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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/25/2016 5:16:36 PM

‘San Antonio Four’ Cleared on All Charges by Texas Appeals Court After Almost 15 Years in Prison

George Stark
People


The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday that the women known as the “San Antonio Four” be declared innocent and exonerated after almost 15 years in prison,KSAT 12 News reports.

The story of Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Cassandra Rivera and Anna Vasquez – who were convicted in 1997 of attacking Ramirez’s nieces, ages 7 and 9 – was the subject of a recent documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, that aired on Investigation Discovery.


Rivera was convicted in December 1997 of sexual assault and sentenced to 37 years. Her friends were each sentenced in February 1998 to 15 years. Rivera was then paroled in 2012, but the other three women were released on bail in 2013 with the help of the Innocence Project of Texas following new evidence.

A judge earlier this year refused to void their convictions while ruling that each was entitled to a new trial.

Ramirez and three of her friends were accused of sexually assaulting her two nieces over a two-day period while Ramirez cared for the young girls at her apartment in San Antonio, Texas in 1994.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ramirez told PEOPLE this year, recounting her ordeal. “I was like, where did they even come up with that? I was like in shock.”

Ramirez, then 19, was a fast-food restaurant worker who’d recently learned she was pregnant. Her friends, Anna Vasquez and Cassandra Rivera, were a lesbian couple raising Rivera’s two young children from a prior marriage. Like Ramirez, the fourth friend, Kristie Mayhugh, also was gay.

The women’s sexuality figured at trial, when prosecutors accused them of cult-like ritual abuse of the victims.

The ruling said Thursday: “They are innocent. And they are exonerated. This court grants them the relief they seek.”

(Yahoo News)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 12:04:31 AM
60,000 Israelis evacuated in Haifa as fires continue to rage
JERUSALEM — More than 60,000 people from the northern city of Haifa were evacuated from their homes Thursday, as firefighters battle massive blazes that have gripped the country over the past three days.

A number of countries, including Russia and Turkey, sent firefighting planes to assist Israel in tackling the fires, which officials said may have been started intentionally. Israel's internal security agencies are looking into the causes of the blazes, which started on Monday night and have broken out in several other places around the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Haifa on Thursday evening to meet with fire and police chiefs. He said that if the fires were started by arsonists, those responsible "will be punished gravely."

Officials said that about 10 firefighting planes from Croatia, Cyprus, Greece and Italy, as well as Russia and Turkey, had either arrived in Israel or were on their way. The Palestinian Authority also said it would send some fire crews.

Netanyahu spoke Thursday morning with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who agreed to send two massive firefighting planes that could drop water on the blazes. Local media reported that a supertanker firefighting plane would arrive from the United States in 24 hours.

Weather experts said the fires, which began in bush areas, had spread widely because of gusty winds following the dry summer months.

In Haifa, authorities removed residents from at least 10 neighborhoods. Although no fatalities were reported, damage was said to be widespread and a few hundred people were treated for smoke inhalation. Several large buildings were engulfed by the fires.


Video posted online by residents and Israeli police show massive wildfires ripping through forests and huge clouds of black smoke billowing over the city skyline near Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut, Israel between Nov. 22 and Nov. 24. (The Washington Post)

In addition to calling for help from abroad and directing all its firefighting forces to Haifa, the Israeli military deployed two search and rescue battalions to the area, and reservists from the Homefront Command were brought in to assist in evacuating civilians.

Some witnesses said the city, Israel’s third-largest, resembled a “war zone.”


A man watches wildfires in Haifa, Israel, on Nov. 24. (Ariel Schalit/Associated Press)


[2010: Forest fire fuels review of Israel's tree-planting tradition]

As the fire continued to burn, Haifa residents remembered a
deadly brush fire in 2010 in which 44 prison guards were burned alive on a bus as they attempted to reach and evacuate a prison. Israel’s prison services said this time, too, that two prisons in the area would be emptied.

Yael Hamer, a resident of Haifa who was evacuated from her home Thursday, told journalists that the situation now was worse than the fire six years ago, when the fire was contained to the forests next to Haifa.

“Now it is residential areas where there are many private homes. It is near schools, gas stations, and there are a lot of cars that are stuck in traffic jams as people try to leave Haifa,” Hamer said.

The first fire began Monday night near Neve Shalom, a small community halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where Jews and Arabs live together. Just as that fire was brought under control, another erupted in Zichron Yaakov, a town just south of Haifa. Dozens of residents there were forced from their homes, and several houses were destroyed.


A man checks the damage to a house during a wildfire in the communal settlement of Nataf, near Jerusalem, Nov. 23. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

On Wednesday, a fire in the community of Nataf in the Jerusalem Hills damaged property. Israeli police said they had detained four Palestinians believed to have started the fire, although it was not clear whether it was on purpose or by negligence.

Throughout the night Wednesday, firefighters battled blazes in other areas, too. In one place, near the city of Modi’in, police were forced to close down the main highway to Jerusalem. Residents also were evacuated.


Cars burned during a wildfire are seen in Haifa, Nov. 24. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)


Ruth Eglash is a reporter for The Washington Post based in Jerusalem. She was formerly a reporter and senior editor at the Jerusalem Post and freelanced for international media.
Follow @reglash


(The Washington Post)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 1:09:12 AM
Drone warfare heads under the seas as U.S. seeks advantage over rivals



Boeing recently debuted the Echo Voyager, a 51-foot-long autonomous submarine that can roam the seas for months. Unlike other unmanned underwater vehicles, it isn’t dependent on a support ship. (Pinner Paul/Boeing)

As unmanned aerial drones have become a critical part of modern warfare, the Pentagon is now looking to deploy autonomous robots underwater, patrolling the sea floor on what one top Navy official called an “Eisenhower highway network,” complete with rest stops where the drones could recharge.

Although still in the development stages, the technology has matured in recent years to be able to overcome the vast difficulties of operating underwater, a far more harsh environment than what aerial drones face in the sky.

Saltwater corrodes metal. Water pressure can be crushing at great depths. And communication is severely limited, so the vehicles must be able to navigate on their own without being remotely piloted.

Despite the immense difficulties, the Navy has been testing and fielding several new systems designed to map the ocean floor, seek out mines, search for submarines and even launch attacks. While the unmanned crafts are now able to stay out for days or weeks, the goal is to create an underwater network of service stations that would allow the vehicles to do their jobs for months — and eventually years.

Military officials say there is a sense of urgency because the undersea domain, while often overlooked, could one day be as contested as the surface of the sea, the skies — and even space.


Take a look at two unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV's), and how these autonomous underwater drones could be used for intel gathering, surveillance, recon and neutralization of potential threats.
(Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

While Russia and China are investing in their submarine fleets, the Pentagon has sought to seize an advantage by introducing new technologies, especially those where humans team up with highly capable robots and autonomous systems.

In 2015, the Navy appointed its first deputy assistant secretary for unmanned systems. And the Pentagon plans to invest as much as $3 billion in undersea systems in the coming years.

Last month, the Navy participated in the multi-nation Unmanned Warrior exercise off the coast of Scotland. Autonomous subs worked in concert with aerial drones to pass along intelligence that could be relayed from undersea to the air and then to troops on the ground.

It’s too early to tell how the Trump administration might view the plans. But Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said advancements in undersea warfare should continue to be a priority for the Navy.

“The Pentagon feels like the U.S. is well positioned to do undersea warfare and anti-submarine warfare better than any other country,” said Clark, the author of a report titled “
The Emerging Era in Undersea Warfare.” “What’s changing, though, is other counties are developing the ability to deny above the water. . . . So the U.S. is thinking it’ll have to rely much more on under the water.”

The goal is to have the unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) deploy from manned submarines or even large autonomous drone subs the way fighter jets take off from aircraft carriers, he said. The Chinese and others have built sensors that can detect large manned submarines, but the military could still send in small, hard-to-detect drone subs.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR), which looks to develop advanced technologies, is seeking to “build the Eisenhower highway network on the seabeds in the seven oceans,” Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, head of the office, said at a conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this year. The ultimate goal is to “have large-scale deployments of UUVs,” he said. “We want them to go out for decades at a time.”

While the project is still in the conceptual stages, the Navy would one day like to build service stations underwater, similar to highway rest stops. There is even a name for them: forward-deployed energy and communications outposts.

“A place where you can gas up or charge your underwater vehicles, transfer data and maybe store some data,” said Frank Herr, the head of the ONR’s ocean battlespace sensing department.

While that may be a long way off, the Pentagon is testing vehicles that are capable of going out for weeks or even months at a time. In recent years, Boeing has developed the Echo Ranger and Echo Seeker, autonomous vehicles capable of carrying out days-long operations.

This year, it debuted the Echo Voyager, a 51-foot-long autonomous submarine with the ability to stay out for months; it isn’t dependent on a support ship the way others are.

“You don’t need to have a support ship involved, and that drastically reduces the daily operational cost,” said Lance Towers, director of sea and land at Boeing’s Phantom Works division.

This year, General Dynamics boosted its underwater offerings when it acquired Bluefin Robotics, which makes several types of underwater robots. Its 16-foot-long Bluefin-21 vehicle is capable of launching what the company calls “micro UUVs,” known as SandSharks, that weigh only about 15 pounds. The SandSharks could scan an enemy shoreline and pop up to the surface to relay data to aircraft flying overhead. The Bluefin-21 could even launch a tube that goes to the surface, sticks up like a large straw and then shoots out an unmanned aerial vehicle like a spitball.

While there are still huge hurdles to overcome, especially when it comes to battery life, underwater-vehicle technology is about where drone technology for aircraft was in the 1990s, said Carlo Zaffanella, General Dynamics’ vice president and general manager for maritime and strategic systems.

Signal processing is improving. So is autonomy, Zaffanella said. And the advancements are coming “at a time when underwater warfare is becoming more important.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a plan to plant 15-foot-tall pods across the ocean floor that could sit there for years waiting to be awakened. When they received a signal, they would float to the surface and release aerial drones, which could perform surveillance over shorelines.

Raytheon, meanwhile, is working on a torpedo that instead of blowing things up would be the military’s eyes and ears underwater, scouting for mines or enemy submarines, mapping the ocean floor and measuring currents.

The new generation of undersea vehicles would require powerful computer brains.

“The undersea environment is particularly challenging and unpredictable,” Navy Rear Adm. Bill Merz said at a recent conference.

“I would even go out on a limb here to say we are truly the unmanned of the unmanned vehicles, and in most cases we don’t even have a man in the loop. So what we field and put in the water is on its own until we hear from it again.”


Christian Davenport covers the defense and space industries for The Post's Financial desk. He joined The Post in 2000 and has served as an editor on the Metro desk and as a reporter covering military affairs. He is the author of "As You Were: To War and Back with the Black Hawk Battalion of the Virginia National Guard."
Follow @wapodavenport


(The Washington Post)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 9:18:18 AM

Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader of revolution, dies at 90

  • 1 hour ago
Media captionJames Robbins looks back at Fidel Castro's life (video)

Fidel Castro, Cuba's former president and leader of the Communist revolution, has died aged 90, his brother has said.

"The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening (03:29 GMT Saturday)," President Raul Castro said.

Fidel Castro ruled Cuba as a one-party state for almost 50 years before Raul took over in 2008.

His supporters said he had given Cuba back to the people. But he was also accused of suppressing opposition.

Live updates

Obituary: Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro: A life in pictures

Fidel: The world icon

Ashen and grave, President Castro told the nation in an unexpected late night broadcast on state television that Fidel Castro had died and would be cremated later on Saturday.

There would now be several days of national mourning on the island.

Raul Castro ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Towards victory, always!"

Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionRaul Castro announced the death of his brother on state television

Barring the occasional newspaper column, Fidel Castro had essentially been retired from political life for some time, the BBC's Will Grant in Havana reports.

In April, Fidel Castro gave a rare speech on the final day of the country's Communist Party congress.

He acknowledged his advanced age but said Cuban communist concepts were still valid and the Cuban people "will be victorious".

Media captionIn April, Castro made a rare appearance at Cuba's Communist Party congress

"I'll soon be 90," the former president said, adding that this was "something I'd never imagined".

"Soon I'll be like all the others, "to all our turn must come," Fidel Castro said.

Castro - who had survived many assassination plots - was the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century.

Castro temporarily handed over power to his brother in 2006 as he was recovering from an acute intestinal ailment.

Raul Castro officially became president two years later.


Fidel Castro's key dates

Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES
  • 1926: Born in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba
  • 1953: Imprisoned after leading an unsuccessful rising against Batista's regime
  • 1955: Released from prison under an amnesty deal
  • 1956: With Che Guevara, begins a guerrilla war against the government
  • 1959: Defeats Batista, sworn in as prime minister of Cuba
  • 1961: Fights off CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles
  • 1962: Sparks Cuban missile crisis by agreeing that USSR can deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba
  • 1976: Elected president by Cuba's National Assembly
  • 1992: Reaches an agreement with US over Cuban refugees
  • 2006: Hands over reins to brother Raul due to health issues, stands down as president two years later

Cuba's revolutionary leader


Throughout the Cold War, Fidel Castro was a thorn in Washington's side.

An accomplished tactician on the battlefield, he and his small army of guerrillas overthrew the military leader Fulgencio Batista in 1959 to widespread popular support.

Within two years of taking power, he declared the revolution to be Marxist-Leninist in nature and allied the island nation firmly to the Soviet Union.

Yet, despite the constant threat of a US invasion as well as the long-standing economic embargo on the island, Castro managed to maintain a communist revolution in a nation just 90 miles (145km) off the coast of Florida.

Despised by his critics as much as he was revered by his followers, he outlasted 10 US presidents and defied scores of attempts on his life by the CIA.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Castro "one of the most iconic personalities of the 20th century" saying his country mourned his loss. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Castro was a "great friend" of Mexico.

But in Miami, where there is a large Cuban community, there have been celebrations in some parts of the city.

(BBC)



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/26/2016 10:02:10 AM
This is the single most dangerous thing Donald Trump said in his New York Times interview



Donald Trump leaves the New York Times (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)


Donald Trump said lots (and lots) of eyebrow-raising things during his sitdown with the New York Times on Tuesday. On climate change. On prosecuting (or not) Hillary Clinton. But one statement — in response to a question about the various conflicts of interest between his eponymous company and his status as the soon-to-be president of the United States — was truly eye-popping.

Trump's statement carried considerable echoes of Richard Nixon's famous/infamous line to interview David Frost three decades ago: "Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”


It's impossible to know whether Trump was purposely channeling Nixon. (I personally think he wasn't doing so consciously.) In truth, it reminded me as much if not more of Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd declaring "I am the law." (The idea of that movie was that people like Dredd functioned as judge, jury and executioner.) Or he could have taken the idea from former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a close Trump adviser, who said the following to CNN's Jake Tapper this month about conflicts of interest: "You realize that those laws don't apply to the president, right? So the president doesn't have to have a blind trust. For some reason, when the law was written, the president was exempt."

Donald Trump has a lot of potential conflicts of interest as president – but there's no law that specifically requires a commander in chief to remove themselves from all of their business interests. The Fix's Peter W. Stevenson explains why presidents usually put their assets in a "blind trust" to avoid problems. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

No matter where Trump got the idea, it's a very dangerous one for any president to hold: That you (or anyone) is effectively above the law.

But before we get to all of the implications that spring from that idea, let's examine the notion of presidential conflicts of interest. According to PolitiFact, the relevant portion of the U.S. code covering it is Title 18 Section 208, which says that federal government employees can't deal with issues in their official capacity in which they or their families have a vested financial interest.

Except that the statute doesn't hold for all federal employees. It reads: "Except as otherwise provided in such sections, the terms 'officer' and 'employee' in sections 203, 205, 207 through 209, and 218 of this title shall not include the President, the Vice President, a Member of Congress, or a Federal judge."

Here's more from PolitiFact:

It’s been this way since at least 1974, when the Justice Department issued a letter saying Title 18 Section 208 did not apply to the president. Congress expressly codified the exemptions in 1989.

In the 1974 letter, the Justice Department said the legislative history of this conflict-of-interest provision indicated that it was never intended to apply to the president. Additionally, the Justice Department said placing conflict-of-interest laws on the president could constrain him in a potentially unconstitutional manner, though it did not give specific examples.

PolitiFact rated Giuliani's claim as "true."

So, legally speaking, Trump (and Giuliani and Judge Dredd) are on generally solid ground when it comes to conflict of interest laws. The primary ones put in place by the U.S. code simply don't apply to the president.

But then there is the common sense reality. As in, someone who is the head of a major international real estate development company should be aware that being elected president puts him deeply at cross-purposes unless and until he fully walls himself off from the goings-on of his former life. (For a running and regularly updated list of how Trump's status as president-elect is helping his private companies, click here.) Because of those appearances, the president-to-be should volunteer to go far above the law when it comes to ensuring there isn't even the glimmer of suspicion that the right hand is washing the left.

In short: Just because something isn't illegal doesn't make it right. (I made a similar argument about Hillary Clinton's relentless pushback that she had broken no laws with her private email setup. That was proven to be accurate — and also besides the broader point of right and wrong.)

Hiding behind the "well, there's no law that says I can't do this" is not exactly presidential. And a belief that the president isn't bound to do everything he can to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest suggests a dangerous slippery slope about what a president can and should do in office.

The best thing Trump can do now is say: I know I am not legally required to do so but I am going to bend over backwards to extricate myself from any and all conflicts of interest — real or perceived — so that the American public can rest assured I am only focused on making their lives better.

I doubt he will say anything of the sort. Which is unfortunate. And dangerous.


Chris Cillizza writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for The Washington Post, and hosts the Ciquizza podcast, a weekly news quiz [Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher].
Follow @thefix




(The Washington Post)


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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