Results tagged “navy”

A 3:35 a.m. rant from Roseanne Barr earlier this week: "I said Israel will attack any boat carrying doctors and medical supplies--they have turned away the red cross already and all medical and food assistance. Israel is a NAZI state. The Jewish Soul is being tortured in Israel. The destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured with this inhuman attack on civilians in gaza. Hamas is the street gangs---this is equivilent to los angeles attacking and launching war on the people of watts to attempt to kill the bloods and the crips." Barr planned to travel with pro-Palestinian activists on a protest boat that was trying sail from Cyprus to Gaza, but it was forced to turn back by the Israeli Navy. (h/t Michael Freund)

A 78-year-old sailor's court martial from 1950 for two unauthorized absences and missing a ship's movement was pardoned by President Bush yesterday. The pardon should should clear his record, but just in case the near octogenarian wants to, he won't be able to rejoin the military, a naval lieutenant commander told the Daily Breeze. Robert Truman Reece, who lives in a Redondo Beach condo overlooking the ocean, is one of the 20 people that Bush pardoned on Tuesday. He's granted 191 pardons since entering office in 2000.

Now here's one way to get drugs across the border and it's not the first time in recent years that this has happened. A homemade cocaine smuggling submarine was found by the Mexican Navy off the Pacific Coast this week. "The crew members said they were fishermen forced to make the journey by drug traffickers who threatened to harm their families," reports KNX1070, per the AP. Nine vessels like this have been found in the past three years by Columbian officials.

In April and May, LAist's TV Junkie highlighted an amazing PBS documentary series called "Carrier", about life on board the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its six-month mission to the Persian Gulf in 2005. The ten episodes gave a seawater and rivets-eye-view of what life is like for the sailors and Marines on the nuclear boat. With an average age of 20 years and a few months, the servicemen and women of the Nimitz gave the producers access to the way they worked, recuperated, and dealt with the pain of being away from their families.

The use of sonar by the Navy off the shores of Southern California has prompted vehement opposition by animal rights and environmental groups, and earlier this year a court order put in place restrictions on the practice. However, reports that a dolphin's death in late January on the island of San Nicolas might be linked to the Navy's use of sonar in a training exercise has once again brought the issue into the spotlight.