Police Arrest 7 Over London Attack, CIA Whistleblower Reveals 'Systematic Illegal' Surveillance, China Could Attack U.S. Pacific Bases In 'Minutes'

Police arrest 7 over London attack as death toll lowered to 3

Seven people have been arrested including in London and Birmingham over Wednesday’s terror attack at the British parliament, the police said on Thursday, revising down the number of victims to three people.

“We have searched six addresses and made seven arrests,” Britain’s top anti-terror officer Mark Rowley, who had earlier said there were four victims in the attack, told reporters in London.

The arrests were made following police “activity in London, Birmingham and elsewhere in the country,” Rowley added.

The new death toll included two members of the public — a woman in her mid-40s, a man in his mid-50s — and the 48 year-old police officer stabbed outside Parliament, named last night as PC Keith Palmer.

The police have said they believe they know the identity of the attacker but will not reveal it “at such a sensitive stage in our investigation.”

Rowley also said that 29 people were treated in hospital. The police had said on Wednesday that around 40 people were injured.

“Sadly seven of them are in a critical condition,” Rowley said.

BOMBSHELL: CIA Whistleblower Leaked Proof Trump Under "Systematic Illegal" Surveillance Over Two Years Ago: FBI Sat On It

The same day House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes gave a press conference disclosing that President Trump had been under "incidental surveillance," Attorney and FreedomWatch Chairman, Larry Klayman, sent a letter to the House Committee on Intelligence imploring them to pursue the claims and evidence presented under oath at a Washington DC FBI Field Office by his client - CIA / NSA Whistleblower Dennis Montgomery - who Klayman claims "holds the keys to disproving the false claims...   ...that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped" 

When Montgomery attempted to deliver this information through the appropriate channels two years ago, the former CIA and NSA contractor wasn't given the time of day:

[W]hen Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was “blown off;” no one wanted to even hear what he had to say.

As a result, Montgomery went to attorney and FreedomWatch founder Larry Klayman - who then approached the FBI: 

Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration.

Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama's former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama's former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed “up close and personal” this “Orwellian Big Brother” intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes. 

He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.

So - we know that evidence exists from a CIA / NSA contractor turned whistleblower, detailing a massive spy operation on 156 judges, the Supreme Court, and high profile Americans including Donald Trump.

Nunes: FBI Is Not Cooperating with Our Investigation into Trump Camp Surveillance 

The FBI is not cooperating with the House of Representatives' investigation into the NSA's surveillance of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, the chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), said today.

During an explosive press conference outside the White House, Nunes told reporters that communications from the Trump team were picked up and disseminated within the government during the 2016 campaign. Nunes said sources within the intelligence community presented him with the information. He spoke to the press after briefing the administration.

"We don’t actually know yet officially what happened to General Flynn," Nunes said of how communications from Gen. Flynn's calls were leaked to the press. "We just know that his name leaked out but we don't know how it was picked up yet. That was one of the things that we asked for in the March 15th letter, was for the NSA, CIA, and FBI to get us all the unmasking that was done."

"And I'll tell you, NSA is being cooperative," Nunes continued, "but so far the FBI has not told us whether or not they’re going to respond to our March 15th letter, which is now a couple of weeks old.”

Italy Falls Out Of Love With The Euro: Beppe Grillo Resurgent In The Polls

Pro-Europe polls are highly likely to get worse as a  further splintering of Matteo Renzi’s PD party takes place.

It is not out of question for Beppe Grillo’s eurosceptic Five Star Movement (M5S) party to achieve an absolute majority in the next election. However, please note that 40% is the threshold for a “majority”.

The Financial Times reports Italy is Falling Out of Love with Europe.

Foreigners often underestimate Italy’s ability to sidestep calamity. That said, the stakes are higher now than in 1992. Solutions may prove harder to find. The reason lies in the radically different EU and Mediterranean contexts in which Italy finds itself.

Some of contemporary Italy’s challenges appear similar to those of the early 1990s. The party system is once again in fragments. The ruling centre-left Democratic party (PD) split last month. The right is divided. The most popular opposition party is the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Since November 2011 four prime ministers have taken office not because voters chose them, but because of a financial emergency, factional squabble, party coup and failed constitutional reform.

Matteo Renzi, the former premier and PD leader, suffered a blow this month when it emerged that Tiziano Renzi, his father, and Luca Lotti, a close political ally, had been caught up in a judicial probe into suspected graft in public procurement.

The most disturbing comparison between 1992 and the present day concerns the Italian economy, which is projected this year to be the slowest-growing in the eurozone. Public debt is more than 132 percent of gross domestic product. Unemployment is almost 12 per cent; the youth jobless rate is over 37 percent.

As a consequence, ever more Italian politicians question the merits of eurozone membership. So do Italian voters. In a Eurobarometer poll published in December, 47 percent called the euro “a bad thing” for their country and only 41 percent “a good thing”. This is the big difference with 25 years ago.

As long as the moderate left or right governs Italy, it may be possible to contain this disenchantment with the EU and the euro. But the PD’s fissures are the latest sign that the party system is cracking under the strain. The Five Star Movement is waiting in the wings.

California may face 'significant risk' from dam

 California is not just fighting nature as it attempts to repair the nation's tallest dam, badly damaged last month by surging storm waters. It's also racing the clock.

Safety experts say there is no time for delay in a state plan to restore the 770-foot Oroville Dam, and they warn California would face a "very significant risk" if a damaged spillway is not in working order by fall, the start of the next rainy season.

A Nov. 1 target to fix the spillway presents "a very demanding schedule, as everyone recognizes," said a report prepared by an independent team of consultants and submitted to federal officials last week. A copy of the report was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The report sketches a challenging array of problems at the Northern California dam, where last month authorities ordered the evacuation of 188,000 people after surging releases of water tore away big chunks of the main spillway and then the dam's second, emergency spillway. At the time, officials feared rapid deterioration of the emergency spillway could send a 30-foot wall of water from the lake behind the dam through surrounding towns.

Water was even seeping from seemingly undamaged stretches of the main spillway, the five-member team found. Only 12 inches thick, the concrete spillway is heavily patched, at some places by clay stuffed into holes below the concrete.

"This calls into question whether the portions of the slab that appear undamaged by the failure should be replaced," the consultants said, raising the prospect of a much bigger long-term repair job.

Repair contracts will have to be awarded by June.

"A very significant risk would be incurred if the Gated Spillway is not operational by November 1," the report said.

The report does not specify what that means.

However, officials with the state Department of Water Resources, which operates the dam, fear a huge rupture that opened in the main spillway could expand to cripple the flood gates that send out controlled releases of water and keep water from spilling over uncontrollably.

In a statement, spokeswoman Maggie Macias said the agency's objective was to have a fully functional spillway before the start of the next storm season.

"We'll be working round-the-clock through spring, summer and fall to make that happen," she said.

China Could Attack U.S. Pacific Bases in 'Minutes': Report

A military expert asserted that a ballistic strike on the U.S.' Pacific facilities could be conducted by Beijing within minutes. China's missile testing facilities have already been equipped with mock U.S. and Japanese targets.

In his latest report on the blog, "War on the Rocks," former Navy Cmdr. Thomas Shugart presented an in-depth view of China's military infrastructure in the Gobi Desert. The analysis offered side-by-side comparisons of Chinese military bases and U.S. facilities in Japan, showing striking similarities and revealing just how quickly Beijing could strike U.S. and Japanese assets if a conflict broke out. The region is already plagued with heightened tensions between nations, Washington-based military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday.

“The time available between the first detection of a missile launch by U.S. space-based missile warning sensors to its impact would probably be on the order of 10 to 15 minutes,” Shugart wrote in his report. "In that short amount of time, U.S. early warning centers would have to detect the launched strike, assess it, and warn U.S. forces overseas."