Thursday, April 21, 2016

Vladimir Putin Cartoon


Russian envoy to NATO warns US over Baltic Sea incident involving destroyer


Russia's ambassador to NATO accused the U.S. Wednesday of trying to intimidate Moscow by sailing a Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea, and vowed Russia would respond to future incidents with "all necessary measures."
Alexander Grushko spoke following a meeting of the NATO-Russia council in Brussels, the first in nearly two years. The meeting, which involved Grushko and ambassadors from NATO's 28 member states, ran over its allotted time by about 90 minutes, but produced no major breakthroughs.
"It's better to talk than not to talk," Grushko told reporters, before adding that relationships between NATO and Russia would not improve "without real steps on NATO's side to downgrade military activity in the area adjacent to the Russian Federation."
Reuters reported that U.S. ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute pressed Grushko about the April 11 incident in which two Russian Su-24 attack aircraft buzzed the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea. The destroyer was conducting flight operations with a Polish helicopter when the jets approached came within 1,000 yards of the destroyer at a height of 100 feet. The following day, a Russian jet came within just 30 feet of the destroyer.
"We were in international waters," Lute told Grushko before reiterating that the incident had been dangerous, according to Reuters. U.S. officials told Fox News last week that they believed the incident breached a 1972 agreement meant to prevent such near-misses from occurring. Grushko insisted that the Russian aircraft "were acting fully in line" with international agreements
Grushko told reporters the USS Cook's presence in the Baltic was a NATO attempt "to exercise military pressure on Russia", then added, "we will take all necessary measures, precautions, to compensate for these attempts to use military force."
Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that under U.S. rules of engagement, the Cook could have opened fire on the planes. The Russian jets did not appear to be armed at the time.
The NATO-Russia Council was founded in 2002 as a forum for consultations between the former Cold War foes, but before Wednesday, had last met in June 2014, when the Kremlin's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine sent relations with the West into a tailspin.
NATO has suspended practical cooperation with Russia because of the Crimean annexation and what it views as Russia's support for the armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
"NATO and Russia have profound and persistent differences," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who chaired the council, told reporters afterward. "Today's meeting didn't change that."

Sanders, Cruz resist pressure after NY losses, vow to fight to conventions


The Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz campaigns vowed to fight all the way to their respective party conventions despite losing big in Tuesday’s New York primaries – rebuffing taunts from their rivals that they’re just about mathematically eliminated from the race.  
Indeed, after coming in a distant third in New York, Cruz has no real path to overtake Donald Trump in the Republican race before the July convention. On the Democratic side, Sanders would have to win 73 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to catch Hillary Clinton.
Clinton could actually lose every remaining primary in the coming weeks and still clinch the nomination. Next up are primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware next week. Clinton moved quickly to cast herself as the all-but-certain nominee.
"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," she told supporters at her victory party in Manhattan on Tuesday night. A campaign aide, on the sidelines, said Sanders has no mathematical chance of a comeback.
Trump declared at his own victory party across town, “We don’t have much of a race anymore.”
Yet Cruz and Sanders were recalibrating their approach and their rhetoric, seemingly preparing to press on.
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Appearing to acknowledge he could no longer clinch the nomination pre-convention, Cruz said Wednesday: “We are definitely headed to Cleveland. And in Cleveland, the people are gonna prevail.” 
His campaign is likely back to concentrating on the delegate-selection process in order to strengthen its position going into Cleveland.
If Cruz – and Ohio Gov. John Kasich – can hold Trump under the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before then, the Texas senator aims to have delegate allies in place from across the country who would peel off from Trump and support him after the first round of voting. Further, his campaign is courting “unbound” delegates in several states – most recently in Pennsylvania, which votes next week and does not bind most its delegates to the primary results – in hopes they would also flock to him in the event of a floor fight.
The maneuvers have only strengthened Trump’s resolve to go on a huge winning streak in the coming weeks, racking up delegates in hopes of reaching the 1,237 threshold and ruling out the possibility of a contested convention. According to The Washington Post, an internal Trump memo projects Trump would get more than 1,400 delegates on the first round of balloting to secure the nomination.
Right now, Trump has 845 delegates, Cruz has 559 and Kasich has 147.
Meanwhile, Sanders, presuming he cannot clinch the nomination himself before the Philadelphia convention, is pursuing a tricky strategy.
"We're going to go to the convention,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on MSNBC. But the Sanders campaign seems to be relying on the prospect of winning over superdelegates, the party insiders and officials free to support whomever they want.
Clinton holds an overwhelming lead among them and is well-positioned to reach the 2,383 total delegates needed by the end of primaries in June, counting both superdelegates and pledged. Sanders officials seem to be raising the bar, though, suggesting she would need 2,383 pledged delegates to truly clinch the nomination.
But Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri said the former secretary of state will continue to hold the pledged-delegate lead as well. And after a campaign period marked by an increasingly bitter tone between the two campaigns, she accused Sanders of going down a  “destructive path” during the New York race.
Including superdelegates, the race stands at 1,930 for Clinton and 1,189 for Sanders.
Sanders, though, has given some mixed signals on the heels of his New York loss.
He took a day off from the campaign trail Wednesday to return to Vermont.
And senior adviser Tad Devine, calling next week a “big week,” said: "We'll see how we do there and then we'll be able to sit back and assess where we are."
But Sanders continued to claim in fundraising memos they could still win.
He told reporters after landing in Burlington, Vt., that he’d get recharged in Vermont, and thinks he can do well in the five primaries next week. He plans to return to the campaign trail in Pennsylvania on Thursday.
Few in the Democratic Party expect Sanders to exit the race formally before the final contests in June. He continues to attract tens of thousands to rallies -- addressing more than 28,000 in Brooklyn two days before the primary. And he continues to raise millions of dollars, giving him fodder for a persistent fight.

Terror victims win Supreme Court judgment against Iran


The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a judgment allowing families of victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and other terrorist attacks to collect nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian funds.
The court on Wednesday ruled 6-2 in favor of more than 1,300 relatives of the 241 U.S. service members who died in the Beirut bombing and victims of other attacks that courts have linked to Iran.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the court rejecting efforts by Iran's central bank to try to stave off court orders that would allow the relatives to be paid for their losses. The money is sitting in a federal court trust account.
Iran's Bank Markazi complained that Congress was intruding into the business of federal courts when it passed a 2012 law that specifically directs that the banks' assets in the United States be turned over to the families. President Barack Obama issued an executive order earlier in 2012 freezing the Iranian central bank's assets in the United States.
The law, Ginsburg wrote, "does not transgress restraints placed on Congress and the president by the Constitution."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. "The authority of the political branches is sufficient; they have no need to seize ours," Roberts wrote.
The decision comes as controversy swirls over pending legislation in Congress that would allow families of the Sept. 11 attacks to hold the government of Saudi Arabia liable in U.S. court. The Obama administration opposes the bill. President Barack Obama met with King Salman in Riyadh Wednesday at the start of a brief trip to the country.
Congress has repeatedly changed the law in the past 20 years to make it easier for victims to sue over state-sponsored terrorism; federal courts have awarded the victims billions of dollars. But Iran has refused to comply with the judgments, leading lawyers to hunt for Iranian assets in the United States.
The Supreme Court case involved $1.75 billion in bonds, plus accumulating interest, owned by the Iranian bank and held by Citibank in New York.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included relatives of the victims of the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1996 terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 service members, and other attacks that were carried out by groups with links to Iran. The lead plaintiff is Deborah Peterson, whose brother, Lance Cpl. James C. Knipple, was killed in Beirut.
"We are extremely pleased with the Supreme Court's decision, which will bring long-overdue relief to more than 1,000 victims of Iranian terrorism and their families, many of whom have waited decades for redress," said Theodore Olson, the former Bush administration Justice Department official who argued on behalf of the families at the Supreme Court.
Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress, as well as the Obama administration, supported the families in the case.

Family of Benghazi victim to receive $400G after CIA expands benefit program


The family of a CIA contractor killed in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya will receive $400,000 after the agency expanded survivor benefits for employees and contractors killed in the line of duty overseas in acts of terrorism.
Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL who was working for the CIA's Global Response staff in Libya at the time of Benghazi, held a standard federal insurance policy that pays a survivor benefit only to spouses and dependents. Doherty, 42, was divorced and had no children, rendering his family ineligible for compensation under the 1941 Defense Base Act, which still requires all overseas contractors including CIA employees to carry disability and life insurance.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the CIA informed lawyers for Doherty's mother, Barbara, Wednesday that the agency's policy change had been finalized.
Barbara Doherty told WFXT that she was relieved that the expanded benefit had approved. She also called on Congress to repeal the Defense Base Act.
"It gives me solace that the CIA has done the right thing,” Doherty said. “Now it’s up to Congress to see if they can step up to the plate."
Legislation introduced last year by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., would expand the death benefit to include families of all defense employees killed in terror attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, even if they don't have spouses or dependents.
"It is entirely disrespectful to make [the families] fight through a long bureaucratic process to get the benefits that that heroism has earned," Lynch told WFXT.
The CIA policy change is retroactive to April 18, 1983, the date a suicide attacker crashed a truck into the front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans, some of whom were CIA officers.
"It wasn’t about the money, at all," Doherty told WFXT. “It was a fight for [all families], because they didn’t have a voice and we did …that’s what kept us going on, knowing that they would eventually be recognize."
"I am glad the [CIA] made this decision so the Doherty family and others who have lost loved ones in service to and sacrifice for our country will finally receive the recognition and honor they deserve," Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chair of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said in a statement.
Doherty's family filed a $1 million damages claim against the CIA and the State Department in September 2014. The Union-Tribune reported that the family will drop all claims against the federal government in the wake of the expanded death benefit.

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