In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business.
But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts - with no authority to run spy operations - paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world's darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.
Missing American in Iran was on unapproved CIA mission
House exhales after passing compromise budget 332-94
The House of Representatives on Thursday approved by a vote of 332-94 a modest bipartisan plan to spend more on both defense and domestic programs for the next two years, an agreement aimed at avoiding government shutdowns and easing automatic spending cuts.
Conservatives fumed that the plan didn’t take the kind of bold steps to reduce spending and deficits they have long sought. Democrats were not pleased that the package didn’t tackle emergency unemployment benefits, which expire Dec. 28.
U.S. drone strike hits wedding party killing 15 people 'by mistake'
Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday.
The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.
"An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital," one security official said.
North Korea: Kim Jong-un's Uncle Has Been Executed
North Korean state news agency KCNA has announced that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of leader Kim Jong-un and formerly one of his closest advisors, has been executed.
The story appears on the English-language KCNA website under the title "Traitor Jang Song Thaek Executed," though no further details of the execution are contained in the body of the story.
Inside the military’s male sexual assault problem
For more than a decade, a debilitating secret festered inside Mike Scott’s head. He tried to tuck it away into a dark corner of his brain, but it consumed his life, pushing him to drink excessively, smoke heavily and, on three occasions, try to kill himself.
“The last time, I was putting pressure on the trigger,” the 42-year-old airline baggage handler said.
Clad in jeans and a button-down flannel shirt, the 6-foot-plus Army veteran agreed to meet with “America Tonight” at a forest that borders the Rio Grande. It’s a place he frequently visits to quell his anxiety.
In Newtown, memorials are gone but reminders are everywhere
Just two weeks after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, the elaborate memorials that drew hundreds of mourners from around the country came down.
Gone were the 26 Christmas trees — one for each victim — that lined the road leading to the Sandy Hook firehouse, where parents learned the fates of their children. The wooden angels staked in a hillside, where many stopped to pray, were pulled from the ground. The bouquets of flowers were picked up, the candles collected. Town officials said it would all be processed into “sacred soil,” perhaps to put at the site of a permanent memorial.
Michigan women will now have to purchase ‘rape insurance’ to get an abortion
The Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature pushed through a bill on Wednesday requiring women to purchase separate insurance policies if they want to have an abortion, the Detroit Free Press reported.
“I don’t think elective abortion should be a part of insurance,” state Rep. Nancy Jenkins (R) told the Free Press. “This doesn’t affect access to abortion. It will still be legal when this law takes effect. Who should be required to pay? Not Michigan taxpayers.”
Piers Morgan Joked About Phone Hacking With Murdoch Editor
CNN host Piers Morgan has been dragged into the London phone hacking trial which is focused on allegations of illegality at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid.
Morgan, who now fronts a nightly show in the U.S., learnt his trade as a showbiz reporter at Murdoch’s daily tabloid the Sun. A court in London heard on Wednesday from a witness for the prosecution that he had discussed phone hacking, long before the scandal became public, with Rebekah Brooks at a private dinner attended by some of the “most powerful people in the media industry.”
U.S. drilling boom leaves some homeowners in a big hole
The United States has a long history of keeping industrial activity out of middle and upper-middle-class residential neighborhoods. But that is starting to change with the spread of new technology for oil and gas drilling, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
The new techniques have allowed once-unreachable reservoirs of energy, trapped beneath the forested suburbs and bustling urban centers of places like Los Angeles, Denver and Cleveland, to be pumped out for the first time. As a result, millions of American homeowners now find themselves living within a mile of drilling activity that they say is deflating the value of their homes, making it hard for them to move.
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