Friday, December 28, 2018

NEWS SUMMARY-INTELLIGENCE REPORT SATURDAY 12/29/2018  NEWSDUMP EDITION


(THIS IS BEING POSTED AT MIDNIGHT AND MAY BE UPDATED INTO SATURDAY MORNING)

President Trump urging action Friday to provide border wall funding as the old Congress reaches its last days.

His Friday tweets suggested a closing of the southern border if the Democrats don't allow the Senate to pass border wall funding.

The Senate will resume for a brief session on New Years Eve but after the beginning of the year a new Congress with the House run by Democrats hostile to President Trump takes over.

The President also tweeted Friday about cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

On Friday police in Bakersfield, California arrested the suspect in the murder of a Stanislaus County, California Sheriff's officer early Wednesday. 

Gustavo Perez Arriaga is the suspected illegal immigrant accused of killing Cpt. Ronil Singh in Newman, California.

Two others were taken into custody accused of being his accomplices.

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck shaking residents of the southern Philippine Island of Mindanao mid-day Saturday, late Friday night in the USA.

The quake centered in the ocean southeast of the island.

A tsunami warning was in effect for the southern and eastern coasts of Mindanao until 1am Eastern US time, 2 pm local time.

In Syria Friday announcements from various sides that they were marching towards or taking control of the city of Manbij at the western edge of the Kurdish part of Syria.

But the US coalition forces say they are still present inside the city and a local Manbij council official explains that Turkish and Turkish aligned forces, Syrian government aligned forces including Russian military police and Kurdish-US coalition forces all have their own zones in the area for now.

Pro-Syrian government Twitter feeds say that Syrian forces are in the countryside north of Manbij and will repel any Turkish moves in the direction of the city.

A high level Turkish delegation led by its Foreign Minister and presidential spokesman are in Moscow Saturday to discuss the future of Kurdish northeastern Syria following the withdrawal of US forces from the country expected in the coming months.

The United Arab Emirates announced Thursday the re-opening of its embassy in Damascus, a sign of a return to normalcy in relations after support for the Syrian government's enemies in the last seven years.   

Bahrain says its re-opening its Damascus embassy as well, another sign of the Gulf Arab states taking a new stance towards Syria after their support for the jihadist opposition.

Four are dead and ten injured after a roadside bomb exploded next to a tourist bus near the pyramids in Giza, Egypt Friday.   A group of Vietnamese tourists were on the bus.

The bomb was planted next to a wall and detonated as the bus passed.

Authorities in Egypt say they conducted raids on suspected terrorists and that 40 have been killed in the aftermath of the bombing.

Police in the Netherlands have arrested four suspected terrorists.   The arrests took place in Rotterdam.

More Yellow Vests protests were called in at least five French cities on Saturday, in what is expected to be an Act 7 of the protests, but there is larger interest on social media for a festive, non-violent Yellow Vests presence on the Champs-Elysses in Paris on New Year's Eve.

The city of Paris plans to go ahead with its regular celebrations Monday night including light shows.

Late word is that hundreds gathered in the southern French city of Marseille today and that a hundred Yellow Vests appeared on the Champs-Elysees for a brief confrontation with police.

There have been new questions raised about the activities of Alexandre Benalla, a former bodyguard for France's president Emmanuel Macron.  Benalla traveled to Chad three weeks ahead of President Macron at the beginning of this month and met with that country's president.  Benalla was cutting business deals in the country as he explained it.

He is still using special diplomatic passports including one given to him four days after he was fired from his job for dressing up as a policeman and attacking protesters at a May Day demonstration in Paris.  He had signed a document last May saying he was turning in any diplomatic passports and testified that he had turned his in before a French Senate committee in September.

The ex-Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz has created a new political party to contest the April 9th elections.  Little is known about the positions of the Israel Resilience Party other than it is committed to a "Jewish" and "democratic" Israel.   A Gantz party polls second to Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud in opinion polls released this week.

Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu dismissed a Gantz party saying it doesn't matter to him how "the Left" divides up its votes.

The grave of the father of Israel's Attorney General has been vandalized.    The tombstone specifically was vandalized.  Police are investigating the incident which took place last week.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will decide on the indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in three corruption cases.    Police have recommended Netanyahu's indictment and Mandelblit's decision is likely in March during the heat of the political campaign for the April 9th election.

Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement, calling the vandalism "a shocking event that must be condemned".    He was also questioning the ten day delay in the vandalism being publicized.

Jewish Home party leader Education Minister Naftali Bennett called the vandalism in part:

"....a terrible act that crosses red lines.  It is forbidden for the Israeli discourse to reach violent areas.."

Opposition protesters were met with tear gas and stun grenades in Sudan as anti-government protesters gathered following Friday prayers.

Nine opposition leaders were arrested Thursday by the government.

Protests against poor economic conditions have been going on for more than a week in the country.

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has declared a "major incident" as migrants in small boats have been crossing the English Channel from France  in significant numbers since November.  221 migrants have come across in total with 12 reported on Friday morning.

On Christmas morning, dozens of migrants in several boats appeared off the southern coast of England with 40 being taken off the small boats.

Javid has asked to speak with his French counterpart about the situation and is considering the deployment of additional border security vessels into the Channel but its possible that may not deter migrant crossings but only make them more likely.

The Federal Communications Commission investigating after a massive 911 outage across large portions of the country Thursday and Friday.    Outages in western Washington state, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Massachusetts among other places.

The source of the outage was CenturyLink with the company identifying the problem late Thursday but it still took many hours for service to come back to normal on Friday.

Banking giant Wells Fargo has reached a 575 million dollar settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The settlement stems from the companies banking and sales practices that involved millions of fake bank accounts being created under the names of real people who didn't know about them.

The money will be dished out to the various states with Mississippi for example getting 2.5 million dollars and Pennsylvania getting 16.5 million dollars dumped into its treasury.

The chairman of Sears, hedge fund billionaire Eddie Lampert, put in a last minute bid to save the company from liquidation Friday.   Lampert's 4.4 billion dollar offer would preserve the 425 stores still open and the jobs of 50,000 of the company's 68,000 employees.

From Her Majesty The Queen in London the 2019 honors list.   "Monty Python" star Michael Palin is knighted.   Yes indeed.  Model Twiggy is named a dame among others honored.

Also Canadian novelist Margo Atwood, best known for "The Handmaid's Tale", joins the "Companions of Honour"

Lyricist Norman Gimbel is dead at the age of 91.  Gimbel's lyrics are well remembered.     Some examples.  He wrote the words that went with theme of the "Happy Days" television series in the 1970's, the "Killing Me Softly" lyrics as recorded by Roberta Flack and others, plus the English language lyrics to "The Girl From Ipanema" as sung by Astrud Gilberto accompanied by Stan Getz  in the 1960's.

A prolific writer of lyrics, Gimbel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984.

And that's the way it really is as we enter Saturday morning December 29th, 2018.


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