Driver says Hastings? car was speeding before crash

Journalist Michael Hastings in Vermont (Penguin/Rolling Stone)

A driver who witnessed the fiery crash that killed journalist Michael Hastings says the vehicle the 33-year-old was driving shook his car "like a freight truck" as it flew by early Tuesday morning in Los Angeles.

"Was stopped at a red light tonight when a pearl white Mercedes flew past," Michael Carter wrote on Facebook a few hours later. "It shook my car like a freight truck going by. Saw it burst into flames a quarter mile down the road when it hit a tree."

In a Facebook message to Yahoo News, Carter explained in detail what he saw:

I was stopped at the light at Santa Monica [Boulevard], headed south on Highland [Avenue]. I looked down to turn my radio down, and this car just blasted past me through the red light?it shook my car. No telling how fast the driver was going. A taxi driver was in the far right lane and we looked at each other, both saying, "What the hell was that?"... By the time the light changed, I could only see the tail lights of the white Mercedes?it was probably past Willoughby by then which was the next red light that I got stopped at. The Mercedes was flying down Highland. The same cab driver pulled up to the light at Willoughby [Avenue] and I looked over at him again in disbelief. Right as I did, the cab driver said something to the effect of, "He didn't make it." The [Mercedes] was all the way south of Melrose [Avenue] at this point.

I looked down Highland and saw a giant fireball at the base of one of the palms that line the medians on Highland. It was surreal. Even from as far away as I was, I could see how violent an impact it had been. I live in the area so parked near my place and sprinted over the the scene of the accident. As I was running, a couple of workers from the service station at the corner of Melrose and Highland were also running over. In broken English, one of them and I traded stories of what we saw as we ran. From what I could understand, he saw the car come off the ground at some point?maybe when [it] crossed Melrose.

A Hancock Park resident was already spraying the car with his water hose when we got to it, but wasn't making any progress. The car was engulfed. I couldn't see inside it. Fire trucks and police cars were at the scene almost immediately, it seemed.

I stayed and watched firefighters extinguish the the blaze. Bummed a cigarette from a guy named Jeremy and traded stories about what we saw. He was right around Melrose and Highland when it happened. I gave a statement to police and walked home.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the driver was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 4:25 a.m. Initially, neither the department nor the Los Angeles County coroner's office could positively identify the victim because the body was too badly burned. On Wednesday, the coroner confirmed the body taken from the vehicle was Hastings but said it would likely take several weeks to determine a cause of death.

Raw video taken from the scene?posted on LAWeekly.com?shows Hastings' vehicle engulfed in flames. The crash remains under investigation, the LAPD said on Thursday, but police officials told the Los Angeles Times they do not suspect foul play.

Hastings, a Vermont native whose 2010 Rolling Stone profile of U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal ("The Runaway General") led to McChrystal's resignation, was hired by BuzzFeed last spring to cover President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and had been working for the site's 6-month-old Los Angeles bureau.

News of Hastings' death was met with a variety of conspiracy theories.

According to the Times, he had been working on a story about Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite who recently filed a privacy lawsuit against the Department of Defense and the FBI.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks claimed Hastings had contacted a lawyer for the anti-secrecy organization shortly before the crash.

"Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him," WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter:

But on Thursday, the FBI said it was conducting no such investigation. "At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI," the bureau said in a statement to the Burlington Free Press.

Hastings is survived by his wife, Elise Jordan, a journalist and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians," BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement announcing Hastings' death. "He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold."

"Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity," Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana said in a statement of his own. "The sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there's no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I'm sad that I'll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/hastings-crash-witness-113514329.html

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Guardian: Documents expose massive UK spying op

LONDON (AP) ? British spies are running an online eavesdropping operation so vast that internal documents say it even outstrips the United States' international Internet surveillance effort, the Guardian newspaper reported Friday.

The paper cited British intelligence memos leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that U.K. spies were tapping into the world's network of fiber optic cables to deliver the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes ? the name given to the espionage alliance composed of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

That access could in theory expose a huge chunk of the world's everyday communications ? including the content of people's emails, calls, and more ? to scrutiny from British spies and their American allies. How much data the Brits are copying off the fiber optic network isn't clear, but it's likely to be enormous. The Guardian said the information flowing across more than 200 cables was being monitored by more than 500 analysts from the NSA and its U.K. counterpart, GCHQ.

"This is a massive amount of data!" the Guardian quoted a leaked slide as boasting. The paper said other leaked slides, including one labeled "Collect-it-all," gave hints as to the program's ambition.

"Why can't we collect all the signals all the time?" NSA chief Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander was quoted as saying in another slide. "Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith" ? a reference to GCHQ's Menwith Hill eavesdropping site in northern England.

The NSA declined to comment on Friday's report. GCHQ also declined to comment on the report, although in an emailed statement it repeated past assurances about the legality of its actions.

"Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorized, necessary, and proportionate," the statement said.

The Guardian, whose revelations about America and Britain's globe-spanning surveillance programs have reignited an international debate over the ethics of espionage, said GCHQ was using probes to capture and copy data as it crisscrossed the Atlantic between Western Europe and North America.

It said that, by last year, GCHQ was in some way handling 600 million telecommunications every day ? although it did not go into any further detail and it was not clear whether that meant that GCHQ could systematically record or even track all the electronic movement at once.

Fiber optic cables ? thin strands of glass bundled together and strung out underground or across the oceans ? play a critical role in keeping the world connected. A 2010 estimate suggested that such cables are responsible for 95 percent of the world's international voice and data traffic, and the Guardian said Britain's geographic position on Europe's western fringe gave it natural access to many of the trans-Atlantic cables as they emerged from the sea.

The Guardian said GCHQ's probes did more than just monitor the data live; British eavesdroppers can store content for three days and metadata ? information about who was talking to whom, for how long, from where, and through what medium ? for 30 days.

The paper quoted Snowden, the leaker, as saying that the surveillance was "not just a US problem. The U.K. has a huge dog in this fight ... They (GCHQ) are worse than the U.S."

Snowden, whose whereabouts are unknown, faces the prospect of prosecution in the United States over his disclosures, and some there have called on him to be tried for treason. Snowden has expressed interest in seeking asylum in Iceland, where a local businessman said he was prepared to fly the leaker should he request it.

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Snowden have so far been unsuccessful.

___

Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/guardian-documents-expose-massive-uk-spying-op-184321219.html

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Inside WWE's massive video vault

WWE owns, quite simply, the largest library of professional wrestling content in the world.

Since buying out WCW in 2001, the titan of sports-entertainment has acquired the tape libraries of major promotions, including ECW, AWA, World Class Championship Wrestling, Championship Wrestling from Florida, Smoky Mountain Wrestling and many others. But who is responsible for curating this priceless collection? How is it organized and stored?

Check out photos of The Fink and WWEClassics.com taking a trip deep inside the library

Bryan Staffaroni is WWE?s Director of Media Technology. In this role, he is responsible for the massive undertaking of digitally archiving each and every match that WWE owns.

?Whether it was a WCW Nitro episode or some MSG show from back in the day ? if it aired, we ingested it in that project,? Staffaroni explained.

As WWE?s Director of Asset Management, George Germanakos oversees the content of what is currently owned, while also keeping an eye on what independent libraries WWE might be interested in acquiring in the future.

?When someone in the company is looking for a certain piece of footage, they?ll come to me,? Germanakos said. ?Whether it is years, dates, venues, names, whatever they need. Call my department up and we?ll get that information and that footage.?

Together, these two men allow the WWE Universe to consume rare wrestling footage and also provide the information needed for historical video packages seen on WWE programming today. On a rainy June day, WWEClassics.com and WWE Hall of Famer Howard Finkel were given a tour of WWE?s top-secret tape library and storage facility. Join us to discover what we found inside.

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Source: http://www.wwe.com/classics/inside-video-vault

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Frustrated veterans plead for help with ?the wait we carry?

President Barack Obama greets Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Eilene Henderson in Section 60 of Arlington National??"Imagine this is you." The words have barely appeared on the screen, over footage of what seems to be an American military convoy, when there's an explosion. "Your life is changed forever" the text reads, over images of two soldiers carrying a wounded comrade, followed by a picture of two artificial legs and a cane. "How long should you have to wait before the country you served provides the help it promised?"

They fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, and now they're facing a different kind of enemy at home: Frequently shocking delays in getting their government to process their disabilities claims. One frustrated veterans group -- Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America -- has put together a new interactive tool to show the American public that "behind every piece of data is a person."

The piece of data is this: The 1,768 veterans profiled on "The Wait We Carry" have waited an average of 546 days to get their benefits. The tool lets you narrow down the list by home state, conflict, and other details. They can share their names, though many do not. The tool allows you to reach out to an individual veteran. And it lets veterans, in turn, share their stories. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Scarring. Burns. Shrapnel. Bad backs. Bad knees.

They aren't all horror stories -- some veterans waited a relatively brief stretch.

But some are grim.

IAVA spotlighted Jonathan Goodman, who served in the Marines and did two tours in Iraq, earning a Purple Heart for wounds suffered in a suicide bomb blast in 2004. Come July 1, 2013, the Tulsa, OK, resident will have waited a full year after filing a claim for traumatic brain injury, chronic migraines and other ailments.

The local VA hospital provides him with medical treatment, but the delay has left him taking extra work shifts while his wife puts in longer hours, IAVA said.

?It's sad to see so many veterans come back and apply for this disability benefits and then wait so long to get a response. It can send a lot of veterans into a downward spiral," said Goodman. ?Veterans need to get the help they've earned. They shouldn't be put on the back burner."

On June 4, the White House said that President Barack Obama is "deadly serious" about wiping out the massive backlog in veterans' disability benefits claims by 2015.

The problem predates Obama's arrival in office. But solutions have been slow in coming. In early June, according to IAVA figures, 865,265 veterans had disability claims pending with Veterans Affairs as of May 25. And 575,825 had been waiting for at least 125 days. It's an issue that has attracted attention from various quarters?including a devastating report from "The Daily Show."

"The wait we carry" recalls the Veterans Administration motto, pulled from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, in which he affirmed the nation's duty "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/frustrated-veterans-plead-help-wait-carry-105641059.html

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How I Motivated Myself to Face My Weight and Debt Problems

There was a time when I was overweight, but didn?t want to admit it to myself. I didn?t feel in control of my health, because I couldn?t quit smoking or eat healthier for longer than a few days, nor exercise regularly.

Thinking about my weight made me feel horrible, so I didn?t want to even think about it. Of course, not thinking about it meant I never did anything about it. Not facing my problems made it worse, which just made me feel worse. It was a downward spiral, and really hard to stop.

I had the same downward spiral when I was in debt (at the same time in my life, about eight years ago). I couldn?t pay all my bills, so I would stuff them in a drawer so I didn?t have to see them. I had creditors calling me but I didn?t answer their calls (I knew their numbers on the caller ID). I didn?t know how much debt I was in because I never wanted to open the envelopes, much less add it all up on paper. I?d borrow money to pay bills, then owe more. And I?d skip paying lots of bills, and accrue interest.

It wasn?t a smart way to manage my finances, but I couldn?t stand the thought of facing all of it. I felt bad even thinking about my finances, so I?d avoid them, and think about other things. Of course, this led to me seeking distraction in food and entertainment and shopping, which led to worse debt. Not facing my debt made it worse.

How did I overcome all of this? I?ll share it here, in hopes that it will help others facing the same problem?or not facing it. It?s also important to note that if you know someone in bad health (or bad financial shape), they are probably also in denial. They don?t want to even talk about it. How do you help them? I?ll share that below too.

How I Finally Faced Things

So how do you face a problem, so you can work on it, when you don?t want to face it? There has to be a point when you say, ?This isn?t good. I need to do something about it.?

In truth, there usually isn?t just one point?there are many. It?s a building problem, where you get many data points over time?you see yourself in a picture and don?t like how heavy you look, you get a comment from someone that?s less than flattering, your pants don?t fit anymore, you breathe heavy when you try to run for a couple of minutes. But then there has to be a point where you decide that enough is enough. You start to feel some resolve. You decide you can do something?it?s not insurmountable.

How exactly I got to that point, I can?t fully remember. But I do know that there were several things that helped me:

• Inspiration: Seeing other people with similar situations who overcame the problem? in blogs and magazines, mainly.
• Do-ability: I didn?t think I could lose all the weight or overcome my huge mountain of debt in a day or a week? but having a small step I could actually do was mentally empowering. If I could do something in a day or two, that was doable. It felt like I could take control again.
• Motivation: When I saw that my health problems were going to be an example for my kids, I knew I had to make a change. When I saw that my financial problems were hurting my family, I knew I had to make a change. In both cases, my motivation for change was bigger than myself?I was doing it to help people I cared about.
• Commitment: When I was inspired by others to make a change, I took an easy step that?s actually a very big step?I made a commitment. Making a commitment is actually very easy?you can tell a friend, a child, a spouse, or the world (via social media or email) that you?re going to make a change. Commit not just to ?losing weight? or ?getting out of debt? but to something specific: ?run 3x a week and cut out sweets? is better. So is ?make a list of all my debts, then make a payment to the first one." Those are first steps? you can always ?add more veggies? or ?make a meal plan? after you get started. But making a commitment is an easy (if a bit scary) first step that will lock you in to further steps.

I have to admit that it wasn?t as simple as making a decision to change, and then continually making progress with no discouragements. Not at all. I would try to make a change, slip up, feel bad, then start again. And again. And make adjustments each time, learning about myself in the process, and over time getting good at the skill of change. But the first step?facing the problem?was made possible by inspiration, do-ability, motivation and finally commitment.

How to Get Others to Face Their Problems

I firmly believe that you can?t force anyone to change. You can only inspire them to change, if you?re lucky. That?s not an easy task. If you have a friend or family member who is struggling with health issues, or financial problems, or something similar where they don?t want to face the problem ? it?s tough. They probably don?t want to hear it from you.

However, that?s not to say you should throw your hands up and forget about it. You can still help. Just don?t try to force it.

Here?s what I would suggest:

1. Never attack?empathize. Never tell the person they?re doing something wrong, or imply they?re a bad or undisciplined or lazy person. Assume that they have the best of intentions, that they would change if they could, but they feel bad about it. Assume that you would feel the same if you were in their position?and try to remember a time when you felt that way. Don?t be patronizing, nor ?sympathize." That?s condescending.
2. Inspire. Set an example, and share what?s working for you. Share stories of other people who have overcome problems.
3. Suggest something do-able. And do it with them. If you want them to tackle health issues, suggest the two of you go walking after work every day. Just for 15 minutes (at first). It?s a nice way to socialize and bond, but also get active. This is a small step that can be built upon?later you can walk further, or faster, and maybe add some jogging intervals to the walking after a few weeks or months (health permitting). You can also later do some diet challenges. But the key is to make the steps do-able, easy, and social.
4. Offer to be an accountability buddy. If the other person admits to not being motivated, suggest that they commit to you, and be accountable to you (email you every day or every week to share progress or lack thereof). Suggest that they set a fun consequence (something embarrassing) if they don?t live up to their commitment to you. Or do a challenge, where the two of you are doing something fun at the same time ?a pushup challenge, a thousand-steps challenge, an eat-more-vegetables challenge.

Despite your best efforts, this might not work. You can?t force change on someone. They have to want it themselves. And if they don?t, you can?t make them want it. In that case, you?ll have to back off, though showing concern and wanting to help is always something you can do. Change is possible. Facing problems is totally possible. You just might need a little inspiration to do it.

How I Finally Faced My Weight and Debt Problems | Zen Habits

---

Leo Babauta is the creator and writer of Zen Habits. He's married with six kids, lives in San Francisco (previously Guam), and is a runner and a vegan. Read more about him: My Story.

Image remixed from pond5.

Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/cGxkAd2anMI/how-i-motivated-myself-to-face-my-weight-and-debt-probl-520648705

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Cabbage circadian clocks tick even after picking

Daily cycles help vegetables fight off hungry caterpillars

By Cristy Gelling

Web edition: June 20, 2013

Enlarge

CABBAGE JET LAG

Vegetables stored under constant light conditions are more vulnerable to being eaten by the cabbage looper caterpillar.

Credit: Goodspeed et al.

Cabbages with jet lag are less nutritious and more vulnerable to insect pests.

Fruits and vegetables have an internal clock that can be reset by a daily cycle of light and dark, but storing produce in darkened refrigerators could disrupt this natural rhythm, researchers report June 20 in Current Biology.

Plants, even after being cropped from the stalk, are much more responsive to their external environment than we give them credit for, says Janet Braam, a plant biologist at Rice University. ?When we harvest them they?re still metabolizing,? she says. ?They?re still alive.?

Braam normally studies circadian rhythms in plants that are growing, but an offhand comment by her son inspired her to turn to the grocery store for new research subjects.

She and her colleagues had previously found that the plant Arabidopsis thaliana schedules production of insect-repelling chemical defenses to match caterpillar feeding peaks. These defenses include compounds called glucosinolates, which are thought to have anticancer and antimicrobial properties in addition to their caterpillar-discouraging ones.

When Braam told her son about these experiments, he joked that now he knew the best time to eat his vegetables. She realized that cabbages???which also produce glucosinolates???might have similar daily cycles even after being picked, packed and shipped.

?So we went to the grocery store, bought some cabbage and put them under dark/light cycles that were either in phase or out of phase with our insects, and then asked whether the insects could tell the difference,? says Braam.

Like Arabidopsis, the cabbage leaves had daily glucosinolate cycles if the vegetables were exposed to alternating 12-hour periods of light and dark. Caterpillars on a cycle offset by 12 hours to the cabbages? (so the cabbages? dawn was the caterpillars? dusk) ate about 20 times more than did caterpillars on a schedule synchronized to their food. Caterpillars also ate twice as much cabbage if the vegetable had been kept either in constant light or constant darkness.

It?s not just cabbages that adjust daily rhythm to better fend off caterpillars; the team found similar results for spinach, zucchini, sweet potatoes, carrots and blueberries. These fruits and vegetables don?t produce glucosinolates, so they must make some other kind of defenses on a daily cycle, says Braam.

The researchers suggest that we might improve the health benefits and pest resistance of fruits and vegetables by storing them under lighting conditions that mimic day and night. But Cathie Martin, a plant biologist at the John Innes Centre in England, is skeptical. She says most postharvest vegetable losses are from fungal infections, not the insects that eat vegetables in the field. And cabbages are sometimes cold-stored for months in the dark before being sold. Cabbages lose the clock-regulated pest resistance about a week after harvesting, the new study shows.

?But maybe I?ll be proven completely wrong,? says Martin. ?Maybe one day we?ll all have little LEDs in the fridge.?

---

Suggested Reading

R. Cheung. Blue light tells plants when to flower. Science News Online, May 25, 2012. [Go to]

T. Hesman Saey. Splices of time. Science News Online, October 20, 2010. [Go to]

J. Raloff. Herbal herbicides. Science News. Vol.171, March 17, 2007, p. 167. Available online: [Go to]

D. Goodspeed et al. Arabidopsis synchronizes jasmonate-mediated defense with insect circadian behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 109, March 20, 2012, p. 4674. doi:10.1073/pnas.1116368109 [Go to]

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/351131/title/Cabbage_circadian_clocks_tick_even_after_picking

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Activists: Troops attack convoy in key Syrian town

This image made from video posted by Ugarit News and taken on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, which is consistent with other AP reporting, shows an explosion from shelling in Qusair, Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad said the regime has received its first shipment of a sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft missile system, and the main Western-backed opposition group announced Thursday that it will not participate in peace talks ? a double blow to international efforts to end the country's devastating civil war. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

This image made from video posted by Ugarit News and taken on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, which is consistent with other AP reporting, shows an explosion from shelling in Qusair, Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad said the regime has received its first shipment of a sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft missile system, and the main Western-backed opposition group announced Thursday that it will not participate in peace talks ? a double blow to international efforts to end the country's devastating civil war. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 21, 2009 file photo, a Russian-made MiG-29 jet fighter flown by the aerobatic team Strizhi (Swifts) perform during MAKS (the International Aviation and Space Show) in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia. Russian arms manufacturer MiG told Russian news agencies Friday, May 31, 2013 that it is signing a contract to deliver at least 10 fighter jets to Syria. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev, File)

BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian troops on Friday attacked a convoy trying to evacuate wounded people from a central town near the border with Lebanon, killing at least seven, as rebel reinforcements infiltrated the besieged area to fight government forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in the town of Qusair also wounded "tens of people." Qusair-based activist Hadi Abdullah described the attack to The Associated Press via Skype, saying it killed nine people and wounded many others.

The battle for Qusair has exposed Hezbollah's growing role in the Syrian conflict that has killed more than 70,000 over the past two years. The Shiite militant group, which has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops, initially tried to play down its involvement, but abandoned the attempt after dozens of its fighters were killed in the Qusair area and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.

Last week, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah firmly linked his militant group's fate to the survival of the Assad regime, raising the stakes not just in Syria, but also in Hezbollah's tense relations with rival groups in Lebanon.

Over the past weeks, troops and Hezbollah fighters captured wide areas around Qusair and earlier this month launched an offensive on the town in an attempt to capture it. Dozens of troops, Hezbollah fighters and rebels have been killed since then.

Abdullah said he was with the convoy evacuating scores of wounded people when troops started firing shells and machine guns, wounding about 80 people. "Women and children jumped out of the cars and started running in fear," Abdullah said.

He said that there are around 800 wounded people in rebel-held areas in Qusair. Abdullah said the main makeshift hospital in the town was hit, and a home was turned into a clinic.

The regime and the opposition both value Qusair, which lies along a land corridor linking two Assad's strongholds, Damascus and the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, an area along the Mediterranean coast. For the rebels, holding the town means protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10 kilometers (six miles) away.

The Observatory and Abdullah said that rebels from the northern province of Aleppo managed to enter rebel-held area of Qusair to help defend it against advancing troops.

"Individuals have come in the past, but this is the first time that groups of rebels have arrived here," Abdullah said. Several days ago rebel commanders issued a call on forces around the country to move on Qusair, underlying its importance.

In Moscow, a Russian arms manufacturer said it is signing a contract to deliver at least 10 fighter jets to Syria.

Sergei Korotkov, general director of the MiG company that makes the jets, told Russian news agencies that a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss terms and deadlines of a new contract supplying MiG-29 M/M2 fighters to Syria.

Korotkov did not say how many MiGs Syria were buying, but said it would be "more than 10." It was not clear when they would be delivered.

Syria's air force has been active in attacking rebel bases and strongholds around the country. Rebel forces have no answer for the government air power.

___

Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-31-Syria/id-12cf296bf4b44813a523e6f752f73854

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