Assistance requested from left-wing activists in the Gaza Strip ..[ 1306 ]

             Gaza flotilla refuses to help Schalit           

By YAAKOV KATZ AND JPOST.COM STAFF

27/5/2010 14:02

Activists refuse quid pro quo: Visits to soldier for docking rights.

 

The Schalit family on Thursday asked for assistance from international left-wing activists due to arrive in the Gaza Strip later in the day.

If the left-wing activists pressure Hamas to allow international organizations to bring letters and food packages to Gilad Schalit, the kidnapped soldier's family has agreed to support the international expedition's attempt to dock, Army Radio reported Thursday.

Lawyer Nick Kaufman presented the offer to the organization "Free Gaza," one of the organizers of the flotilla headed for Gaza, which promptly refused the offer.

"We are disappointed that the organizers of the flotilla have refused to also provide basic humanitarian assistance to our son, who has been held in Gaza four years in contradiction of international law," said the Schalit family.

The IDF announced Wednesday evening that it was planning to stop the international convoy of nine ships currently on its way to Gaza carrying hundreds of activists and thousands of tons of supplies.

“If they decide to continue sailing and do not listen to the instructions, then they will be stopped, brought to Israel and dealt with by the Interior Ministry, which will return them to the countries they came from,” an IDF statement said.

According to the statement, the IDF will unload the supplies and transfer the shipment to the Gaza Strip, after inspecting it for weaponry.

The Navy has held a number of drills in recent weeks to prepare for the arrival of the small fleet, which is expected to try breaking the Israel-imposed sea blockade on Gaza and dock at its newly expanded port.

The scenarios drilled included the commandeering of the ships, which could, military sources said Wednesday, include violent clashes – depending on the response by the passengers on the vessels.

“We will do everything to ensure that the operation runs smoothly, but are prepared for every possible scenario,” one defense official explained.

Meanwhile Wednesday, the IDF continued its media blitz against the flotilla and released data showing that all of the supplies the ships are carrying were already being transferred by Israel to Gaza via land crossings on a regular basis.

“This flotilla is a provocation that is not needed considering the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is stable and good,” said Col. Moshe Levi, commander of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration. Levi said that 100 trucks, loaded with supplies, enter Gaza on a daily basis, and that in the past two months over 1,200 tons of medical supplies were transferred to the Strip.

 

"X-51A Waverider", Hypersonic Aircraft cruiser.. [ 1305 ]

Aircraft sets hypersonic record at six times the speed of sound

An aircraft has set a record for hypersonic flight by flying more than three minutes at Mach 6 – six times the speed of sound.

 

Published: 12:30PM BST 27 May 2010

The X-51A Waverider

The X-51A Waverider was released from under the wing of a B-52 Stratofortress Photo: US Air Force

The X-51A Waverider was released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the southern California coast and its scramjet engine accelerated the aircraft to Mach 6, and it flew autonomously for 200 seconds before losing acceleration. At that point the test was terminated.

The Air Force said the previous record for a hypersonic flight was 12 seconds.

 

"We are ecstatic to have accomplished many of the X-51A test points during its first hypersonic mission," said Charlie Brink, an X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
"We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines," he said.

The Waverider was built for the Air Force by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing Co.
Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said, "This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation."

Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force, and the remaining three will be tested this autumn.
"No test is perfect," Mr Brink said, "and I'm sure we will find anomalies that we will need to address before the next flight."

Red Cross is defending its practice ...[ 1304 ]

Red Cross defends helping Taliban treat casualties

By the CNN Wire Staff

May 27, 2010 2:50 a.m. EDT

Men load foodstuffs during ICRC food distribution in Kunar province, east of Kabul on October 8, 2008.

(CNN) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross is defending its practice of providing medical training and basic medical supplies to the Taliban in Afghanistan -- saying it is in line with the ICRC's mandate not to discriminate between different sides in a conflict.

In the latest situation report issued Tuesday, the Red Cross disclosed that in April its workers "reached over 100 Afghan security personnel, over 70 members of the armed opposition, taxi drivers involved in the transport of wounded people, first-aiders and its own staff."

That prompted plenty of quizzical and some critical comments in the international media and among bloggers -- and some grumbling among Afghan officials.
But an ICRC spokesman in Geneva said the practice is consistent with its obligation of neutrality and its mandate to provide assistance to all sides in conflict.

The ICRC says it provides a three-day course that includes lessons in international humanitarian law, practical work with bandages and other basic medical techniques.
It says the course is also a chance to remind all sides about respect for civilians and proper treatment of detainees.

Some critics have drawn a distinction between providing medical care to the wounded and training insurgents to do so. But the ICRC says it has provided similar training in Darfur, Sudan and to Hamas members in Gaza.

ICRC spokesman Christian Cardon says it has been providing such training in Afghanistan for about four years to the Taliban as well as to Afghan police and civilian first-aiders. He added that the ICRC was not training the Taliban in surgical skills; the focus was on stabilizing those injured.
The ICRC says that roadblocks, fighting and mines have made access to hospitals very difficult -- especially in provinces like Helmand and Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan.

The International Security Assistance Force says it has no issues with Red Cross workers training insurgents in medical care.
"We recognize the need for their work to be executed impartially -- and it's precisely for this reason that they are able to gain the access that they do," Lt. Col. Joseph T Breasseale told CNN. "One of the litany of things that separates the international coalition from the Taliban is that we have frequently provided first aid to injured Taliban fighters and we will continue to do so."

The ICRC says the three-day first-aid courses are a small part of its program in Afghanistan. In April it conducted a war surgery workshop for dozens of doctors, and supported the regional hospital in Kandahar in performing almost 1,000 operations.

The ICRC says it has 1,500 national and 140 international staff in Afghanistan.

Α Νew phase of Homegrown Τerrorism...[ 1303 ]

Homegrown terrorist threat to be part of National Security Strategy

By Pam Benson, CNN

May 27, 2010 2:38 a.m. EDT

Washington (CNN) -- The Obama administration unveils its National Security Strategy on Thursday and it will be the first time a president explicitly recognizes the threat posed to the country by radicalized individuals at home, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser said.
The security strategy acts as a blueprint for how a White House administration intends to protect Americans. In the past, it has focused mostly on international threats.
But a spate of terror-related plots in the United States recently prompted the Obama administration to include homegrown terrorism in the document, National Security Adviser John Brennan said Wednesday.
Homegrown terrorism represents a new phase of the terrorist threat, he said.
Earlier this month, Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad was charged with trying to detonate a car bomb in New York's bustling district of Times Square.
U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood in November.
Colorado resident Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan national, pleaded guilty in February for conspiring to detonate explosives in the New York subway system.
And David Headley, an American citizen from Chicago, Illinois, is accused of providing surveillance in the Mumbai, India, terrorist attacks that killed 160 people.
"We've seen an increasing number of individuals here in the United States become captivated by extremist ideology or causes," Brennan said. "We have seen individuals, including U.S. citizens armed with their U.S. passports, travel easily to extremist safe havens, return to America, their deadly plans disrupted by coordinated intelligence and law enforcement."
Brennan, who made his comments at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that as the United States has strengthened its defenses against massive attacks like 9/11, al Qaeda has shown itself to be a "resilient, resourceful and determined enemy."
Brennan said al Qaeda is recruiting individuals with little training, attempting relatively unsophisticated attacks and seeking people living in the United States to launch such attacks.
"They are seeking foot soldiers who might slip through our defense," Brennan said. "As our enemy adapts and evolves their tactics, so must we constantly adapt and evolve ours."

Brennan did not provide any specific details about the president's strategy for combating al Qaeda and its affiliates, but said it "will require a broad, sustained and integrated campaign that harnesses every tool of American power, military and civilian, kinetic and diplomatic."

Colombian model wanted on drug trafficking [ 1302 ]

Former model arrested in Argentina on drug charges

By the CNN Wire Staff

May 26, 2010 6:29 p.m. EDT

Authorities suspect Angela Sanclemente of running an organization that uses models as drug mules.

(CNN) -- A former Colombian model wanted on drug trafficking charges was captured Wednesday in Argentina, a spokesman for the Argentina Airport Security Police said.
Angela Sanclemente, 30, was picked up the K-Lodges Hostel in Buenos Aires' Palermo neighborhood, police spokesman Maximiliano Lencina told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
Lencina said Sanclemente was registered at the hostel -- popular with foreign university students -- under the name "Annie" and had told people at the hostel she was from Mexico. She had dyed her brown hair to blonde and was alone in the hostel when detained.
Lencina said Sanclemente has been in touch with her lawyer and will be questioned on Thursday by an Argentine federal judge. She will be transported Wednesday afternoon from the hostel to Airport Security Police offices at the Ezeiza International Airport, he said.
Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Sanclemente in March. Investigators at the time said they believed she might be in Argentina, where authorities suspected she may be the "queen-pin" of an international operation that uses models as drug mules to move suitcases loaded with cocaine out of the Buenos Aires airport.
"We believe she played an important role in the drug trafficking organization," said Lencina.
Argentine authorities had already detained several alleged members of the trafficking gang, and sources told CNN that some of those arrested named Sanclemente and her Argentine male model boyfriend -- now in custody -- as ringleaders.
In Facebook messages posted earlier this year, Sanclemente maintained her innocence.

"I'm very sad and hurt by the bad information. I don't know how the press can destroy an innocent person," she wrote. "I don't want to go to jail. I don't deserve it. I am innocent."
Sanclemente's mother, Yaneth Valencia, arrived at the hostel, where she was denied permisssion to see her daughter. She told reporters outside the hostel that "there is a plot against her."
"They are using my daughter," she said, without specifiying who she meant. "My daughter is innocent."
She told the reporters that she would be "happy to give you an interview in a studio," but would charge them, "because I need the money to help my daughter."
Sanclemente first hit the headlines in 2000 when she was 20. She won Colombia's prestigious Queen of Coffee beauty pageant. Victory was short-lived. Judges dethroned her after two days when they found she had been married, contrary to competition rules.
That marriage -- to a Barranquilla, Colombia, businessman -- lasted three months in 1998. He paid for her to study journalism at Barranquilla's university.
A university friend, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, said Sanclemente dropped out of college after three semesters and spent tuition fees on silicone breast implants instead. That friend said Sanclemente idolized Colombia's then-top model Natalia Paris. She dyed her hair blond and imitated Paris' distinctive accent to appear more like her.
Paris married a drug trafficker turned DEA informant, known as Julio Correa. He was killed in 2001 by his former associates when he returned to Colombia from Miami, Florida. Drug underworld sources said he was cut up in a meat grinder.

Sanclemente left Colombia around 2005 and headed to Mexico, where she continued to pick up modeling assignments and bit-part roles as a TV actress, according to friends.

CNN's Brian Byrnes and Karl Penhaul contributed to this story.