Cartoon

Clinton Family Foundation donated $100G to NYT group same year paper endorsed Hillary

A little-known private foundation controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times' charitable fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper's editorial page endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Clinton Family Foundation, a separate entity from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has been the family's vehicle for personal charitable giving since 2001.
It is funded directly by the Clintons and distributes more than $1 million a year to civic and educational causes.
The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is a charity affiliated with the newspaper that assists underprivileged New Yorkers. It is run by members of the New York Times Company's board of directors and senior executives.
The Times' editorial board endorsed Clinton against Democratic challengers John Edwards and Barack Obama on January 25, 2008, writing that she was "more qualified, right now, to be president."
At the time, there were reports that the Times board had leaned toward endorsing Obama, but was overruled by then-chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family controlled the paper. Sulzberger's cousins and Times Company directors, Lynn Dolnick and Michael Golden, chaired the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund in 2008.
The Clinton Family Foundation did not list the specific date the donation was made in its public tax disclosure forms. Neither the Times nor a representative of the Clintons responded by press time to a request for comment. Clinton ended her presidential campaign on June 7, 2008.
The CFF's $100,000 contribution to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is larger than its typical donations.

Obama under fire for saying no ‘complete strategy’ yet for training Iraqis

President Obama took heat Monday for admitting he doesn't yet have a "complete strategy" in hand for training Iraqis to fight the Islamic State -- months into the coordinated campaign to defeat the deadly terrorist network.
"When a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people," Obama said, adding, "We don't yet have a complete strategy."
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement: "It is no surprise this administration does not have a 'complete strategy' for training Iraqis to fight ISIS. What is surprising is that the president admitted it."
The president addressed the ISIS fight during a press conference on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany. He appeared to be speaking specifically to a new strategy for accelerating the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces. "We're reviewing a range of plans for how we might do that," Obama said.
A U.S. official afterward stressed to Fox News that Obama was indeed talking only about optimizing that train-and-equip mission, "including integration of Sunni fighters," and not "overall strategy." State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke also said Obama was not speaking to overall strategy.
But the comments nevertheless fueled critics' concerns about the direction of the U.S. mission, particularly on the heels of ISIS gains in Ramadi, and the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.

More on this...

• Obama meets with Iraqi PM to discuss ISIS strategy

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tweeted: "Pres Obama admits: 'We don't yet have a complete strategy' to combat #ISIS"
Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short cited a similar comment Obama made 10 months ago, saying in a statement, "the fact he still doesn't have a final plan for the deteriorating situation in Iraq is unacceptable."
A military official also took issue with Obama's claim that he was waiting for options from the Pentagon. "What the f--- was that? We have given him lots of options, he just hasn't acted on them," the official told Fox News.
Obama, similarly, said last August that the U.S. did not "have a strategy yet" for confronting ISIS in Syria. The administration later approved airstrikes in Syria.
Underscoring the work to be done training Iraqi forces, a Pentagon official told Fox News that zero soldiers are being trained at the al-Asad Air Base in Anbar -- the province where ISIS seized the city of Ramadi last month.
However, the Pentagon says 2,598 are in training at other locations in Iraq. And 8,920 Iraqi soldiers have been trained to date by the U.S. military.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren backed up the president on his assertion he was still awaiting a "finalized plan" from the Pentagon. He said Defense Secretary Ash Carter has assembled a group of "experts" to develop courses of action to "increase support" to Iraqi forces. Warren would not give a timeline on when this "finalized plan" would be presented to the White House.
A separate defense official told Fox News that any potential increases in the size of the U.S. military presence would likely be in the "train-and-equip" mission and not tactical air controllers to call in close air support against ISIS forces by U.S. aircraft flying overhead.
Echoing the president, the official said, "the problem is the number of recruits" that the U.S. military can train. "We are sending weapons as quickly as we can to Iraq, I don't think we can send anymore," he said.
Obama put some of the responsibility on the Iraqis themselves, urging them to be more inclusive. Speaking Monday, shortly after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Obama said a "big part" of the solution is "outreach to Sunni tribes."
"We've seen Sunni tribes who are not only willing and prepared to fight ISIL, but have been successful at rebuffing ISIL. But it has not been happening as fast as it needs to," he said. "And so, one of the efforts that I'm hoping to see out of Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi legislature when they're in session is to move forward on a national guard law that would help to devolve some of the security efforts in places like Anbar to local folks and to get those Sunni tribes involved more rapidly."

US Army website hacked, Syrian Electronic Army takes credit

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. Army's official website was hit Monday by hackers claiming to be with a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army, Fox News has learned.
The site, which was down Monday afternoon, is a declassified public website.
Various screenshots that appeared on Twitter reportedly showed pro-Assad propaganda on the site before it crashed.
"Today an element of the Army.mil service provider's content was compromised," Army Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in a statement. "After this came to our attention, the Army took appropriate preventive measures to ensure there was no breach of Army data by taking down the website temporarily."
The SEA is a hacker group that has claimed in the past to disrupt major news websites, including the New York Times, CBS News, the Washington Post and the BBC.
The SEA website launched its website in May 2011 stating the group’s mission: to attack the enemies of the Syrian government, mainly those who “fabricated” stories about the Syrian civil war. They wrote that they were not officially affiliated with the government but were a group of Syrian youths.
In April 2013, the SEA successfully hacked the AP’s Twitter page, sending out a false message that there had been two explosions at the White House and that President Obama had been injured.

ISIS captures 86 Eritrean Christians in Libya, US official confirms

The ISIS terror group kidnapped 86 Eritrean Christians from a people-smugglers' caravan in Libya last week, a U.S. defense official confirmed Monday.
The defense official confirmed initial reports of the mass kidnapping to Fox News after seeing a recent intelligence report. The independent Libya Herald newspaper reported that the convoy was ambushed by militants south of Tripoli before dawn this past Wednesday morning.
Meron Estafanos, the co-founder of the Stockholm-based International Commission on Eritrean Refugees, told the paper that the group of migrants included "about 12 Eritrean Muslims and some Egyptians. They put them in another truck and they put 12 Eritrean women Christians in a smaller pick-up".
Estafanos said that the militants had initially stopped the truck and demanded that the Muslims on board make themselves known. Everyone who responded was asked about the Koran and their religious observance in an attempt to catch Christians pretending to be Muslims.
The main body of the group was put back on the original truck. As the militants drove the vehicle away, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported that at least nine men attempted to escape by diving off the back of the truck. Estefanos said three of those who had escaped were safe, but still trying to get out of Libya. The fate of the others was not known.
Libya has become a jumping-off point for thousands of migrants from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa who attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to southern Europe. However, Libya's ongoing instability has led to an increased presence by ISIS and other terror groups, increasing the risk for Christians and other non-Muslims attempting the crossing.
In February, Libyan militants proclaiming loyalty to ISIS released a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Two months later, another video showed the militants shooting and beheading an indeterminate number of Ethiopian Christians. Estefanos told the Libya Herald that the video released in April had been edited and that 64 people had been massacred, including several Eritreans.
"Ever since the kidnapping by ISIS in Libya last February," she said,  "many are taking different routes. Some go from Khartoum [Sudan] to Turkey, then Greece. Others are now leaving via Khartoum to Cairo, then Alexandria and from there by boat to Italy. I think we will see an increase towards Turkey and Cairo instead of Libya".
Libya is divided between rival governments and hundreds of militias in the aftermath of its 2011 civil war that ousted dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The violence has impacted the country's oil revenues heavily. U.N. envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon has warned that the country only has enough money to pay salaries for another six weeks, urging warring parties to agree on a unity government. Negotiators are currently meeting in Morocco to discuss a power-sharing agreement.