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While you are working in the kitchen and setting the table, the Obama administration has just released thousands of new regulations hoping no one would really notice.
DCF: While millions of Americans prepare to stuff themselves with Turkey and pie, the Obama administration quietly released its plans for 2,224 federal rules Friday — a preview of just how many more regulations the president is attempting to issue before he leaves office.
President Barack Obama’s Unified Agenda for Fall 2015 is his administration’s regulatory road map and lays out thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Obama has developed a habit of releasing the agenda late on Friday before a major holiday.
While Obama’s latest release features fewer regulations than the last two, it shows the administration is determined to churn out as many rules as it can before the end of 2016. This includes major energy and environmental regulations coming down the pipe, like new rules for coal mines and rules banning common pesticides.
Obama has already put out several major environmental regulations this year, including limits on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, more federal control over U.S. waterways, new hydraulic fracturing regulations and stricter smog rules.
In the last week alone, the Obama administration imposed $1.8 billion in regulatory costs, according to a new report by the right-leaning American Action Forum (AAF). This brings the total cost of regulation in 2015 to a whopping $183 billion — about half from final rules and the other from proposed rules.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s new smog limits turned out to be some of the costliest ever proposed by a federal agency.
The EPA says tighter smog, or ground-level ozone, limits would only cost $1.4 billion and yield much more in health benefits from less pollution. But AAF found that the EPA’s smog rule could end up costing 40 times more than the agency predicted based on the experience of counties not in compliance with older agency smog rules.
“Observed nonattainment counties experienced losses of $56.5 billion in total wage earnings, $690 in pay per worker, and 242,000 jobs between 2008 and 2013,” according to AAF policy experts.
*** There is also the matter of popcorn and corporate food chains
NYT’s WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced sweeping rules on Tuesday that will require chain restaurants, movie theaters and pizza parlors across the country to post calorie counts on their menus. Health experts said the new requirements would help combat the country’s obesity epidemic by showing Americans just how many calories lurk in their favorite foods.
The rules will have broad implications for public health. As much as a third of the calories that Americans consume come from outside the home, and many health experts believe that increasingly large portion sizes and unhealthy ingredients have been significant contributors to obesity in the United States.
“This is one of the most important public health nutrition policies ever to be passed nationally,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Right now, you are totally guessing at what you are getting. This rule will change that.”
The rules are far broader than consumer health advocates had expected, covering food in vending machines and amusement parks, as well as certain prepared foods in supermarkets. They apply to food establishments with 20 or more outlets, including fast-food chains like KFC and Subway and sit-down restaurants like Applebee’s and The Cheesecake Factory. Much more here.
One of the world’s most volatile regions was roiled further Tuesday when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey said it hit the plane after it repeatedly violated Turkey’s airspace and ignored 10 warnings.
Turkey and Russia exchanged bellicose language after the downing of the plane, raising fears in the international community that the brutal Syrian conflict could spiral into something much wider.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the downing of the Russian plane would have “serious consequences for Russia’s relationship with Turkey.”
The shooting down of the plane, Putin said, “represents a stab in the back by the terrorists’ accomplices. I can’t describe what has happened today in any other way. Our plane was downed over Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16 jet.
“The plane fell on Syrian territory 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) away from the Turkish border. It was flying 1 kilometer away from the Turkish border when it was attacked. In any case, neither our pilots nor our jet posed any threat to Turkey. That is obvious. They were carrying out an operation fighting against ISIL in Northern Latakia.” (ISIL is another acronym for ISIS.)
Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Serdar Kilic, was equally aggressive in his comments, tweeting: “Understand this: Turkey is a country whose warnings should be taken seriously and listened to. Don’t test Turkey’s patience. Try to win its friendship.”
NATO’s governing body, the North Atlantic Council, said it would hold an emergency meeting in Brussels at 5 p.m. (11 a.m. ET) on Tuesday. The council is made up of the NATO ambassadors of the 28 countries that are members of the alliance and is NATO’s highest decision-making body.
Turkey is a member of NATO, which considers an attack on one of its members to be an attack on them all.
Not long after the plane was shot down Tuesday morning, spitting fire and diving nose-first toward the ground, Turkey claimed responsibility. Turkey’s semiofficial outlet, the Anadolu Agency, quoted Turkish presidential sources as saying the Russian Su-24 was “hit within the framework of engagement rules” in Syria’s Bayirbucak area, near the border with Turkey.
Russian officials denied the plane had violated Turkish airspace.
Both pilots ejected from the plane, but their fate is unknown, Sputnik reported. The terrorist group ISIS does not operate in the area where the plane went down. But other rebel groups do, including al Nusra Front — al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria — along with more moderate U.S.-backed groups.
Abu Ibrahim al-Sheghri, the military leader in the 10th coastal brigade and part of the Turkmen Mountain Military Operation Room, told CNN that the body of one of the pilots had been found in the Nibh Almur area of Syria.The brigade is searching for the other pilot in the same area, he said.
And Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, Turkey’s national public broadcaster, aired footage of what it said were Russian helicopters searching for the pilots.
Early this year, Moath al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot whose plane crashed in Syria the previous December, was burned alive by ISIS while he was trapped in a cage.
A brutal civil war
Turkey released a purported image of the flight path of the plane showing it had violated Turkish airspace. Turkey said it had issued 10 warnings to the aircraft before two F-16s responded “within engagement rules” near the Turkish-Syrian border.
But the Russian Defense Ministry said “objective monitoring confirmed” the plane was not in Turkish airspace.
“The Su-24 bomber jet was in Syrian airspace at the altitude 6,000 meters, the Russian Defense Ministry said,” according to Sputnik. “The pilots were reportedly able to parachute out of the jet before it crashed.”
A U.S. defense official told CNN that Turkey informed Washington that it had shot down a Russian military aircraft near the Syrian border after an airspace violation. U.S. forces were not involved in the incident, the official added.
Syria has been embroiled for more than four years in a brutal civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, sent millions of families fleeing and laid waste to entire cities.
Turkey vehemently opposes the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Russia is propping up the Assad regime.
Skirmishes between Turks and Syrians have taken place in the past, with Turkish officials accusing Syrian planes of violating Turkish air space.
A ‘significant escalation’
A Russian plane is seen crashing nose-first in northern Syria.
“The moment of the plane falling into Bayirbucak region across from Hatay’s Yayladagi was captured on camera,” the Anadolu Agency reported. “The pilot’s evacuation via parachute was also captured. Heavy smoke has been seen in the area where the plane fell.”
Sajjan Gohel, international security director for the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a think tank, described the downing of the plane as “a very significant escalation.”
“It’s very much the last thing that’s needed right now, especially in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, when there was hope that Russia could form an alliance with France and with the United States against ISIS,” Gohel said. “This is going to complicate things. This is going to add unnecessary tensions that really weren’t required at this critical juncture.”
5 things to know about the downing of the Russian jet
He said the downing of the Russian plane would hamper efforts to form a united front against the terrorist group ISIS.
“This is a situation that unfortunately was almost inevitable at some point, because Turkey has long been accusing Russia of interfering in their airspace,” Gohel said. “They’ve threatened them in the past. And even though economic relations between the two countries are strong — politically, there have been tensions recently.”
NATO ‘in contact with Turkish authorities’
A NATO official told CNN that NATO was monitoring the events closely.
#BREAKING Flight radar track on downed warplane issued by Turkish military
“We are in contact with Turkish authorities and will have to wait to see how it develops,” the official said.
The official noted that “when Russian jets violated Turkish airspace a few weeks ago, the Council did meet in an extraordinary session, which resulted in a condemnation of the incursion.”
The official would not comment on whether the alliance was in contact with Russian authorities over the incident.
Opinion: The hardest questions about fighting ISIS
A massive proxy war
Syria’s internal conflict has become a massive proxy war for numerous international powers, both in the region and outside it — a situation that has added to the perception that incidents such as Tuesday’s plane downing were inevitable.
Currently, the United States, Russia, France, Australia, the Gulf states, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Jordan and Hezbollah are involved, one way or another, in military activity in Syria.
“Russia has a slight get-out-of-jail-for-free card, in that it hasn’t lost any actual lives here, but it is insisting that its plane didn’t cross into Turkish airspace,” said CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh.
“They have tried in the past to have meetings in Ankara and Istanbul between Turkish and Russian officials to make sure misunderstandings didn’t happen, and it’s clearly failed,” Walsh said.
This incident has the potential to be extraordinarily damaging, but Russia is unlikely to want to start a major conflict with Turkey, a NATO member, over an incident like this — that could technically be blamed on this jet straying, according to Turkish officials, into the wrong territory — Paton Walsh said.
War on ISIS: Who’s doing what?
Turkey shot down Syrian fighter previously
In March 2014, Turkey shot down a Syrian fighter jet after the warplane strayed into its airspace, according to then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is now the country’s president.
“Our F-16s went up in the air and shot that plane down. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, then from now on, our slap will be hard,” Erdogan told supporters at a campaign rally in 2014.
But state-run media in Syria called it an act of “blatant aggression” and said the downed plane was over northern Syria at the time.
Policemen escort five Syrian men after they were detained at Toncontin international airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Photograph: Reuters
Guardian: Recent events involving Syrian refugees arriving at North American borders have brought to light the increased global traffic along the continent’s migrant routes
But both groups are most likely part of a steady stream of migrants from around the world, who have in recent years quietly started to follow the well-trodden routes used by Latin Americans to reach the United States.
As well as Syrians, migrants from Nepal, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Pakistan now regularly make the long detour through Latin America, joining the flood of Central American migrants seeking refuge from violence.
Officials say that the nationalities using the migrant routes vary as humanitarian or political crises flare up around the world: the number of Syrians started to increase since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, and has ballooned as the civil war has worsened; more Cubans have sought to reach the US since Havana began to reestablish diplomatic relations with Washington.
“Over the past decade, Latin America has definitely become a route of entry to the US for Asian and African migrants, said Ernesto Rodríguez, a migration expert at Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology (ITAM).
That shift is becoming a serious concern in the region, prompting authorities from transit countries to call an emergency meeting on “extra-territorial” migrants in Costa Rica on Tuesday.
Immigrants from Central America, Nepal and Bangladesh are seen in a trailer truck after being detected by police X-ray equipment in Mexico. Photograph: Attorney General’s Office/Reuters
Colombia is an attractive route because it is not a crime to have entered the country irregularly. The worst that can happen is that migrants get deported back to their point of entry.
But Ecuador will not accept deportees who are not nationals of that country. “All we can do is drop them off at the bridge at the border and walk away,” says one Colombian official.
Most often, smugglers tell migrants that if they are caught they should request refugee status. Once asylum is requested, authorities grant them a safe conduct pass for five days to present their case to the foreign ministry. Most never show. They use the reprieve to continue their journey northward.
In Colombia, 68 Syrians have been detained since 2012, as well as 372 Somalis, 132 Pakistanis and 18 Eritreans, according to figures from Migración Colombia.
In Mexico over 300 Nepalese were apprehended between January and September this year – more than quadruple the number in 2014, while the number of Indians detained has more than doubled to 310. Seven Iraqis were detained in Mexico the first nine months of 2015, compared to a total of five in the previous three years. And at least 40 Syrians have been apprehended trying to make it to the US since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
The number of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa pale in comparison to Cubans who have chosen to take the land route to the United States rather than the traditional sea journey toward the Florida coast. The number of Cubans entering the US has surged since President Obama announced a renewal of diplomatic ties with the Caribbean country last December following more than 50 years as cold war enemies.
This recent exodus is promoted by fears that the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy – which fast-tracks legal residency for undocumented Cubans in the US as long as they arrive by air or overland – could soon come to an end.
Almost 27,300 Cubans entered the US in the first nine months of this year – a 78% rise on the same period last year, according to the Pew Research Centre. Two-thirds of those travelled overland through Mexico and entered the US at the Texas border. Many others have been stopped along the way; Mexico detained 6,447 Cubans in the first nine months of 2015, and more than 4,000 were apprehended in Colombia in the first eight months of the year.
According to the Asssociated Press, 2015 may witness the biggest outflow of Cubans since the 1980 Mariel boatlift that brought 125,000 people across the Florida Straits.
Many of those are likely to head south before they head north, said Rodríguez. “Smugglers are always looking for easier routes, which is why we’ve seen the increase flow through Latin America.”
I was an intelligence officer for 33 years. When intelligence officers write or brief, they start with the bottom line. Here it is: ISIS poses a major threat to the US and to US interests abroad and that threat is growing every day.
The nature and significance of the threat flows from the fact that ISIS is— all at the same time— a terrorist group, a state, and a revolutionary political movement. We have not faced an adversary like it before.
As a terrorist group, ISIS poses a threat to the Homeland. That threat today is largely indirect — ISIS’s ability to radicalize young Americans to conduct attacks here. The FBI has over 900 open investigations into homegrown extremists, the vast majority radicalized by ISIS and a large number of which relate to individuals who may be plotting attacks here. Such attacks have already occurred in the US. Others have been arrested before they could act.
While the sophistication of such homegrown attacks is likely to be fairly low, the potential exists for the quantity of these kinds attacks to be large. The number of ISIS followers in the US is in the thousands. It dwarfs the number of followers that al-Qaeda ever had.
Over time, if not significantly degraded, the ISIS threat to the Homeland will become a direct one—that is, an ISIS ability to plan and direct attacks on the Homeland from the group’s safe haven in Iraq and Syria— just like the group did in Paris last week.
Such attacks are deeply concerning because they carry the potential to be much more sophisticated and complex—and therefore more dangerous—than than homegrown attacks, again just like in Paris last week, or London in 2005, or even 9/11 itself. And, in something that should get everyone’s attention, ISIS has shown an interest in weapons of mass destruction.
“Over time” may be shorter than many think. The attack in Paris was the first manifestation of an effort that ISIS made to put together an attack capability in Europe—an effort that they began less than a year ago. The head of the UK’s domestic security agency recently warned that ISIS is planning mass casualty attacks in Britain. His concerns are well founded. We will not be far behind.
As a state, ISIS poses a threat to regional stability—a threat to the very territorial integrity of the current nation states there, a threat to inflame the entire region in sectarian war. All this in a part of the world that still provides almost a third of the world’s oil supply; a region that is home to one of America’s closest allies, Israel; and a region that is home to a set of close American allies— the Gulf Arab states—that are willing to resist Iran’s push for regional hegemony.
And, as a revolutionary political movement, ISIS is gaining affiliates among extremist groups around the world. They are signing up for what ISIS desires as its objective—a global caliphate where day-to-day life is governed by extreme religious views. In the mind of ISIS, its global caliphate would extend to the US itself.
When they join ISIS, these affiliates evolve from focusing on local issues to focusing on establishing an extension of the caliphate themselves. And, their targets evolve from local to international ones. This is the story of the bombing of the Russian airliner by an ISIS group in the Egyptian Sinai.
ISIS has gained affiliates faster than al-Qaeda ever did. From nothing a year ago, there are now militant groups in nearly 20 countries that have sworn allegiance to ISIS. They have conducted attacks that have already killed Americans, and they carry the potential to themselves grab large amounts of territory. Libya is a place that this could happen in the near term.
An intelligence officer has many jobs. One is to describe for a president the threats that we face as a nation, and that is what the previous paragraphs did. Another is to look a president in the eye when his or her policies to deal with these threats are not working and say so.
Mr. President, the downing of the Russian airliner, only the third such attack in 25 years, and the attacks in Paris, the largest in Europe since the Madrid bombings in 2004, make it crystal clear that our ISIS strategy is not working.
Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the CIA, released a book earlier this year on the war against international terrorists. The book, The Great War of Our Time: CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism — From al Qaida to ISIS, warned against the types of attacks that occurred in the Sinai and Paris.
***
WotR’s: The November 13 attacks in Paris were not the first time that Islamic State supporters or affiliates tried to target western countries. In fact, a series of active Islamic State plots have been disrupted all across Europe in the last year, set to be carried out while the group was at the height of its territorial gains. The individual identified as the “mastermind” of the Paris attack, Abdelhamid Abbaoud, was connected to another plot in Belgium that was foiled by the Belgian police in January this year, and was in contact with other extremist cells in Europe. European officials even suggested that the Belgium plot in January could have been directed by Islamic State leadership. Had the plot been successful, the attack would have coincided with the group making important ground advances in Syria and Iraq. The prime minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, stated last week that their security services had foiled seven domestic Islamic State plots. Other attempts were detected in Spain and Italy, and the United States has also thwarted numerous plots.
The Islamic State has declared time and time again that it will target the West. Last January, the group’s spokesperson, Muhammad Al-Adnani, threatened that:
there were many others who killed, ran others over, threatened, frightened, and terrorized people, to the event that we saw the Crusader armies deployed on the streets in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium and other strongholds of the cross to whom we promise — by Allah’s permission — a continuation of their state of alert, terror, fear and loss of security.
True, these are just statements. But these statements, along with the number of plots disrupted in Europe, prove that the Islamic State already tried to follow up on these statements. Some of the group’s affiliates were stopped by Western law enforcement agencies during the last year as was noted, but it was expected that the Islamic State would adapt and try to find new ways to overcome their failures.
Telegraph: French patrol planes are scouring the seas off Scotland for a Russian submarine after Britain was forced to call on allies for help because it has scrapped its own sub-hunting aircraft.
A French Atlantique 2 maritime patrol plane has been searching for the submarine for at least 10 days, since the vessel was detected north of Scotland.
Britain scrapped its own Nimrod sub-hunting aircraft in 2010
A Royal Navy frigate, HMS Sutherland, and a hunter killer submarine have also been sent on the search, amid fears the Russian boat could be trying to spy on a Trident nuclear deterrent sub.
HMS Sutherland has been called into the hunt Photo: MoD
SkyNews: French patrol aircraft are reportedly among those helping with the search from RAF Lossiemouth.
Aircraft based at an RAF base are conducting “activity” off Scotland in response to reports a Russian submarine has been seen nearby, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.
It is understood that a Royal Navy frigate and a submarine are also involved in the hunt.
The Sun on Sunday reported that a French patrol aircraft was carrying out the search as the UK no longer has any specialist sub-hunting aircraft.
Britain scrapped the RAF’s Nimrods with search capability in 2010 after the Strategic Defence Services Review.
The Telegraph reported that two French Atlantique 2 maritime patrol planes and a Canadian plane were now operating out of RAF Lossiemouth, about 37 miles (60km) east of Inverness.
The MoD admitted that allied planes were operating from the base but refused to comment on naval manoeuvres.
“We can confirm that allied maritime patrol aircraft based at RAF Lossiemouth for a limited period are conducting activity with the Royal Navy,” a statement said.
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Video:More British Troops To Baltics
“We do not discuss the detail of maritime operations.”
One of the commitments is to buy nine Boeing P8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft which will be capable of hunting submarines.
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Last year, the Ministry of Defence faced embarrassment when it emerged it had to seek the help of the US, France and Canada when trying to find another Russian submarine spotted off the west coast of Scotland.
At that time it was thought the Russian vessel was possibly tracking UK nuclear submarine movements from the Clyde.
