Ukrainian police have accused five suspects detained over the assault of a journalist of links to the opposition, including its leader Vitali Klitschko.

The interior ministry's chief investigator, Mykola Chynchyn, linked on Friday Klitschko, who is the leader of opposition party Udar, and his brother Wladimir Klitschko to the suspects who attacked Tetyana Chornovil earlier this week.

In addition, Chynchyn also linked several other parliamentarians as well as local lawmakers to the detained suspects.
"In the course of the investigation it was established that the detained had been in close contact with members of the party Udar," said Chynchyn.

Furthermore, Chynchyn said the police investigation had established links between one of the suspects and the leader of a criminal gang "with whom the Klitschko brothers had closely cooperated."

MSNBC.com political reporter Benjy Sarlin revealed a scoop on Tuesday. Citing unnamed officials with the Obama admiration, Sarlin reported that the White House blames Congress for their failure to pass even a symbolic item on the president's second term agenda in 2013. Why the White House would bury this earth-shattering revelation on Christmas Eve is beyond me.

"President [Barack] Obama had a fairly ambitious agenda he talked up in 2012 election," Sarlin observed while touting his most recent piece, "The Year Congress Stole."

"He thought if he won he would break the fever among Republicans and that they would suddenly be interested in helping him out on things like infrastructure, immigration, the environment," he added. "It hasn't quite turned out that way."

Sarlin noted that Republicans, who retain control of the chamber of Congress most responsive to the popular sentiment, uncompromisingly refuse to pass a Democratic president's agenda. "When I talk to former Obama administration officials, people to the White House, that's what they will mention," Sarlin revealed.

"'Look,'" the MSNBC reporter said, adopting the voice of an Obama ally. "'These guys can't keep the lights on, let alone pass major policy.'"

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

Critics are calling the practice the new "debtors' prison" -- referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it's been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it's against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees -- or they just haven't been called on it until now.

Advocates are trying to convince courts that aside from the legal questions surrounding the practice, it is disproportionately jailing poor people and doesn't even boost government revenues -- in fact, governments lose money in the process.

"It's a waste of taxpayer resources, and it undermines the integrity of the justice system," Carl Takei, staff attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, told FoxNews.com.

"The problem is it's not actually much of a money-making proposition ... to throw people in jail for fines and fees when they can't afford it. If counties weren't spending the money jailing people for not paying debts, they could be spending the money in other ways."

Lee Harvey Oswald was your typical America-hating communist from Louisiana, and like every Russkie-loving pinko from the South he grew up watching American spy dramas, volunteered for a Civilian Air Patrol run by a CIA contract agent and joined the US Marines. Nicknamed Oswaldski for his tendency to speak Russian and spout pro-Soviet propaganda, he was given special training and assigned to one of the most sensitive facilities in the world running the radar for the U2s spying on the Russkies and the ChiComs. After contracting gonorrhea in the line of duty, Oswald was tested for Russian proficiency before being honorably discharged to take care of his mother who wasn't ill and flew to Europe using money he didn't have on planes that didn't exist to arrive at Helsinki, where he stayed at the most luxurious hotel in town before waltzing into the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. While there he kept a detailed log of Soviet facilities, made notes about microdots, and carried a CIA standard-issue Minox camera, before getting bored and returning to the United States on a military jet using money loaned to him from the US Embassy.

A U.S. government contractor kidnapped by al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan in 2011 has recorded a video message calling on the Obama administration to negotiate with his captors, saying he feels "totally abandoned and forgotten."

Warren Weinstein looked ashen and sounded lethargic as he pleaded for renewed interest in his case and asked the U.S. government to consider releasing al-Qaeda militants in its custody. The 72-year-old development expert from Rockville, Md., began his address by urging President Obama to step up efforts to get him released.

"You are now in your second term as president of the United States and that means that you can take hard decisions without worrying about reelection," said Weinstein, who was recorded sitting against a white wall wearing a gray tracksuit top and a black woolen hat. No one else appeared in the video.

The video, which included the yellow logo of As-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media production outlet, was sent in an anonymous e-mail to several journalists who have reported from Afghanistan. Included were links to a handwritten note that purports to be from Weinstein, saying "Letter to Media" at the top. The note is dated Oct. 3. It is not clear when the video was made.

A State Department spokeswoman and a member of Weinstein's family said Wednesday night that they had not independently received the note or video. The Washington Post provided a copy to both of them.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf later said that U.S. officials were "working hard to authenticate" the contents of the message.

"We reiterate our call that Warren Weinstein be released and returned to his family," she said in a statement. "Particularly during this holiday season - another one away from his family - our hopes and prayers are with him and those who love and miss him."

Palestinians and Israelis have met more than twenty times since July 2013 with little progress. Israel security issues dwarfed the final status negotiators while it continued to build, at an accelerated rate, "Jewish only" colonies undermining the very peace talks.

Fearing its collapse, US Secretary of State John Kerry amassed earlier this month a team of 160 American diplomats and security specialists led by General John Allen, former commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to draft a framework "that could help both Israelis and Palestinians get to an agreement."
Inarguably, President Barak Obama and Secretary Kerry are much more serious on pushing a peace agreement than any previous U.S. administration. Nevertheless, they have proven equally powerless overcoming Israel's mercurial demands.

Since Oslo, Palestinians have endorsed all of the U.S. and Israeli pre-conditions, starting with UN resolution 242, the recognition of Israel and annulling the Palestinian National Charter without any reciprocal recognition of their rights by Israel.

Today, Israel is requesting to prequalify previous Palestinian recognition of it, not just as a nation of people, but as an ethnocentric 'Jewish state'. It is also demanding that any future peace agreement must codify its occupation of parts of the West Bank - the Jordan River valley - under a euphemism called "security arrangements."

Preface: D.C. and the mainstream media are trumpeting the passage of a budget bill as a victory for bipartisanship and the American people. But the truth is very different.

Military Spending Is Destroying Our Economy

We've repeatedly documented that military waste and fraud are the core problems with the U.S. economy.

For example, we've noted that we wouldn't be in a budget crisis in the first place if we hadn't spent so much money on unnecessary wars ... which are killing our economy.

But it goes far beyond actual fighting. We could easily slash the military and security budget without reducing our national security.

For example, homeland security agencies wasted money on seminars like "Did Jesus Die for Klingons Too?" and training for a "zombie apocalypse" instead of actually focusing on anti-terror efforts.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn notes that the Department of Defense can reduce $67.9 billion over 10 years by eliminating the non-defense programs that have found their way into the budget for the Department of Defense.

BusinessWeek and Bloomberg point out that we could slash military spending without harming our national security. Indeed, we could slash boondoggles that even the generals don't want.

There has been yet another violent attack with mass casualties. This was not the act of a lone gunman, or of an armed student rampaging through a school. It was a group of families en route to a wedding that was killed. The town was called Radda - not in Colorado, not in Connecticut, but in Yemen. The weapon was not an easy-to-obtain semiautomatic weapon, but missiles fired from U.S. drones. On Thursday, Dec. 12, 17 people were killed, mostly civilians. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has consistently tracked U.S. drone attacks, recently releasing a report on the six months following President Barack Obama's major address on drone warfare before the National Defense University (NDU) last May. In that speech, Obama promised that "before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured - the highest standard we can set." The BIJ summarized, "Six months after President Obama laid out U.S. rules for using armed drones, a Bureau analysis shows that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed more people than in the six months before the speech." In a nation that abhors the all-too-routine mass killing in our communities, why does our government consistently kill so many innocents abroad?

One significant problem with assessing the U.S. drone-warfare program is its secrecy. U.S. officials rarely comment on the program, less so about any specific attack, especially where civilian deaths occur. As Obama admitted in the speech, "There's a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and nongovernmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties." The BIJ's estimate of the death toll from U.S. drone strikes during the past 12 years in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is well over 4,000.

The Raptr hovers stubbornly at an altitude of about 100 feet despite a lashing Oklahoma wind, its 73-inch rotor blades whirring like a swarm of buzzing bees. Then handler Curtis Sprague disconnects the remote device that he is using to control the mini-helicopter, leaving the pilotless aircraft to move entirely under its own steam - a flying robot let loose in the clear blue sky. The unmanned plane does a pirouette, then flies back to the spot from which it was launched. It lowers itself slowly to the runway, landing with a slight shudder before switching itself off.

Equipped with a military-grade autopilot that can make up to 500 flight corrections per second even as it carries out fully-autonomous surveillance of an area with a 10-mile radius, the Raptr is one of a new generation of drones now poised to burst onto the civilian scene. The helicopter's ability to transmit real-time video and thermal imaging over a wide area has already attracted interest from as far afield as South Africa, where game keepers want to use it to thwart rhino poachers. (Drones are also being eyed as a means of carrying snake antivenom to the Australian outback.)

In the US, a diverse group of interests have their eyes on the technology - fire fighters combatting wild fires, police departments tracking fugitives, farmers on the watch for diseased or parched crops, TV crews filming breaking news.

© WND

'We lost control of the software. It's all going nuts'

Aaron Klein's WABC Radio show experienced what the host called a "tech meltdown" while he was conducting a live, on-air interview with the lawyer who won an injunction against the National Security Agency's collection of phone records.

Software used by the radio station dropped the guest, Larry Klayman, and listeners who had called in to ask Klayman questions were cut off in mid-sentence. Other callers could not be put on the air due to technical difficulties at the radio station.

Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.

Klein's headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.

At one point, the WABC call screener said, "We lost control of the software. It's all going nuts."

The technical difficulties started on the show about 10 minutes prior to the Klayman interview. They subsided following the two segments that featured Klayman.

"In my three years of broadcasting at WABC we never had such a technological meltdown as we are having today," Klein told the audience.

He continued: "Calls are dropping. We cant get the guests on. Once the guests are on they are dropping. We've had several meltdowns. Feedback from the microphone. I can barely broadcast. ... However we are going to land this airplane and we're going to have fun doing it."

Get Larry Klayman's fascinating account of his battle with the powers that be: "Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment"

During the interview, Klayman called NSA data collection the "worst violation of constitutional rights in American history."