Company will drill almost two miles underwater in Gulf of Mexico as part of next generation of deep-water developments

Royal Dutch Shell is pressing ahead with the world's deepest offshore oil and gas production facility by drilling almost two miles underwater in the politically sensitive Gulf of Mexico.

The move is being viewed in the oil industry as a demonstration of Shell's confidence that its technology can deliver returns on expensive and risky offshore projects, despite a recent downturn in oil prices.

It comes a day after ExxonMobil said it would start work on a $4bn (£2.6bn) project to develop the Julia oilfield, also in the North American ocean basin, and weeks after BP delayed development of its biggest Gulf of Mexico project - Mad Dog Phase 2 - citing rising costs.

John Hollowell, a Shell executive vice-president, said: "This important investment demonstrates our ongoing commitment to usher in the next generation of deepwater developments, which will deliver more production growth in the Americas. We will continue our leadership in safe, innovative deepwater operations to help meet the growing demand for energy in the US."

The move comes despite ongoing controversy over offshore exploration - especially in the Gulf of Mexico, where in April 2010 a fire and explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and started a leak that took three months to cap. Last month BP said it had paid $25bn (£16bn) of the $42bn it has set aside to cover the damage caused by the spill.

In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon transformed the furry feline into an elite spy, implanting a microphone in her ear canal and a small radio transmitter at the base of her skull, and weaving a thin wire antenna into her long gray-and-white fur. This was Operation Acoustic Kitty, a top-secret plan to turn a cat into a living, walking surveillance machine. The leaders of the project hoped that by training the feline to go sit near foreign officials, they could eavesdrop on private conversations.

The problem was that cats are not especially trainable - they don't have the same deep-seated desire to please a human master that dogs do - and the agency's robo-cat didn't seem terribly interested in national security. For its first official test, CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench. Instead, the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi. The program was abandoned; as a heavily redacted CIA memo from the time delicately phrased it, "Our final examination of trained cats... convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs." (Those specialized needs, one assumes, include a decidedly unflattened feline.)

Operation Acoustic Kitty, misadventure though it was, was a visionary idea just 50 years before its time. Today, once again, the U .S. government is looking to animal-machine hybrids to safeguard the country and its citizens. In 2006, for example, DARPA zeroed in on insects, asking the nation's scientists to submit "innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs."

New revelations about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, are pulling Hillary Clinton back into a political firestorm that the presumptive 2016 candidate had so far managed to escape unscathed.

House Republicans have unearthed new evidence suggesting the Obama administration could have done more to help the U.S. diplomats under attack last Sept. 11.

State Department whistle-blowers testifying Wednesday before the House Oversight panel are also expected to say the then-secretary of State was personally involved in the decision to depict the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans as something other than terrorism.

"I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi. We're going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday. "We're going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We're going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton."

The Benghazi scandal could be the final "hinge point" that brings down the Obama administration, former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton said.

"This could be the hinge point," he said to Newsmax. "It's that serious for them."

Mr. Bolton is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

His comments came as Congress is readying to hear testimony from several witnesses about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Witness Greg Hicks already has stated publicly that the administration was aware that the attack was terrorist in nature, and not related to protests of a YouTube film about Muslims, as originally stated.

Mr. Bolton said these witnesses' testimonies could prove explosive.

It's on. As the White House grapples with a growing backlash over its Libya lies and lapses, President Obama's apologists are gearing up for battle. Put on your hip-waders. Grab those tar buckets. Get ready for Operation Smear Benghazi Whistleblowers.

Capitol Hill hearings this Wednesday on the deadly 9/11 consulate attack by jihadists will feature three compelling witnesses, all State Department veterans: Gregory N. Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya and highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in the country at the time of the Benghazi jihad attacks; Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine who now serves as deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the top security officer in Libya.

Nordstrom first testified last fall about how State Department brass spurned his requests for increased security at the compound. Hicks and Thompson are coming forward publicly for the first time this week with more damning evidence contradicting Team Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's claims about the administration's response the night of the attack and in the ensuing months of cover-ups.

Deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya Gregory Hicks testified Wednesday that he was told not to meet with a congressman sent to investigate the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. Hicks said a State Department lawyer accompanied the delegation and attempted to be in every single meeting he was involved in.

Obama administration officials are finally letting the attorney for a Benghazi whistle-blower get a security clearance - but the clearance is at such a low level that it will probably slow the congressional probe of how the administration handled last year's terrorist attack on the embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

Victoria Toensing represents an unnamed government official who can help explain the reaction of top government officials to the jihadi attack on the U.S diplomatic site in Benghazi and killed four Americans last Sept. 11.

The official may also be able to explain if officials rewrote intelligence reports and took other actions to minimize media coverage of the administration's errors and the perceived role of Al Qaeda jihadis.

The ill-treatment of Palestinian minors held within the Israeli military detention system is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised," a report Wednesday by the UN children's fund found.

UNICEF in the 22-page report that examined the Israeli military court system for holding Palestinian children found evidence of practices it said were "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."

"Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised," it concluded, outlining 38 recommendations to improve the protection of children in custody.

Over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated and prosecuted around 7,000 Palestinian children aged between between 12 and 17, most of them boys, the report said, noting the rate was equivalent to "an average of two children each day."

And when are anti-GMO activist groups going to stop saying they're "shocked and disappointed" by the president?

Shocked and disappointed is polite-speak and politically correct reaction. It's baloney.

Don't you get it? Obama has never been on your side. He never deserved your trust.

Disappointment implies he was your buddy and then unaccountably walked away.

The man is a politician. He's a liar. Different pols have different styles of lying. Some pretend they're your friend before they screw you over and leave you in the dust.

I've previously published Obama's track record as Monsanto's number-one political supporter in America.

For months now, the Internet has been buzzing with rumors of massive ammo buys by the U.S. government.

Now, some members of Congress have taken notice and have begun holding hearings about just how much ammo is being bought and for what purpose.

Ben has the Reality Check you won't see anywhere else.


Sources

• fbo.gov
• upi.com
• fbo.gov
• fbo.gov
• denverpost.com
• usnews.com
• foxnews.com
• foxnews.com