Source: Gizmodo

Starting today, it appears the US military will be testing a device or devices that will potentially jam GPS signals for six hours each day. We say “appears” because officially the tests were announced by the FAA but are centered near the US Navy’s largest installation in the Mojave Desert. And the Navy won’t tell us much about what’s going on.

The FAA issued an advisory warning pilots on Saturday that global positioning systems (GPS) could be unreliable during six different days this month, primarily in the Southwestern United States. On June 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, and 30th the GPS interference testing will be taking place between 9:30am and 3:30pm Pacific time. But if you’re on the ground, you probably won’t notice interference.

The testing will be centered on China Lake, California—home to the Navy’s 1.1 million acre Naval Air Weapons Center in the Mojave Desert. The potentially lost signals will stretch hundreds of miles in each direction and will affect various types of GPS, reaching the furthest at higher altitudes. But the jamming will only affect aircraft above 5,000 feet. As you can see from the FAA map below, the jamming will almost reach the California-Oregon border at 4o,000 feet above sea level and 505 nautical miles at its greatest range.
Map released by the FAA showing the GPS jamming that will occur at different altitudes this month (FAA)

I gave the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division a call yesterday, but they couldn’t tell me much.

Read more: http://gizmodo.com/faa-warns-of-gps-outages-this-month-during-mysterious-t-1780866590

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Philadelphia wants to avoid a repeat of 2000 when it arrested more than 400 protesters at the Republican National Convention, only to see most cases end in acquittals.

Less than two months before the Democratic National Convention comes to town, a City Council committee has passed legislation letting police issue $100 civil fines rather than make criminal arrests for many nuisance crimes.

The offenses include disorderly conduct, blocking a street and failing to heed a request to disperse.

Police say it's mainly an effort to realign penalties for minor offenses in the wake of the city's decriminalization of possessing small amounts of marijuana.

But an adviser to the police commissioner told The Philadelphia Inquirer that one department concern was also how unruly protesters would be handled outside the DNC.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEM_2016_CONVENTION_PHILADELPHIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-06-06-11-14-35

Source: Haaretz

The American national security adviser also lashes out at Israel's settlement activity, saying that the only road to 'sustainable security for Israel and to dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians is two states for two peoples.'

Haaretz and JTA 07.06.2016 09:38 Updated: 10:24 AM

U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice promised Israel on Monday that the new military aid agreement between the two nations that is currently being negotiated will constitute “the single largest military assistance package — with any country — in American history.”

Addressing the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Rice said the new decade-long aid package, which is expected to provide Israel somewhere between $37.5 billion and $40 billion over the life of the pact, will “constitute a significant increase in support,” providing funding to update Israel’s aircraft fleet and strengthen missile defenses.

Hinting at the polarized views on Israeli policy among the U.S. presidential candidates, Rice said that “Israel’s security isn’t a Democratic interest or a Republican interest—it’s an enduring American interest.” At the same time, Rice lashed out at Israel's settlement activity, saying that the only road to “sustainable security for Israel and to dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians is two states for two peoples.”

“Just as we oppose counterproductive Palestinian actions and strongly condemn incitement and violence, settlement activity corrodes the prospects for two states,” she said. “It moves Israel toward a one-state reality.”


Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.723578

Source: Bloomberg

The death of meaningful U.S. immigration reform, done in by Washington partisanship and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s incendiary comments on foreigners, is leaving crops withering in the field and the farm lobby with nowhere to turn as a labor shortage intensifies.

Carlos Castaneda watched one-quarter of his Napa cabbages rot in three of his California fields this spring as 37 immigrant laborers scheduled to arrive March 13 under a farmworker visa program were delayed by bureaucratic paperwork. He said he’d like to see fixes to an immigration system that causes his crops to rot unharvested. But he has little hope that will happen in this political climate.

“The rhetoric that’s getting preached is pushing xenophobia,” said Castaneda, 39, whose parents are Mexican immigrants. “You can’t call an immigrant a murderer. You can’t paint them with that brush."

About a quarter of the U.S. farm workforce, more than 300,000 people, don’t have valid immigration papers, according to a 2009 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center. Other studies suggest the number may be more than 1 million. Proportions of undocumented workers tend to be higher in the hand-harvested fruit, vegetable and horticulture sectors, as well as large dairy farms where milking happens year-round.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-06/crops-rot-while-trump-led-immigration-backlash-idles-farm-lobby

The world’s most advanced fighter jet was canceled over cost. New threats have Congress asking if that was a mistake.

By Justin Bachman
June 7, 2016 — 6:00 AM EDT

The Pentagon collected its final F-22 Raptor from Lockheed Martin Corp. four years ago. Amid the Cold War’s end and shrinking defense budgets, the most advanced fighter jet ever built was deemed both unnecessary and unaffordable.

Now, Congress has ignited a flicker of hope for fans of the pricey plane. A House subcommittee asked the U.S. Air Force to investigate what it would cost to put the tactical fighter back into production. By many accounts, no other aircraft can match the F-22’s range of capabilities—many of which remain classified—for speed, agility, stealth, and battlefield sensor power. With 183 in service, a reboot could mean, theoretically, the delivery of 194 additional planes that were planned before the program was canceled. But at roughly $67 billion, the F-22 was ferociously expensive even by military contracting standards. The per-hour cost to fly it is higher than that of most of the Pentagon’s air fleet, including the newer, equally costly F-35 Lightning II.

Measured against these near-insurmountable fiscal realities is newly aggressive behavior and military upgrades by China and Russia. This year, Russia deployed its most advanced striker, the Sukhoi Su-35, for combat operations in Syria and is working to sell versions to China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Venezuela, and Brazil. And China has begun marketing its advanced FC-31 tactical fighter, which analysts believe is based largely on data stolen in an April 2009 hack of Lockheed Martin systems related to the F-35 program.

In an August report, the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group called the 2009 decision to end the F-22 “an unexpected way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” The fighter is revered among some as the guarantor of American air supremacy for decades to come, if only there were enough. It's dismissed by others as a gold-plated hammer in search of a nail, namely a mission beyond projecting air dominance.

The F-22 finally saw combat in September 2014, nine years after its entry into service, against Islamic State forces in Syria. And contractors long ago secured major tooling needed to restart the line, just in case. Nevertheless, any effort to revive it faces enormous obstacles, said Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst with Teal Group. He’s described the F-22 as a brilliant fighter without a mission, while the F-35 has a clear mission but troubles as an aircraft. “It’s not impossibly far-fetched,” he said of the F-22’s resurrection. “It’s just that there are very big hurdles.”

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-07/the-f-22-raptor-back-from-the-grave

Hillary Clinton stands on the cusp of history as the first woman to be the presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party, after a drawn-out campaign against Bernie Sanders that exposed her vulnerabilities as a candidate as well as divisions among Democrats.

With Democrats in six states still to make their choices on Tuesday, the Associated Press said that its count shows Clinton had secured the number of pledged delegates and superdelegates required to claim the Democratic nomination. The sudden conclusion of a contest that ran longer than Clinton—or anyone else—anticipated when she started her run will put new pressure on Sanders to end his insurgent campaign. It also puts a burden on Clinton to find a way to unify her party after a sometimes bitter fight.

Clinton signaled she wouldn't declare outright victory before voters cast ballots and caucused in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota, though her campaign used the AP designation moments after it was released to solicit campaign donations.

“According to the news we are on the brink of an historic, historic, unprecedented moment,” Clinton said Monday at a rally in Long Beach, California. “But we still have work to do, don't we? We have six elections tomorrow and we’re going to fight hard for every single vote, especially right here in California.”

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-07/clinton-s-new-task-after-clinching-democratic-nomination-is-unifying-party

Source: i24 News

US National Security Advisor rules out support for global peace initiative, slams Israelis and Palestinians

By i24news
Published: 06/07/2016 - 07:08am, updated: 08:48am

As France intensifies its bid to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks, US National Security Advisor Susan Rice warned that conditions in Israel and the West Bank were deteriorating, which she blamed on actions by both sides.

In an exclusive interview with US Jewish weekly the Forward on Monday, Rice ruled out support for a global peace initiative, while expressing unusual criticism of both Israeli and Palestinian behavior.

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Rice, who addressed the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum on Monday, said that negotiations over a 10-year military aid deal for Israel is evidence of the United States’ support for Israel. “Even in these days of belt-tightening, we are prepared to sign the single largest military assistance package with any country in history,” Rice said.

She also noted that Israel already “receives more than half of the US’s entire foreign military assistance budget.”

Read more: http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/115901-160607-susan-rice-criticizes-israel-but-promises-largest-aid-package-in-history

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — A New York City municipal pool that maintains female-only hours so that Hasidic Jewish women can swim with no men present has raised alarms among critics who say the accommodation to a particular religious group violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

But defenders say the women-only swim sessions at the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Brooklyn give women whose community separates the sexes a rare chance to exercise.

“Why deprive them?” said New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat who represents a heavily Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn.
Really, you’re not taking away from anyone else.”

The rec center in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood has apparently kept women-only pool hours since the 1990s, but the practice only came to the attention of the wider public when someone complained about it to the city’s Commission on Human Rights.

Commission spokesman Seth Hoy said it received an anonymous tip “a few months back” that the indoor pool might be violating the city’s human rights law, which bans sex discrimination in public accommodations.

more...

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/06/06/brooklyn-pool-that-reserves-women-only-hours-sparks-controversy/

Economic growth will slacken in 2016 to its slowest pace in four years as uncertainty about the presidential election weighs on the outlook, according to a survey of forecasters by the National Association for Business Economics.

They see gross domestic product expanding 1.9 percent this year on a fourth quarter-to- fourth quarter basis. That’s down from a projected 2.5 percent gain in the last quarterly survey released in March and compares with growth last year of 2 percent.



Almost 60 percent of forecasters say uncertainty surrounding the November presidential election will hurt the economy, the association said.

“If I’m an owner of a medium-sized business and I’m hearing very rattling news about the election, on the margin I’ll be a little more cautious about hiring or making an investment,” said Lisa Emsbo-Mattingly, president of NABE.

Emsbo-Mattingly, who is also director of research for asset allocation for Fidelity Investments in Boston, said the biggest factor behind the markdown in the 2016 outlook is weak business investment. Spending on equipment, structures and intellectual property is projected to stall in 2016, after expanding 2.8 percent last year.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-06/u-s-economy-projected-to-expand-this-year-by-least-since-2012