CAVEAT EMPTY

Scott Pruitt kinda sorta maybe gets that carbon dioxide contributes to warming.

During a wide-ranging Fox News Sunday interview, the EPA administrator fielded questions about President Trump’s recent executive order, the Clean Power Plan, the Paris Agreement, and public health.

When asked about his statement last month that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change, Pruitt offered a classic conservative response. “CO2 contributes to greenhouse gas, it has a greenhouse-gas effect,” he said. “The issue is, how much we contribute to it from the human-activity perspective, and what can be done about it.”

Sound familiar? During his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also recognized the existence of human-made climate change. Then he added a caveat, “Where there is the debate is what that influence is.”

It’s possible Trump administration members finally realize, unlike their boss, that most of America — 70 percent, according to recent data — agree climate change is happening. And The Hill recently reported thatPruitt has concerns about being labeled anti-science.

But until they trim their hedge on whether human activity is to blame, he and others in Trump’s orbit will stand directly opposed to scientific consensus — which harbors no doubts about why the climate is changing.

Emma Foehringer Merchant2 days ago

(GRIST)

US Just Admitted “ISIS HQ” They Blew Up Was Actually An Innocent Family’s Home

APRIL 4, 2017

By Claire Bernish

Five-hundred fifty-eight days after targeting an ostensible headquarters of the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, the United States finally admitted to bombing a family home and killing a university professor and three family members, wounding at least two more — even though the coalition suspected mere hours after the attack the ill-begotten mission had snuffed out the lives of an innocent family.

Overnight from September 20 through 21, the U.S.-led coalition carried out an airstrike against a family home — putatively believed to be a strategic Islamic State target — killing four members of the Rezzo family and wounding others on scene.

Airwars reports, “University professor Mohannad Rezzo; his 17-year old son Najib Mohannad Rezzo; his brother Bassim’s wife Miyada Rezzo and their 21-year old daughter Tuka Rezzo” perished together, as bombs intended for Islamic State leaders instead heedlessly destroyed a family.

But, unironically, it took until April Fool’s Day 2017 for U.S. officials to concede the coalition’s heinous error.

“This report was opened and a credibility assessment completed in 2015. However, the report was never officially closed or reported publicly. I do not know why that was,” Colonel Joe Scrocca, Director of Public Affairs for the Coalition, told Airwars. “The case was brought to our attention by the media and we discovered the oversight, relooked [at] the case based on the information provided by the journalist and family, which confirmed the 2015 assessment, and officially closed the report in February.”

Asked by Airwars how the coalition managed to mistake a family home for the headquarters of one of the most insidious, barbarous, terrorist organizations in operation, an unidentified spokesman Spartanly stated,

ISIS uses many different types of structures to plan its terrorist activities. Many of which are residential homes taken from the people of Iraq and Syria.

While indeed welcome news, for the Rezzos and their loved ones the tepid acknowledgement of wrongdoing dismisses over a year and a half demanding their deceased family members not be posthumously falsely described as fighters, militants, or anything other than the innocent, extremist-condemning people they were.

“For eighteen months, we have been fighting for this admission of a mistake, for our loved ones to be counted as civilians,” Professor Zareena Grewal told Airwarsfrom New York. “It is a small relief to have the US government concede that this airstrike was a mistake, that they mistakenly targeted the residential homes of a family that opposed ISIS. It is also deeply frightening because this case is an indictment of the quality of US intelligence.”

Grewal, an associate professor of American and religious studies at Yale University and the author ofIslam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority and Is the Quran a Good Book? excoriated the imprecision with which the coalition murdered members of his family in an editorial for the New York Times on October 4, 2015 — just days after the tragedy.

“The American-led air campaign did not hit a weapons storage facility belonging to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as one local report claimed,” Grewal asserted. “In a secluded part of Mosul that locals call ‘the Woods,’ the empty government warehouse, which the Islamic State briefly occupied until January, remains untouched. Instead, the strike hit two homes nearby, killing my husband’s cousin, Mohannad Rezzo, a university professor; his 17-year-old son, Najeeb; and their beloved German shepherd, Sinbul.

Mohannad’s wife, Sana, survived the explosion, which flung her, burned, from her second-floor bedroom to the driveway below. Mohannad’s older brother, Bassim, also narrowly survived, but his wife, Miyada, and their 21-year-old daughter, Tuka, did not. Bassim’s pelvis and leg were shattered in the attack and require surgery, but it is his emotional pain that consumes him.

Grewal’s candid description of the hopelessly ill-conceived airstrike provide intimate, insider context for civilian casualties resulting from U.S.-supported actions — the physical actuality of which too frequently is dismissed in the sterile headlines and paragraph-long articles by the American corporate press.

Major Genieve David, spokeswoman for the United States Air Force Central Command, confirmedto Grewal at the time that officials were made aware of a “civilian casualty allegation” the day following the ill-fated airstrike. CENTCOM planned to assess whether a “formal investigation” would be warranted — but, apparently, left Grewal and surviving family members in the lurch without acknowledging the avoidable error, much less offering apology, for more than 18 months.

“Today’s official recognition of this airstrike having killed civilians has been a long time coming, and should have been made public previously,” stated Azmat Khan in an email to Airwars. “It is also a searing reminder of the immense difficulty families face in getting the loss of their loved ones recognized, even in cases in which there is ample evidence of civilian loss.”

Khan and fellow investigative journalist, Anand Gopal, worked doggedly for more than a year with various members of the victims’ family to compel the United States to take responsibility and clear the Rezzo family name.

“There is still information that the Coalition has refused to provide us,” Khan continued, “for example, the kind of aircraft and munitions used in this airstrike, as well as the reason why the Rezzo family homes were hit. We are also still awaiting the results of our Freedom of Information Act requests for the government’s own investigations into this incident.”

Wholly uninvolved parties have been slain in shockingly high numbers in airstrikes carried out by the U.S. coalition in Iraq and Syria — two military theaters, among others, which have received the staunch support of the Trump administration in the form of additional troops, supplies, and, frighteningly, greater latitude for aggressive actions.

To wit, the U.S. Military’s Combined Joint Task Force for Operation Inherent Resolve claims a striking 229 people were killed essentially without justification in Iraq and Syria last month, during coalition efforts to extinguish Da’esh (Islamic State) control in the region.

However, being a notorious underreporter of its own wrongdoing, those figures don’t approach the actual travesty committed, in part, thanks to American taxpayer dollars.

Airwars determined that, as of the 30th, coalition airstrikes against supposed terrorists had instead slaughtered no less than 1,472 noncombatant civilians residing in the two long-fraught conflict zones during the month of March, alone — more than seven and a half times the 196 innocents killed throughout the same month last year.

“This is worse than anything we have ever seen from the coalition, and it’s up there with the levels of allegations we saw against Russia a year ago,” observed Airwars’ Chris Woods. “Something is shifting — a lot more civilians are dying, and it’s happening on Donald Trump’s watch.”

Indeed, it seems the new administration only amplified the beating of war drums so favored by the previous — leaving even more families like the Rezzos to grieve when directly affected by a battle royal against the Islamic State many of them have at least loosely supported.

While the U.S. coalition ultimately admitted wrongdoing in the killing of a family, the uptick in bombings and the butchery of civilians continues at an untenably reckless pace — thanks, in part, to lack of public backlash. Beyond the corporate press relegating the murders of civilians in the Middle East to mere footnotes, pro-U.S. Military propaganda claims airstrikes almost always hit intended targets.

Grewal, however, has experienced the reality — and wishes the tragic number of errant bombings and scores of civilian victims would garner appropriate scrutiny and condemnation, as he stressed,

The claim that our military air strike campaigns are precise is a dangerous and bloody myth.

It has now been over 14 years since United States forces invaded Iraq — and the conflict shows no indication a resolution is even in sight.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

(activistpost.com)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 4/5/2017 10:31:32 AM
	BRIEFLY Stuff that matters CAVEAT EMPTY Fox News Scott Pruitt kinda sorta maybe gets that carbon dioxide contributes to warming. During a wide-ranging Fox News Sunday interview, the EPA administrator fielded questions about President Trump’s recent executive order, the Clean Power Plan, the Paris Agreement, and public health. When asked about his statement last month that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change, Pruitt offered a classic conservative response. “CO2 contributes to greenhouse gas, it has a greenhouse-gas effect,” he said. “The issue is, how much we contribute to it from the human-activity perspective, and what can be done about it.” Sound familiar? During his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also recognized the existence of human-made climate change. Then he added a caveat, “Where there is the debate is what that influence is.” It’s possible Trump administration members finally realize, unlike their boss, that most of America — 70 percent, according to recent data — agree climate change is happening. And The Hill recently reported thatPruitt has concerns about being labeled anti-science. But until they trim their hedge on whether human activity is to blame, he and others in Trump’s orbit will stand directly opposed to scientific consensus — which harbors no doubts about why the climate is changing. Emma Foehringer Merchant2 days ago (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 4/5/2017 10:56:53 AM
	APR 3 2017, 7:01 AM ET North Korean Defector Tells Lester Holt ‘World Should Be Ready’ by LESTER HOLT and ALEXANDER SMITH SEOUL, South Korea — A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country's "desperate" dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies. Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime. According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is "desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM." He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S. Lester Holt Speaks with Thae Yong-ho, Former North Korean Diplomat Who Defected 1:55 "Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM," he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday. Thae was living in London and serving as North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he and his family defected to South Korea and were announced to the world in August. North Korea is estimated to have upward of eight nuclear weapons but has not demonstrated the ability to attach them to a long-range rocket, an ICBM, capable of hitting the U.S. “Kim Jong Un is a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination” Analysts are unsure exactly how close the regime is to achieving this aim, but a senior official told NBC News in January that his government was ready to test-fire an ICMB "at any time, at any place." Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told NBC News that American officials were particularly troubled by this latest threat. Analysis: Will North Korea Be Pres. Trump's First Global Crisis? 1:50 President Donald Trump told the Financial Times newspaper on Monday that "something had to be done" about North Korea. This came after Defense Secretary James Mattis said the country "has got to be stopped" and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said military action was "on the table." "It does feel more dangerous — I'll give you three reasons," according to Adm. James Stavridis, an NBC News analyst and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "One is [Kim's] own precarious situation in command of the nation. Number two is the instability in South Korea. We've just seen the South Korean president indicted, arrested, and incarcerated." "And, number three, a new and more aggressive American foreign policy coming from Washington," he added. Lester Holt walks with North Korean defector Thae Yong Ho in Seoul. NBC News Some analysts have warned that military action against the country might be very difficult and even disastrous. An invasion could risk a retaliatory strike against U.S. allies of Japan and South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is just 50 miles from the border. Nonetheless, Thae warned America and its allies to be prepared. "If Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons and ICBMs, he can do anything," he said. "So, I think the world should be ready to deal with this kind of person." He added that "Kim Jong Un is a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination" and that "the final and the real solution to the North Korean nuclear issue is to eliminate Kim Jong Un from the post." Kim came to power in 2012 and has defined his strongman premiership by the pursuit of a nuclear weapon that can hit the U.S. He has conducted more missile tests than in the rest of the country's history combined, and three of North Korea's five nuclear tests came under his watch. According to Thae, Kim is obsessed with obtaining nukes because he saw what happened to Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, both of whom abandoned their countries' weapons of mass destruction programs and then were overthrown by Western-backed forces. “Our freedom here is achieved at the cost of the sacrifice of my family members left in North Korea” Many analysts agree that Kim sees a nuclear weapon — and the retaliatory threat it poses — as an insurance policy against a similar strategy being pursued against him. "That's why Kim Jong Un strongly believes that only a nuclear weapon can guarantee his rule," Thae said. According to the former diplomat, the world should look to Kim's past actions to see what he is capable of. The young leader has reportedly been responsible forpurges and executions of top officials and even members of his own family. Last month, according to U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials, he masterminded the assassination of his own half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, at an airport in Malaysia. "Kim Jong Un is a person who did not even hesitate to kill his uncle and a few weeks ago, even his half-brother," Thae said. "So, he is a man who can do anything to remove [anyone in] his way." North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attends a competition between tank units from the Korean People's Army this year. KCNA via AFP/Getty Images Since his defection Thae has been making media appearances and giving talks denouncing North Korea's controlling and often brutal society. For this reason he believes he could be the next victim. "I am already a marked man," he said. "Kim Jong Un wants to eliminate any person or any country which poses a threat to him. And I think I am really a great threat to him." Thae was the highest-ranking North Korean official to abandon the regime and enter public life in South Korea since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, who was responsible for crafting "Juche" — North Korea's state ideology, which blends elements of Marxism with ultra-nationalism. He made the decision to switch sides, he said, after his two sons began asking questions about why North Korea did not allow the internet, why there was no proper legal system and why officials were executed without trial. His sons also complained they were being mocked by their British friends. "All of my family members were a little bit frightened, you know, on that day," he said of the moment he decided to escape. "But I always told them that we have to try to be as peaceful as possible. We should carry the normal faces and normal feelings so that our plan of defection should not be noticed by anyone in the embassy." This came at a high price, however. He was able to escape with his wife and children — but he fears his brother and sister in North Korea have been punished for his actions. "Our freedom here is achieved at the cost of the sacrifice of my family members left in North Korea," he said. "When a defection of my level happens, the North Korean regime usually sends the family members of high officials, defectors, to remote areas or labor camps and, to some extent, even to political prison camps as well." This fate is not unique. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been detained in North Korea's notorious gulags, where they are subjected to forced labor, torture and executions — treatment the United Nations said was "strikingly similar" to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Families are taken away by the country's secret police for arbitrary crimes such as "gossiping" about the state. Read more here (nbcnews.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 4/5/2017 11:10:27 AM
	Russia Claims "Unstoppable" Hypersonic Missile That Can Defeat Any US Warship BY MAC SLAVO/SHTFPLAN.COM APRIL 03, 2017 As President Trump ratchets up the U.S. military in his latest budget proposal, his counterpart, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has reportedly created a hypersonic missile with such devastating implications for the U.S. Navy, that it is being called "unstoppable." Russia claims to have created a devastating hypersonic missile that travels five times faster than the speed of sound and could rip through navy warship defences because it's too fast to stop. The Kremlin's Zircon missile has been called "unstoppable", "unbeatable" and "undefendable" with a 4,600mph speed that only one defence system in the world can destroy - that system is owned by Russia. The missile employs revolutionary scramjet technology to reach its hypersonic speeds whereby propulsion is created by forcing air from the atmosphere into its combustor where it mixes with on-board fuel - rather than carry both fuel and oxidizer like traditional rockets. This makes it lighter, and therefore much faster. The Zircon has been in testing stages this year and would be capable of destroying the world's most advanced warships and aircraft carriers in one strike and could be put into action by 2020. The US Navy warns it could be fitted to Russia's nuclear-powered Kirkov warship, where it would have a range of up to 500 miles. A senior Naval source told the Mirror: "Hypersonic missiles are virtually unstoppable. The whole idea of the carrier is the ability to project power. But with no method of protecting themselves against missiles like the Zircon the carrier would have to stay out of range, hundreds of miles out at sea. Its planes would be useless and the whole basis of a carrier task force would be redundant." Reports indicate that no counter measures for the Zircon missile exist. If true, then the majority of the U.S. Naval fleet has just been rendered obsolete. Originally published at SHTFplan.com - reposted with permission. Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=1129#8D6EbYH73Q2BqBsK.99
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 4/5/2017 11:24:43 AM
	US Just Admitted “ISIS HQ” They Blew Up Was Actually An Innocent Family’s Home APRIL 4, 2017 By Claire Bernish Five-hundred fifty-eight days after targeting an ostensible headquarters of the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, the United States finally admitted to bombing a family home and killing a university professor and three family members, wounding at least two more — even though the coalition suspected mere hours after the attack the ill-begotten mission had snuffed out the lives of an innocent family. Overnight from September 20 through 21, the U.S.-led coalition carried out an airstrike against a family home — putatively believed to be a strategic Islamic State target — killing four members of the Rezzo family and wounding others on scene. Airwars reports, “University professor Mohannad Rezzo; his 17-year old son Najib Mohannad Rezzo; his brother Bassim’s wife Miyada Rezzo and their 21-year old daughter Tuka Rezzo” perished together, as bombs intended for Islamic State leaders instead heedlessly destroyed a family. But, unironically, it took until April Fool’s Day 2017 for U.S. officials to concede the coalition’s heinous error. “This report was opened and a credibility assessment completed in 2015. However, the report was never officially closed or reported publicly. I do not know why that was,” Colonel Joe Scrocca, Director of Public Affairs for the Coalition, told Airwars. “The case was brought to our attention by the media and we discovered the oversight, relooked [at] the case based on the information provided by the journalist and family, which confirmed the 2015 assessment, and officially closed the report in February.” Asked by Airwars how the coalition managed to mistake a family home for the headquarters of one of the most insidious, barbarous, terrorist organizations in operation, an unidentified spokesman Spartanly stated, ISIS uses many different types of structures to plan its terrorist activities. Many of which are residential homes taken from the people of Iraq and Syria. While indeed welcome news, for the Rezzos and their loved ones the tepid acknowledgement of wrongdoing dismisses over a year and a half demanding their deceased family members not be posthumously falsely described as fighters, militants, or anything other than the innocent, extremist-condemning people they were. “For eighteen months, we have been fighting for this admission of a mistake, for our loved ones to be counted as civilians,” Professor Zareena Grewal told Airwarsfrom New York. “It is a small relief to have the US government concede that this airstrike was a mistake, that they mistakenly targeted the residential homes of a family that opposed ISIS. It is also deeply frightening because this case is an indictment of the quality of US intelligence.” Grewal, an associate professor of American and religious studies at Yale University and the author ofIslam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority and Is the Quran a Good Book? excoriated the imprecision with which the coalition murdered members of his family in an editorial for the New York Times on October 4, 2015 — just days after the tragedy. “The American-led air campaign did not hit a weapons storage facility belonging to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as one local report claimed,” Grewal asserted. “In a secluded part of Mosul that locals call ‘the Woods,’ the empty government warehouse, which the Islamic State briefly occupied until January, remains untouched. Instead, the strike hit two homes nearby, killing my husband’s cousin, Mohannad Rezzo, a university professor; his 17-year-old son, Najeeb; and their beloved German shepherd, Sinbul. Mohannad’s wife, Sana, survived the explosion, which flung her, burned, from her second-floor bedroom to the driveway below. Mohannad’s older brother, Bassim, also narrowly survived, but his wife, Miyada, and their 21-year-old daughter, Tuka, did not. Bassim’s pelvis and leg were shattered in the attack and require surgery, but it is his emotional pain that consumes him. Grewal’s candid description of the hopelessly ill-conceived airstrike provide intimate, insider context for civilian casualties resulting from U.S.-supported actions — the physical actuality of which too frequently is dismissed in the sterile headlines and paragraph-long articles by the American corporate press. Major Genieve David, spokeswoman for the United States Air Force Central Command, confirmedto Grewal at the time that officials were made aware of a “civilian casualty allegation” the day following the ill-fated airstrike. CENTCOM planned to assess whether a “formal investigation” would be warranted — but, apparently, left Grewal and surviving family members in the lurch without acknowledging the avoidable error, much less offering apology, for more than 18 months. “Today’s official recognition of this airstrike having killed civilians has been a long time coming, and should have been made public previously,” stated Azmat Khan in an email to Airwars. “It is also a searing reminder of the immense difficulty families face in getting the loss of their loved ones recognized, even in cases in which there is ample evidence of civilian loss.” Khan and fellow investigative journalist, Anand Gopal, worked doggedly for more than a year with various members of the victims’ family to compel the United States to take responsibility and clear the Rezzo family name. “There is still information that the Coalition has refused to provide us,” Khan continued, “for example, the kind of aircraft and munitions used in this airstrike, as well as the reason why the Rezzo family homes were hit. We are also still awaiting the results of our Freedom of Information Act requests for the government’s own investigations into this incident.” Wholly uninvolved parties have been slain in shockingly high numbers in airstrikes carried out by the U.S. coalition in Iraq and Syria — two military theaters, among others, which have received the staunch support of the Trump administration in the form of additional troops, supplies, and, frighteningly, greater latitude for aggressive actions. To wit, the U.S. Military’s Combined Joint Task Force for Operation Inherent Resolve claims a striking 229 people were killed essentially without justification in Iraq and Syria last month, during coalition efforts to extinguish Da’esh (Islamic State) control in the region. However, being a notorious underreporter of its own wrongdoing, those figures don’t approach the actual travesty committed, in part, thanks to American taxpayer dollars. Airwars determined that, as of the 30th, coalition airstrikes against supposed terrorists had instead slaughtered no less than 1,472 noncombatant civilians residing in the two long-fraught conflict zones during the month of March, alone — more than seven and a half times the 196 innocents killed throughout the same month last year. “This is worse than anything we have ever seen from the coalition, and it’s up there with the levels of allegations we saw against Russia a year ago,” observed Airwars’ Chris Woods. “Something is shifting — a lot more civilians are dying, and it’s happening on Donald Trump’s watch.” Indeed, it seems the new administration only amplified the beating of war drums so favored by the previous — leaving even more families like the Rezzos to grieve when directly affected by a battle royal against the Islamic State many of them have at least loosely supported. While the U.S. coalition ultimately admitted wrongdoing in the killing of a family, the uptick in bombings and the butchery of civilians continues at an untenably reckless pace — thanks, in part, to lack of public backlash. Beyond the corporate press relegating the murders of civilians in the Middle East to mere footnotes, pro-U.S. Military propaganda claims airstrikes almost always hit intended targets. Grewal, however, has experienced the reality — and wishes the tragic number of errant bombings and scores of civilian victims would garner appropriate scrutiny and condemnation, as he stressed, The claim that our military air strike campaigns are precise is a dangerous and bloody myth. It has now been over 14 years since United States forces invaded Iraq — and the conflict shows no indication a resolution is even in sight. Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 4/5/2017 2:12:49 PM
	Eyewitnesses tell of horror in Syria gas attack Ash Gallagher Yahoo NewsApril 4, 2017 IDLIB — Dozens of people are dead after a suspected chemical attack in the Khan Shaykhun neighborhood of Idlib province, Syria. Yahoo News spoke to several eyewitnesses via WhatsApp and Facebook. One Syrian activist, Zouhir, said his brother is in Idlib. Zouhir told Yahoo News, “The attacks started at 7 a.m. in the area. Civil defense [rescue teams] responded right away but didn’t know where the attack had come from. As they were helping people, another sudden attack took place near the hospital.” Zouhir said his brother reported more than one attack in the area, and that rescuers had identified the chemical as “sarin gas” based on victims’ symptoms like “yellow material coming out of their mouth, then blood, and difficulty breathing.” Photos and video have emerged on social media showing children piled on the ground, half naked and extremely thin, suggesting severe malnutrition. Another video showed children dead, with their eyes open. Bodies including those of women could be seen strewn in the streets. An eyewitness, Zadi, said he saw a little girl who looked like she “had butter coming out of her mouth” and that when people were rushing toward the hospital, they were “targeted with rocket-propelled grenades.” A man carries a child following a suspected chemical attack at a makeshift hospital in the town of Khan Shaykhun, Syria, on April 4, 2017. (Photo: Edlib Media Center/AP) Slideshow: Suspected Syria gas attack kills dozens, including children >>> Yet another eyewitness, Yaman, also spoke with Yahoo News and said he went to see what happened at the hospital; while there, “Khan Shaykun was directly targeted by [several] air raids, by Russian aircraft — it destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of children inside who were receiving treatment.” He called the attacks a “massacre.” The Russian Defense Ministry has denied claims that its aircraft were involved in the attack. One doctor treating victims, Dr. Feras al-Jundi, went to a hospital in a neighborhood not far from Khan Shaykhun to help. He said the scene was ghastly: “I saw a lot of victims. The hospital was filled with them. There were a lot of unconscious people,” he said. “I tried to help the women, children and old men. I saw more than 10 [dead], and then the hospital was attacked three times. People were in a state of anxiety and fear.” He blames the Syrian government for the attack. But a Syrian military official denied the accusations and stated that the government “has not and does not use [chemical weapons], not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place.” Destruction at a hospital room in Khan Shaykhun, a Syrian rebel-held town, following a suspected toxic gas attack. (Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images) The last major chemical assault took place in the Damascus neighborhood of Ghouta in August 2013. At the time, the United Nations called it a “war crime.” Following the attack, the Syrian government agreed to give up its chemical arsenal, but concerns have been raised among international players about Assad’s transparency. The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, calling the attack “monstrous.” A Security Council meeting has been called for Wednesday. The attack comes after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ankara that it should be up to the Syrian people to decide if Assad should stay in power. Since January, the U.S. has turned its focus to defeating the Islamic State militant group in Raqqa and Mosul. _____ Ash Gallagher is a journalist covering the Mideast for Yahoo News.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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Scott Pruitt kinda sorta maybe gets that carbon dioxide contributes to warming.

North Korean Defector Tells Lester Holt ‘World Should Be Ready’

US Just Admitted “ISIS HQ” They Blew Up Was Actually An Innocent Family’s Home

Eyewitnesses tell of horror in Syria gas attack