US Soldier Shot Dead in ‘Insider Attack’ in South-Eastern Afghanistan

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Photo Credit: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft MediaAn Afghan man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at US soldiers in south-eastern Afghanistan, killing at least one serviceman on Sunday, local officials and the Nato-led coalition said.

The so-called “insider attack” in Paktika province is the fourth in less than a month and is likely to strain already tense ties between coalition troops and their allies, with most foreign troops scheduled to withdraw by the end of next year. A Reuters tally shows Sunday’s incident was the tenth this year, and took the death toll of foreign personnel to 15.

“A man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at Americans in Sharana city [the provincial capital] near the governor’s office,” said an Afghan official, adding that two soldiers had been hit by the gunfire.

The Nato-led coalition confirmed one soldier had been shot by a man in security forces uniform, but did not comment on his nationality or whether the Afghan was wearing a army uniform.

Insider attacks threaten to further undermine waning support for the war among Western nations sending troops to Afghanistan. A similar flurry of attacks last year prompted the Nato-led force to briefly suspend all joint activities and take steps to curb interaction between foreign and Afghan troops.

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We Lose About Five Days to Slow-Loading Computers Every Year

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockWe’ve all heard the old joke about a man who has a near-death experience and looks back on his life, only to discover, “man, I sure slept an awful lot.” Frankly, the joke never really made sense to me, because sleeping is an amazing way to pass the time. And it’s certainly better than sitting around and waiting for your computer to load stuff, which wastes an average of five days every year for most people, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by SanDisk (yep, the same company that probably manufactured your flash drive), surveyed more than 8,000 people in the United Kingdom, finding they lost more than 130 hours each year to waiting for their computers to load. It could be worse, though: in Italy, the average time-loss was seven days. Here in the United States, we only lose 4.9 days a year. Only.

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US Man Found Hanged in Egypt Jail Cell

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesAn American man was found hanged in a jail cell on Sunday in a police station near the banks of the Suez Canal.

The man, identified by the U.S. state department as 66-year-old James Lunn, had apparently committed suicide. He had been arrested on August 29 for breaking the curfew put in place amid the violent unrest that followed the military’s ousting of President Mohammed Morsi in early July.

The American embassy in Cairo confirmed the death to ABC News, saying he died of “apparent suicide.” The State Department also issued confirmation of the death today, and said that his family has been contacted.

Egypt officials had identified Lunn as a retired U.S. Army officer, but the U.S. State Department said Sunday that he was not a veteran.

Lunn was found after breakfast was served in the Ismailia police station, hung from the bathroom door of his prison cell, Egypt’s public prosecutor said. A black belt wrapped around his neck was attached with string to both his shoes, which were tangled up on the other side of the door, according to the prosecutor. The statement said that blood was seen coming from his nose and that he had already died when they found him.

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John McCain: Let Joe Biden Out of Witness Protection

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesJoe Biden to the rescue!

A top Senate Republican called for President Obama to get the long absent Vice President Joe Biden “out of the witness protection program” to restart stalled talks to end the government shutdown and stop a US credit default.

“I hope the president will become engaged. Maybe we need to get Joe Biden out of the witness protection program,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Biden has been the chief White House negotiator in previous high-stakes budget talks, including the deal that averted the 2011 “fiscal cliff.”

McCain said the vice president’s mysterious absence this time underscored the uncompromising position of the White House, which has refused to negotiate with House Republicans.

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Gold Rush Threatens to Bring New Era of Genocide to War Torn Darfur

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAHImpoverished tribes in war torn Darfur, the scene of decades of misery and genocide, now have one of the oldest reasons for fighting known to man: gold.

More than 800 people have been killed and 150,000 displaced since January as poor, but heavily armed tribes fight over the Jebel Amer gold mining region. That is more than double the number of people killed in political and ethnic fighting in 2012, and world leaders fear the mad dash for precious metal could be plunging the region into a new era of violence. Humanitarian groups say the Sudanese government, led by accused war criminal President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is pitting tribes against each other in a bid to get the most possible out of some 4,000 mines.

“Ten years after the genocide began, state-sponsored violence has once more taken hold of the region,” said Akshaya Kumar, a policy analyst for the Enough Project, a Washington-based humanitarian organization. “Cash-strapped and dollar-starved, Sudan sees gold as its new oil. The recent gold discoveries are fueling atrocities again in Darfur.”

When South Sudan split from Sudan two years ago, it took with it much of the nation’s oil wealth. With shrinking oil revenues, al-Bashir is seeking to increase the $2.2 billion worth of gold produced by the mines annually. And his strategy to keep control of the vast region’s gold, amid hundreds of thousands of amateurs in a virtual free-for-all, relies on fighters battle-hardened from decades of ethnic and religious war.

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Palin and Lonegan Rev Up NJ Crowd Ahead of This Week’s Special Election (+video)

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Sarah Palin rode the Tea Party Express tour bus into Ocean County today to lend her political star power to Republican Steve Lonegan’s U.S. Senate campaign, urging the roughly 2,000 supporters to muster up “their Jersey fight” to help him defeat Cory Booker.

In the final weekend before the special election on Wednesday, Booker also revved up his campaign by launching a bus tour in north Jersey for a series of events he delayed after his father’s death on Thursday.

With polls putting Lonegan within 12 percentage points of Booker — a much closer margin than pundits had predicted — both camps worked aggressively to energize their supporters. Both candidates capitalized on the public discontent with the federal government shutdown, 12 days old with no end in sight.

If New Jersey, a blue state, sends a conservative like Lonegan to Washington, President Obama and the Democratic leaders in Congress would understand that their policies and message are failing, Palin said.

“New Jersey, know that the eyes of America are on you now,” Palin said. “You can turn things around. Something big is happening here,” the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor told an enthusiastic crowd at the New Egypt Speedway.

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Senate GOP Blocks Dems from Extending Debt Limit Beyond 2014 Midterm Elections

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen Senate Republicans on Saturday blocked a bid by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to extend the nation’s debt limit until after the 2014 midterm elections.

In an 53-45 vote, the Senate failed to win the 60 votes necessary to advance the debt-limit measure to a floor debate. The bill would increase the federal debt by an estimated $1.1 trillion.

Every Democrat supported the measure, though Reid switched his vote at the end to preserve the right to bring the motion up for another vote later.

Republicans criticized the legislation as politically transparent. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and two other centrist GOP senators have instead proposed raising the debt-limit only until Jan. 31, 2014.

During the vote, a large number of Democratic senators huddled around Collins (R-Maine). Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), the other two GOP centrists backing the Collins plan, joined her.

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Glenn Beck to Values Voter Summit: ‘You are Looking at a One-Party System’

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Photo Credit: Values Voter Summit web siteGlenn Beck praised GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, but denounced the Republican Party leadership at the Values Voter Summit Saturday in Washington, D.C.

Beck even said the party could be going the way of the Whigs by not standing for principle.

“You are looking at a one-party system,” Beck told the audience. “You’re looking at a system with John Boehner, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi — they’re all the same. I am thrilled to say we are finally standing up. We are finally saying, ‘No, this is what we believe, and we will not move.”

Beck said the notion that Cruz and Lee will harm the Republican Party by holding firm against Obamacare, spending, and the debt is wrong. He also said the fight is much bigger than Obamacare, and Republicans lack vision.

“I’m tired of people saying, ‘Oh, but we might lose’; yes…and we just might win,” Beck said, causing the ballroom to erupt in a rousing standing ovation.

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Boehner says Obama Rejected GOP Plan to End Shutdown as Negotiations Shift to Senate

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER.

House Speaker John Boehner today told fellow Republicans that his talks with President Barack Obama have stalled.

‘The Senate needs to hold tough,’ Representative Greg Walden said Boehner told House GOP lawmakers. ‘The president now isn’t negotiating with us.’

Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government in exchange for a budget negotiating process.

Attention now turns to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of Senators are working on a separate plan to reopen the government.

Word of the negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the top Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, emerged as the Senate, as expected, rejected a Democratic effort to raise the government’s borrowing limit through next year.

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Photo Credit: APFocus on Senate after Obama rejects House plan

By JAKE SHERMAN, JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT.

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.

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MURRAY: Obama ‘Clueless About this Country in Some Profoundly Disturbing Ways’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller President Barack Obama successfully portrayed himself as a uniting candidate during the 2008 election, but his actions in office deepened the partisan divide, author and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview.

“In the 2008 campaign, I actually believed that [Obama] was going to try to be a president who would bridge the partisan divide and compromise,” Murray said. “His rhetoric was really pretty good, and his behavior since he got into office has been the polar opposite. And it is getting worse rather than better.”

Obama’s carefully cultivated demeanor of sophistication drew in intellectuals from across the political spectrum during the campaign, according to Murray.

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