Sunday June 22nd 2014
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Iraq crisis: Rutba latest western town to fall to Isis
Sunni militants have seized another town in Iraq's western Anbar province - the fourth in two days.
Fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) captured Rutba, 90 miles (150km) east of Jordan's border, officials said.They earlier seized a border crossing to Syria and two towns in western Iraq as they advance towards Baghdad.
The insurgents intend to capture the whole of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, a spokesman told the BBC.
Iraq's government said on Sunday it had killed 40 militants in an air strike on the militant-held northern town of Tikrit, although witnesses said civilians died when a petrol station was hit.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Cairo, said Isis' "ideology of violence and repression is a threat not only to Iraq but to the entire region".
Calling it a "critical moment", he urged Iraq's leaders "to rise above sectarian motivations and form a government that is united in its determination to meet the needs and speak to the demands of all of their people".
Earlier, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the prospect of US intervention in Iraq, saying Washington's main intention was to keep Iraq within its own sphere of power.
Dismissing talk of sectarianism, he said: "The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the US camp and those who seek an independent Iraq."
Related : Taliban Attacks NATO Air Base In Afghanistan
Iran's top leader 'strongly' opposes US intervention in Iraq
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's top
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is against US intervention in neighboring
Iraq, where Islamic extremists and Sunni militants opposed to Tehran
have seized a number of towns and cities.
"We strongly oppose the intervention of the U.S. and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq," Khamenei was quoted as saying by the IRNA state news agency on Sunday, in his first reaction to the crisis.
"The
main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the U.S.
camp and those who seek an independent Iraq," said Khamenei, who has the
final say over government policies. "The U.S. aims to bring its own
blind followers to power."
Shiite Iran supports the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and has said it would consider any request for military aid.
Mr Kerry also stressed the importance of the right to free speech and the rule of law.
The US has unfrozen $575m (£338m) in military aid to Egypt, state department officials said.
Mr Sisi, the 59-year-old ex-army chief, won elections in May, promising to tackle "terrorism" and bring security.
The retired field marshal overthrew President Mohammed Morsi last July amid mass protests against his rule.
He has since been pursuing a crackdown on Mr Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which urged a boycott of the 26-28 May elections. Liberal and secular activists also shunned the poll in protest at the curtailing of civil rights.
In Ramallah, stone-throwers clashed separately with Israeli troops and Palestinian police, and witnesses said both forces used live fire.
An autopsy showed the man killed in Ramallah was shot by an M-16
rifle, said Palestinian pathologist Dr. Saber Aloul. Palestinian forces
do not use M-16s, said spokesman Adnan Damiri. The Israeli military had
no comment.
Sunday's deaths brought to four the number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its most extensive military operation in the West Bank in years in response to the abduction of three Israeli teens on June 12.
As part of the crackdown, Israel is trying to dismantle Hamas in the West Bank, after blaming the kidnapping on the Islamic militant group. Hamas has praised the abductions but not claimed responsibility.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he has "unequivocal proof" of Hamas involvement, is sharing this evidence with several countries and will make it public soon.
The Tianshan website said in a one-line report that no civilians were hurt in the attack in Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang's southwest. Officials in the region contacted by phone either said they were unclear about the situation or refused to comment.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based group World Uyghur Congress, said he called several residents in the Yecheng area who described hearing rapid gunfire, likely from police, before an explosion rang out. He said that authorities quickly placed the county under martial law and started rounding up people in a nearby market.
"It's undeniable that the armed police are using excessive force to deal with the unrest in the region. Why did they need to shoot them dead on the spot?" Dilxat Raxit said. "If they just injured them they would still have a chance to be put through the legal process."
The Kremlin set out Putin's view after overnight fighting in Ukraine's east in which pro-Russian separatists, according to Ukrainian government forces, attacked military bases and customs posts within hours of the ceasefire coming into force on Friday night.
While welcoming Poroshenko's truce, the Kremlin said Putin believed his peace plan should not be an "ultimatum" to the rebels and warned the ceasefire would not be "viable and realistic" unless there were practical moves to start talks between the opposing sides.
Poroshenko, who has unveiled a 15-point peace plan to end the insurgency in the east, has met regional leaders and offered to respect the use of the Russian language in the east but has refused to enter into direct dialog with separatist leaders.
"The opportunity which the ceasefire opens up should be used to start meaningful negotiations and political compromise between the opposing sides in eastern Ukraine," the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying.
In an apparently conciliatory gesture, he called on "all parties to the conflict to cease fire and sit down at the negotiation table".
Villagers said Boko Haram fighters spent six hours on a shooting spree, chasing fleeing residents into the bush and torching homes.
Boko Haram wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
The latest attacks by the group appear to have centred on two villages - Kwarangilam and Koronginim.
Residents described how attackers wearing military uniforms arrived in sports utility vehicles and on motorbikes shouting "Allahu Akbar" and shooting everyone in sight.
Many were gunned down as they tried to hide in the bush.
Witnesses also described seeing Nigerian air force planes and soldiers taking part in a counter-offensive.
The bodies of Boko Haram fighters were also reported to have been found outside Kwarangilam along with burned-out vehicles.
Remote areas at risk Hundreds of villagers have been killed in northern Nigeria in Boko Haram attacks in recent months.
In one attack near the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, at the beginning of June, 45 people were killed.
The attackers told villagers they had come to preach before firing on a crowd that gathered, survivors said.
Militants have frequently targeted remote areas since emergency rule was imposed a year ago in the north-east.
Nigeria's government has been facing growing pressure both at home and abroad to do more to tackle Boko Haram since the militants' kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls.
The BBC's Will Ross in Lagos says that civilians who have formed vigilante groups are calling on the government to arm them with better guns so they can be more effective against the group.
Israeli media reported on Sunday morning that the victim was the 15-year-old son of a civilian contractor employed by the Israel Defence Forces and that four other people were injured. An official told the Associated Press that the vehicle in which they were travelling appeared to have driven over a bomb or been struck by fire from Syria.
It would be the first time an Israeli has been killed by fire emanating from the Syrian civil war.
Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed in clashes in the West Bank on Saturday night, bringing the death toll to five since Israel launched its biggest military operation in Palestinian cities and villages for a decade.
Ma'an news agency named the two Palestinian dead in the West Bank as Ahmad Fahmawi, 36, who was killed in Al Ein refugee camp in Nablus, and Mahmoud Ismail Atallah, who was found dead on a rooftop in Ramallah.
It said Fahmawi was killed on his way to dawn prayers, after refusing to return to his home when ordered by IDF troops, who then opened fire. The circumstances of Atallah's death were unclear, but he was found on the roof of a commercial building in Ramallah and had been shot.
An IDF spokesman did not reply to requests for comment, but in a statement to Ma'an it said Fahmawi had approached soldiers "in a threatening manner". After firing warning shots at him, the soldiers had then "fired towards the suspect".
The Israeli incursion into Ramallah, deploying hundreds of IDF troops, marks the biggest operation in the city – the Palestinian capital and political hub – since the intifada.
"We were not surprised. We knew this existed in homes where families live. On the first floor, the family resides, and on the third floor is a weapons production lab," he added.
The Yahalom unit has also taken part in searches in caves in the Hebron area, the source stated.
"We divided the unit into company-sized battle crews, headed by a company commander. Each commander has been allocated a particular area," he continued. "The whole of the unit is in Judea and Samaria."
International governments and aid organisations need to send more health experts to the area and step up education efforts to curb the outbreak, Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders in Brussels, said on Friday.
"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Mr Janssens said. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."
He said it was the first Ebola epidemic in which Doctors Without Borders teams "cannot cover all the needs, at least for treatment centres".
It is the deadliest outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever since the first reported outbreak in 1976 killed 280 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO said.
"This is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths, so this is unprecedented so far," Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders, said.
Ebola fever is a severe, often fatal illness in humans, and outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90 per cent, according to the WHO.
Mr Janssens said the governments in the affected region had not initially recognised the severity of the outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year.
"There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," Mr Janssens said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."
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After the events of this past week, however, Mr Obama's goal may be out of reach, as he announced that the United States will send 300 military advisers into Iraq.
With new boots on the ground, says Princeton University Prof Julian Zelizer, the administration must be wary of mission creep - where a small commitment spins into something much more substantial.
"Mission creep is difficult to avoid," he writes for CNN.com. "The history of military involvement shows that many operations that start small end big."
He cites what can only be considered the granddaddy of mission creep, the Vietnam War. It initially began as a small intervention, he says, when the US sent military advisers to Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese army.
Even after Congress approved President Lyndon B Johnson's request for a heightened military presence in Vietnam, he "didn't imagine how big the conflict would become," Zelizer writes.
So why does mission creep occur? Zelizer says that "very often the political pressures to escalate intensify once a president has committed forces to a region, particularly in the early years of a conflict".
The 17-foot-tall, steel beam “cross” was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York that fell during the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The cross became a sort of shrine or place of comfort for first
responders who often prayed there and left messages or flowers. It was
moved away from the debris a few weeks later and became a tourist
attraction through several years of reconstruction.
American Atheists filed the suit in 2011, which was thrown out last year by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York.
The appeals court ruling Thursday cites an amicus brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm that specializes in church-state law and protecting the free expression of all religious traditions.
“We’re thrilled that the court picked up on this issue,” said group lawyer Eric Baxter, whose brief argued that American Atheists had no right to bring a lawsuit in the first place. “Courts should not allow people to sue just because they claim to get ‘dyspepsia’ over a historical artifact displayed in a museum.”
The museum officially opened on May 21.
Asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether he would be willing to work with President Barack Obama as majority leader, McCarthy said he could work with just about anyone--except Reid. "I believe you can work with anybody. The challenge has been Harry Reid," McCarthy said. "There's more than 240 bills that have passed the House that haven't even been brought up inside the Senate. If you want to know the problem, the frustration with Washington, [it's] the Senate. The Senate has not moved anything, they never send something to the president's desk, so how do you even negotiate with the president if he doesn't have the bill on his desk?"
Republicans in the House have taken the brunt of the blame for obstructionism in Congress since 2010. Last year, the House dug in and refused to pass a budget until the Senate would agree to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That standoff ended in a deeply unpopular government shutdown.
In addition to blocking Senate bills, this House of Representatives is on track to propose the least amount of legislation since the Clinton administration.
But McCarthy, who was elected last week to replace Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as House majority leader after Cantor lost his primary to a tea party challenger, said legislation would start moving if Republicans were able to take over the Senate in November.
"What is the hold up here?" he asked. "Harry Reid and the Senate. If that fundamentally changes in November, I think it'll be a new day for America and a new direction."
"We strongly oppose the intervention of the U.S. and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq," Khamenei was quoted as saying by the IRNA state news agency on Sunday, in his first reaction to the crisis.
Shiite Iran supports the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and has said it would consider any request for military aid.
US 'will stand with Egypt's people' - Secretary Kerry
Washington will "stand
with the Egyptian people in their fight for the future they want", US
Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged.
He was speaking after talks in the capital Cairo with Egypt's newly elected President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.Mr Kerry also stressed the importance of the right to free speech and the rule of law.
The US has unfrozen $575m (£338m) in military aid to Egypt, state department officials said.
Mr Sisi, the 59-year-old ex-army chief, won elections in May, promising to tackle "terrorism" and bring security.
The retired field marshal overthrew President Mohammed Morsi last July amid mass protests against his rule.
He has since been pursuing a crackdown on Mr Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which urged a boycott of the 26-28 May elections. Liberal and secular activists also shunned the poll in protest at the curtailing of civil rights.
2 Palestinians killed as Israel raids West Bank
RAMALLAH, West Bank – Israeli troops shot dead a mentally ill Palestinian who approached them in a West Bank refugee camp Sunday, the army said, while another Palestinian was killed in violent confrontations in the city of Ramallah.In Ramallah, stone-throwers clashed separately with Israeli troops and Palestinian police, and witnesses said both forces used live fire.
Sunday's deaths brought to four the number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its most extensive military operation in the West Bank in years in response to the abduction of three Israeli teens on June 12.
As part of the crackdown, Israel is trying to dismantle Hamas in the West Bank, after blaming the kidnapping on the Islamic militant group. Hamas has praised the abductions but not claimed responsibility.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he has "unequivocal proof" of Hamas involvement, is sharing this evidence with several countries and will make it public soon.
Police In China's Xinjiang Region Reportedly Shoot 13 Dead After Attack
BEIJING (AP) — Police in China's restive western region shot dead 13 assailants who rammed a truck into a police office building and set off explosives in an attack Saturday that also wounded three officers, state media said.The Tianshan website said in a one-line report that no civilians were hurt in the attack in Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang's southwest. Officials in the region contacted by phone either said they were unclear about the situation or refused to comment.
Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based group World Uyghur Congress, said he called several residents in the Yecheng area who described hearing rapid gunfire, likely from police, before an explosion rang out. He said that authorities quickly placed the county under martial law and started rounding up people in a nearby market.
"It's undeniable that the armed police are using excessive force to deal with the unrest in the region. Why did they need to shoot them dead on the spot?" Dilxat Raxit said. "If they just injured them they would still have a chance to be put through the legal process."
Putin Joins Calls For Ceasefire In Ukraine
MOSCOW/KIEV, June 21 (Reuters) - Russia's Vladimir Putin on Saturday voiced limited support for Ukraine's unilateral ceasefire in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists, but told President Petro Poroshenko there had to be talks with the rebels to prevent the truce collapsing.The Kremlin set out Putin's view after overnight fighting in Ukraine's east in which pro-Russian separatists, according to Ukrainian government forces, attacked military bases and customs posts within hours of the ceasefire coming into force on Friday night.
While welcoming Poroshenko's truce, the Kremlin said Putin believed his peace plan should not be an "ultimatum" to the rebels and warned the ceasefire would not be "viable and realistic" unless there were practical moves to start talks between the opposing sides.
Poroshenko, who has unveiled a 15-point peace plan to end the insurgency in the east, has met regional leaders and offered to respect the use of the Russian language in the east but has refused to enter into direct dialog with separatist leaders.
"The opportunity which the ceasefire opens up should be used to start meaningful negotiations and political compromise between the opposing sides in eastern Ukraine," the Kremlin quoted Putin as saying.
In an apparently conciliatory gesture, he called on "all parties to the conflict to cease fire and sit down at the negotiation table".
Boko Haram crisis: Dozens killed in villages near Chibok
Dozens of villagers are
feared dead after attacks by suspected Boko Haram Islamist militants in
Nigeria's northeastern Borno state.
The raids on Saturday morning were close to Chibok, from where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted in April. Villagers said Boko Haram fighters spent six hours on a shooting spree, chasing fleeing residents into the bush and torching homes.
Boko Haram wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
The latest attacks by the group appear to have centred on two villages - Kwarangilam and Koronginim.
Residents described how attackers wearing military uniforms arrived in sports utility vehicles and on motorbikes shouting "Allahu Akbar" and shooting everyone in sight.
Many were gunned down as they tried to hide in the bush.
Witnesses also described seeing Nigerian air force planes and soldiers taking part in a counter-offensive.
The bodies of Boko Haram fighters were also reported to have been found outside Kwarangilam along with burned-out vehicles.
Remote areas at risk Hundreds of villagers have been killed in northern Nigeria in Boko Haram attacks in recent months.
In one attack near the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, at the beginning of June, 45 people were killed.
The attackers told villagers they had come to preach before firing on a crowd that gathered, survivors said.
Militants have frequently targeted remote areas since emergency rule was imposed a year ago in the north-east.
Nigeria's government has been facing growing pressure both at home and abroad to do more to tackle Boko Haram since the militants' kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls.
The BBC's Will Ross in Lagos says that civilians who have formed vigilante groups are calling on the government to arm them with better guns so they can be more effective against the group.
Israeli teenager killed in attack on Syrian frontier
Attack on civilian vehicle in Golan Heights leaves 15-year-old son of IDF contractor dead – the first Israeli killed by fire from Syrian civil war
An Israeli teenager has been killed in a mortar attack on Israel's border with Syria in the Golan Heights.Israeli media reported on Sunday morning that the victim was the 15-year-old son of a civilian contractor employed by the Israel Defence Forces and that four other people were injured. An official told the Associated Press that the vehicle in which they were travelling appeared to have driven over a bomb or been struck by fire from Syria.
It would be the first time an Israeli has been killed by fire emanating from the Syrian civil war.
Meanwhile, two Palestinians were killed in clashes in the West Bank on Saturday night, bringing the death toll to five since Israel launched its biggest military operation in Palestinian cities and villages for a decade.
Ma'an news agency named the two Palestinian dead in the West Bank as Ahmad Fahmawi, 36, who was killed in Al Ein refugee camp in Nablus, and Mahmoud Ismail Atallah, who was found dead on a rooftop in Ramallah.
It said Fahmawi was killed on his way to dawn prayers, after refusing to return to his home when ordered by IDF troops, who then opened fire. The circumstances of Atallah's death were unclear, but he was found on the roof of a commercial building in Ramallah and had been shot.
An IDF spokesman did not reply to requests for comment, but in a statement to Ma'an it said Fahmawi had approached soldiers "in a threatening manner". After firing warning shots at him, the soldiers had then "fired towards the suspect".
The Israeli incursion into Ramallah, deploying hundreds of IDF troops, marks the biggest operation in the city – the Palestinian capital and political hub – since the intifada.
Elite IDF unit finds weapons during West Bank searches for kidnapped boys
A senior army source familiar with searches carried out in recent days by the elite Yahalom Combat Engineering unit told on Sunday of the arms found in West Bank searches.
"We found grenades, which are as deadly as industrially produced grenades, homemade explosives, and weapons labs," the source said."We were not surprised. We knew this existed in homes where families live. On the first floor, the family resides, and on the third floor is a weapons production lab," he added.
The Yahalom unit has also taken part in searches in caves in the Hebron area, the source stated.
"We divided the unit into company-sized battle crews, headed by a company commander. Each commander has been allocated a particular area," he continued. "The whole of the unit is in Judea and Samaria."
Doctors Without Borders calls for more aid as Ebola outbreak continues to devastate West Africa
The Ebola outbreak is devastating West Africa and will
spread to more countries unless more aid is provided, an official with
the group Doctors Without Borders said on Friday.
The outbreak has been linked to 337 deaths across Guinea,
Sierra Leone and Liberia and is now the deadliest on record, numbers
released by the World Health Organisation show.International governments and aid organisations need to send more health experts to the area and step up education efforts to curb the outbreak, Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders in Brussels, said on Friday.
"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Mr Janssens said. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."
He said it was the first Ebola epidemic in which Doctors Without Borders teams "cannot cover all the needs, at least for treatment centres".
It is the deadliest outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever since the first reported outbreak in 1976 killed 280 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO said.
"This is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths, so this is unprecedented so far," Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders, said.
Ebola fever is a severe, often fatal illness in humans, and outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90 per cent, according to the WHO.
Mr Janssens said the governments in the affected region had not initially recognised the severity of the outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year.
"There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," Mr Janssens said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."
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The danger of mission creep in Iraq
Withdrawing troops and ending US involvement in the Iraq War was one of President Obama's central objectives when he stepped into the Oval Office.After the events of this past week, however, Mr Obama's goal may be out of reach, as he announced that the United States will send 300 military advisers into Iraq.
With new boots on the ground, says Princeton University Prof Julian Zelizer, the administration must be wary of mission creep - where a small commitment spins into something much more substantial.
"Mission creep is difficult to avoid," he writes for CNN.com. "The history of military involvement shows that many operations that start small end big."
He cites what can only be considered the granddaddy of mission creep, the Vietnam War. It initially began as a small intervention, he says, when the US sent military advisers to Vietnam to train the South Vietnamese army.
Even after Congress approved President Lyndon B Johnson's request for a heightened military presence in Vietnam, he "didn't imagine how big the conflict would become," Zelizer writes.
So why does mission creep occur? Zelizer says that "very often the political pressures to escalate intensify once a president has committed forces to a region, particularly in the early years of a conflict".
Ground Zero Cross: Court presses atheist group to explain why artifact is 'offensive'
A federal appeals court said this week that an atheist group trying to keep the so-called Ground Zero Cross out of the National September 11 Memorial Museum must better explain how displaying the artifact is “offensive” and violates members’ constitutional rights.The 17-foot-tall, steel beam “cross” was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York that fell during the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
American Atheists filed the suit in 2011, which was thrown out last year by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York.
The appeals court ruling Thursday cites an amicus brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm that specializes in church-state law and protecting the free expression of all religious traditions.
“We’re thrilled that the court picked up on this issue,” said group lawyer Eric Baxter, whose brief argued that American Atheists had no right to bring a lawsuit in the first place. “Courts should not allow people to sue just because they claim to get ‘dyspepsia’ over a historical artifact displayed in a museum.”
The museum officially opened on May 21.
Kevin McCarthy: The Problem With Washington Is Harry Reid, Not Obama
Less than a week after being elected majority leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is blaming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for all of Washington's dysfunction.Asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether he would be willing to work with President Barack Obama as majority leader, McCarthy said he could work with just about anyone--except Reid. "I believe you can work with anybody. The challenge has been Harry Reid," McCarthy said. "There's more than 240 bills that have passed the House that haven't even been brought up inside the Senate. If you want to know the problem, the frustration with Washington, [it's] the Senate. The Senate has not moved anything, they never send something to the president's desk, so how do you even negotiate with the president if he doesn't have the bill on his desk?"
Republicans in the House have taken the brunt of the blame for obstructionism in Congress since 2010. Last year, the House dug in and refused to pass a budget until the Senate would agree to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That standoff ended in a deeply unpopular government shutdown.
In addition to blocking Senate bills, this House of Representatives is on track to propose the least amount of legislation since the Clinton administration.
But McCarthy, who was elected last week to replace Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as House majority leader after Cantor lost his primary to a tea party challenger, said legislation would start moving if Republicans were able to take over the Senate in November.
"What is the hold up here?" he asked. "Harry Reid and the Senate. If that fundamentally changes in November, I think it'll be a new day for America and a new direction."
White House vows faster deportation of illegal immigrants, will open new detention center
The Obama administration has announced that it will work to process and deport illegal immigrants quicker, and that a new detention center for families crossing the border is to be opened.The Wall Street Journal reports that the facility, located on the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center's Artesia, N.M., campus, will hold families while their deportation proceedings unfold
"We will house them in facilities that are humane and compliant with legal requirements," Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, the government reportedly shut down the main family detention center amid complaints about conditions there.
Currently, the government only has about 100 beds to house families with children. This fiscal year, some 39,000 people traveling as families have been apprehended, but the vast majority have been released, with many receiving ankle bracelets to monitor movement.
Bobby Jindal Says Rebellion Brewing Against Washington
WASHINGTON (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Saturday night accused President Barack Obama and other Democrats of waging wars against religious liberty and education and said that a rebellion is brewing in the U.S. with people ready for "a hostile takeover" of the nation's capital.Jindal spoke at the annual conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group led by longtime Christian activist Ralph Reed. Organizers said more than 1,000 evangelical leaders attended the three-day gathering. Republican officials across the political spectrum concede that evangelical voters continue to play a critical role in GOP politics.
"I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States," Jindal said, "where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren."
The governor said there was a "silent war" on religious liberty being fought in the U.S. — a country that he said was built on that liberty.
"I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them," he said. "The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore."
Earlier this week, Jindal signed an executive order to block the use of tests tied to Common Core education standards in his state, a position favored by tea party supporters and conservatives. He said he would continue to fight against the administration's attempts to implement Common Core.
"The federal government has no role, no right and no place dictating standards in our local schools across these 50 states of the United States of America," Jindal said.
Canada Orsainville airlift inmates recaptured in Montreal
Canadian police have recaptured three prisoners who escaped by helicopter from a jail outside Quebec City earlier this month.
Police said they were detained at a home in Montreal in the early hours of Sunday and more arrests were likely. The three, Yves Denis, 35, Denis Lefebvre, 53, and Serge Pomerleau, 49, were due to face trial on murder and drugs charges.
They are set to appear in court on Monday.
The prisoners fled on 7 June in a helicopter which landed in the yard of the Orsainville detention centre, on the outskirts of the city.
A judge had relaxed the three high-security prisoners' jail conditions, allowing them to be in the jail yard at the same time, so they could better prepare their defence, Canada's CBC reports.
Police are continuing their investigation into who may have helped the men escape.
As a manhunt was launched, the public had been warned not to approach the men. The circumstances of how they were recaptured remain unclear.
It was the second jailbreak involving a helicopter in Quebec province in just over a year.
In March 2013, two inmates fled from a prison near Montreal by climbing up a rope into a waiting helicopter.
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