Russia's Test-Firing of ICBM Planned, But 'Suspicious'By
Robert Windrem and Jim Miklaszewski
Russia said it test-fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile on Tuesday, a planned event that timing of which was still called into question by United States officials because of the ongoing Ukraine crisis.Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region with a dummy warhead, that hit a target at a test site in Kazakhstan, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov told state-run news agency RIA.
The launch site, Kapustin Yar, is near the Volga River about 280 miles east of the Ukrainian border. Kazakhstan, a Russian ally, is further to the east.
A senior U.S. official told NBC News that the test launch had been "on the books for some time prior to the current crisis in Ukraine."
Defense and military officials told NBC News that the United States has adequate surveillance and tracking satellites to detect the launch and are waiting for confirmation.
The timing, the military officials agreed, appeared “suspicious but not threatening.”
"This was a previously notified and routine test launch of an ICBM," National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.
"As required under the New START Treaty, Russia provided advance notification of this launch to the United States," she said. "Such advance notifications are intended to provide transparency, confidence, and predictability and to help both sides avoid misunderstandings. Russia and the United States routinely flight test their ICBMs and SLBMs."
Jeff Black of NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.
Never in my life heard of serving food AT a funeral sevice
Food will no longer be served at central Pennsylvania funeral homes due to a federal appeals court ruling.Lancaster Newspapers reports that the ban is included in a list of operating laws for funeral directors reinstated recently by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A federal judge in 2012 threw out the decades-old operating laws, deeming them unconstitutional.
Director Chad Snyder of The Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home in Lancaster County said Monday that he was disappointed by the ruling.
He said food was requested and provided at 40 to 50 services since the 2012 ruling, and he believes it provides some comfort to bereaved families.
“I personally think food and funerals go hand-in-hand,” Snyder told the paper. “Just like weddings and food go hand-in-hand.”
The food ban was instituted in 1952 out of safety concerns, but Snyder said there's no risk if proper precautions are taken.
Mountain Lion Family Feast Caught on Camera
National Park Service
The male kitten, dubbed P-30, checks out the camera.
With an adorably wrinkled nose, a mountain lion cub honed her hunting skills earlier this month on a dead mule deer caught by mom in California's Malibu Creek State Park.
The female mountain lioncub, called P-28 by wildlife biologists, tested her "kill bite" on the deer's neck, while her brother, dubbed P-30, attacked the rest of the carcass. A remotely activated camera captured the nighttime feast for researchers who are tracking the cougar family at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. (Mountain lion and cougar are two names for the same animal.) STORY AND PHOTOS
As Obama moves from one disaster to the next disaster, it’s clear that he’s lacking the support from citizens here at home, is viewed skeptically by people abroad, and lacks the respect from foreign leaders that the Great Seal of the United States should confer on any president. “A CBS News/ New York Times poll out tonight find only 40% of Americans are satisfied with the presidency of Barack Obama,” reported CBS News last week. “59% say they're disappointed.” Only 59 percent? What’s wrong with these people? Obama’s been beaten on Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now in Ukraine.
In a week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused cancer patients and millions of upset and frightened Americans who’ve lost their health insurance of lying about their Obamacare horror stories, you’d think his hubris couldn’t be topped. But as disgusting and corrupt as the man the Democratic Party picked to lead them in the Senate is (and he is), the man that same party picked to lead the country takes the crown.
President Obama’s week should have ended with him being presidential. Russia had just sent forces into Ukraine, our allies in Europe were caught off-guard and the world looked to the United States for reassurance and leadership. Rather than offer it and stay on top of the situation, Barack Obama marched into the White House pressroom, read a statement that had been written for him and left the room. Running away from questions like a 5-year-old boy running from the “cooties” might have been understandable had the president run into the Situation Room or to a waiting phone call from world leader. But rather than stay directly involved in a developing situation with major potential geopolitical implications and actually do the job of a president,Barack Obama…went to a party. View Full Article
Frozen Wonderland: Lake Superior's Ice Cover Nears Record 95 percent
By
Nadia Sikander
Lake Superior is now 91 percent covered by ice — the most since 1994 — and the great lake may even surpass a record dating back more than 30 years in coming days, experts say.
And that massive chunk of ice, it turns out, has not only become a maze-line jungle gym of ice structures for visitors to marvel at, it's helping the environment.
The ice cover may even eclipse the 1979 record of 95 percent with temperatures expected to dip in the coming days after “one polar vortex after another,” Jia Wang, a research ice climatologist for the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, told NBC News.
“In the next week or two, the forecast is that the temperatures will be under freezing.The lake still has about 10 days to grow in ice cover — 5 percent is no problem,” he said.
Indeed the long duration of lower temperatures this winter has allowed a lot more ice to form.
The frigid stretch has even allowed visitors to Lake Superior to hike to fairy-tale like ice caves that have formed around the great lake in Michigan — a phenomenon that hasn’t occurred in 20 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also cites the increased ice cover as having environmental benefits. Ice cover with little snow cover lets light shine through — stimulating the growth of algae that feeds other living organisms, NOAA said. And in the shallow waters where whitefish spawn, ice cover shields eggs from harsh winds.
Maybe the cold isn’t so bad after all.
ERIC MILLER / Reuters file
Sightseers look at a frozen rock face along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore of Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake, near Cornucopia, Wis. on Feb. 14.
Police say they are investigating the death of a 13-year-old boy whose body was found after he and another child were attacked by a large dog in Paterson, New Jersey.Paterson police say they received a report that two boys had been attacked by a dog Friday and that the children, both 13, ran in different directions.
One of the boys, who authorities identified as Kenneth Santilla, was found dead near Rossiter Avenue and Hill Street. Police are waiting on the Medical Examiner's Office to confirm the cause of death.
The other boy, whose name has not been released, and the dog's owner, 50-year-old Paterson resident Paul Clarke, both suffered bite wounds. Authorities said Clarke stabbed the animal during the attack. The dog was euthanized, and its remains will be tested for rabies.
According to Animal Care and Control, the dog that attacked the boys was a bull mastiff that weighed around 115 pounds.
“I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and I’ve never seen nothing like this," said Chief Animal Control Officer John DeCando. "Nothing to this extreme.”
A python snake strangles and ultimately eats a crocodile in an epic duel that shocked onlookers at Lake Moondarra, near Mount Isa, northwestern Queensland, Australia, on March 2, 2014.
TIFFANY CORLIS via ABC Northwest / EPA
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Suspected Islamist Militants Kill 85 in Blasts, Raid on Nigerian Village
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Suspected Islamist militants have killed at least 85 people in northeastern Nigeria, witnesses and officials said on Sunday, in a further setback to President Goodluck Jonathan's military campaign.
Twin bomb blasts in the city of Maiduguri killed at least 46 people on Saturday evening while, around 30 miles away, dozens of gunmen were razing a farming village, shooting dead another 39.
The attacks will heap pressure on Jonathan, whose intensified military push to end the Islamist sect Boko Haram's four-and-a-half-year-old insurgency has been running for almost a year.
While the bloodshed has not diminished, the army had at least had some success in confining it to remote rural areas in recent months, so that the attack on a densely populated market area in Maiduguri will be seen as a setback.
Russia's Medvedev Predicts 'New Revolution, New Bloodshed'
MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that Ukraine's leaders had seized power illegally, and predicted their rule would end with "a new revolution [and] new bloodshed." Medvedev said that, while Viktor Yanukovych had practically no authority, he remained the legitimate head of state according the constitution, adding: "If he is guilty before Ukraine - hold an impeachment procedure ... and try him." "Everything else is lawlessness. The seizure of power," Medvedev said on his Facebook page. "And that means such order will be extremely unstable. It will end in a new revolution. New bloodshed."
The day after the terrorist attack on our mission in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, Barack Obama appeared before the country promising that he would get to the bottom of this, that accountability would be held, and that justice would be served.However, almost a year and a half later, absolutely none of that has happened — and it seems the Obama Administration itself is making sure that it doesn’t. According to an 88-page report from the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee,
Read More[Not just Benghazi, but "fast and furious", obamacare, voter fraud, etc. etc. ... When there is wrongdoing, SOMEONE is supposed to investigate and stop it and/or punish those responsible !! ]
UNREAL: Obama Skips National Security Meeting on Russia Situation
As the situation between Russia and Ukraine develops, you’d expect our president to be keeping up-to-date on every single detail coming out. But remember, this is Obama. He didn’t attend national security briefings while our ambassador was in danger in Benghazi. According to tweets from White House press correspondents, Obama skipped a key national security meeting on the Ukraine situation earlier today. Absolutely unreal. Where was he? Golfing?
A White House official emailed some reporters to say that President Obama’s team met today to discuss the ongoing situation on Ukraine. It appears President Obama did not attend. “The President’s national security team met today to receive an update on the situation in Ukraine and discuss potential policy options. We will provide further updates later this afternoon,” reads the full statement. According to Time magazine’s Zeke Miller, Obama skipped the meeting. “Obama did not attend the meeting, but WH official says he has been briefed by Susan Rice and his national security team,” says Miller.
Instead of attending a meeting with his national security team, Susan Rice, the Obama advisor who repeatedly said that Benghazi had everything to do with a YouTube video, is briefing the president on crucial national security matters. What could possibly go wrong? Did JFK skip national security meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis? No. Even Jimmy Carter was intimately involved in every aspect of the negotiations and operations during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Barack Obama is a new low for the office of the president. Unbelievable. 2014 Capitalism Institute
Crimea Standoff: Russian Gunmen Surround Ukraine Military Base
By
Bill Neely
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine - Russian troops surrounded a military base in Ukraine's Crimea region Sunday in a tense standoff as the security crisis in the region deepened.
Armed men arrived at the base in Perevalne and demanded the Ukrainian soldiers inside lay down their weapons.
The Ukrainian forces remained defiant, but were heavily outnumbered.
No shots were fired in what appeared to be the first direct confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian military forces.
Russian troops haven't fired a shot. They don't need to. With rocket-propelled grenades at the ready, they have taken over Crimea without resistance and with the backing of most of this region's people.
In the regional capital, Simferopol, a pro-Russian self-defense force protected a statue of Lenin.
The base standoff was another sign that Russia was tightening its grip on Crimea – and its influence in other parts of pro-Russian eastern Ukraine.
In Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, there were running battles after local militias thwarted pro-Western demonstrators who tried to attack another Lenin statue.
The scenes underscored the problem facing Ukraine's interim leaders, who are powerless to stop the loss of Crimea.
Earlier Sunday, they called up military reservists, put their army on combat alert and appealed to the West for help - but the East of their country is now mutinous.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far shown no sign of heeding international demands that he withdraw from Ukraine.
President Barack Obama spoke with Putin by telephone for 90 minutes on Saturday and expressed his "deep concern" about "Russia's clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity," the White House said.
NATO's secretary general said Russia had violated the U.N. charter with its military action in Ukraine, and he urged Moscow to "'de-escalate the tensions."
NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report from London.
Consulate in China Warns Americans Following Mass Stabbing
SUI SHUI / EPA
By Ed Flanagan
Police investigate the scene outside the train station after a deadly attack by a group of knife-wielding men in Kunming, in southwest China's Yunnan province, on March 2, 2014.
A United States Consulate in China called Sunday for Americans in the area to be cautious after a group of ten knife-wielding assailants killed 29 victims and left 130 wounded on Saturday.
"The Consulate General recommends that U.S. citizens pay attention to their surroundings when traveling in China and report any concerns to the local police," said a statement from the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu.
A total of 33 people were killed, including four of the attackers, at the main train station in Kunming, the capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The group of ten attackers "indiscriminately" stabbed their victims, the consulate said.
Police shot and killed four of the culprits and captured one more, but five were still on the loose, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
China's top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, called the incident a terrorist attack and Xinhua reported that the attack was carried out by "Xinjiang separatist forces."
The far western region of Xinjiang is boiling with a rebellion of Chinese rule, led by members of the Muslim Uighur population.
National Park Service
ERIC MILLER / Reuters file
