FBI practices finding needle in haystack

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Canada border is U.S. drug war's second front

The world's longest undefended border: It's an increasingly imprecise term for the U.S. - Canada border, as authorities on both sides ratchet up efforts to curb bustling traffic in illegal drugs and guns.

The U.S. Border Partrol has tripled the number of agents along the 5,500-mile stretch in recent years, with hundreds more soon to be deployed.

Unmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft are being tested for use over the (frontier) border, and video surveillance towers are going up around Buffalo and Detroit. Multi-agency, binational law enforcement teams operate in 15 regions from coast to coast.

The U.S. - Mexico border draws far more attention - and more American resources, as Mexican drug cartels fuel killings and corruption with massive trafficking operations.

Thousands of Mexican troops battle the cartels in a conflict that has killed over 11,000 people since 2008. By comparison, the scale of drug violence and trafficking in Canada is minuscule.

The northern border, mostly out of the spotlight, presents its own challenges though. It's hard to monitor due to its enormous length and rough geography, and used by a diverse array of traffickers ranging from outlaw motorcycle gangs to Asian-run drug rings.

"It's a long border, mostly very remote, very wooded, very sparsely populated," says James Burns, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent in charge of upstate New York. "It's easy to go from one side to the other without detection."

Canada supplies large quantities of marijuana to American users, including hundreds of thousands of pounds a year of lucrative, hogh-potency "B.C. Bud" from British Columbia.

Canada also has developed rapidly into a leading supplier of ecstacy - often laced with highly addictive methamphetamine - both for U.S. and overseas markets, as crime gangs operate factory-style superlabs.

The contraband arrives by helicopter, boat and float plane, in cattle trucks, hikers' backpacks and by snowmobile.

One favored smuggling passageway is the St. Regis/Akwesasane Mohawk Indian reservation that straddles the St. Lawrence River along the New York - Canada border where tribal sovereignty limits access by Canadian and U.S. authorities.

Just this month, federal and state authorities in Plattsburgh, New York, on the western shore of Lake Champlain, announced the dismantling of a purported billion-dollar marijuana smuggling ring that used Mohawk land as a transit route into the U.S.

"Operation Iron Curtain" resulted in charges against more than 45 people from Quebec to Florida. Over the past four years, the ring smuggled about $250 million worth of high-grade, hydroponic marijuana into the U.S. annually, according to authorities.

Even excluding the remote 1,500-mile border with Alaska, the U.S. - Canada frontier coveres 4,000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making it twice as long as the U.S. - Mexico border.

Yet, the U.S. Border Patrol has 1,500 agents deployed along the Canadian border, compared with 16,900 along the Mexican border.

The northern contingent is up from less than 500 agents in 2002 and will expand to more than 2,200 over the next year, according to the Border Patrol.

Marijuana from Canada accounts for less than 3 percent of the pot seized near U.S. borders, with the bulk coming from Mexico. But the DEA fears more will be coming from the north as marijuana-growing operations expand in eastern Canada.

Canada border is drug war's second front - Washington Times
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Rabbis Busted For Money-Laundering

The insular Syrian Jewish community was rocked Thursday when its 87-year-old United States leader was arrested for money-laundering.

A perfect cover

He was among five Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis charged in a scheme that federal agents claim chumed "tens of millions" through nonprofit charities and synagogues they ran.

Saul Kassin, head of Sharee Zion in Sheepshead Bay, was a key player in an international operation that washed dirty money - provided by an FBI informer - through local religious institutions, as well as intermediaries in Israel and Switzerland, according to the FBI. MORE

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Are Men Obsolete?

American Thinker: Are Men Obsolete?

When I snapped out of my left wing trance last year, I was lost in space. I had no conservative friends and was clueless about Web sites and books.

I had heard something vaguely about Talk Radio. So I scanned my AM dial and found Michael Savage. (It took several months, and a chat with a rather bemused new friend, before I realized there were other hosts as well.) Read on.... Are Men Obsolete?
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Iranian Militias Marry, Rape Virgin Prisoners Before Executions

Members of Iran's feared Basij militia forcibly marry female virgin prisoners the night before scheduled executions, raping their new "wives" and making it religiously acceptable to execute them, a member of the paramilitary group says.

He told the Jerusalem Post that at age 18 he was "given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic of Iran it is illegal to execute a woman if she is a virgin. So the government arranges wedding ceremonies to be conducted the night before executions, and prisoners are forced to have sexual intercourse with a guard.

Raped by her new husband, a fermale prisoner is now fit to be put to death.

Some female prisoners are drugged with sleeping pills to make them docile.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after the rape was over," said the militiaman. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Jerusalem Post

Report: Iranian Militias Marry, Rape Virgin Prisoners Before Executions - Iran Map News - FOXNews.com
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Denver police officer charged, accused of using gun to speed up McDonald's order

A Denver police officer faces felony menacing and weapons charges based on an allegation he pointed a pistol to speed up his order at an Aurora McDonald's in May.

An employee at the McDonald's at 18181 E. Hampden Avenue told investigators two Denver police officers were waiting for their order at the drive-thru window in the early-morning window in the early-morning hours when Derrick Curtis Saunders, 29, grew impatient and pulled a weapon.

More at: Denver police officer charged, accused of using gun to speed up McDonald's order - The Denver Post
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Shuttle Astronauts Mark Moon Landing With Spacewalk

The astronauts aboard the shuttle-station complex celebrated the 40th anniversary of man's first moon walk with their own spacewalk Monday, heading outside to stockpile some big spare parts. FOXNews.com

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Apollo 11 Anniversary Restored Video Footage

Forty years ago, Apollo 11 blasted off on its 280,000-mile journey, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to reach the moon by the end of the decade.

To commemorate the anniversary, NASA released newly restored video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

At 7:32 a.m. Mountain time on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11's Saturn V engines fired, and the crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins reached orbit 12 minutes later.

Four days later, with the planet watching from 240,000 miles away on television signals delayed by 1.3 seconds, Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface, famously saying, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Ten things you may not have known about the Apollo 11 moon landing

NASA Marks Apollo 11 Anniversary With Restored Video Footage - FOXNews.com

NASA admits Apollo 11 moon landing tapes got erased

Moon Landing Conspiracy MythBusters
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Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite dies at 92

Former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, whose authoritative delivery of news events from the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to the Apollo moon landing, Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crises, made him "the most trusted man in America," died Friday at age 92.

Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. at his Manhattan home surrounded by family. His family issued a statement weeks ago that said Walter had been suffering for some years with cerebrovascular disease and was not expected to recuperate.

Cronkite's death coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which took the first astronauts to the moon. Anniversary celebrations have included frequent rebroadcasts of Cronkite's coverage of the moon landing.

For nearly 20 years, millions of Americans tuned in to "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" to hear the day's major events. Cronkite's avuncular manner and deep voice made his show the top-rated news program from 1969 until he retired in 1981. He was replaced by Dan Rather.

Off camera, Cronkite's stamina and admittedly demanding ways brought him the nickname "old Ironpants." But to viewers, he was "Uncle Walter," and when he signed off his newscast by saying, "And that's the way it is," few doubted him.

A former wire service reporter and war corrspondent, he valued accuracy, objectivity and understated compassion.

During his years at the CBS News anchor desk, Cronkite was regularly voted the "most trusted man in America" in opinion polls. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was so impressed with Cronkite that he asked him to run for public office.

The title "anchorman" was first applied to Cronkite, and he came so identified in that role that eventually his own name became the term for the job in other languages. Swedish anchors are known as Kronkiters; In Holland, they are called Cronkiters.

Walter Cronkite set the standard. In fact, during the 60s and 70s, when people heard the word journalist, most immediately thought of Cronkite.

"I don't understand my impact or success," Cronkite once said. "That my delivery is straight, even dull at times, is probably a valid criticism. But I built my reputation on honest, straightforward reporting. To do anything else would be phony."

Too bad we don't have integrity like that in today's news reporting, where it is more opinion instead of facts.

Writing in a blog on The Huffington Post in March 2006, Cronkite explained his signature "And that's the way it is (with the date at the end)" signoff by saying: "To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue."

Walter LeLand Cronkite was born November 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Missouri, the son and grandson of dentists. The family moved to Houston, Texas when he was 10.

Cronkite got his first taste of journalism at the Houston Post, where he worked summers after high school and served as campus correspondent at the University of Texas.

Cronkite quit school after his junior year for a full-time job with the Houston Press. After a brief stint at KCMO Radio in Kansas City, Missouri, Cronkite became a United Press correspondent in 1939.

Cronkite left KCMO when the station manager wouldn't give him a full-time position. The station manager told Cronkite, "you don't have what it takes to make it in broadcasting."

He was one of the first journalists assigned to American forces after the United States entered World War II in 1941.

Cronkite flew on the first bombing raids over Germany, parachuting into the Netherlands with the 101st Airborne Division and landing with Allied troops at Normandy, but he never thought himself brave in World War II.

He was a chief correspondent at the postwar Nuremberg trials and spent his final two years with the United Press managing its Moscow bureau.

Cronkite returned to the United States in 1948 and covered Washington for a group of Midwest radio stations. He then accepted Edward R. Murrow's invitation to join CBS News in 1950.

"Personally, I feel I was an overweening coward in the war," he once said. "I was scared to death all the time. I did everything possible to avoid getting into combat."

Joins new medium called television

Cronkite joined CBS News in 1950 and hosted public affairs programs. In 1953, he began narrating the long-running "You Are There" series, which recreated historical events.

He replaced Douglas Edwards as the anchor of CBS News on April 16, 1962, and his stirring reports on issues from the space program to the Vietnam War often had as much impact as the events themselves.

Cronkite followed the 60s space race with open fascination, anchoring marathon broadcasts of major flights from the first suborbital shot to the first moon landing, exclaiming with a tear in his eye, "Look at those pictures, wow!" as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon's surface in 1969.

In 1998, for CNN, he went back to Cape Canaveral to cover John Glenn's return to space after 36 years.

Cronkite grew teary and his voice cracked as he told the nation in 1963 that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.

After watching the bloody Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a disillusioned Cronkite told his viewers:

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of American leaders, both in Vietnam and in Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. ... It seems now more than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in stalemate."

Cronkite said in 2006 that the Tet report was his favorite story and many believe it led President Lyndon Johnson not to seek re-election in 1968. "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America," Johnson said.

When he retired from the anchor job, Cronkite had expected to get special assignments and projects from CBS, but Dan Rather shunned Cronkite and wouldn't work with him so it didn't work out that way.

President Ronald Reagan awarded Cronkite the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981.

After retiring from the CBS News anchor chair, Cronkite spent his time making documentaries, writing books, giving speeches and sailing. He also campaigned against global warming and spoke out against the Iraq War.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Cronkite was selected to introduce the postponed Emmy awards show. He told the audience that in its coverage of the attack and its aftermath, "television, the great common denominator, has lifted our common vision as never before."

In April 1997, Cronkite underwent successful quadruple bypass heart surgery.

Cronkite's wife of 64 years, Betsy, died in 2005 from cancer. They had two daughters and one son.

Growing up, watching The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite with my family was a regular weekday activity.

Anniversary celebrations of the Apollo 11 moon landing and Cronkite's coverage of it has brought back a lot of memories for me.

The most treasured memory I have of my sister, Constance, is of us watching the Apollo 11 landing and Cronkite's coverage of it. A local newspaper photographer came to our house and took a picture of my sister watching the landing. The landing and her picture were the front page story the next day.

D. Brian Blackwell
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Intense combat tied to homicides by Ft. Carson soldiers

Fort Carson soldiers charged with or convicted in homicides upon returning from Iraq had experienced intensive combat, several claiming they had witnessed war crimes, according to an Army report released Wednesday.

The findings represent the conclusion of an exhaustive investigation following a cluster of eleven homicides and two attempted murders committed by 14 soldiers between 2005 and 2008 that led to the formation of an Army task force.

MORE .... Intense combat tied to homicides by Ft. Carson GIs - The Denver Post
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Watergate Figure John Dean Threatens to Sue Historian Over Damaging Tape Recordings

John Dean, the Nixon-confidant-turned-government witness, who once spent eight years embroiled in a libel suit against a publishing house, is now threatening to sue a history professor - who runs a Web site dedicated to the Nixon tapes - for posting audio tapes online that suggest Dean is covering up the details of his role in the Watergate scandal.

Dean, the former White House counsel whose damning testimony led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, is continuing a pattern of frivolous lawsuits meant to stifle questions about his role in Watergate.

Watergate Figure John Dean Threatens to Sue Historian Over Damaging Tape Recordings - Local News News Articles National News US News - FOXNews.com
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Federal Government Was Culprit in Housing and Economic Crisis, Says Congressional Report

According to a Congressional Report, the federal government was a culprit in the Housing and Economic Crises.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the chief culprits in the housing crises because they encouraged people who could not afford payments on a house to take out mortgages anyway, says a congressional report released Tuesday.

The report says that the Community Reinvestment Act and other federal programs fed the housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to the economic downfall in 2008.

The report explains in detail how FannieMae and Freddie Mac - government sponsored enterprises (GSE) that were not subject to the same oversight as other publicly traded firms - "privatized their profits but socialized their risks."

In the short run, the government was successful in its goal to raise the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect created a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the U.S. economy and American people.

"While government intervention was not the sole cause of the financial crises, its role was significant and has received too little attention," says the report.

The report mentions the Clinton Administration's National Homeownership Strategy, citing President Bill Clinton's directive to "lift America's homeownership rate to an all-time high by the end of the century."

The Clinton directive further suggested Freddie and Fannie reduce down-payment requirements and, "called for increased use of "flexible underwriting criteria," which it said could be achieved in concert with "liberalized affordable housing underwriting criteria." according to the report.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made 54 percent of the "subprime" mortgage loans from 2002 to 2007, or about $1.9 trillion in mortgage loans to borrowers with credit scores lower than 660.

The report argues that lowered lending standards were the cause of the housing crises and did not exempt the Republicans or the Bush administration from blame. It said placing certain lending quotas for under-served populations allowed "both Democrat and Republican administrations to consistently make campaign promises to boost homeownership through government intervention in the market.

"Consequently, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dramatically increased these quotas, which reached their zenith when the Bush administration raised them to 56 percent, 27 percent and 39 percent, respectively," the report says.

"As home prices continued their dizzying rise, many people decided to cash in by buying a house with an adjustable rate mortgage featuring a low introductory teaser rate set to increase after a few years," the report continues.

"These borrowers, confident in the oft-cited assertion that U.S. home valueshad never before fallen in the aggregate, planned to sell or refinance their investment before the mortgage rate adjusted upward, pocketing the difference between the initial purchase price and the subsequent appreciation in value," says the report. "However, buyers failed to grasp the effect of a government policy that had quietly eroded the prudential limits on mortgage leverage, creating a danderous speculative bubble."

The report also talks about how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became a powerful lobby. Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson opened up "partnership offices" in congressional districts, hired relatives of members of Congress, and GSE employees contributed $15 million to federal political campaigns from 1998 to 2008. Throughout that time, all attempted reforms in Congress were blocked.

Also, in 1995, "Johnson seeded the Fannie Mae Foundation with $350 million of Fannie Mae stock. The company used this foundation to spread millions of dollars around to politically connected organizations like the Congressional Hispanic Caucas Institute," according to the report.

Fannie and Freddie were not subject to regulations, while executives were paid very well.

Former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines earned over $50 million in compensation during his six-years at the helm, the report says. Fannie and Freddie paid billions more to shareholders. "Thus, the government subsidizations of GSE operations amounted to little more than corporate welfare," the report says.

The report cited Raines accusations that to blame Fannie and Freddie is to blame only the lender and not the borrower.

"Responsibility for the erosion of mortgage lending standards, which began with government affordable housing policy, rests squarely on the policy makers who advocated these ill-conceived policies in the first place," the report says. Borrowers quite naturally responded to the incentives they were given, irrespective of their socioeconomic status, and risky lending spread to the wider mortgage market."

Here We Go Again

The report comes after Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) - who fought against regulation of the two quasi-public (government and private) mortgage giants - and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) wrote a letter in June to Fannie and Freddie calling on the GSE's to lower lending standards on condo buyers.

Read the congressional report

CNSNews.com - Federal Government Was Culprit in Housing and Economic Crisis, Says Congressional Report
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Okla. Couple Held in Burial, Excavation of Girl

An Oklahoma couple has been arrested in Montana for investigation of burying a young girl then digging up her remains and moving the body from state to state for over a year.

Abel Wolf, 35, and Denise Wolf, 40, are being held without bail in the Hill County jail in Havre after being charged in Oklahoma with unlawful removal of a body. They are scheduled for a court appearance this morning.

An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death and whether the remains are those of Abel Wolf's 11-year-old daughter, Cheyenne, says Jessica Brown of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

Abel and Denise Wolf were arrested Thursday, July 2, near Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation southwest of Havre.

Relatives had reported to Oklahoma police that Cheyenne Wolf was missing when her father and stepmother Denise moved to Montana and Oregon.

The investigation led police to discover the remains in a storage unit in the Milton-Freewater area of Oregon.

An affidavit filed by OSBI investigator David Houston said Abel Wolf told Houston the family was upset with Cheyenne in April 2008 because she would not eat dinner one night.

MORE.... Okla. Couple Held in Burial, Excavation of Girl - Local News News Articles National News US News - FOXNews.com

QI Investigations
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Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Michael Jackson is to be buried without his brain, according to the Los Angeles Coroner's Office.

Following an autopsy at the Los Angeles Coroner's Office, the singer's brain has been detained for neurological tests, including ones to see what drugs he had taken.

Rather than postpone the funeral, the Jackson family has instead decided to bury him without it.

The tests, which cannot be done until the brain has sufficiently hardened, are expected to show up any past drug or alcohol abuse, or overdoses the star may have suffered.

A source at the coroner's office says that removing the brain was "the only way to carry out the tests."

"The tissue has to be examined. I can't tell you how long that is going to take," he said.

The results could also play a crucial role in criminal investigations into the star's death.

Six of his doctors now face being quizzed by the DEA, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown has ordered an investigation into which pills were prescribed and dispensed to Jackson and by whom.

"If there has been abuses, charges will follow," a spokesman for Mr. Brown said.

The star's funeral is taking place this morning in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Los Angeles County, after permission for burial at Neverland was refused.

The Jackson family had initially planned a funeral procession from the morgue to Jackson's 2800-acre Neverland ranch, where a viewing of the body would be open to the public.

Now, however, they are holding a closed-casket family ceremony followed by a public send-off at LA's Staples Center, during which Stevie Wonder will perform.

Fans have been allocated 11,000 tickets for the event, with an additional 6500 to watch it on giant screens at the nearby Nokia Theater.

The tickets were up for grabs over the weekend via an online lottery system. Demand was so great, the website crashed when half a million people tried to access it in the first 24 hours.

The televised concert that is planned is expected to attract a global audience of three million people.

Meanwhile, a custody battle for Jackson's children looks set to break out.

Jackson named singer Diana Ross as his children's guardian if his mother Katherine could not fulfill the role, but his ex-wife Debbie Rowe has said: "They are my flesh and blood. I'm going after my children."

Following her 1999 divorce from Jackson, Rowe signed away her parental rights in exchange for a $5.2 million payout.

But in the wake of child abuse claims against Jackson in 2003, she then made a bid to regain temporary custody.

In legal documents, Rowe claimed her attempts to contact the children were continually thwarted by Jackson.

Legal documents prove Rowe was impregnated by artificial insemination using donated sperm.

A 13-year-old video has emerged, during which Jackson is questioned about child-abuse allegations and insists he isn't gay.

The 1996 video, shows Jackson being grilled by a team of attorneys, as part of a lawsuit brought by Neverland staff for unfair dismissal.

During the footage, Jackson giggles nervously when asked about having sex with McCauley Culkin, and says the allegations are lies.

Jackson also denied bleaching his skin white, and maintained he was heterosexual: "I'm a black American and I'm proud of it. And I'm honored of it. The bleached skin rumor...is a rumor. I don't bleach my skin," he said. "And I'm not gay." Daily Mail
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Black Money: Secret World of International Bribery

International bribery. It's a trillion dollars a year, with corporations on one side, heads of state on the other. And it thrives in an invisible world. Black Money

Father Who Ditched Nine Kids Via Safe Haven Law Has Twins on the Way

The Nebraska man who abandoned his nine children under the state's Safe Haven law last year is expecting to become the father of twins.

Gary Staton, 37, became a single father in February 2007 when his wife, RebelJane, died of a cerebral aneurysm soon after giving birth to the couple's ninth child.

Unable to handle the burden alone, Staton made national news over a year later on Sept. 24 when he dropped off his children - ages 1 to 17 - at a hospital in Omaha.

According to the law at the time, parents could hand children up to age 18 over to state custody without prosecution. Legislators later amended the law to limit its reach to infants up to 30 days old.

Read more .... Father Who Ditched Nine Kids Via Safe Haven Law Has Twins on the Way - Local News News Articles National News US News - FOXNews.com
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