pipeline to carry Azerbaijan's considerable gas supplies to Europe. The Shah Deniz reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters.
The European Union and the United States both enthusiastically support building connections to Azerbaijan's gas as a way to reduce dependence on Russian gas.
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SecureLine ($7.99 per month) is a personal VPN service from the antivirus outfit avast! Nothing really sets it apart from all the other VPN services currently flooding the market?it is easy to use, hides your online activity from eavesdroppers, and allows you to spoof your IP address to view content that's restricted to a certain geographic location. It has a cleaner interface and simpler setup than most of the competition, but the support for international servers is, at best, still hit-and-miss.
There are many VPN services on the market, some of which we've reviewed, such as Norton Hotspot Privacy, VPN Direct, and HideIPVPN.
How VPN Services Work
Your computer has an IP address assigned by your ISP which someone can lookup to try to figure out your geographic location. Sometimes, you may want to change that address so that it will be harder to trace online activity back to you. Perhaps all the recent revelations about the government snooping through records of what users are doing has you feeling paranoid. SecureLine overrides the IP address with one drawn from its pool of servers, so you can suddenly pretend you're in a different state or? country of your choice from a list of options.
VPN services are useful if you frequently log into wireless networks other than the one you control, such as coffeeshops and airports. On a recent trip, I used it when I logged into Google Apps to check my email and my bank account. SecureLine is not intended to replace my corporate VPN as it won't let me connect to work servers, but it did encrypt my network connection regardless of which site I was on.
Installation
When installing the free antivirus, I had the option to perform a typical installation, which includes the real-time shields in the antivirus tool, along with a firewall, antispam tool, browser protection, and the SafeZone feature. I didn't really want to install all those features on this device, though. I already have a firewall I am happy with, and my mail server includes antispam functionality. I was pleased to see the "minimal" installation, which just installs the antivirus, browser protection, and SecureLine.
I was glad to see the service wasn't restricted to just people who had paid for avast! antivirus, but was available to the free users, as well. However, even users of the free antivirus have to pay for SecureLine, for $7.99 per month. Yearly plans for $59.99 are available, as well. Users can also try out SecureLine for free for 24 hours. The "market" tab in the avast! user interface has an easy way to pay for and to add SeucreLine protection.
Since the antivirus software is a Windows-only product, SecureLine protects only Windows users. However, avast! has released a separate iOS version of the VPN service.
It is clear, however, that SecureLine is an add-on feature, and intended only for avast! users. If you already have antivirus protection you are happy with and don't want to replace it with avast!, you won't be able to use SecureLine?because it's not a good idea to run more than one AV app at the same time: they tend to conflict. On one hand, this is a great way for avast! to extend network protection to its users, and I am glad to see more and more antivirus vendors beginning to realize that many of their users are at risk each time they hop on to an open Wi-Fi hotspot. On the other hand, considering SecureLine is not a bundled service but one I have to pay for, it seems a little shortsighted to integrate it so tightly that it can't be a stand-alone product, like Symantec's Norton Hotspot Privacy.
Getting Started
I clicked on SecureLine from the left pane on the avast! user interface and uploaded the license file to activate SecureLine. If I didn't have the license file, I would have to go to the Market and pay for my SecureLine subscription first. Once activated, SecureLine appeared as its own icon in my system tray, independent of avast! antivirus.
Once activated, it was pretty simple to use. I could choose any one of the servers in Dallas, Miami, New York, Seattle, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Prague, and Singapore and hit "connect." I could also set avast! to prompt me to start SecureLine whenever I connect to an unsecure Wi-Fi network.
That's it?nothing else to clutter up the interface, and no advanced features that can be overwhelming for users.
SecureLine has the easiest installation I've ever seen. There is no message about installing the WinTAP adapter, no software installation, zilch. You just enable the service, and everything is handled in the background quietly and efficiently.
App Features and Performance
I could also connect using "best possible network" by clicking on the "connect" button directly from the systray icon. Once I was connected, I verified that my IP address had changed by checking my public IP address. It's not enough to just have my IP address change?I want the assurance that my network traffic is passing through an encrypted tunnel so that my information stays private from snoops. I hit a few websites while connected to SecureLine and kept an eye on the packets being generated in WireShark to verify that the data were not being transmitted in cleartext and that everything was encrypted.
I took the laptop to a few places with wireless networks and tried connecting. Whenever I connected to an open wireless network, I was prompted to enable SecureLine. I was a little disconcerted the first time the computer "spoke" to me about SecureLine, as I hadn't realized audio notifications were on by default?Next: Measuring Network Performance on SecureLine
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/qWfyt8b4Kqc/0,2817,2420857,00.asp
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By Diane Bartz and Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Government auditors discovered four years ago that a select group of private contractors conducting background checks for high-security jobs were not doing enough to ensure the quality of their investigations.
Some investigators hired by the companies were not adequately trained or closely supervised, and the background reports they turned over to agencies for hundreds of thousands of prospective employees had missing information that could lead to risky hiring, the inspector general for the Office of Personnel Management said in a 2010 report that got little attention.
Now, as Congress focuses on how former Booz Allen Hamilton systems administrator Edward Snowden gained access to National Security Agency secrets while working at a facility in Hawaii, the report's findings are drawing new attention. Some lawmakers are calling for a full review of how security clearances are done.
Snowden is facing espionage charges after leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance programs to the media. He flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday and, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday he was in the transit area of a Moscow airport.
At a hearing last week, Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat on a contracting oversight panel of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, cited an ongoing investigation into USIS, the contractor that conducted the most recent security review of Snowden.
"It is a reminder that background investigations can have real consequences for our national security," McCaskill said.
Questions have been raised about whether Snowden misstated his educational credentials. Hiring screeners at Booz Allen Hamilton found possible discrepancies in a resume submitted by Snowden, but the company still employed him, a source with detailed knowledge of the matter said last week.
Snowden also would have had to undergo a polygraph exam administered by the NSA, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
USIS is one of three companies now doing background checks under contracts worth up to $2.5 billion with the government's Office of Personnel Management.
USIS declined to comment for this story beyond a statement issued last week in which it said it had cooperated with the OPM inspector general's investigation and had no comment about Snowden's background check.
Screening prospective employees is a challenge because of the large number of jobs now requiring secret or top-secret clearances.
As of October 2012, 4.9 million U.S. workers had some sort of federal security clearance. There were 3.9 million background investigations done in fiscal 2012, some by the OPM's Federal Investigative Services unit and others by the three contractors with oversight by the OPM. It is unclear how many each does.
The OPM's Federal Investigative Services (FIS) defended the quality of background investigations.
"FIS investigative personnel are held to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct in their positions of public trust and national security," Merton Miller, associate director of FIS, said in a statement. "Misconduct rarely occurs."
The 2010 report found problems with procedures and safeguards used by all three private contractors - USIS, KeyPoint Government Solutions and CACI International Inc.
All three companies have had investigators who were found to have done substandard work in background checks, which involve pulling records and interviewing associates of a job seeker.
"USIS, Kroll (KeyPoint) and CACI have all employed background investigators who have been convicted of fabrication," Susan Ruge, associate counsel at the OPM's inspector general's office said.
The U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia has prosecuted 18 cases since 2006 - 11 of them federal employees and seven who worked for the private companies, according to OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland in testimony to Congress last week. The penalties for the crimes have ranged from prison time to house arrest.
CACI and KeyPoint declined to comment.
Some experts said it made no difference whether the background investigations were done by contractors or by government employees.
Companies are "using basically the same kinds of people" as the government, said Daniel Schwartz, a former NSA general counsel. "They're former agents or retired agents."
The Government Accountability Office said the fiscal 2012 base price for a "top-secret" clearance investigation conducted by OPM was $4,005 while the base price of a less sensitive "secret" clearance was $260.
Those conducting the background checks may be inexperienced, and may be pushed to work quickly, said Schwartz.
"The real problem in this process is that it is grossly understaffed," said Schwartz, now with the law firm Bryan Cave. "There are not enough good staffers. On the clearance side, it's a huge problem."
USIS, which has 2,300 investigators, is the oldest and largest of the three companies. It was created in 1996 when the government decided to partially privatize the work to achieve savings estimated at the time to be between $60 million and $120 million per year.
USIS is owned by a larger investigative company called Altegrity, which in turn is principally owned by private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.
KeyPoint started in 2000 as Kroll Government Services, which did consulting and investigations. Veritas Capital bought Kroll in 2009 and changed its name.
It has 2000 investigators and works for more than 120 federal agencies, including OPM, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration, according to the company's web site.
Defense contractor CACI, a technology company, began doing federal background checks in 2004. It was criticized for the translators and other personnel that it provided to the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
(Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson, Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flaws-found-security-checks-u-contractors-four-years-051459763.html
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However, we may never know what's ahead, especially with kids, we will never deny that for once in a while, accidents may happen. What if you've been injured or someone in your family are? It may be weird to think about it, but sometimes, it is important to consider things. If injuries ruined your vacation, then maybe it's time to seek help to an expert when it comes to Premises Liability Injuries that you or someone in your household had suffer, to seek liability particularly to injuries involving children.
Sometimes, this can happen during a vacation or staying at rental vacation homes that aren't really well maintenance or fully well maintained. So, if these happen to you, then contact the Personal Injury Lawyers in Fort Lauderdale located in Florida. Then, you and your family member's medical needs will be meet such as medical bills, lost wages and out-of-pocket expenses. To resolve your injury claim or accident, then it's time to seek legal help. You deserve to be compensated. Life is too short to suffer and be in anguish, where you supposed to enjoy your family vacation, rather, sometimes life is too complicated but with the help of an attorney, life can be good.
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Source: http://www.pinayinstates.us/2013/06/seek-legal-help-for-personal-injuries.html
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Greylock continues to staff up on enterprise-focused investment partners. Today, the venture firm is announcing that former VMware VP Jerry Chen is joining Greylock's enterprise investment team as a general partner. In his new role, he will focus investing in cloud and application infrastructure and new enterprise applications.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2avclLpwvg4/
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On its blog today, Rdio announced that it will now support up to five people on its family plan. Previously, only three customers were able to buddy up on the music-streaming service, with monthly pricing set at $17.99 for two users and $22.99 for three. Fees for two and three users will remain the same, while four members cost $27.99 and maxing out with five listeners will set you back $32.99 per month. If you already have an account and want to get your sibs in on the actions, head to your Rdio settings and select "Unlimited Family." From there, you can invite the family to sign on.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Next Web
Source: Rdio Blog
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/60Bm99P6fic/
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Jun
2013 24
Source: http://www.straightuplove.com/weekly-horoscope-june-24-july-1/
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MOSCOW (AP) ? A plane took off from Moscow Monday headed for Cuba, but the seat booked by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was empty, and there was no sign of him elsewhere on board.
An Aeroflot representative who wouldn't give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden wasn't on flight SU150 to Havana. AP reporters on the flight couldn't see him.
The Interfax news agency also quoted an unidentified Russian security source in Moscow as saying that Snowden wasn't on the plane.
The airline said earlier Snowden registered for the flight using his U.S. passport, which American officials say has been annulled.
Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday from Hong Kong, where he had been hiding for several weeks to evade U.S. justice. Ecuador is considering Snowden's asylum application.
After spending a night in Moscow's airport, the former National Security Agency contractor ? and admitted leaker of state secrets ? had been expected to fly to Cuba and Venezuela en route to possible asylum in Ecuador.
Snowden, also a former CIA technician, fled Hong Kong to dodge U.S. efforts to extradite him on espionage charges. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government had received an asylum request, adding Monday that the decision "has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world." The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks also said it would help Snowden.
Ecuador has rejected the United States' previous efforts at cooperation, and has been helping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.
Snowden gave documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, often sweeping up information on American citizens. Officials have the ability to collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved.
Snowden had been in hiding for several weeks in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a high degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong to face espionage charges but was rebuffed; Hong Kong officials said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws.
The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong. During conversations last week, including a phone call Wednesday between Attorney General Eric Holder and Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen, Hong Kong officials never raised any issues regarding sufficiency of the U.S. request, a Justice representative said.
The United States was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries that Snowden could travel through or to, reminding them that Snowden is wanted on criminal charges and reiterating Washington's position that Snowden should only be permitted to travel back to the U.S., a State Department official said. Snowden's U.S. passport has been revoked.
U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said, "Given our intensified cooperation after the Boston marathon bombings and our history of working with Russia on law enforcement matters ? including returning numerous high-level criminals back to Russia at the request of the Russian government ? we expect the Russian government to look at all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the U.S. to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."
Still, the United States is likely to have problems interrupting Snowden's passage. The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but does with Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. Even with an extradition agreement though, any country could give Snowden a political exemption.
The likelihood that any of these countries would stop Snowden from traveling on to Ecuador seemed remote. While diplomatic tensions have thawed in recent years, Cuba and the United States are hardly allies after a half-century of distrust. Another country that could see Snowden pass through, Venezuela, could prove difficult, as well. Former President Hugo Chavez was a sworn enemy of the United States and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, earlier this year called President Barack Obama "grand chief of devils." The two countries do not exchange ambassadors.
Snowden's options aren't numerous, said Assange's lawyer, Michael Ratner.
"You have to have a country that's going to stand up to the United States," Ratner said. "You're not talking about a huge range of countries here."
It also wasn't clear Snowden was finished disclosing highly classified information.
Snowden has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
___
Associated Press White House Correspondent Julie Pace and Associated Press writers Philip Elliott, Matthew Lee and Frederic J. Frommer in Washington, Lynn Berry in Moscow, Kevin Chan in Hong Kong and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.
___
Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flight-cuba-snowden-booked-departs-105616986.html
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Earlier today I found myself searching for my keys and?lo and behold?a certain song popped into my head. And what a wonderful tune it is. Both versions.
Ween's no stranger to weirdness for it's own sake, but in this case, there's a little story behind it. In short: Ween was commissioned to make music for a Pizza Hut ad, and submitted the first version (and some other, unrelated songs) for the first run. When all were rejected, Ween opted for a second?and righteously more explicit?version.
Pizza Hut-approved or not, both versions are fantastic classics, and the go-to tune for humming whenever your cheese or one-syllable-thing-that-rhymes-with-cheese goes missing. Enjoy, and may your cheese never go missing. [Spotify, Amazon, iTunes]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/ween-whered-the-cheese-go-543936107
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