Newsweek names Obama 'The First Gay President' in shocking cover talking about his support of same-sex marriage

By Meghan Keneally

In a gutsy move, Newsweek has released the cover of their next issue, on the cover of which they depict President Obama with a rainbow halo and the title of 'The First Gay President'.

The news-magazine, which hits stands Monday, is using the shock factor of labeling the straight, married, father-of-two President to draw attention to itself.

Tina Brown, who heads the magazine and it's sister website The Daily Beast, is known for her appreciation of controversial covers to help boost public interest and sales.

After Time magazine went with a cover shot of a young blonde mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old boy, Ms Brown is said to have taken it in stride, saying 'let the games begin!'

The article accompanying the cover was written by the news magazine's regular blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who is an openly gay self-titled conservative political pundit.

'When you step back a little and assess the record of Obama on gay rights, you see, in fact, that this was not an aberration. It was an inevitable culmination of three years of work,' Mr Sullivan said in a statement about the article.

'He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family,' he wrote, describing the similarities between Mr Obama and the gay community.

There was little doubt that Newsweek would be covering the President's historic announcement that he supports same-sex marriage after he had a sit-down television interview confirming what many already believed to be the case.

This was, however, the first time that a sitting President had done so, and the magazine asserts that such a move was a calculated one that had been thoroughly planned.

'It’s easy to write off President Obama’s announcement of his support for gay marriage as a political ploy during an election year. But don’t believe the cynics,' representatives from the news magazine told Politico in a statement about the article.

President Obama's announcement came several days after Vice President Joe Biden said that he was 'absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and men and women marrying are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.'

The move, thought to be a misstep as he made his opinion known before Mr Obama publicly declared his, was criticized by many within the administration and outside of the White House.

'Would I have preferred to have done this in my own way, in my own terms, without I think, there being a lot of notice to everybody? Sure,' Mr Obama said in the ABC. 'But all's well that ends well.'

On the day of the President's interview, Mr Biden is said to have had a private meeting in the Oval Office where in he apologized for his overstep.

Republicans, the vast majority of whom are against gay marriage, said that Mr Obama simply made his historic announcement in an effort to gain support among liberal voters in the lead up to the general election.

'While President Obama has played politics on this issue, the Republican Party and our presumptive nominee Mitt Romney have been clear,' Republican national committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

'We support maintaining marriage between one man and one woman and would oppose any attempts to change that.'

Multinational force massed on Jordanian-Syrian border as 50 killed in Damascus bombings

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Beset on two fronts, Bashar Assad rushed his elite Republic Division to Damascus Thursday, May 10, as two massive car bombs in the al Qaza district of Damascus demolished the command center of the Syrian military security service’s reconnaissance division, killing at least 50 people and injuring 170. Over to the southeast, 12,000 special operations troops from 17 nations, including the US and other NATO members, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were poised on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border for an exercise codenamed “Eager Lion.”

debkafile’s military sources also disclose that the bomb attack on Damascus was the most serious his regime had suffered against a military target since the 14-month Syrian uprising began. For the first time, Assad moved his most loyal unit, the Republican Guard Brigade, into central Damascus.

Western and Arab pressure is building up to an intolerable pitch for the Syrian president to step down and save his people from the descent into the ultimate agony of a full-blown civil war. It is coming from two directions:

1. Special forces units of the US, France, Britain, Canada and other NATO members have gathered in Jordan alongside Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari special units for a large-scale ten-day military exercise in Jordan starting May 15.

The exercise was set up by the US Special Operations Command Central. It is the Obama administration's message to the Islamic rulers of Iran, Bashar Assad and his Moscow backers, as well as its answer to the complaints from Arab and other Western governments that America is doing nothing to stop the horrors perpetrated in Syria.

Since all 12,000 troops massed in Jordan are commandos, they stand ready at all times to cross the border into Syria if this is deemed necessary.

2. Syrian cities, especially the capital, are being targeted for violent bombing attacks designed to bring the Assad regime tumbling down. Behind these attacks are Persian Gulf emirates led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. debkafile’s intelligence sources disclose they have been joined in the last few days for the first time by Turkey which is contributing intelligence input. The military pressure on the Assad regime is thus reinforced by a campaign of terror against its props.

No connection is admitted between the multinational force on the Jordanian-Syrian border and the spate of bombings. However, if Saudi or Qatari intelligence did play a hand in the Damascus bombings, their special forces in Jordan will have been in the picture.

Euro Will Have to Be Devalued to Save EU: Siegel

By: Jeff Cox / CNBC.com Senior Writer

LAS VEGAS — Faced with a stubborn sovereign debt crisis that just won't go away, the European Central Bank will be forced into currency devaluation, Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel said.

Despite aggressive efforts to shore up problems in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, the ECB has yet to find the formula that will assuage market concerns that not only could the countries default on their debts, but contagion also will spread to other nations.

One obvious solution to helping the troubled nations is a devaluation of the euro, something the ECB has resisted due primarily to pressure from Germany and nations that don't have the same debt issues. Devaluing a currency enables debtor nations to meet their obligations more easily, but European nations cannot act unilaterally in monetary policy.

"Europe is a big mess," Siegel said at the Skybridge Alternatives Conference here. "Greece leaving the euro zone — I think they would love to leave if they could figure out how. The ECB, in an attempt to save the union, will lower the euro."

Siegel sees the euro falling to 1.10 against the U.S. dollar, with a possibility that the two currencies even might reach parity.

Devaluing a currency enables debtor nations to meet their obligations more easily, but European nations cannot act unilaterally in monetary policy.

"Will that save the periphery?" Siegel said. "I give it a 50-50 chance."

Siegel has been in the news lately for a series of strongly bullish forecasts relative to the U.S. equity markets, including a recent prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average could hit 17,000 in 2013, a 30 percent gain from current levels.

Asked during a SALT panel discussion to name the factor that could pre-empt that forecast, he named not the troubles in Europe but rather the so-called fiscal cliff the U.S. faces if it fails to extend a number of tax breaks by the end of 2012.

Economists estimate that losing the payroll tax holiday, tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush and extended unemployment benefits, along with mandated tax increases and spending cuts, would sap about $500 billion or nearly 4 percent from the economy.

In his baseline forecast, Siegel sees Congress agreeing to extension for another six to 12 months.

"I do think we will get the extensions," he said. "But if we don't that's going to be hard."

'Netanyahu forming war government'

Arab newspapers interpret new Netanyahu-Mofaz alliance as preamble for war

by Roi Kais

Newspapers across the Arab world could not ignore Israel's political drama and the declaration of a unity government on Tuesday. Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz were described as conniving war mongers and corrupt politicians as editorials declared war was looming.

"Netanyahu is forming a war government," al-Quds al-Arabi's headline cried. "No one knows what goes on through the mind of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on many regional issues these days. One can predict that this man is scheming and planning wars after murdering the peace process with the settlement policy in the occupied Arab territories," the London-based paper said.

The UAE paper al-Bayan printed an editorial titled "A government challenges peace." The headline in Saudi Arabia's al-Madina paper read: "Israel prepares for war."

The paper analyzed Netanyahu as a statesman and ruled he was "concerned about his status in Israeli history and wants to be remembered as the leader who destroyed the Iranian nuclear program and solidified Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region."

Lebanon's popular as-Safir newspaper chose to address the political drama from a different perspective. Titled "Israeli recklessness," its editorial explained that the "news (of early elections) turned out to be random fraud but it captured the attention of the entire world and became the focus of analyses and estimates that war is looming."

"The country once described as the only democracy in the Middle East is slowly emerging to be nothing more than a yard-sale, not just because some of its Arab neighbors are trying to establish true democratic models but because its current statesmen are behaving like crime bosses."

YouTuber claims NASA has edited footage of spaceship near Sun out of SOHO footage

By Peter Farquhar

* SOHO camera captures "spaceship" near Sun
* NASA "wipes footage" from video
* Third "spaceship near Sun" seen this year

EITHER we aren't alone, or it's nigh time NASA fixed its dodgy cameras.

For the third time this year, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has returned an image of a giant UFO hovering near, or feeding off the Sun. Maybe.

SOHO was launched in 1995 as a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, with a sole aim to study the Sun. The mission was supposed to last just two years, but it is still plugging away and has approved support from ESA to continue to do so until at least December.

In recent years, SOHO has found an extended role as a predictor of solar weather activity, helping scientists on Earth prepare for radiation bursts sent our way by solar flares.

On the SOHO homepage, fans can access all sorts of Sun-related data, including images that have been built from observations from any of the dozen or so instruments onboard SOHO, and videos.

The same sort of content can be found at NASA's solo project, the Solar Dynamic Observatory. Most popular are videos that feature comet fly-bys or collisions. Others specialises in time lapse rotations of the Sun showing flare activity.

It's these that keep turning up on skywatcher websites and conspiracy theorist blogs in equal measures.

In December, one was the source of hysteria surrounding the appearance of a cloaked alien spaceship near Mercury.

In March, it was a Death Star refuelling on the sun.

And now one YouTuber, rob19791, claims to have found the ultimate proof of alien life feeding off our Sun - a NASA cover-up.

He posted this video, UFO next to the sun, on May 5, of footage taken two days earlier by SOHO. In his eyes, the video clearly shows a massive rectangular object hovering near the Sun's surface.

An object that looks strikingly similar to another massive, rectangular object hovering near the Sun discovered last month.

"Cosmic rays" was the official line from the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) - streaks of charged particles whizzing through space that get picked up by cameras.

The same killjoy explanation was given for the discovery of "Bio Station Alpha" on Mars last year.

So what's so different about the UFO spotted by rob19791?

A day after the footage was shot, live streaming images from SOHO were disabled - a suspicious coincidence, he says.

The official word from NASA?

"SOHO went into 'Emergency Sun Reacquisition' mode on Friday May 4, 2012, caused by a false trigger of the Coarse Sun Pointing Attitude Anomaly Detector. We are working on the recovery of the spacecraft to normal mode."

Rob19791's version of events?

"Nasa are clearly trying to stop us looking at the sun. The reasons could be anything from the crafts/ships seen recently or an impending solar flare that will wipe out humanity."

He claims NASA have now scrubbed the "UFO" from the footage and are most likely now working to change the way users view the SOHO site.

Either that, or they are sick to death of having to explain their camera glitches...

WATCH VIDEO HERE