19 May 13

Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper
More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.  

Father of Assad spokesman Mekdad kidnapped in Syria
Gunmen in Syria have abducted the elderly father of Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, one of the most powerful voices in the government. The man was seized in the southern province of Daraa, government and opposition sources said.  

Italy coalition: Thousands rally in Rome against cuts
About 100,000 protesters, led by trade unionists, have rallied in the Italian capital Rome against the policies of the new coalition government. Wielding red flags and placards, they urged the centre-left Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, to scrap austerity measures and focus on job creation. Public trust in his fragile coalition with the centre-right is dropping, opinion polls suggest.  

More South Koreans support developing nuclear weapons
Perhaps it is merely basic human desire to keep up with the neighbors, but an increasing number of South Koreans are saying that they want nuclear weapons too. Even in Japan, a country still traumatized by the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is a debate about the once-taboo topic of nuclear weapons.  

Alaska volcano shoots lava up hundreds of feet
Alaska's remote Pavlof Volcano was shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air, but its ash plume was thinning Saturday and no longer making it dangerous for airplanes to fly nearby. A narrow ash plume extends a couple hundred miles southeast from the volcano, which is 625 miles southwest of Anchorage, said Geologist Chris Waythomas of the Alaska Volcano Observatory.  

Armed groups bomb Libyan military posts in Benghazi
Armed groups attacked military posts in Libya's second city Benghazi with bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade, an army commander said on Saturday. Nearly two years after the uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule, the government still exerts little control over the armed brigades that helped overthrow him.  

It’s Official: Gold Is Now The Most Hated Asset Class
Not a day passes without the financial media denouncing gold as an investment option and hailing the bureaucrats heading the world's monopolist monetary central planning agencies as superheroes. It began prior to gold's recent breakdown, with widely cited bearish reports on gold published by Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, among others.  

Chinese premier heads to India to boost ties
Just weeks after a tense border standoff, China's new premier is heading to India on his first foreign trip as the neighboring giants look to expedite efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute and boost economic ties. China says Li Keqiang's choice of India for his first trip abroad since taking office in March shows the importance Beijing attaches to improving relations with New Delhi.  

18 May 13

Colorado sheriffs sue over new state gun restrictions
The sheriffs say the new state laws violate Second Amendment protections that guarantee the right to keep and bear arms.  

Dozens injured in head-on train crash in Connecticut
More than 60 people were injured, at least two critically, after a head-on, rush-hour collision between two commuter trains near New York City. Hundreds of people were on the trains involved in Friday evening's crash just outside Bridgeport, Connecticut. Officials said a train that left New York City's Grand Central en route to New Haven, Connecticut, derailed then was hit by another train.  

Enraged by kidnapping, Egypt police keep Gaza border closed
Egyptian police angered by the kidnapping of seven colleagues by Islamist gunmen kept a crossing into the Gaza Strip closed again on Saturday, stranding hundreds of Palestinian travellers, witnesses said. The protest began on Friday when police strung barbed wire across the Rafah border post and chained up the gates, local residents said, a day after the abductions.  

Increased Solar Flares Disrupt Communications
Sunspot AR649, July 15-17, 2004, unleashed five X[-strength] flares," he said. "So what we are witnessing with sunspot AR1748 is pretty rare." Solar flares are measured on a scale of intensity ranging from A, B, M, C to X. The X-strength flares, the level the recent solar activity has been categorized as, are the highest strength.  

Egyptians targeted with blasphemy charges
The pale, young Christian woman sat handcuffed in the courtroom, accused of insulting Islam while teaching history of religions to fourth-graders. A team of Islamist lawyers with long beards sang in unison, "All except the Prophet Muhammad."  

NASA Announces Brightest Lunar Explosion Ever Recorded
A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at the right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program.  

'Church of Scotland amends disputed Israel paper'
The Church of Scotland revised a paper it had published rejecting Jewish scriptural-based rights to the land of Israel after it caused waves of controversy among the Jewish community in the UK, BBC reported Friday. The report entitled "The Inheritance of Abraham" was changed after a meeting with representative of the British Jewish community and was set to be discussed and voted on next week at the convening of the church's general assembly, it was reported.  

N Korea 'fires three short-range missiles'
North Korea has fired three short-range missiles from its east coast, South Korea's defence ministry said. Two missiles were fired on Saturday morning and one in the afternoon, the ministry said in a statement. Officials at the ministry said they were "monitoring the situation and remain on alert".  

Northeast Japan jolted by magnitude 5.9 quake, no tsunami warning
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 jolted northeastern Japan on Saturday, but no tsunami warning was issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.  

US criticises Russia over missiles to Damascus
The US has criticised Russia’s recent delivery of anti-ship missiles to President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. With a range of 300 km, the Yakhont missiles could threaten warships in the Mediterranean reducing the capacity of a possible Western intervention.  

Nigeria bombs Islamists, U.S. sounds alarm
Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm civilians.  

Head of Pro-Israel Organization Targeted By IRS Speaks Out
Details are unfolding about the Internal Revenue Source's targeting of conservative and pro-Israel organizations. Earlier this week, TheBlaze reported that the pro-Israel educational group Z STREET was among those targeted. Z STREET filed a lawsuit in 2010, claiming the organization's attorney was told by an IRS agent that their tax exempt status application had to undergo additional scrutiny since their organization was "connected to Israel."  

France's Hollande signs gay marriage law
French President Francois Hollande has signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage, making France the 14th country to legalize gay weddings.  

17 May 13

Two 'known or suspected' terrorists vanished from witness program
Two "known or suspected" terrorists who cooperated with the government and were placed in the Witness Security Program later were able to board airplanes and quietly vanish, the Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a report that was highly critical of how the government handles some of its most dangerous witnesses.  

Syrian rebels launch offensive in south to reverse losses
Syrian rebels said they attacked an important military base in the south and checkpoints in the city of Deraa on Thursday, trying to regain ground lost to President Bashar al-Assad's forces near the Jordanian border. The rebels were thrown onto the defensive last week when Assad's troops retook the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh on the main north-south highway between Damascus and Jordan.  

"Big Brother" is big business?
The odds are you are not just a face in the crowd any longer. Even if your picture isn't plastered all over social networking and photo-sharing sites, facial recognition technology in public places is making it harder if not impossible to remain anonymous. Lesley Stahl reports on the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive.  

Pat Robertson Tells Wife Of Cheating Husband To Be Grateful For Marriage, Make Home Enticing
Pat Robertson has many opinions on subjects including homosexuality, politics and the coming of the Mark of the Beast, but it was the famous televangelist's opinion on marriage that took center stage during Wednesday's episode of his daily television program, "The 700 Club."  

Ohio's well data shatters shale oil hopes
U.S. hopes for a new shale oil bonanza in Ohio, joining the prolific Bakken and Eagle Ford plays that have raised production to 20-year highs, were shattered on Thursday by the first hard evidence that the Utica formation was primarily gas-prone.  

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation. Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram...is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.  

Report: Russia sends Assad 'ship killing missile'
Russia sold advanced Yakhont antiship cruise missiles to Syrian President Bashar Assad, outfitted with an advanced guidance system that makes them more effective than the older version of the missile Russia sold to Syria... These missiles will allow Syria to thwart any attempt by international forces to reinforce Syrian rebels by imposing a naval embargo or no fly zone...  

Israeli official: We underestimated Assad regime's strength
The debate over the situation in Syria and President Bashar Assad's chances for survival has sharpened recently within the Israeli defense establishment. A senior defense official claimed recently in closed conversations that Israel has erred in its estimates of how quickly Assad would fall from power in Syria. According to the official, Israel has "underestimated" Assad's strength and the inner life force of the Syrian regime.  

16 May 13

IRS Also Targeted Pro-Life Groups: Will Media Report?
We’ve heard a lot in the past few days about the IRS applying extra scrutiny to groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their name, but it appears the unfair targeting runs deeper than that. As the Thomas More Society, a non-profit public interest law firm, first reported yesterday, the IRS harassed at least two pro-life organizations that applied for tax-exempt status as early as 2009. When the Coalition for Life of Iowa submitted such an application, the IRS reportedly demanded that they promise, under perjury of law, not to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood.