Immigration deal would boost defense manufacturers

The border security plan the Senate approved last week includes unusual language mandating the purchase of specific models of helicopters and radar equipment for deployment along the U.S.-Mexican border, providing a potential windfall worth tens of millions of dollars to top defense contractors.

The legislation would require the U.S. Border Patrol to acquire, among other items, six Northrop Grumman airborne radar systems that cost $9.3 million each, 15 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters that average more than $17 million apiece, and eight light enforcement helicopters made by American Eurocopter that sell for about $3 million each. . .

The headquarters of Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood was overrun by youths who ransacked the building after those inside were evacuated on Monday following a night of violence that killed at least seven people.

By far the bloodiest incident of Sunday’s mammoth and mostly peaceful protests against the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Mursi, it began after dark and continued for hours, with guards inside firing on youths hurling fire bombs and rocks.

A spokesman for the Brotherhood blamed the violence on “thugs” and said it would be demanding answers from police who failed to protect it. He said two of those inside were injured – by fires – before a security detail from the movement was able to evacuate all those inside the compound in mid-morning. . .

The number of homicides on record in New York City has dropped significantly during the first half of the year — to 154 from 202 in the same period last year — surprising even police officials who have long been accustomed to trumpeting declining crime rates in the city.

In the first 178 days of 2013, the city averaged less than a murder a day, the first time the police can recall that happening for any sustained period. The latest numbers were recorded through Thursday.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly attributed much of the drop to a new antigang strategy meant to suppress retaliatory violence among neighborhood gangs. Police officials also credited their efforts at identifying and monitoring abusive husbands whose behavior seemed poised to turn lethal.

The recent decrease in violence is all the more striking because last year the department recorded the fewest homicides since it began a reliable method of compiling crime statistics half a century ago. The police recorded 419 murders in 2012.

“By far, it was the lowest, and guess what?” Commissioner Kelly said Friday morning before going on to announce that the number of murders this year was running about 25 percent below even that record year.

“In my business, in our business, this is miraculous. These are lives that are being saved.”. . .

The former second-ranking officer in the United States military, retired Gen. James E. Cartwright of the Marines, is a target of an investigation into the leak of classified information about American cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed Thursday night.

The leak investigation, being carried out by the United States attorney for Maryland, Rod J. Rosenstein, was announced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. after articles in The New York Times described an ambitious series of cyberattacks under the code name Olympic Games that were intended to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb. That General Cartwright is a focus of the leak inquiry was first reported by NBC News.

The general, 63, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011, became a favorite adviser of President Obama and was considered an influential voice in the White House on security matters.

A lawyer for General Cartwright, Gregory B. Craig, who served as White House counsel early in the Obama administration, declined to comment. . .

Liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status faced less IRS scrutiny than Tea Party groups, according to the Treasury inspector general. 

Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, told Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) in a letter dated Wednesday that the IRS did not use inappropriate criteria to scrutinize groups with “progressives” in their name seeking tax-exempt status.

“Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention. . .

“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, emails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention,” George wrote to Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
 

U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry assured India and other concerned partners in this volatile region Monday that the United States plans to continue supporting Afghanistan’s military and to keep American forces in the country “under any circumstances” after the scheduled 2014 combat troop withdrawal.

India is particularly worried that the U.S. pullout will leave an ongoing war in Afghanistan between Taliban fighters backed by Pakistan and other forces that have sought aid from India and Central Asian countries to combat any Taliban attempt to regain power. . .

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and a married New Jersey woman named Cecelia Reynolds traveled to Puerto Rico in 2007, where they were guests at the Governor’s beach house, owned by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Photographic evidence appears to place them both at the beach house, and on the nearby beach, which is private and closed to the public.

It is not known how they traveled to Puerto Rico. In January, Menendez said he reimbursed $58,500 to Salomon Melgen, his largest political donor, for two private jet trips to the Caribbean, a substantial portion of his net worth. At the time Menendez said that there were no other trips. . .

During his more than four decades in power, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya was North Africa’s outrageously self-styled arms benefactor, a donor of weapons to guerrillas and terrorists around the world fighting governments he did not like.

Even after his death, the colonel’s gunrunning vision lives on, although in ways he probably would have loathed.

Many of the same people who chased the colonel to his grave are busy shuttling his former arms stockpiles to rebels in Syria. The flow is an important source of weapons for the uprising and a case of bloody turnabout, as the inheritors of one strongman’s arsenal use them in the fight against another.

Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters. Libya’s own former fighters, who sympathize with Syria’s rebels, have been eager collaborators. . .

They’re known for preaching peace, kindness and love, but a radical breed of anti-Islamic Buddhist monk is wreaking havoc in Myanmar, resulting is lynch-mob killings and the forced removal of more than 150,000 Muslims from their homes.

Mass boycotts of Muslim-owned stores and anti-Islamic riots have plagued Myanmar’s transition to democracy after decades years of military rule, according to the New York Times. Up to 250 Muslims have been killed and countless others injured in the riots – the most violent of which occurred in the central city of Meiktila in March. . .

Prostitutes in one of Brazil’s biggest cities are beginning to sign up for free English classes ahead of this year’s Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup.

Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes in the city of Belo Horizonte, said Tuesday that 20 have already signed up for the courses and she expects at least 300 of the group’s 4,000 members to follow suit. The association is organizing the classes and seeking volunteer teachers.

“I don’t think we will have problems persuading English teachers to provide services for free,” she said. “We already have several volunteer psychologists and doctors helping us.”. . .

What do Kim Kardashian’s new baby and the Space Needle have in common?

They’re both NORTH WEST … TMZ has learned.

Seriously, that’s the kid’s name … according to the birth certificate from Cedars-Sinai hospital. 

There were rumors floating around a few months ago that Kim and Kanye West might give the baby a directional name … but who thought they would actually go through with it? 

Despite months of laboratory testing and scrutiny by top U.S. scientists, the Obama administration’s case for arming Syria’s rebels rests on unverifiable claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people, according to diplomats and experts.

The United States, Britain and France have supplied the United Nations with a trove of evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that U.S. officials say proves that Syrian troops used the nerve agent sarin on the battlefield. But the nature of the physical evidence — as well as the secrecy over how it was collected and analyzed — has opened the administration to criticism by independent experts, who say there is no reliable way to assess its authenticity. . .

The romantic comedy is back.

It took only 400 years.

“Much Ado About Nothing,” Joss Whedon’s larky adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play that opens Friday, transposes the action from 17th-century Sicily to modern-day Santa Monica, where in Whedon’s sprightly re-imagining, the verbally sparring Beatrice and Benedick fall in love in the director’s own modern mission-style home, amid shots of tequila, beeping iPhones and scads of political intrigue.

But Shakespeare’s play — with its deceptions, schemes, setbacks and ultimate victory of true love — also serves as a sobering reminder of how romantically impoverished mainstream American cinema has become. “Much Ado,” which for decades served as the classic template for bickering couples such as Hepburn and Tracy, Day and Hudson and Ryan and Hanks, has gradually devolved into “Nothing.” Ask hard-core romantic comedy fans for the best recent example of a big-studio romantic comedy and they’re likely to squint and strain before maybe mentioning “The Proposal,” a creaking Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds vehicle from 2009. . .

Extensive fraud has been committed by investigators responsible for conducting background checks used in granting security clearances to national security employees, a government watchdog will tell lawmakers on Thursday.

Patrick McFarland, the inspector general for the Office of Personnel Management, will tell a joint hearing of Senate subcommittees on homeland security that his office doesn’t have the resources it needs to ensure the checks – which were required of the millions of Americans with clearances – are not falsified.

So-called “fabrication cases” occur when background investigators “report interviews that never occurred, record answers to questions that were never asked, and document records checks that were never conducted,” McFarland will say, according to prepared testimony.

In one case, a woman responsible for conducting credit checks was found to have fabricated 1,600 different reports. In an ironic twist, the background check used to hire her was also found to be false.

In all, 18 employees have been criminally convicted of falsifying background checks, McFarland will say in his testimony. . .

Although she didn’t come out directly and say it, Miley Cyrus smokes weed. She also thinks it’s less dangerous than consuming alcohol.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the singer/actress, who catapulted to fame as a child star on Disney’s “Hannah Montana,” opens up about her feelings about marijuana.

In 2010, the star was videotaped smoking a substance from a bong, which she later claimed was salvia, an herb that some use for its hallucinogenic properties.

Rumors have also surfaced that the reason she and her fiance Liam Hemsworth have been having problems is because her partying has gotten out of control.

When asked if she was a “stoner,” Cyrus, 20, told the magazine:  ”You can’t ask someone that and expect them to say yes. I did a song with Snoop Dogg called ‘Ashtrays and Heartbreak,’ so people can put it together for themselves.”

If that’s not a confirmation that she smokes weed, what is?
 
She added, “I think alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana. People can be mad at me for saying that, but I don’t care. I’ve seen a lot of people spiral down with alcohol, but I’ve never seen that happen with weed. . .

Oreos, the dunkable chocolate cookie with a crème épaisse center (we joke), is getting a limited edition flavor makeover for summer. What did the bosses at Nabisco decide on? Watermelon Oreos — this is happening. . .

Chuck Hagel Jokes That Indian Man Asking Him A Question Is A Member Of The Taliban

He was a college professor. Hagel was speaking at the University of Nebraska where he went to school. He had previously answered a question on Afghanistan and negotiating with the Taliban before the exchange. . . 

The producers of an upcoming documentary on TWA Flight 800—which exploded and crashed into the waters off of Long Island on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board—claim to have proof that an explosion outside the Paris-bound flight caused the crash. And six former investigators who took part in the film want the case reopened.

“These investigators were not allowed to speak to the public or refute any comments made by their superiors and/or NTSB and FBI officials about their work at the time of the official investigation,” anews release announcing the documentary said. “They waited until after retirement to reveal how the official conclusion by the (NTSB) was falsified and lay out their case.”

After a four-year investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane, which had just taken off from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion likely caused by a spark from faulty wiring.

But according to Tom Stalcup, a co-producer of the documentary, the investigators “provide radar and forensic evidence proving that one or more ordinance explosions outside the aircraft caused the crash.” The film, will premiere on EPIX on July 17, the 17th anniversary of the crash.

Stalcup said the investigators plan to file petition the NTSB for a new probe. . .

President Barack Obama says it’s no surprise that there’s friction in early efforts to launch peace talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s government.

But Obama says even though the war is still ongoing, there must be a parallel track to political reconciliation.

Prospects for reconciliation talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government were dampened Wednesday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended security talks with the U.S. and the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack that killed four U.S. troops. . .