CLG: Syria hands over evidence of mustard gas attack by 'rebels' on civilians to OPCW,

 News Updates from CLG
19 December 2016

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All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

Previous editions: Administration is now actively questioning the legitimacy of Trump's election victory

 

Donald Trump Is Poised to Win Electoral College | 18 Dec 2016 | Donald Trump appeared poised to sew up his victory Monday despite opposition groups' efforts to block his path by persuading members of the Electoral College to snub him. The presidency is awarded to the candidate who wins at least 270 votes in the Electoral College, with each state assigned a certain number of votes based on population. Mr. Trump won a majority of the popular vote in enough states to accumulate 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232.

 

Syria hands over evidence of mustard gas attack by 'rebels' on civilians to OPCW | 18 Dec 2016 |  Syrian authorities have handed over a batch of documents with the evidence of a [US-backed] 'rebel' use of banned chemical agent against civilians near Aleppo to the international chemical watchdog. Samples from the shell containing mustard gas are to be delivered to The Hague. The documents were handed over in Damascus to the mission of the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)..."We have provided all the documents to the mission, they were vetted and accepted. The mission will come to Syria one more time to collect samples, which will be subsequently analyzed," said Samer Abbas, spokesman for the Syrian National Authority monitoring the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

 

At least 30 soldiers dead in Yemen suicide blast | 18 Dec 2016 | A suicide bomber killed at least 30 Yemeni soldiers in Aden Sunday, the latest in a string of deadly bomb attacks against recruits in the war-torn country's second city. Military officials and medics said many others were wounded in the attack that targeted a crowd of soldiers gathered to collect their salaries near a base in northeastern Aden. The attacker immersed himself among the soldiers crowding outside the house of the head of special security forces in Aden, Colonel Nasser Sarea, in Al-Arish district, near Al-Sawlaban base.

 

France creates multi-agency committee to aid victims of terrorism | 18 Dec 2016 | A new French committee aimed at providing co-ordinated administrative support to victims of terrorist attacks and their families was inaugurated Friday in Paris by a broad group of government agencies. Juliette Meadel, state secretary for victims of terror attacks, announced the launch of Paris's Local Support Committee for Victims of Terrorist Acts (CLSV) at the Paris prefecture. She said the CLSV was "tailor-made" by various organisations including the City of Paris, the Paris prosecutor and the Paris police authorities as well as various social groups.

 

Canadian woman is among ten people shot dead as gunmen take tourists hostage at castle in Jordan in 'cowardly terrorist attack' --Attacks started in several different locations on Sunday before a group of gunmen fled to Karak city's medieval castle, a popular tourist attraction | 18 Dec 2016 | Ten people were killed after 'terrorists' in Jordan opened fire in what appear to be targeted attacks against tourists and police in Karak on Sunday. A Canadian woman, seven police officers and two Jordanian civilians were killed in Karak, a tourist destination famous for its medieval castle about 70 miles south of the capital of Amman, according to Jordan's general security department. More than two dozen people were taken to the hospital, it has been reported.

 

Traces of explosives are found on victims of EgyptAir crash that killed 66 --EgyptAir flight MS804 crashed down into the eastern Mediterranean on May 19 | 15 Dec 2016 | Traces of explosives have been found on the remains of an EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last year killing all 66 on board, it has emerged. The Airbus A320 plunged into the eastern Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo on May 19...French investigators have said that they had found trace levels of the explosive material TNT on the plane's debris but were prevented from further examining it.

 

Bomb threat forces jet to land at JFK Airport | 12 Dec 2016 | An airliner heading from Houston to Frankfurt, Germany, diverted to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York because of a threat, according to the Port Authority. Someone called in a bomb threat to Lufthansa headquarters. The pilot of the flight made a decision to land at JFK after 8 p.m., the Port Authority said.

 

Khalid Ahmed Ibrahim Arrested Over Fears He Might Commit Act of Terrorism | 15 Dec 2016 | A B.C. man has been arrested on a peace bond under the suspicion that he might commit an act of terrorism. Khalid Ahmed Ibrahim, 39, caused a "fear of terrorism" on December 8, according to documents obtained by Vice News. A peace bond...can impose conditions on a person such as prohibiting them from leaving the country, forcing them to surrender any weapons they own and not allowing them to access the internet. Ibrahim's bail conditions include that he must live with his mother, not leave B.C., not possess knives or alcohol, maintain a 6 p.m. curfew, not access the internet and attend counselling, Vice reported.

 

Berlin whistleblower behind German-NSA secret data leak, not Russian hackers - sources | 17 Dec 2016 | Russian hackers are not the source behind the recent WikiLeaks release of leaked secret data on German-US intelligence cooperation and a parliamentary inquiry into it, Der Spiegel reports, citing unnamed security officials who have indicated it's an inside job. The respective German officials are "confident" that the documents published by WikiLeaks were not obtained through a cyberattack last year on the Parliament (Bundestag), allegedly committed by Russian hackers. "Contrary to various media reports, there is absolutely no indication that the documents were stolen during a cyberattack on the Bundestag in the year 2015," Der Spiegel writes, citing its own source.

 

China urges US to stop military reconnaissance in Chinese waters | 18 Dec 2016 | The Chinese Defense Ministry says it has been in touch with Washington and will return a US drone seized in the South China Sea. The ministry's response comes after the US had said one of its underwater devices had been captured by a Chinese naval vessel. The ministry said it was regrettable that the US spoke publicly about the seizure and voiced a protest against frequent reconnaissance by the US military in Chinese waters.

 

China seized US underwater drone 'to prevent danger to navigation' - Chinese military | 17 Dec 2017 | An American unmanned underwater device seized by Chinese military in the waters of the South China Sea earlier this week was potentially "dangerous" to safe navigation in the area, China claimed, adding that the drone would be returned to the US after its investigation. The Chinese Defense Ministry praised its navy's efforts in handling the incident "professionally," in what has been dubbed as one of the most serious episodes between the two nations' military in years.

 

Chinese warship seizes US underwater drone in international waters | 16 Dec 2016 | The Chinese navy has seized an underwater drone in plain sight of the American sailors who had deployed it in international waters, in a seemingly brazen message to the incoming Trump administration. According to a US defence official, the unmanned glider had come to the surface of the water in the South China Sea and was about to be retrieved by the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic and surveillance ship, when a Chinese naval vessel that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat in the water...The incident happened about 100 miles northwest of the Philippines' port of Subic Bay.

 

Facebook unveils effort to wipe out fake news [CNN, etc.?] following election | 15 Dec 2016 | Facebook is taking steps to weed out fake news and hoaxes, addressing the growing controversy over its role in the spread of misinformation on the Internet that sharpened political divisions and inflamed discourse during the presidential election. The giant social network said Thursday it plans to make it easier to report a hoax and for fact-checking organizations globalist trolls to flag fake actual articles.

 

British man gets one year over attempt to kill Trump | 13 Dec 2016 | A British man was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday for grabbing a police officer’s gun in an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, according to Wednesday reports. Michael Sandford, now 20, reached for the firearm during a rally in Las Vegas in June when Trump was not yet president-elect, The Telegraph said. Sandford, who has autism, was sentenced at a federal court in Las Vegas and had been facing up to 20 years in prison prior to his guilty plea. His lawyers have said he suffers from mental illness and was experiencing a psychotic episode during the incident.

 

Judge rejects injunction request in Colorado elector suit seeking to block Donald Trump | 12 Dec 2016 | A federal judge on Monday rejected an attempt by two Colorado electors to unbind their votes in the Electoral College, saying the effort designed to impede Donald Trump's path to the White House is "a political stunt." U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel denied a request for a preliminary injunction to nullify a state law that requires presidential electors to vote for the winner of the state's popular vote. To do otherwise, Daniel said in his ruling from the bench, "would undermine the electoral process."

 

Completed Wisconsin recount widens Donald Trump's lead by 131 votes | 12 Dec 2106 | Wisconsin's historic presidential recount ended Monday resulting in a net gain of 131 votes for President-elect Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said. Clinton and Trump added 1,557 votes to their totals as a result of the recount, 844 for Trump and 713 for Clinton. Over all, the commission said voters cast 2.976 million ballots. The recount resulted in a net increase of 837 ballots.

WikiLeaks figure says 'disgusted' Democrat leaked Clinton campaign emails | 14 Dec 2016 |A WikiLeaks figure is claiming that he received leaked Clinton campaign emails from a "disgusted" Democratic whistleblower, while the White House continued to blame Russian hackers Wednesday for meddling in the presidential election and asserted that Donald Trump was "obviously aware" of Moscow's efforts on his behalf. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said in the report by the Daily Mail that he flew to Washington for a clandestine handoff with one of the email sources in September. He said he received a package in a wooded area near American University. "Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians," Mr. Murray told the British newspaper. "The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks."

'Breaking' news: White House did nothing about alleged hacking because Hillary was going to win anyway | 15 Dec 2016 | While plenty of sources have insisted that Vladimir Putin himself was personally directing a hacking campaign against the Hillary Clinton campaign, others have asked repeatedly: if the Russians were known to be trying to influence the election through hacking, why didn't the Obama administration do anything about it? Instead, the president went out on the road with Hillary Clinton to join her on the campaign trail.

Intel analysis shows Putin approved election hacking, claims White House | 15 Dec 2016 | A US official familiar with the US intelligence assessment of the [alleged] Russia election-related hacking said the understanding is that the operation was carried out with sophisticated hacking tools, the equivalent of those used by the US National Security Agency. The use of the advanced tools suggests Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the hacks, a person familiar with the matter said, adding that it was more than a US intelligence assumption at this point.

Ray McGovern: Russia Election Interference Allegations Don't Add Up | 13 Dec 2016 | The CIA alleged that Russia engaged in hacking in order to help Donald Trump become the next president, but does the evidence back up the accusations? ...Were these hacks - a malicious remote attack - or were they really leaks - when information is physically removed and released by an insider?

How Clinton lost Michigan -- and blew the election | 14 Dec 2016 | Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope...SEIU -- which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to -- dialed Clinton's top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious. Turn that bus around, the Clinton team ordered SEIU...

President-Elect Trump Appoints Stephen Miller Senior Advisor to the President for Policy | 13 Dec 2016 | President-Elect Donald J. Trump has announced his selection of Stephen Miller, a top aide to his campaign, as the new senior White House adviser for policy. Miller has served as the top adviser on policy for the Trump campaign since January of 2016 and directed the campaign's entire policy operation since then. Miller also served as the chief speechwriter and heads policy for Trump's transition team.

Trump Names Rick Perry as Pick for Energy Secretary | 14 Dec 2016 | President-elect Donald Trump named former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as his choice for secretary of energy in a statement this morning. Praising Perry's gubernatorial experience, Trump said Perry would "do an amazing job" in his new role.

 

Trump taps ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state | 13 Dec 2016 | President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Rex Tillerson to be the 69th secretary of state. The ExxonMobil CEO will also serve as a member of the National Security Council. A statement from Trump's transition team on Tuesday says Tillerson, 64, is "a forceful and clear-eyed advocate for America's vital national interests" and will "help reverse years of misguided foreign policies and actions that have weakened America's security and standing in the world." ...In 2013, Vladimir Putin presented the Texan with the Order of Friendship, one of the highest honors a foreigner may be awarded from Russia.

 

IBM boss promises 25,000 new American workers during Trump's first term on eve of summit with tech bosses at Tower | 14 Dec 2016 | The head of IBM is getting in good with President-elect Donald Trump with a pledge to hire 25,000 Americans during his administration in advance of a tech summit at Trump Tower on Wednesday. 'At IBM alone, we have thousands of open positions at any given moment, and we intend to hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States, 6,000 of those in 2017,' writes CEO Ginni Rometty in USA Today.

 

Trump Meets With Black Celebrities Including Kanye West, Ray Lewis | 13 Dec 2016 | Retired Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis is meeting with President-elect Donald Trump along with Hall of Fame former Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown. Trump recently offered up some "controversial rhetoric" about African-American voters and has since scheduled a meeting with members of the black community to address issues having to do with black people, according to a new report.

 

Propane Dealer to Trump Supporters: No Gas For You | 17 Dec 2016 | The heat of the presidential election might leave some people out in the cold up in Skowhegan, Maine. As Maine's temperatures began their annual descent below freezing, the phones at Turner LP Gas Service in Skowhegan are ringing more frequently as customers look to refill their propane tanks to keep their homes warm.According to the Portland Press-Herald, customers heard a unique greeting on Turner LP's answering machine.

 

Politico 'Reporter' Fired Over Obscene Ivanka Trump Tweet | 14 Dec 2016 | 'Reporter' Julia Ioffe has been fired by Politico after she suggested on Twitter that President-elect Donald Trump is having sex with his daughter Ivanka. Her tweet followed a report in The Hill that Ivanka will get an office in the White House in the space traditionally reserved for the First Lady. Trump's team denied the report. Politico announced her firing, saying "incidents like this tarnish POLITICO and the great work being done across the company."

 

Muslim college student who claimed Trump supporters attacked her on the subway under arrest for fabricating story | 14 Dec 2016 | She made it all up -- and now she's under arrest. The Muslim college student who claimed she was harassed on the subway by three men who shouted "Donald Trump," called her a terrorist and tried to rip her hijab off her head has admitted to detectives that she concocted the entire story, the Daily News has learned. Yasmin Seweid, 18, has been charged with filing a false report, a police source said.

 

Students petition to fire prof for shaming Trump supporters | 15 Dec 2016 | Students at Orange Coast College have started a petition to fire Olga Perez Stable-Cox, the professor who called the election of Donald Trump "an act of terrorism" during an in-class tirade. Cox, who teaches Human Sexuality, has made national headlines for claiming that Trump is a "white supremacist," and stating that Vice-President-elect Pence is "one of the most anti-gay humans in this country." The petition denounces Cox not merely for her comments about Trump and Pence, but also for asking all Trump supporters to stand up in front of the entire class, which the anonymous student who submitted the video asserts was an attempt to isolate and publicly shame those who voted for Trump.

 

Student Claims to Discover 'Fake Book' With Alt-Right Materials in Columbia University Library | 14 Dec 2016 | A student worker at the university's Butler Library claimed to find the fake book in one of the shelves that appeared to contain symbols and forms associated with the Dark Enlightenment movement, which rejects democracy and egalitarianism and "focuses on the fundamentally flawed tenets of modern western culture," according to a subreddit dedicated to the movement. The discovery of the book was first published on Monday night by BWOG, Columbia's student-run campus news site.

 

Students remove Shakespeare portrait at UPenn and replace it with photo of black lesbian writer amid push for diversity at English department | 12 Dec 2016 | Students advocating for diversity at the University of Pennsylvania have taken down a portrait of William Shakespeare from a prominent location on campus and replaced it with a photograph of a black American writer. The wall-sized black-and-white image of the Bard was removed on Thursday from the Hayer Staircase at Fisher-Bennett Hall, which houses UPenn's English department, and delivered it to the office of an unsuspecting English professor and department chair Jed Esty. The students responsible for the stunt then replaced the portrait with a printout of a photograph depicting poet and novelist Audre Lorde, who died of breast cancer in 1992.

 

Corpus Christi: 4 cases of illness consistent with tainted water | 17 Dec 2016 | City officials confirmed Saturday that there are four cases of people who have skin and intestinal issues consistent with exposure to contaminated water. The Caller-Times also has confirmed that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's initial report shows a backflow issue at a mixing tank Dec. 7. However, it's not clear whether that was the first potential contamination or if there were even earlier backflows. Corpus Christi is in the third day of the chemical contamination scare afflicting the city's water system.

 

Official: Texas city had 3 reports of dirty water before ban | 17 Dec 2016 | There were three reports of dirty water before the 300,000 residents of Corpus Christi were told not to drink the city's water due to a chemical leak at an asphalt plant, city officials said Saturday, adding that the city has not found evidence of water contamination...Assistant City Manager Mark Van Vleck said earlier that the first "dirty-water report" came Dec. 1 from the administration building at the asphalt plant that oil refiner Valero leased to Ergon Asphalt and Emulsions. City workers flushed the pipe. A second report came from the same building Dec. 7, he said, and the main was flushed again.

 

Flint Bottled Water Deliveries Must Start, 6th Circuit Rules | 16 Dec 2016 | A mostly unsympathetic three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that bottled water deliveries must begin immediately to Flint residents whose homes don't have filter systems on their kitchen taps, upholding a lower court judge's decision ordering the door-to-door deliveries in response to the city's long-running lead water crisis. The panel's 2-1 decision marks the third time a federal court has ordered the water deliveries, which the state argued were unnecessary and c-stly. In two previous rulings ordering the door-to-door water deliveries, U.S. District Judge David Lawson said the state was unable to show that filtering systems to remove the lead from the water had been properly installed.

 

Ohio governor vetoes 'heartbeat' abortion bill, but passes 20-week ban | 14 Dec 2016 | Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday rejected the so-called "heartbeat bill," breaking with his party to veto legislation that would have given Ohio the strictest abortion ban in the nation. Kasich did tighten Ohio's abortion laws by signing a bill that would prevent abortions after 20 weeks' gestation, when opponents of the procedure say fetuses can feel pain. Still, the governor will face backlash from conservative Republicans for killing the bill they say would have prevented thousands of abortions.

 

Fire at NYU Medical Center Sends Smoke Across Manhattan, Injures 1 | 14 Dec 2016 | A two-alarm fire erupted from the fifth-floor roof of an NYU Medical Center building on the east side of Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon, sending thick, black smoke pouring into the sky over New York City. Firefighters rushed to 560 1st Ave., between 31st and 32nd streets in the Murray Hill neighborhood, just after 12 p.m., an FDNY spokesman told Patch. It burned out of control for about an hour Wednesday afternoon before the FDNY declared it under control around 1 p.m.

 

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