Mexico Earthquake 2012: 7.6-Magnitude Quake Rocks Mexico

The Associated Press is reporting that a “strong” quake has hit Mexico City.

CNN’s Rodrigo Javier also confirmed the earthquake, noting that CNN Mexico’s newsroom has been evacuated.

Reuters reports that a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck near Acapulco, Mexico.

This is a breaking news update. Please check back for updates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/mexico-earthquake-2012_n_1367682.html

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Iran Nuclear Threat Brings No U.S. Enthusiasm For A Military Strike

Huff Post- Posted: 2/15/12 | Updated: 2/15/12

By- David Wood

WASHINGTON —  The threat of punishing U.S. military strikes underlies Washington’s campaign to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But there is no enthusiasm evident within the U.S. military for a war many believe would be messy, bloody, unpredictable and ultimately inconclusive.

Seeking to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama has focused on coordinating international economic pressure against Iran and moved to strengthen economic sanctions just last week. But he warned in the Jan. 24 State of the Union address, “Let there be no doubt: American is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”

It’s a truism of diplomacy to never to make a threat that you’re not prepared to carry out. There is no doubt that if ordered, the U.S. military would launch devastating attacks against Iran. Whether such strikes would come along with or instead of Israeli attacks, tactical planning is already under way, as is done routinely for a variety of potential military operations the Pentagon might be ordered to carry out, senior officers said.

“If called upon, I have no doubt that the armed forces of the United States will deal with whatever contingencies might unfold there,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said last week when asked about a possible military confrontation with Iran.

But Gen. Martin Dempsey, the crusty Army general who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told National Journal last month that a war with Iran “would be really destabilizing … I personally believe that we should be in the business of deterring [war] as a first priority,” he said.

The Joint Chiefs are hardly a bunch of shrinking violets. Dempsey commanded the 1st Armored Division for 14 months of hard combat in Iraq and served there another two years directing the training of Iraqi security forces.

MORE HERE

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Muammar Gaddafi Killed, Captured In Sirte: (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

AP/The Huffington Post First Posted: 10/20/11 08:00 AM ET Updated: 10/20/11 06:28 PM ET

Longtime dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed following the capture of his hometown of Sirte.

[CLICK HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES]

There were confusing reports of Gaddafi’s capture and death, and questions remained over exactly how he was killed.

Arab broadcasters showed graphic images of the balding, goateed Gaddafi – wounded, with a bloodied face and shirt – but alive. Later video showed fighters rolling Gaddafi’s lifeless body over on the pavement, stripped to the waist and a pool of blood under his head.

While he was still alive, the fighters drove him around lying on the hood of a truck, perhaps to parade him in public. One fighter held him down, pressing on his thigh with a pair of shoes in a show of contempt.

Standing upright, he is shoved along a Sirte road by fighters who chanted “God is great.”

Gaddafi appears to struggle against them, stumbling and shouting as the fighters push him onto the hood of a pickup truck.

“We want him alive. We want him alive,” one man shouted before Gaddafi is dragged away, some fighters pulling his hair, toward an ambulance.

MORE HERE

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Osama Bin Laden Home Videos Released (VIDEO)

Osama Bin Laden Home Videos Released

Huffington Post

First Posted: 05/ 7/11 09:12 AM ET Updated: 05/ 7/11 04:50 PM ET

LOLITA C. BALDOR and KIMBERLY DOZIER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Newly released videos show Osama bin Laden watching himself on television and rehearsing for terrorist videos, revealing that even from the walled confines of his Pakistani hideout, he remained a media maestro who was eager to craft his own image for the cameras.

The videos, released by U.S. intelligence officials Saturday, were offered as further proof that Navy SEALs killed the world’s most wanted terrorist this week. But they also served to show bin Laden as vain, someone obsessed with his portrayal by the world’s media.

VIDEOS HERE

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Meet SEAL Team Six: Navy SEALs Unit Who Killed Bin Laden

SEAL Team Six: Navy SEALs Unit Who Killed Bin Laden Has Interesting Past

History.com/Huffington Post Posted: 05/ 3/11 01:55 PM ET

History.com – Sources are reporting that Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader who avoided capture for nearly a decade after engineering the attacks of September 11, 2001, was killed by an elite counterterrorism unit of the U.S. military known as DevGru. Find out more about the origins and past operations of these highly trained Navy SEALs.

Originally known as SEAL Team Six, the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DevGru) is one of several publicly disclosed units under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), an elite and highly classified group that coordinates counterterrorism and other security-related missions around the world. (Others include the Army’s fabled Delta Force and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron.) Based at Pope Army Air Field and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, JSOC was established in 1980 after American special forces failed to rescue American hostages at the Iranian Embassy during Operation Eagle Claw.

For the full story from History.com, click here.

Notable Past DevGru Missions

Operation Just Cause (1989)
Working with Delta Force and other elite units, DevGru members assisted in the capture of deposed dictator Manuel Noriega during the United States’ invasion of Panama in December 1989.

Operation Pokeweed (1990)
DevGru reportedly returned to Panama to take part in a secret operation intended to apprehend the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The mission is believed to have failed due to poor intelligence.

Battle of Mogadishu (1993)
DevGru members participated in a multinational task force during Operation Gothic Serpent, the U.S.-led mission to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in the fall of October 1993. It culminated in the Battle of Mogadishu, which was later chronicled in the book “Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War” and a subsequent film adaptation.

For an expanded list of missions and the full story from History.com, click here.

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OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD!! Obama To Announce

Osama Bin Laden Dead, Obama To Reportedly Announce

HuffPost-  First Posted: 05/ 1/11 10:49 PM ET Updated: 05/ 1/11 10:54 PM ET

Osama Bin Laden is dead, President Obama will announce, according to multiple television networks.

DEVELOPING…

MORE HERE AS IT COMES IN

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Icelandic Volcano Ash May Hover For Days

Ash may hover for days over uncertain Europe

SYLVIA HUI and ANGELA CHARLTON | 04/17/10 10:25 PM |

PARIS — The Icelandic volcano that has kept much of Europe land-bound is far from finished spitting out its grit, and offered up new mini-eruptions Saturday that raise concerns about longer-term damage to world air travel and trade.

Facing days to come under the volcano’s unpredictable, ashy plume, Europeans are looking at temporary airport layoffs and getting creative with flight patterns to try to weather this extraordinary event.

Modern Europe has never seen such a travel disruption. Air space across a swath from Britain to Ukraine was closed and set to stay that way until Sunday or Monday in some countries, affecting airports from New Zealand to San Francisco. Millions of passengers have had plans foiled or delayed.

Activity in the volcano at the heart of this increased early Saturday, and showed no sign of abating.

“There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight,” Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson told The Associated Press on Saturday. “The activity has been quite vigorous overnight, causing the eruption column to grow.”

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines, depending on prevailing winds.

In Iceland, winds dragged the ashes over new farmland, to the southwest of the glacier, causing farmers to scramble to secure their cattle and board up windows.

With the sky blackened out and the wind driving a fine, sticky dust, dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir teamed up with neighbors to round her animals and get them to shelter. The ash is toxic – the fluoride causes long-term bone damage that makes teeth fall out and bones break.

“This is bad. There are no words for it,” said Hilmarsdottir, whose pastures near the town of Skogar were already covered in a gray paste of ash.

MORE HERE

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Iran Election Riots: Gunmen Open Fire (VIDEOS & PHOTOS)

2:19 PM ET — More details from Reuters. “Iran’s hardline Islamic Basij militiamen killed at least one person on Monday and wounded more when their building was attacked by demonstrators protesting an election they say was stolen by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

Also:

The U.S. State Department said it was “deeply troubled” by reports of violence and voting irregularities in the election.
“We are deeply troubled by the reports of violence, arrests and possible voting irregularities,” said State Department spokesman Iran Kelly, adding that Washington was still assessing what had happened in the election.

1:52 PM ET — Mousavi speaks at the rally. Also, if you haven’t checked the slideshow on HuffPost frontpage, we’ve placed the same photos here.

VIDEOS & MORE HERE

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Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal: Bush Left A “Sickening Legacy” In The Middle East

Saudi Prince: Bush Left “Sickening Legacy” In Middle East

DONNA ABU-NASR | January 24, 2009 02:41 PM EST |

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s ex-ambassador to Washington said former President George W. Bush left a “sickening legacy” in the Middle East and warned that U.S.-Saudi relations would be at risk if the Obama administration doesn’t change America’s policy in the region.

Prince Turki al-Faisal’s unusually tough words were the latest blunt assessment by the Saudi royal family that prospects for Arab-Israeli peace are growing dim unless dramatic policy changes are made.

Turki said he strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process in his decades as a public servant. But after Israel’s three-week assault in the Gaza Strip, the prince said, “these pleas for optimism and co-operation now seem a distant memory,” he said in a Financial Times op-ed published Friday.

The kingdom has resisted calls for a holy war against Israel, “but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain,” he added.

The comments followed a warning from King Abdullah on Monday that his 2002 Arab-Israeli peace initiative won’t remain on the table forever.

“America is not innocent in this calamity,” said Turki, who is the chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. “Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region, but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents.”

The impassioned comments are a departure from the oil-rich kingdom’s normally diplomatic rhetoric toward the U.S., its longtime ally. The Bush family has had strong ties with the Saudi royal family, and Turki’s harsh public comments about Bush were rare.

Analysts say the king had to send a clear message after Israel’s assault in Gaza left almost 1,300 Palestinians dead. A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, was in its sixth day Saturday.

MORE HERE

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