Frankie Cordeira Jr.

Description: Iran Test Fires High-Speed Torpedo... Three senior defense officials report that Iran test-fired a high-speed torpedo near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The Hoot torpedo is still in the testing phase the officials report but once it is fully operational it should be able to travel about12000 yards (approximately six nautical miles) at a speed of about 200 knots per hour (approximately 250 miles per hour). None of the officials couldsay whether the test was successful or not. The USS George HW Bush strike group is in the Gulf right now but all three officials said the test did not pose a threat to U.S. shipsor assets in the region. Two of the officials said that the Iranian military last tested this torpedo in February 2015. The ACLU is suing four federal agencies for records related to the Jan. 29 raid in Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL and civilians including children. The civil liberties organization filed a freedom of information request for documents in March and then filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on Monday to force the government to respond. "After conducting an internal investigation the government released little information about the circumstances surrounding the Raid the legal or factual justifications for it and its consequences" the suit said. Among the information the ACLU wants is an accounting of the civilians killed in the raid which erupted in a deadly firefight after as one senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News "almost everything went wrong." The head of U.S. Central Command told Congress between four and 12 civilians were killed but Human Rights Watch and others have put the toll higher. The Trump administration has characterized the raid as a huge success. However NBC News has reported in March that none of the intelligence gleaned from the operation so far has proven actionable or vital. A man stands on the rubble of a house destroyed by a Saudi-led airstrike in the outskirts of Sanaa Yemen Feb. 16 2017. At least one Saudi-led airstrike near Yemen's rebel-held capital killed at least five people on Wednesday the country's Houthi rebels and medical officials said. Hani Mohammed / AP Gregory Lepsky appeared in a New Jersey federal courtroom Friday to face charges that he planned to detonate a pressure cooker bomb in New York City in the name of ISIS. Seamus Hughes of George Washington's Program on Extremism pulled this inventory of the defendant's internet search history from the case file. Eight men accused of plotting to attack the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on behalf of ISIS were sentenced Thursday. The men were found guilty in a Brazilian court of recruiting and promoting terrorism and face sentences that range from five to 15 years in prison. They were arrested in a series of raids in late July 2016 several weeks before the Games. They had all pledged allegiance to an ISIS offshoot authorities said anddiscussed a plan to contaminate one of Rio de Janeiro's water reservoirs. "All of the accused were dedicated to promoting the terrorist organization called the Islamic State through the social networks Facebook Twitter and Instagram" said the judge in the case Marcos Josegrei da Silva. The suspects all Brazilian citizens discussed plans in email threads and via messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp according to court documents reviewed by NBC News. Some celebrated other terrorist attacks like the shooting at the Orlando nightclub. It doesn't appear any of them knew each other aside from conversations online and messaging apps. The convictions are the first under Brazil's new anti-terrorism law. Previously terrorism was not clearly defined in Brazil and was treated like any other crime; now an individual can face up to 22 years in jail if found guilty of preparing terrorist acts. One of the men sentenced under Brazil's new terrorism law for a plot against the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Court Documents The newest issue of the ISIS magazine Rumiyah includes instructions for would-be terrorists about how to kill pedestrians with trucks. In infographic form the instructions list the characteristics of the ideal vehicles ("slightly raised chassis and bumper") where to buy steal or rent the trucks and the ideal targets. The latest installment of the magazine's "Just Terror Tactics" feature comes as the U.S. Transportation Security Administration has just sent a warning about truck attacks to law enforcement agencies across the U.S. Truck Attacks Poster Propaganda We've got a bad feeling about this. The Russian government jumped on the "May the 4th Be With You" bandwagon by tweeting the message "Come to our side" over a photo of a key Star Wars character. Han Solo? Nope. Luke Skywalker? Nah. Yoda you ask? Nyet. The Russian Embassy in the U.K. chose a photo of Darth Vader a villain bent on galactic domination to personify itself on what's come to be known as Star Wars Day. Hopefully it's just a snarky joke from a Twitter account known for trolling. Otherwise someone tell the Pentagon to fire up the Millennium Falcon. On Wednesday a tweet from President Trump's account said it had been an honor to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House. "An honor to host President Mahmoud Abbas at the WH today" said the tweet. "Hopefully something terrific could come out (sic) it between the Palestinians & Israel." After the tweet which included a video showing a handshake between Trump and Abbas had been retweeted thousands of times it was deleted from Trump's account. @realDonaldTrump Iran tried to test-fire a cruise missile from a submarine in the southern Persian Gulf on Tuesday and failed according to two senior U.S. officials. One official described the launch as a basic ejection test an exercise to ensure the submarine can launch the missile while submerged. The officials both said the test did not appear to be successful. The submarine was in Iranian territorial waters and did not pose a threat to any U.S. military ships in the region the officials explained. The USS George H.W. Bush strike group is operating in the Persian Gulf supporting military operations in Iraq and Syria. What's the difference between "Panda Power" and "Kung Fu Panda"? Two years in jail. That's the sentence given Wednesday to an amateur cartoonist who was convicted of falsely claiming that the DreamWorks studio stole the idea for its hit animated movie from him. Jayme Gordon 51 sued DreamWorks for copyright infringement in 2011 demanding $12 million. The studio spent more than $3 million fighting the case and Gordon has been ordered to pay that amount in restitution. Massachusetts prosecutors said Gordon had created some characters in the 1990s for a series called Panda Power. After he saw a trailer for "Kung Fu Panda" in 2008 he changed the drawings to match the movie images and claimed Hollywood was ripping him off. He was caught prosecutors said when it was discovered that his revised panda pictures were traced from a 1996 Disney coloring book even though they were dated several years earlier. At trial Gordon denied copying them and insisted DreamWorks and Disney had also used his work for movies including "The Incredibles" "A Bug's Life" and "Flushed Away." Prosecutors said Jayme Gordon copied his panda drawings from a coloring book and then claimed DreamWorks stole the character from him. DOJ The National Security Agency's recent announcement that it will stop collecting American emails that mention people who are foreign intelligence targets will result in a loss of intelligence but may help the agency politically former NSA director Michael Hayden says. "Operationally they were wiling to pay the price the NSA is going to lose some good coverage here" Hayden said in a Q & A published Tuesday by the Cipher Brief an intelligence website. The NSA announced on Friday that it would stop collecting communications among Americans that simply mention a foreign intelligence target and limit the collection to communications between foreigners. In the past if an American emailed another American about say ISIS leaderAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi that email might be picked up and stored by NSA. The decision to stop doing that Hayden said is meant to make it easier for Congress to renew the law governing some of NSA's bulk collection a provision known as section 702. Considered a valuable counter terrorism tool and a potential invasion of privacy the law expires this year.
By Frankie Cordeira Jr.
Pinned to Domestic and Global News on Pinterest
Found on: http://ift.tt/2qTAxv1