Hundreds of civilians killed in US-led air strikes on Isis targets – report. The air campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed more than 450 civilians, according to a new report, even though the US-led coalition has so far acknowledged just two non-combatant deaths. More than 5,700 air strikes have been launched in the campaign, which nears its first anniversary this Saturday, with its impact on civilians largely unknown. Now Airwars, a project by a team of independent journalists, is publishing details of 52 strikes with what it believes are credible reports of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including those of more than 100 children.
It says there is a “worrying gulf between public and coalition positions” on the campaign’s toll on civilians. To date the US Central Command (Centcom), the lead force in the campaign, has published one official investigation – a report in May that found two children were killed in a November 2014 strike in Syria. One of the attacks investigated was on Fadhiliya, Iraq, on 4 April.
Is War Becoming More Humane? Torture etc. Man Fleeing Bad Date Jumps Fence At Newark Airport, Breaching $300 Million Security System. You can't get a 4 ounce bottle of face wash on a plane in this country, but it seems like it's really not that hard to run out onto the freaking tarmac. Or so discovered one man, who hopped a fence at Newark Airport yesterday and meandered across a couple runways, according to officials.
The NY Post reported that 24-year-old Jersey City resident Siyah Brown was able to bypass a security fence at about 4:20 a.m. yesterday; Brown was apparently fleeing a date with a man nearby after their car ran out of gas and a third man arrived to help them refuel. The big story, judging by the Post's headline, is that Brown—who was reportedly wearing a women's red pants and a sweater—was "dressed like a woman" during this incident, but what's far more newsworthy is that he was able to scale a security fence equipped with cameras, sensors and barbed wire, making his way across two runways in the airport before an airline worker found him and called the cops.
Obama can’t point to a single time the NSA call records program prevented a terrorist attack. President Obama speaks during an end-of-the year news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Dec. 20, 2013. (Susan Walsh/AP) National Security Agency defenders, including President Obama, continue to cite the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 when defending the program that scoops up domestic call records in bulk. But asked specifically, on Friday, if he could identify a time when that program stopped a similar attack, President Obama couldn't.
That's because the program hasn't prevented a second 9/11. At the end of the year news conference, Reuters's Mark Felsenthal asked: As you review how to rein in the National Security Agency, a federal judge says that, for example, the government has failed to cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata actually stopped an imminent attack. But President Obama never answered the question about a specific examples. The president's reliance on a 9/11 narrative is expected. George Clooney's satellite spies reveal secrets of Sudan's bloody army | World news | The Observer.
Nathaniel Raymond is the first to admit that he has an unusual job description. "I count tanks from space for George Clooney," said the tall, easygoing Massachusetts native as he sat in a conference room in front of a map of the Sudanese region of South Kordofan. Close by, pins and ink scrawlings on the map detail the positions of Sudanese army forces and refugee populations in the troubled oil-producing province, where the Sudanese army is carrying out a brutal crackdown. The wall next to Raymond has a series of satellite images projected on it. At the flick of a mouse, tiny images of tanks and military vehicles hove into view, caught by a satellite hundreds of miles above. Raymond is director of the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), which aims to use advanced satellite imagery to monitor potential human rights abuses in Sudan.
Images of Clooney being taken away in handcuffs appeared in newspapers and on blogs around the world. The situation in Sudan is complex and violent. Dubai police will use facial recognition and Google Glass to look for wanted criminals. Photo by KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images The FBI is ramping up its facial recognition database and doctors are trying out Google Glass in emergency rooms. Now the Dubai police want to take it all to the streets. Reuters reports that the city is going to start equipping officers with Glass so they can use facial recognition to look for wanted criminals.
A Dubai police spokesperson told the 7 Days newspaper that custom-made software will allow the officers’ Glass to sync with a database of faces. That way if police officers encounter wanted crooks, their eyewear can alert them. The Dubai police department will do a pilot phase where officers wear Glass to track traffic violations and look for offending vehicles. Each Glass costs $1,500, a price point that Reuters points out is in line with Dubai police’s $400,000 Lamborghinis. SAS quad bike squads kill up to 8 jihadis each day... as allies prepare to wipe IS off the map: Daring raids by UK Special Forces leave 200 enemy dead in just four weeks
Targets are identified by drones operated by SAS soldiersWho are then dropped into IS territory by helicopter to stage attacksThe surprise ambushes are said to be 'putting the fear of God into IS'The raids are attacking IS's main supply routes across western Iraq By Mark Nicol for The Mail on Sunday Published: 22:01 GMT, 22 November 2014 | Updated: 00:56 GMT, 23 November 2014 SAS troops with sniper rifles and heavy machine guns have killed hundreds of Islamic State extremists in a series of deadly quad-bike ambushes inside Iraq, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Defence sources indicated last night that soldiers from the elite fighting unit have eliminated ‘up to eight terrorists per day’ in the daring raids, carried out during the past four weeks. Until now, it had been acknowledged only that the SAS was operating in a reconnaissance role in Iraq and was not involved in combat. Scroll down for video ‘We’re degrading their morale. Our tactics are putting the fear of God into IS.