Tehran claims reverse-engineering U.S. drone
Tehran claims reverse-engineering U.S. drone
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in Iran last year, including information that the aircraft was used to spy on Osama bin Laden weeks before he was killed. Iran also said it was building a copy of the drone.
Similar unmanned surveillance planes have been used in Afghanistan for years and kept watch on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. But U.S. officials have said little about the history of the particular aircraft now in Iran’s possession.
Tehran, which has also been known to exaggerate its military and technological prowess, says it brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret drone equipped with stealth technology, and has flaunted the capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States.
The U.S. says the drone malfunctioned and downplayed any suggestion that Iran could mine the aircraft for sensitive information because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.
The drone went down in December in eastern Iran and was recovered by Iran almost completely intact. After initially saying only that a drone had been lost near the Afghan-Iran border, American officials eventually confirmed the plane was monitoring Iran’s military and nuclear facilities.
Civil rights probe laughing matter for Arpaio
PHOENIX — An audio recording has surfaced of an Arizona sheriff playing his refusal to cooperate in a racial profiling investigation for laughs at a fundraiser for an anti-illegal immigration group in Texas. He ridicules politicians who sought the probe and displayed contempt toward federal authorities who were — and are still — investigating him on two fronts.
The dismissive comments in 2009 by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio came as the U.S. Justice Department had already launched a civil rights probe of his trademark immigration patrols and the FBI already was examining abuse-of-power allegations for the sheriff’s investigations of political foes.
In the September 2009 speech in Houston, Arpaio boasted that he arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants after politicians and federal investigators started to pick apart his patrols. He said he wouldn’t cooperate with the inquiry, but said he would tone down the patrols — if he was proven wrong.
“But I’m not. After they went after me, we arrested 500 more just for spite,” the self-proclaimed “America’s toughest sheriff” said, pausing for laughter and applause.
In an interview Thursday, Arpaio defended his comments before Texans For Immigration Reform as a collection of humorous off-the-cuff remarks intended merely to show that he wasn’t going to back down to critics.
Newspaper devotes entire front page to fighting bullying
In a rare and forceful act of advocacy, an Iowa newspaper devoted the entire front page of its Sunday edition to an anti-bullying editorial after a gay teen committed suicide.
Relatives have said Kenneth Weishuhn Jr., 14, suffered intense harassment, including threatening cellphone calls and nasty comments posted online, after coming out to family and friends about a month ago. He died April 15 from what the local sheriff’s office described only as a “self-inflicted injury.”
The Sioux City Journal’s front-page opinion piece calls on the community to be pro-active in stopping bullying and urges members to learn more about the problem by seeing the acclaimed new film, “Bully,” which documents the harassment of a Sioux City middle school student. It notes that while many students are targeted for being gay, “we have learned a bully needs no reason to strike.”
“In Kenneth’s case, the warnings were everywhere,” the editorial said. “Undoubtedly, it wasn’t the first life lost to bullying here, but we can strive to make it the last.
Editor Mitch Pugh said the newspaper has run front-page editorials before but has never devoted the entire page to one.
By wire sources