Obama Pledges $3B To Africa Obama Pledges $3B To Africa

President Barack Obama on Friday said the United States has a “moral imperative” to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition in Africa despite shrinking national budgets around the world.

Obama announced $3 billion in private sector pledges to help boost agriculture and food production in Africa. He said the U.S. and other donor nations would continue to make “historic investments” in development, though he offered no new American financial pledges.

“Some have asked in a time of austerity, whether this new alliance is just a way for governments to shift the burden on to somebody else,” Obama said of the private sector commitments. “I want to be clear, the answer is no.”

Obama’s announcement in Washington kicked off four days of international summitry. World leaders are gathering at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains, later in the day for a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations. Obama heads to Chicago on Saturday evening for NATO meetings.

While much of the G-8 meetings will focus on Europe’s mounting economic troubles, leaders will also hold a session on food security in Africa. Obama invited the heads of four African nation – Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania – to attend the meeting.

Obama said that even as G-8 leaders dealt with Europe’s pressing fiscal challenges, he felt it was “also important, also critical, to focus on the urgent challenge that confronts some 1 billion men, women and children around the world: the injustice of chronic hunger.”

The White House said the private sector pledges, along with commitments from donor countries to work with African nations on food security programs, could raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years.

Obama also championed a food security initiative at the 2009 G-8 summit that resulted in $22 billion in government-backed pledges. The pledge period for L’Aquila Food Security Initiative ends later this year, and some humanitarian groups say much of the promised money has not been dispersed.

The president urged wealthy nations to make good on their pledges.

“We must do what we say. No empty promises,” Obama said.

The G-8 will release an accountability report this weekend detailing how much of the $22 billion is still on the sidelines. Administration officials say the U.S. is on track to fulfill its $3.5 billion pledge.

Obama, whose father was born in Kenya, sought to put the problem of food security in Africa in personal terms. Some of his relatives in Kenya live in villages where hunger is sometimes a reality, he said.




Isa 30:1- Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin:



Isa 30:2- That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!



Isa 30:3- Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt [your] confusion.



Isa 36:6- Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so [is] Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him.

49 headless bodies dumped on north Mexico highway

Forty-nine bodies with their heads, hands and feet hacked off were found Sunday dumped on a northern Mexico highway leading to the Texas border in what appeared to be the latest carnage in an escalating war between Mexico's two dominant drug cartels.

Local and federal authorities discovered the bodies before dawn scattered in a pool of blood at the entrance to the town of San Juan, on a highway leading from the metropolis of Monterrey to the border city of Reynosa. A white stone arch welcoming visitors was spray-painted with black letters: "100% Zeta."

Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene said at a news conference that the 43 men and six women would be hard to identify because of the lack of heads, hands and feet. The bodies were being taken to a Monterrey auditorium for DNA tests.

The victims could have been killed as long as two days ago at another location, then transported to San Juan, a town in the municipality of Cadereyta, about 105 miles (175 kilometers) west-southwest of McAllen, Texas, and 75 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of the Roma, Texas, border crossing, state Attorney General Adrian de la Garza said.

Only one couple looking for their missing daughter visited the morgue in Monterrey where autopsies were being performed on the mutilated bodies Sunday, a state police investigator said.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said none of the six female bodies matched the missing daughter's description. He said some of the bodies were badly decomposed and some had their whole arms or lower legs missing.

De la Garza said he did not rule out the possibility that the victims were U.S.-bound migrants.

But it seemed more likely that the killings were the latest salvo in a gruesome game of tit-for-tat in fighting among brutal drug gangs.

"This is the most definitive of all the cartel wars," said Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

Mass body dumpings have increased around Mexico the last six months as the fearsome Zetas gang goes head to head with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, led by fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and its allies.

Under President Felipe Calderon's nearly six-year assault on organized crime, the two cartels have become the largest in the country and are battling over strategic transport routes and territory, including along the northern border with the U.S. and in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

In less than a month, the mutilated bodies of 14 men were left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo, 23 people were found hanged or decapitated in the same border city and 18 dismembered bodied were left near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara. Nuevo Laredo, like Monterrey, is considered Zeta territory, while Guadalajara has long been controlled by gangs loyal to Sinaloa.

The Zetas are a transient gang without real territory or a secure stream of income, unlike Sinaloa with its lucrative cocaine trade and control of smuggling routes and territory, Benitez said. But the Zetas are heavily armed while Sinaloa has a weak enforcement arm, he said. The Zetas, founded by deserters from Mexico's elite special forces, started out as assassins for the Gulf Cartel before those two gangs had a bloody split in early 2010.

The government's success in killing or arresting cartel leaders has fractured some of the big gangs into weaker, quarreling bands that in many cases are lining up with either the Zetas or Sinaloa. At least one of the two cartels is present in nearly all of Mexico's 32 states.

A year ago this month, more than two dozen people — most of them Zetas — were killed when they tried to infiltrate the Sinaloa's territory in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit.

But their war started in earnest last fall in Veracruz, a strategic smuggling state with a giant gulf port.

A drug gang allied with Sinaloa left 35 bodies on a main boulevard in the city of Veracruz in September, and police found 32 other bodies, apparently killed by the same gang, a few days after that. The goal apparently was to take over territory that had been dominated by the Zetas.

Twenty-six bodies were found in November in Guadalajara, another territory being disputed by the Zetas and Sinaloa.

Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since Calderon launched a stepped-up offensive when he took office in December 2006.

Mexico is now in the midst of presidential race to replace Calderon, who by law can't run for re-election. Drug violence seems to be escalating, but none of the major candidates, Enrique Pena Nieto, Josefina Vazquez Mota or Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has referred to the body dumpings directly. All three say they will stop the violence and make Mexico a more secure place, but offer few details on how their plans would differ from Calderon's.

Benitez said the wave of violence has nothing to do with the presidential election.

"It has the dynamic of a war between cartels," he said.
 Jer 5:26-  For among my people are found wicked [men]: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.

Pro 1:16-  For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

Pro 1:19-  So [are] the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; [which] taketh away the life of the owners thereof. 

Car hits beam of elevated train in Chicago; 4 die

A speeding car hit a support beam of a Chicago elevated train track, crashing with enough force for the vehicle to split in two and killing four female passengers inside, authorities said Sunday.

Family and friends grieving on Mother's Day said all four women were mothers who were out for the night and had planned to attend a party.

The Cook County medical examiner's office said three died at the scene — Tyshyra Hines, 21; Bernadette Harris, 25; and Alicia Josten, 22. A fourth woman, 21-year-oldIeshia Nelson, was pronounced dead at an area hospital early Sunday.

Harris' sister, Sheila Harris, told the Chicago Tribune that her sister was a devoted parent to three children, ages 4, 6 and 8.

"She'd go above and beyond for her kids," she said. "She was an outstanding mother."

Chicago Police Department spokesman Hector Alfaro said the car was traveling fast when it hit a cement beam that supports Chicago Transit Authority train tracks on the city's West Side before it ran into a light pole.

Chicago fire officials said the vehicle crashed with enough force that it split in two. Police were investigating the cause of the crash, which happened about midnight Sunday.

The four women were headed to a party, Nelson's mother, Yvette Harris, told Chicago's WBBM-Radio. She said her daughter had a 2-year-old son, and she had not yet told him the news.

"I took him to his grandparents' last night, because he couldn't go to the hospital with me," Harris said. "I don't know what I'm going to say."

Exd 20:3-  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Exd 20:4-  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth:

Exd 20:5-  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me;

 Exd 34:14-  For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name [is] Jealous, [is] a jealous God:

Jer 7:18-  The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

Amo 5:21-  I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies 

White supremacists accused of planning for 'race war' in Florida

Members of a white supremacist skinhead group called American Front trained with AK-47s, shotguns and explosives at a fortified compound in central Florida to prepare for what its reputed leader believed to be an “inevitable race war,” prosecutors said Tuesday.

According to court documents, members of American Front discussed acts of violence that included causing “a disturbance” at City Hall in Orlando, shooting at a house and attacking an anti-racist skinhead group.

At least 10 members of the group, which authorities described as a militia-styled, anti-Semitic domestic terrorist organization, have been arrested in Florida since the weekend, including at least three people on Tuesday.

The felony arrest charges include paramilitary training, attempting to shoot into an occupied dwelling, and evidence of prejudices while committing an offense. The last charge falls under Florida's hate-crimes law.

“This investigation is a result of our ongoing partnership with local law enforcement and federal agencies in a concentrated effort to stamp out hate crime in our community,” Ninth Circuit State Attorney Lawson Lamar said in a statement Tuesday.

His office said he would not comment further on the case because the investigation is ongoing.

According to a court statement from Agent Kelly Boaz, a sworn deputy for the Orange County sheriff’s office and investigator with the state attorney's office, that was filed in support of an arrest warrant, the group was led by Marcus Faella, 39, of St. Cloud, Fla. He and his wife, Patricia Faella, 36, were among those arrested over the weekend.

“Marcus Faella has been planning and preparing the AF for what he believes to be an inevitable race war. Faella has stated his intent during the race war to kill Jews, immigrants, and other minorities. Faella believes the race war will take place within the next few years based on current world events.”

Much of the information of the alleged plots came from an informant who infiltrated the group in mid-2010.

According to Boaz:

Faella viewed himself and fellow members of the American Front as “protectors of the white race.” He regularly conducted firearms, explosives and military/tactical training at his rural property in Saint Cloud and in the swamps of a Florida wildlife management area.

Faella’s remote property was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by two pit bulls. It contained fortified entrenchments built from railroad timbers, cement piling and other materials.

Faella regularly held weapons training on his compound, where he also stored water, meals ready to eat and other survivalist-type supplies. During target practice he told participants to visualize the jugs of water they were shooting at as the heads of black people, which he referred to by the N-word.

Read local coverage from WESH

In July 2011, an American Front member from Missouri who was also in the National Guard visited the compound and conducted paramilitary training, including hand-to-hand combat techniques, that he learned from the Guard.

Last November, an American Front member, Jessy Brown, committed suicide with a 12-gauge shotgun on Faella’s property, the informant reported. The weapon belonged to Faella.

In January, a recruit beat up a former American Front member at a local bar for “comments made against the AF on Facebook.” No charges were filed in that case.

In February, Faella started planning to “cause a disturbance” at Orlando City Hall “so the media would report on it and bring new members to AF.” No attack was ever carried out.

Faella also wanted members to “hunt down” members of an anti-racism skinhead group called REDS and “put their teeth to the curb” – an apparent reference to violent acts portrayed in “American History X,” a 1998 movie about the roots of race hatred in America.

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Law enforcement became increasingly concerned when the informant reported that Faella and his followers were plotting to attack REDS members during “May Day” protests on May 1 in Melbourne, Fla., and “shoot up” the house of a REDS official.

Fearing that his cover might be blown, the informant destroyed his cellphone after removing the memory card. He fled the area and contacted police.

The May Day confrontation apparently never took place.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based hate watchdog, describes the American Front as a California-based group of skinheads with a propensity for violence. The group was founded in the late 1980s, faded from national headlines in the 1990s and then saw a major resurgence around 2007 under new leader David Lynch.

Lynch was killed by an unknown attacker in his Sacramento, Calif., home on March 2, 2011. In California, the group has shrunk significantly. “Now, most of its activities – and, apparently, most of its members – are in Florida,” the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok wrote on the center’s Hatewatch blog.

2 Esdras 15:15-  For the sword and their destruction draweth nigh, and one people shall stand up and fight against another, and swords in their hands

Mat 24:7-  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

2 Esdras 13:31-  And one shall undertake to fight against another one city against another one place against another one people against another and one realm against another

Obama endorses gay marriage, says same-sex couples should have right to wed

President Obama announced Wednesday that he believes same-sex couples should be granted the right to marry, becoming the first U.S. president in history to fully embrace that level of civil rights for gays.

Obama’s announcement gave an immediate jolt to the decades-long movement for gay equality at a moment when a growing number of states are moving to ban — or legalize — same-sex unions and as polls show a majority of Americans support marriage rights.

President Obama has said his position on the matter is evolving. Tell us what you think, then explain your view in the comments.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll in March found that 52 percent of adults think it should be legal for gay couples to marry.

For Obama personally, the disclosure completed a long conversion process that advisers said ended earlier this year after soul-searching and talks with his family.

“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News.

Obama had hinted at that sentiment for years as he repeatedly said his views on gay marriage were “evolving,” but his statement still came as a dramatic election-year revelation that promised to energize advocates on both sides. Gay rights activists and many Democrats embraced the news, but some religious leaders, including one of Obama’s spiritual advisers, said they were distraught.

The potential dangers for Obama could be seen just one day before his announcement, when voters in North Carolina, a swing state critical to his reelection, voted overwhelmingly for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex unions. Obama hinted at the rapidly shifting political fault lines on Wednesday, saying he had weighed the teachings of his Christian faith against a growing pro-marriage consensus among younger Americans — a key target group for his reelection campaign.

“You know, when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality,” Obama said in the interview, excerpts of which were aired during a rare midday newscast.

“They are much more comfortable with it,” Obama continued. “You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Advocates put the announcement in historic terms, calling it an unprecedented moment of validation from the country’s most important political figure. Many said that Obama’s self-described evolution matched the thought process for non-gay Americans and that his comments could help push others to support marriage rights.

“President Obama made history by boldly stating that gay and lesbian Americans should be fully and equally part of the fabric of American society and that our families deserve nothing less than the equal respect and recognition that comes through marriage,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group close to the White House. The group’s incoming president, Chad Griffin, a major Obama fundraiser who has repeatedly pressed the president in personal conversations to support gay marriage, added that Obama’s words “will be celebrated by generations to come.”

Lev 20:13-  If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.

Rom 1:26-  For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

Rom 1:27-  And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

Amo 9:8-  Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD [are] upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD.

Neo-Nazi suspected in Arizona murder-suicide

The Neo-Nazi founder of an anti-immigrant border militia is believed to have shot and killed four people before turning a gun on himself following a domestic dispute at a home in a Phoenix suburb, police said on Thursday.

Police believe Jason Todd "J.T." Ready opened fire at a house in Gilbert on Wednesday, killing his girlfriend, her daughter, the daughter's boyfriend and the young couple's toddler daughter. He then shot himself, Gilbert Police Sergeant Bill Balafassaid.

Ready, 39, founded the U.S. Border Guard group, a private-citizen militia in Arizona that advocated deadly force to stop illegal immigration over the border from Mexico.

Ready had long-held ties to neo-Nazi groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center said on their websites.

"We are under attack at this very moment but not by invading troops (yet) or communistic threat. ... What or who is it you ask? Just look around your neighborhoods and your schools. Look at the violence on T.V. Look at the border," Ready said in a posting on his group's website.

Police identified the dead as Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47, who they said was Ready's girlfriend; Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; Jim Franklin Hiott, 24; and 15-month-old Lily Lynn Mederos, who was still alive at the scene but later died in a hospital.

Police found the child and the bodies of two adults inside the home and those of the other adults outside.

"We feel safe to say that this was a domestic violence issue. There was an argument, and this is purely a domestic situation," Balafas said.

Amber Mederos worked at a nearby Wendy's restaurant, and was reported to be in the process of moving out of her mother's home because of tensions with Ready, who also lived there.

TIME TO MAKE A BETTER LIFE

Her final posting on Facebook on Tuesday evening read: "Time to get the drama out of (my) life and make a better life for me my daughter and my love."

At the time of the shooting, a female witness was in the home. Balafas said "she heard arguing, she heard gunshots (and) came through a back bedroom and located the bodies."

Officers recovered two handguns and a shotgun from the scene on Wednesday. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said six grenades were also retrieved from the house by a bomb disposal unit from Luke Air Force base, near Phoenix.

"The reason we contacted them is because it is military ordnance," ATF agent Tom Mangan told Reuters. He said the explosives were live, and investigators were tracing the serial numbers on them to determine their provenance.

A profile of Ready by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center said he had attended neo-Nazi gatherings in Nebraska and Phoenix, and railed against Jews and "Negroid immigration" in white nationalist online forums.

He advocated deadly force to stop Mexicans from crossing into the United States illegally, and favored laying a minefield along the U.S. border, the center said.

A chilling propensity to violence was apparent in a blog posting by Ready on the U.S. Border Guard website.

"Some of us have our fingers on the triggers; Soap box. Ballot Box. Ammo box. These were given to us by our founding fathers and mothers," Ready wrote. "We have just about depleted the first two options."

Police had been called to the house on five previous occasions, for incidents including domestic violence, disorderly conduct and suspicious activity. None of the incidents resulted in charges being brought.

Eze 35:5-  Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed [the blood of] the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time [that their] iniquity [had] an end: 

Oba 1:10-  For [thy] violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.