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Hurricane Eta formed in the Western Caribbean Sea. Short term impact threatens Central America from Nicaragua to Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. The slow moving storm is forecast to circle back into the Western Caribbean by late week. Mash the graphics below to enlarge. All links and images are self-updating. NHC Public Advisories NHC Forecast Discussions Tropical Tidbits by Levi Cowan Florida Radar LoopMobile AL Radar LoopNew Orleans Radar LoopNorthwest Florida Radar LoopHavana Weather Live

Terrorism is a continuation of politics by other means......at least in some corners of this world. He transmitted the false presence of suicide terrorists[Former Interior Minister] Acebes Blames Zapatero for Spreading the “Only Confirmed Lie” of 3/11.The general secretary of the PP has pointed out directly the president of the government as responsible for the “only confirmed lie”, for the time being, of 3/11: the alleged presence of suicide terrorists [on the trains]. “Zapatero himself was the one that spread this information”, Acebes has denounced in COPE [Radio News Channel] on the basis of the revelations of EL MUNDO newspaper,...

The Trump administration is considering plans to designate Nicolás Maduro’s socialist regime in Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism over its support for Hezbollah and Marxist guerrillas, according to a report from the Spanish newspaper ABC on Tuesday. According to U.S. officials who spoke with the Spanish newspaper, administration officials are currently deliberating whether to add Venezuela to the list of state sponsors of terrorism over its support for groups including the Basque separatist movement ETA, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah, and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Officials have so far refused to officially confirm whether they plan to...

The researchers report that they were studying the planet's rings, which are collectively called Eta, and discovered that they had an oddly shaped orbit -- not round or even circular. Instead, they describe it as sort of triangular. More study showed that the odd orbit of the rings was due to gravitational pull from Cressida -- one of the planet's moons. The gravitational impact is exaggerated, they note, due to the moon keeping pace with the orbit of the planet. The particles in the ring, on the other hand, move faster than the moon. This results in the moon tugging...

Europe’s top rights court on Tuesday ordered Spain to compensate two ETA members convicted of the 2006 bombing of Madrid Airport for the “inhuman and degrading treatment” they suffered in police custody. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) did not, however, uphold the men’s claim that they had been tortured. Igor Portu and Martin Sarasola are serving life sentences over the bombing of the Terminal 4 car park at Madrid airport, which killed two people and injured around 50 others as part of ETA’s violent four-decade campaign for Basque independence. The pair claimed they were kicked and punched by...

What Obama is pursing in Iran and Cuba isn’t peace.....The list of countries designated by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism is a pretty exclusive club, a veritable Legion of Doom populated by the likes of North Korea and Syria. The Obama administration has, for reasons that seem to be mainly political, shown extraordinary solicitude toward two countries that were on the State Department’s list when he became president: Cuba and Iran. Cuba has been removed from the list — “Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission” was the State Department’s bloodless explanation — and John Kerry has...

Thousands of people gathered in northern Spain on Sunday to demand a referendum vote for the independence of the country’s Basque region. Demonstrators holding long lengths of cloth formed human chains across several Basque cities, including the capital of Vitoria, Bilbao and San Sebastian. Many of the protesters wore the colors of the Basque flag -- red, white and green. The demonstration was organized by the pro-independence Gure Esku Dago ("It's in Our Hands") group, and was backed by several separatist parties and local figures. Spain’s Basque community has long asserted that it should be independent of the country, and...

Inés del Río Prada, of the Basque separatist group Eta, was a member of a unit that killed 24 people, including 12 in a car bombing in the centre of Madrid. Her release earlier this week at the command of the European court of human rights (ECHR), prompted a wave of outrage. The Spanish courts had little choice but to let Del Río go free. She had been sentenced in 1989 to 3,828 years in total, but because of a peculiarity of Spanish law dating back to 1973, she could serve a maximum of only 30. Given time off for...

THE REGION TO BE INVESTIGATED FOR TAX REIMBURSEMENTS Navarra in €1.7bn tax inquiry The Spanish tax authorities are stunned, and they have every reason to be so. A discovery of a tax maneuver involving Volkswagen’s car production in the small region of Navarra in northern Spain, has disclosed that the region is indirectly funded by the central government in Madrid through tax returns that add up to 10 percent of the region’s yearly budget.

Documents show that Spanish police tipped ETA terrorists to a raid while also apologizing for the "accident." Aiding and abetting a terrorist group is a serious crime in Spain, punishable by jail terms of up to ten years. So if it should turn out that the country’s very own interior minister gave terrorists advance notice of an imminent police raid, and later apologized to them for not having aborted it, then it stands to reason that the government — which has since elevated the minister in question to deputy premier and political heir apparent — is in big trouble, and...

The suspected head of armed Basque separatist group Eta has been arrested in northwest France, reports say. Alejandro Zobaran Arriola was among four Eta suspects held in an operation by French police near the Belgian border, Spanish national radio reports. Mr Arriola was described as the group's "new military chief". Eta's campaign for independence for the Basque region has cost more than 800 lives since 1968 but it called a halt to armed attacks last year.

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

ETA in Chavez's Venezuela: the ultimate proof The confession of the suspected ETA members and Xavier Juan Carlos Besance Atristain arrested last Sept. 29 in Guipúzcoa, is the first survey of members of the terrorist organization on the use of Venezuela as a stage for armed training. So far all the indications on the use of that country during the government of Hugo Chavez were based on documents seized from ETA in France, in emails containing the hard disk of FARC leader Raul Reyes, killed in a bombing Colombian army, and evidence gathered in Bogotá by Spanish officials to former...

Belgian police have arrested a 29-year-old alleged member of the Basque separatist group ETA in the northern port city of Ostend, according to a statement by the Spanish Interior Ministry. Spain’s Interior Ministry says Belgian police have arrested an alleged member of Basque separatist group ETA in the northern port city of Ostend. A ministry statement says Luis Maria Zengotitabengoa was arrested early Saturday by police acting on information provided by their Spanish counterparts. The 29-year-old is the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by Spain’s National Court on suspicion of transporting explosives to Portugal on behalf of ETA...

Obama amputates our nuclear arms By: Charles Krauthammer ...snippet...Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.” Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker...

French police said on Thursday they had arrested the suspected military leader of the Basque separatist movement ETA in the south-western city of Bayonne. AFP - French anti-terrorist police on Thursday arrested the suspected military chief of the Basque separatist group ETA, Mikel Karrera Sarobe, police sources said. Two other suspected ETA members -- also Spanish nationals -- were arrested with Karrera Sarobe when detectives and anti-terrorist police raided a house in the southwestern French city of Bayonne at daybreak, the sources said. They were a man and a woman, and one of them is suspected of being the number-two...

Oswaldo Álvarez Paz's arrest is evidence of Chávez's abuse of the legal system and the silencing of his critics. The arrest of Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, a former president of Venezuela's Chamber of Deputies, governor of the Venezuelan state of Zulia, and presidential candidate, should concern the entire world because it demonstrates just how far President Hugo Chávez's regime is willing to stray from democratic norms. Standing silent as democracy atrophies in Venezuela is now not only immoral, but is becoming increasingly dangerous for all of Venezuela's people. Álvarez Paz has a worldwide reputation for being an honourable man devoted to...

Director of the Police under Mayor-OrejaCotino thinks that the Government is negotiating with ETA again. In spite of which it may seem, Mayor-Oreja is not alone in his belief that the Government is negotiating with ETA. Juan Cotino, former director of the [National] Police, has the same certainty. EUROPA PRESS Juan Cotino, now second deputy president of the Valencian Council, thinks that the [Zapatero’s] administration is negotiating with the terror organization ETA again, according what he told in an interview in the program ' Bon Matí' on Radio 9 […]. Cotino, [...] was appointed chief of a main directorate of...

France and Spain vowed to intensify efforts to clamp down on Eta activities today after suspected members of the Basque separatist group killed a French policeman in a shoot-out in a town south-east of Paris. Jean-Serge Nérin died of his injuries yesterday evening in Dammarie les Lys shortly after he was shot from a car that had been stolen by a group of at least six people, all but one of whom fled.

War: A Spanish court has charged Venezuela with collaborating in a terrorist plot to assassinate President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. That's an attempt on a top U.S. ally, and calls for a hard response. If it's not predator-drone time, it's time to name Venezuela as a state sponsor of terror. What came to light Monday isn't the first time Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has been caught aiding terrorists, but it may well be the most egregious. Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco named a Venezuelan government official as a key link between 12 FARC and ETA terrorists who were indicted in a 2003...