Palm Beach County sheriff gets $1 million for violence prevention unit amid questions about civil liberties, "care for mentally ill" [how touching!]. - Florida House and Senate budget leaders have awarded Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw $1 million for a new violence prevention unit aimed at preventing tragedies [false flags] like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., from occurring on his turf. Bradshaw plans to use the extra $1 million to launch "prevention intervention" units featuring specially trained deputies, mental health professionals and caseworkers. The teams will respond to citizen phone calls to a 24-hour hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services, if needed. Bradshaw is readying a hotline and is planning public service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors, friends or family members if they fear they could harm themselves or others.

The Pentagon has redesigned its biggest "bunker buster" bomb with more advanced features intended to enable it to destroy Iran's most heavily fortified and defended nuclear site. - U.S. officials see development of the weapon as critical to convincing Israel that the U.S. has the ability to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb if diplomacy fails, and also that Israel's military can't do that on its own. Several times in recent weeks, American officials, seeking to demonstrate U.S. capabilities, showed Israeli military and civilian leaders secret Air Force video of an earlier version of the bomb hitting its target in high-altitude testing, and explained what had been done to improve it, according to diplomats who were present. In the video, the weapon can be seen penetrating the ground within inches of its target, followed by a large underground detonation, according to people who have seen the footage.

Despite reassuring reports in the mainstream media, nothing has been done to resolve the hunger strike in Guantanamo, military attorney Barry Wingard told RT. A third party is needed to negotiate between the camp officials and the men suffering, he said. - “We need to get a neutral third person to negotiate between the camp officials and the men who are hunger striking,” Wingard said. As many as 23 prisoners are now being forced to eat through nasal tubes, as a mass hunger strike in Guantanamo nears the unprecedented three-month benchmark. Lawyers for the detainees say that as many as 130 of the 166 inmates are taking part, while the US military insists it's ‘merely’ a hundred.

Laura Pitter: Why Obama doesn’t need Congress to start to make good on his promise
The Guardian: Drone Policy Author: US Prefers Killing Suspects Than Gitmo

The Obama Administration, following in the footsteps of the first imperial U.S. president George Bush, has gone after these persons using the Espionage Act, an archaic law which had only been used three times in U.S. history until Obama was placed in office. Obama has used it six times against six individuals. Citing Moyers and Company, these six are:
1: Thomas Drake a former senior executive at the U.S. National Security Agency who was charged under the Espionage Act.
2: Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the U.S. State Department.
3: John Kiriakou, was a CIA agent who followed his conscience when it came to the illegal interrogation methods and torture that was being carried out by the U.S. and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for giving journalists the names of two former colleagues who tortured detainees.
4: Shamai K. Leibowitz, who was an FBI Hebrew translator and was worried that Israel would take the disastrous step of bombing nuclear facilities Iran. His leak of a wire tap to a blogger cost him 20 months in prison.
5: Bradley Manning who believe the American public had the right to know of the crimes being committed by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq.
6: Jeffrey Sterling was a CIA officer who was privy to the details of a plan to derail plans Iran may have had in building a nuclear bomb.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the White House is considering providing lethal weapons to foreign-sponsored militants fighting the Syrian government. - Hagel made the remarks at a joint press conference in Washington with British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond on Thursday. "Arming the rebels - that's an option," Hagel said, adding that a "range of options" remained on the table. "These are options that must be considered with partners, with the international community: what is possible, what can help accomplish (our) objectives," he said. Saying that the British government has not directly supplied arms to the militants in Syria, Hammond confirmed that Britain does not rule out the possibility to do so in the future. The British defense secretary also said the US decision to provide weapons to the militants is a signal that Washington was showing renewed leadership over the Syrian crisis.

Bill Van Auken: US defense secretary says Washington weighs arming of Syrian insurgency - In reality, both the US and Britain are already deeply involved in supporting the forces fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The CIA has established a covert station in Turkey near the Syrian border to coordinate the shipment of arms from that country as well as Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, both US and British military forces have undertaken the training of so-called rebels inside Jordan.

The first chops, to the forehead, did not go through the bone and are perhaps evidence of hesitancy about the task. The next set, after the body was rolled over, was more effective. One cut split the skull all the way to the base.

“The person is truly figuring it out as they go,” said Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
In the meantime, someone — perhaps with more experience — was working on a leg. The tibia bone is broken with a single blow, as one might do in butchering a cow. That’s one possible version of an event that took place sometime during the winter of 1609-1610 in Jamestown. What’s certain is that some members of that desperate colony resorted to cannibalism to survive.

That cannibalism occurred during the colony’s “starving time” was never in much doubt. At least a half-dozen accounts, by people who lived through the period or spoke to colonists who did, describe occasional acts of cannibalism that winter. They include reports of corpses being exhumed and eaten, a husband killing his wife and salting her flesh (for which he was executed), and the mysterious disappearance of foraging colonists.

Washington Post/The Fold: Jamestown colony’s cannibal past - VIDEO

The Irish parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade has sent an appeal to the Irish government from which the original demand of introducing visa and financial sanctions against Russian officials allegedly involved in Sergey Magnitsky’s death has been removed. - The foreign affairs and trade committee passed a resolution urging Irish leadership to express concern over the prison death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, the Irish Times said Thursday. But it dropped its earlier plans to call for an EU-wide blacklist on officials implicated in the case, similar to the one passed in the United States last year. Russian Embassy in Dublin said in March the blacklist could “have a negative influence” on the pending adoption agreement, though it later denied making a direct link between the two issues. Committee head Pat Breen dismissed allegations that the Russian stance amounted to blackmail, while Senator Jim Walsh, who proposed the blacklist, called the resolution a “compromise,” the Irish Times said.
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_05_02/Irish-parliament-refuses-to-adopt-Magnitsky-List/