Feds: Illinois Teen Sought to Join Islamic State

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Photo Credit: AP Photo / Sun-Times Media, Al PodgorskiBy Associated Press.

A 19-year-old American left a letter expressing disgust with Western society before trying to board an international flight in Chicago, the first step in his plan to sneak into Syria to join the Islamic State group, according to a federal criminal complaint released Monday.

Mohammed Hamzah Khan, who lived with his parents in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, was arrested Saturday at O’Hare International Airport trying to board a plane on the first leg of connecting flights to Turkey, which borders Syria. He is charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, which carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Investigators said Khan left a three-page, handwritten letter in his bedroom for his parents that expressed anger over his U.S. taxes being used to kill his “Muslim brothers and sisters,” an apparent reference to a bombing campaign against Islamic State militants.

“We are all witness that the western societies are getting more immoral day by day,” he wrote, then signed letter, “Your loving son,” according to court documents.

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Photo Credit: AFPWHY ISIS AND HAMAS WEAR MASKS

By SHMULEY BOTEACH.

The biblical story of Saul teaches us a powerful lesson regarding the individual’s moral choice and what that choice may lead to.

In ancient Israel, as the era of the judges was ending, it came time for the Israelites to finally have a king. Saul was God’s first choice. He had the strength and support necessary to protect the Israelites and, under God’s command, once and for all destroy the threats and specter of death that the Israelites had lived under for centuries. And yet when it came to the key battle with the sworn enemy of the Israelites – the nation of Amalek – Saul thought he would be more compassionate than God Himself, ignoring His command by sparing the life of the Amalekite king Agag – the Bin Laden of his time.

Later on in his life, Saul wrongly believed that a young shepherd named David was a challenge to his throne and pursued him with his army. Mistakenly convinced that a village of priests had aided David’s escape, Saul in a fit of paranoia massacred the village.

That’s quite a moral shift.

How did such a promising young man who was hand-picked by God end up going down such a wicked path? The Talmud offers this famous response: “Those who are kind when they should be cruel will end up being cruel when they should be kind.”

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FBI: Militants May Be Working on Plan to Strike US

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An al-Qaida cell in Syria that was targeted in American military airstrikes last month could still be working on a plan to attack the United States or its allies and is “looking to do it very, very soon,” the head of the FBI says.

“Given our visibility we know they’re serious people, bent on destruction,” FBI Director James Comey said.

The Khorasan Group, a small but battle-hardened band of al-Qaida veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the target of U.S. strikes near Aleppo, Syria.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Comey said the militants were “working and, you know, may still be working on an effort to attack the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon.”

Senior U.S. officials have not said whether the group’s plots have been disrupted.

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One in Three Jobs Will Be Taken by Software or Robots by 2025

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockGartner sees things like robots and drones replacing a third of all workers by 2025, and whether you want to believe it or not, is entirely your business.

This is Gartner being provocative, as it is typically is, at the start of its major U.S. conference, the Symposium/ITxpo.

Take drones, for instance.

“One day, a drone may be your eyes and ears,” said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner’s research director. In five years, drones will be a standard part of operations in many industries, used in agriculture, geographical surveys and oil and gas pipeline inspections.

“Drones are just one of many kinds of emerging technologies that extend well beyond the traditional information technology world — these are smart machines,” said Sondergaard.

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Dog Named 'Lazarus' Survives Euthanasia Attempt

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Photo Credit: AP / Jay ReevesAnimal control officer Wanda Snell knows what she saw: A veterinarian inserted a needle into the black-and-brown mutt and injected a chemical meant to euthanize the dog no one had adopted. The animal moved a bit and was still and quiet by the time she left the shelter for home.

What Snell can’t explain is how or why a mixed-breed dog that nobody wanted recovered overnight and has since bounced back fully from what should have been a lethal injection.

Less than a month later, the dog lives with a family in a suburb of the Alabama city of Birmingham, where the animal romps and plays with another rescue dog. His survival seemed all the more surprising since the same dog already been struck by a car before arriving at the Ozark City Animal Shelter.

A rescue worker who retrieved the roughly 4-year-old male dog after the failed procedure named him “Lazarus” after the man the Bible says Jesus brought back to life. Snell has another name for that escape artist of a dog. “I call him Houdini,” she said.

No one connected with the shelter is exactly sure what happened to prevent Lazarus’ death, and officials declined to release the name of the contract veterinarian who performed the injection.

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Feds Won't Impose Travel Ban to Ebola-Ravaged Areas Because it "Could Impede Efforts by Aid Workers"

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Photo Credit: AP / Tanya BindraTop government health officials say they are opposed to placing a ban on travelers from Ebola-infected countries, warning that shutting down borders could impede efforts by aid workers to stop the spread of the deadly virus.

The idea of a ban gained currency this past week after the nation’s first case was diagnosed in Dallas. Proponents have argued that it would help ensure public safety.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, said Sunday that a travel embargo on West African countries that are struggling with Ebola would make it much harder for them to control the virus.

“You isolate them, you can cause unrest in the country,” Fauci told “Fox News Sunday.” ”It’s conceivable that governments could fall if you just isolate them completely.”

British Airways and some other airlines have suspended flights from those countries, and overall traffic to and from the affected areas has dropped.

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Sierra Leone Records 121 Ebola Deaths in a Single Day

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / JAMES GIAHYUEBy Umaru Fofana, Joe Bavier and Jonathan Oatis / Reuters.

Sierra Leone recorded 121 deaths from Ebola and scores of new infections in one of the single deadliest days since the disease appeared in the West African country more than four months ago, government health statistics showed on Sunday.

The figures, which covered the period through Saturday, put the total number of deaths at 678, up from 557 the day before. The daily statistics compiled by Sierra Leone’s Emergency Operations Centre also showed 81 new cases of the hemorrhagic fever.

Ebola was first reported in Guinea in March and has since spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone in what has become the worst epidemic of the disease since Ebola was identified in 1976.

Smaller outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal were brought under control. The United States last week confirmed its first Ebola case, a Liberian national who had traveled to Texas.

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Photo Credit: AFP / Pascal GuyotUS journalist with Ebola to arrive in Nebraska Monday

By AFP.

Doctors in Nebraska are set for the Monday arrival of Ashoka Mukpo, an NBC television cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia, the hospital where he will be treated said.

The Nebraska Medical Center on Sunday tweeted “Patient to arrive tomorrow,” without specifying an exact time.

Earlier the hospital had announced on Twitter that it had “received a call from the US State Department letting us know that we will be receiving a second Ebola patient. Possibly on Monday morning. Our 40+ member team with the Biocontainment Unit is ready.”

The hospital has already treated Rick Sacra, a doctor who overcame the virus and was given the experimental drug TKM-Ebola.

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Photo Credit: AP / Tanya BindraShipment of medical supplies to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone reportedly delayed for weeks

By Fox News.

A shipping container filled with approximately $140,000 worth of medical equipment needed to fight the spread of the Ebola virus in the West African country of Sierra Leone has sat untouched on the docks of the country’s capital for nearly two months according to a published report.

According to The New York Times the shipment of hospital linens, protective suits, face masks, and other items arrived in the port of Freetown Aug. 9, but has still not been cleared by government officials.

The Ebola outbreak has killed over 3,000 people, with the vast majority of deaths occurring in Sierra Leone and two other West African countries, Liberia and Guinea. Local health officials have been overwhelmed by the spread of the virus, and some say the case of the delayed container is a vivid illustration of how government corruption has undercut efforts to fight Ebola as well.

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If Obama thinks Ebola is a ‘national security priority,’ why no travel ban?

By Gregg Jarrett.

President Obama declared the Ebola outbreak a “national security priority.” That was three weeks ago. Yet, he has failed to treat it as such.

He could ban all travel into the U.S. of any person who has been in the affected West African countries. He has the legal power to do so.

Why hasn’t he?

The fundamental duty of the nation’s chief executive is to protect its citizens. Under Article II of the Constitution, he is duty-bound to respond to threats and to conduct the country’s foreign affairs. When a crisis presents itself, the president has nearly unfettered power and discretion to act. This includes protecting the health and safety of Americans. Does stopping the deadly spread of Ebola constitute such a crisis?

“This is a social crisis, a humanitarian crisis, an economic crisis, and a threat to national security beyond the outbreak zones.” Those are the words of the director general of World Health Organization during an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Ebola protection myths busted: ‘direct contact’ means indirect contact, N95 masks, full-face respirators and more

By Mike Adams.

If ebola goes airborne, its spread would be utterly impossible to stop, say many experts. Some scientists insist the possibility of the virus mutating into a full-blown “airborne” variety is rather small, but no one denies that such risk increases with each and every day that the contagion is not stopped in Africa.

At the same time, ebola is now in America, having been confirmed in “patient zero” Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas. Because of this, a huge number of Americans and Canadians are now wisely investing in protective gear such as Tyvek body suits, N95 masks, respirators, latex gloves, isolation gowns and more. But most people have little or no training on how to use these items properly, so in the interests of public health and safety, I’m going to cover a few basics here.

As far as my own background goes, I’m trained in microbiology testing and I’m the director of the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, where I conduct food contamination testing using ICP-MS instrumentation. Although I’m not a doctor, I can easily cover the basics of safety from exposure to viral pathogens.

How ebola spreads

The key point to understand in all this is that you can catch ebola by coming into contact with any body fluid that originated from another person.

Read more from this story HERE.

Growing Number of Jails Across Country Releasing Illegals…

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Photo Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles TimesMore jails refuse to hold inmates for federal immigration authorities

Emboldened by recent court rulings, more and more counties and cities across the country are refusing to jail inmates extra days to give federal authorities time to deport them.

In most jails until recently, inmates booked on criminal charges and suspected of being in the country illegally were often held for an additional 48 hours at the behest of federal immigration officials.

These “holds” created a pipeline for the deportation of thousands of people from the United States in the last decade. Now, that enforcement tool is crumbling.

Although some localities started limiting the number of immigration holds a few years ago, the trend of completely ignoring the requests gathered steam this spring after a series of federal court rulings determined that the immigration holds are not mandatory and that local agencies should not be compelled to follow them.

“I think there’s momentum,” said Kate Desormeau, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney who has helped litigate immigration hold cases. “The more localities recognize that they don’t have to do this — and that it doesn’t make sense for them to do this — makes it easier for other localities sitting on the sidelines to say they’re going to stop treating ICE detainers like warrants.”

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Best-Selling Novelist Brad Thor: Political Correctness Puts Americans At Risk

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism Thor, an unabashed patriot, writes successful novels that combine fact and fiction to drive his readers to understand the threats facing this nation. In this exclusive interview, he says “political correctness has always been a wedge, a tool, the left uses to separate people out.”

Saying this is an ideological battle, Thor says it is time to “call out the ideology.”

“Islam wants a carved out place in the public square where they don’t get criticized,” he continued. “If Catholics, Presbyterians, or Dutch Reformers had people killing in the name of their texts in the numbers the Muslim faith does, we would be compelled to address those issues.”

Discussing how progressive elites have worked to build a hostile public perception about the tea party, Thor said, “I believe that if ISIS carried a Gadsden flag instead of the black jihadist flag, they would have gotten a lot more attention. The left is successful to the degree to which they keep the people they purport to promote, down.”

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Watchdog Claims Union's Legal Fight Reveals ObamaCare Fraud

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By Perry Chiaramonte.

A Texas union’s dirty laundry — aired out in court when workers charged they were cheated out of overtime pay – also shows the labor organization ripped off taxpayers under a $1.3 million contract to sign people up for ObamaCare, a watchdog group is claiming.

Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a “navigator,” enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage. The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in some cases, paid them to recruit union members. The watchdog group discovered the alleged discrepancy in court papers filed by union workers suing the labor organization for unpaid overtime.

“Southern United Neighborhoods and ULU Local 100, both rebranded ACORN entities, present a risk of violating the law – this time by potentially misusing over $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars for union activities instead of enrolling individuals in the Affordable Care Act,” Daniel Epstein, executive director for Cause of Action said to FoxNews.com.

Epstein and his group sent a letter to the federal Health and Human Services Inspector General this week asking that SUN and the union be investigated for fraud.

“Given the amount of federal dollars at issue, the Inspector General should investigate SUN and conduct an audit into the potential misuse of ACA navigator funds,” read the letter.

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerMedicaid Scam In Michigan Takes $29 Million From Taxpayers

By Jonah Bennett.

Health care providers defrauded Medicaid to the tune of $29 million dollars by coordinating with a day care center for mentally ill adults to steal patient information, the Washington Examiner reports.

Abdul Malik Al-Jumail and his daughter Jamella Al-Jumail created a series of fake health companies, and then collaborated closely with Felicar Williams, 51, who ran the day care center. Felicar would steal patient information, the Jumails would file false claims, and then provide kickbacks to Felicar. Many complex procedures for mental health were billed that were simply never provided.

Sometimes the Jumails would even fabricate entire medical records if necessary to gain reimbursement, showing how patients desperately needed treatment, and how their companies provided care. All three individuals involved are now in prison. The actual sentencing, however, hasn’t yet been scheduled. Two others, Mohammed Sadiq and Philandis Thomas, are charged in the indictment and scheduled for trial later this month. Another individual remains on the loose.

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Pinkeye Was Only Symptom in Child Killed by Enterovirus

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Photo Credit: MPD01605A New Jersey preschooler killed last month by a respiratory virus that is spreading across the U.S. showed symptoms only of pinkeye before he died in his sleep, health officials said.

Four-year-old Eli Waller, of Hamilton Township, was kept home from school by his mother on Wednesday, Sept. 23, because he was developing a little bit of pinkeye, said Jeff Plunkett, the health officer for the township. He was otherwise fine and had been in school on Sept. 21 and 22.

Waller, a triplet with two sisters, never woke up.

“Between the time his mom put him to bed Wednesday night and when she went to wake him up on Thursday morning, he passed,” Plunkett said in a telephone interview yesterday. “He had no other symptoms whatsoever.”

Read more from this story HERE.