The Telegraph - Bruno Waterfield

The European Union is to ban olive oil jugs and dipping bowls from restaurant tables

CNN - Faith Karimi

A federal court has sentenced two Minnesota women to lengthy prison sentences for soliciting donations in the name of charity, then funneling the funds to Somali militants.

Authorities said the two women went door-to-door in Somali neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada, seeking contributions.

Amina Farah Ali, 36, got two decades in prison on 13 terror-related counts that include providing material support to Al-Shabaab. Read more »

The Washington Times - Jeffrey T Kuhner

All the president’s problems lead to his own doorstep

President Obama is facing a perfect storm of scandals, cover-ups and criminality that threatens to sweep him from power. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first Watergate hearings. They eventually brought down President Nixon, forcing him to resign. Mr. Obama is the liberal Nixon — a corrupt chief executive, who is presiding over a lawless administration.

Like Tricky Dick, the Obama administration has an “enemies list.” The Internal Revenue Service has admitted that its agents deliberately targeted conservative, Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel Jewish groups, denying or blocking their requests for tax-exempt status. During the 2012 election cycle, the IRS — under the direction of its Washington office — became an arm of the Obama regime to persecute its political opponents. The agency abrogated personal freedoms and violated numerous laws. Read more »

CNN

British police have identified a number of suspects in the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann during a 2007 family vacation in Portugal, London’s Metropolitan Police said Friday.

A review was launched in 2011 in an attempt to find out what happened to the British toddler who vanished from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on the Algarve coast, police told CNN.

Police have been working closely with Portuguese authorities on the case. Read more »

The Telegraph - Tom Phillips, Shanghai and agencies

China has tested a long-range missile capable of intercepting satellites, US intelligence sources have claimed.

BBC

Nigerian troops will have difficulty flushing out Boko Haram militants in urban areas

At least 30 militants have been killed during air raids on their training camps in north-eastern Nigeria, officials say.

An army spokesman said jets and helicopter gunships had been used to attack several camps.

He told the BBC that a plane had been hit by anti-aircraft fire but had managed to return to base.

States of emergency were declared this week in three north-eastern states hit by Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency. Read more »

CNN

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.2 struck eastern Canada on Friday morning, the government said.

The quake was centered about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from Shawville, in western Quebec, near the Ontario border. It was felt in the Ottawa-Gatineau area and out to Toronto, more than 260 miles away, and in New York state.

Authorities say it is unlikely the quake, which occurred at 9:43 a.m., caused significant damage. Read more »

The Telegraph - Jeremy Warner

The latest brainwave from Brussels has the City in its sights, even if Britain goes it alone

The Telegraph - Louise Armitstead, Chief Business Correspondent

A stagnant economy, a weak President and a jump in car burnings are all signs of a looming crisis in France.

CNN

A 30-year-old Uzbek national who has been arrested on federal terrorism charges is expected to make an initial appearance in a Boise, Idaho, court on Friday.

A grand jury in Boise returned a three-court indictment charging Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and one count of possessing an unregistered destructive device.

A grand jury in Salt Lake City, Utah, returned a separate indictment charging him with one count of distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction. Read more »

BBC

At least 40 people have been killed and dozens injured by two attacks apparently targeting Sunnis in towns near the Iraqi capital.

In the first attack, in Baquba, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad, at least 30 people were killed by two bombs detonated outside a Sunni mosque.

Later, police said at least seven people were killed by a bomb at a Sunni funeral in Madain, to the south. Read more »

CNN

Republicans using the Internal Revenue Service scandal to slam health care reform have a new twist in their argument.

Sarah Hall Ingram, who heads the implementation of the Affordable Care Act at the IRS, formerly led the agency’s tax exempt/government entities division, the same division that’s now taking heat for targeting conservative groups in the past few years.

An IRS spokesperson confirmed Ingram is the current director of the Affordable Care Act office, a department she’s worked in since December 2010. Meanwhile, a 2009 posting on the IRS website referred to her as the commissioner for the tax exempt/government entities division. Read more »

BBC

Russia has sent sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Syria, US media report.

The New York Times quotes unnamed US officials as saying the missiles could be used to counter any potential future foreign military intervention in Syria.

Without confirming details, Russia’s foreign minister said Russian supplies did not break any international rules.

It comes amid growing alarm that chemical weapons may be being used in Syria, something US President Barack Obama has said would be “a red line”. Read more »

CNN - Jennifer Feldman

Police in Omaha, Nebraska, said Thursday that they’re looking into whether there’s a connection between the recent killings of a university professor and his wife and two unsolved area homicides.

Roger and Mary Brumback, both 65, were found dead at their home early Tuesday by officers responding to a welfare call.

Police are saying little else about the case. Read more »

CNN - Barbara Starr

The U.S. military has updated plans to “capture or kill” alleged perpetrators of the deadly terror attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, CNN has learned.

The development comes amid growing pressure on the White House to show progress in the effort to catch those who killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans last September 11.

Officials emphasize that military planning has been underway since the immediate aftermath of the armed assault. Read more »

The Hill - Bernie Becker and Peter Schroeder

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said Friday that he expects more IRS officials to lose their jobs over the targeting of conservative groups – but that even that won’t fix broad problems within the agency.

Camp, leading off the first hearing held on the extra scrutiny the IRS gave to Tea Party groups, rattled off what he said were at least five separate violations of taxpayers – including threats to conservative organizations, and the leaking of confidential information.

Camp also linked the IRS uproar to what he called a “culture of cover-ups – and political intimidation – in this administration,” an apparent nod to last year’s attack in Benghazi and the Justice Department’s seizure of reporter records. Read more »

Mail Online - David Martosko, Washington DC

• Assailed by questions over three scnadals engulfing White House during Rose Garden press conference with Turkish Prime Minister
• Would not say whether anyone in his West Wing knew about the IRS targeting of the Tea Party before last week
• Offered ‘no apologies’ for DoJ secretly seizing phone records of Associated Press reporters over intelligence leak
• Admitted ‘lessons needed to be learned’ from Benghazi but said it was up to Congress to approve more money for military to provide extra security in hotspots abroad

President Barack Obama dodged questions Thursday about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, shifted responsibility for the Benghazi attack to Congress, and said ‘I offer no apologies’ for the Department of Justice’s secret seizure of reporter’s phone records in search of a classified intelligence leak. Read more »

The outrageous behavior by the IRS when dealing with those who are opposed to the politics of the Obama administration continues to come to light. The latest example involves the Coalition for Life of Iowa. The group was contacted by an IRS employee, who gave her name as Ms. Richards, who demanded s sworn statement that the coalition would not be involved with protesting near Planned Parenthood’s abortion operations. Once received, according to Ms. Richards, the group would be given their tax exemption.

BBC

ALancaster bomber has performed a flypast over Derwent reservoir, 70 years on from the historic World War II raid on German dams.

Hundreds of onlookers gathered near the dam - one of the practice sites pilots used ahead of their top-secret mission. Read more »

The Telegraph - Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor

Nigel Farage has been barricaded by police in a pub before being whisked away in a riot van after his visit to Scotland was hijacked by hard-Left independence supporters.

CNN - Jake Tapper

The U.S. Marshals Service had been “unable to locate” two former participants in the federal Witness Security Program who have been identified as known or suspected terrorists according to the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The Marshals Service has concluded that “one individual was and the other individual was believed to be residing outside of the United States,” according to the public summary of an interim Justice Department Inspector General’s report obtained by CNN. Read more »

Townhall.com - Guy Benson

Remember what we were told when this explosive story first broke less than a week ago? The IRS official in charge of tax exemptions for organizations saidthe improper methods employed within her division were executed by “low level workers” in Cincinnati who weren’t motivated by “political bias,” and impacted roughly 75 organizations? Wrong, wrong and wrong:

“Low Level” - Officials within the highest echelons of the agency were aware of the inappropriate targeting, including the last two commissioners — at least one of whom appears to havemisled Congress on this very question. Now Politico reports that Lerner herselfsent at least one of the probing letters to an Ohio-based conservative group. Read more »

The Washington Examiner - Joel Gehrke

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.” Read more »

The Daily Caller - Neil Munro

The Benghazi-related emails released by the White House late May 15 exclude the critical emails between administration officials that were sent during the crucial first two days after the deadly jihadi attack that killed four Americans last September.

The 100 pages of partially redacted emails also conclude with a dismissive message from CIA chief David Petraeus.

“Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” Petraeus said about the heavily edited, four-sentence “talking points” that the White House used to downplay Al Qaeda’s role in the Sep. 11 attack on the poorly protected diplomatic compound. Read more »

BBC

French President Francois Hollande says recession is now “threatening the very identity of Europe”.

Speaking at a news conference in Paris, he said the financial crisis was now under control and “behind us” but “what is hitting Europe is a recession… provoked by the austerity policy”.

Mr Hollande was speaking after figures showed France to be back in recession. Read more »

The Telegraph - William Clarke and agencies

The Telegraph - Emma Rowley

Britain is on track to “accelerate” its shale gas program, according to Michael Fallon, the energy minister.

A test drilling site for shale gas Photo: Rex Features

The Telegraph - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

My colleague Jeremy Warner has set off a storm in the Spanish press and something close to a diplomatic incident by asserting in a blog that Spain is insolvent.

BBC

Seven members of the Egyptian security forces have been seized by unidentified kidnappers in the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian officials say.

The three policemen and four soldiers were captured while travelling in minibuses in northern Sinai, east of the city of El Arish.

The kidnappers are said to be demanding the release from prison of jailed relatives. Read more »

CNN - Chelsea J Carter, Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick

The nation’s top tax collector resigned Wednesday amid controversy over Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups that applied for federal tax-exempt status.

The official, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, was aware employees were targeting conservative groups in May 2012, according to the agency.

But Miller, then the agency’s deputy commissioner, didn’t tell Congress about it when he testified before an oversight committee in July — despite being questioned on the issue. He was named acting commissioner in November. Read more »

CNN - Jake Tapper and Alison Harding

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa exclusively obtained by CNN, the co-chairmen behind an independent review of September’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, expressed irritation over the House Oversight Committee chairman’s portrayal of their work and requested he call a public hearing at which they can testify.

“The public deserves to hear your questions and our answers,” wrote former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, co-chairmen of the Accountability Review Board that was convened to investigate the September 11th attack. Read more »

CNN

David Beckham, one of the most iconic football stars of his generation, has announced his retirement.

His decision comes days after the 38-year-old won his latest title with French club Paris Saint-Germain.

Beckham, who won the Champions League with Manchester United in 1999, also won league titles with Real Madrid, AC Milan and Los Angeles Galaxy before arriving in the French capital earlier this year.

The midfielder won 115 caps for England and is married to former Spice Girl and fashion designer, Victoria, He is estimated to be the country’s wealthiest sportsman. Read more »

CNN - Susan Candiotti

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev hiding in the boat in a backyard of Watertown on April 19.

Boston Marathon bombing victims were collateral damage in a strike meant as payback for U.S. wars in Muslim lands, the surviving suspect wrote in a message scribbled on the boat where he was found hiding, a law enforcement source told CNN Thursday.

In the message, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev also proclaimed that an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all and said he would not miss older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who died after a firefight with police three days after the bombing — because he would soon be joining him, according to the source. Read more »

CNN - Lateef Mungin

Tornadoes ripped through North Texas on Wednesday night, part of a weather system that killed at least six people and injured more than 100 others, officials said.

The fatalities occurred when the storm struck a Habitat for Humanity neighborhood in the Granbury area, Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds said. There were about 120 homes in the neighborhood, and most of them were destroyed.

At least 10 tornadoes touched down in the area overnight, according to a National Weather Service preliminary count. Read more »

The Hill - Amie Parnes

The White House took a series of steps Wednesday to make up with the Washington press corps.

The wooing took several shapes and followed a disastrous press briefing on Tuesday at which White House press secretary Jay Carney was torn apart over the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press phone records.

To bolster President Obama’s free-press credentials, the White House announced Wednesday it had asked Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce a press shield law that would allow media organizations to challenge subpoenas of phone records and offer legal protections for protecting confidential sources. Read more »