Utah Family Who Killed Themselves in Fear of the Apocalypse Overdosed on Drugs

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By Associated Press. A Utah couple and their three children who were found dead in their home last fall overdosed on drugs after the parents told friends and family they were worried about the apocalypse, authorities said Tuesday.

Police also found old letters written by the mother to a Utah inmate serving time for killing family members in the name of God, slayings chronicled in the 2003 Jon Krakauer book “Under the Banner of Heaven.”

Benjamin and Kristi Strack and three of their four children — ages 11, 12 and 14 — were found dead in September in a locked bedroom of their Springville home. All five were in a bed, with the kids tucked into the covers around their parents.

At a news conference Tuesday, Springville Police Chief J. Scott Finlayson said investigators have concluded their probe and determined the family members died from drug toxicity from either methadone, heroin or a combination of drugs, including those found in cold medicine.

Authorities determined the parents committed suicide. The younger two children’s deaths were ruled homicides, although Finlayson said there were no signs of a struggle. (Read more about the Utah family HERE)

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Utah Family That Killed Themselves Showed Troubling Signs According to Family

By Associated Press. Benjamin and Kristi Strack often talked about the apocalypse and wanting to leave the evil they saw in the world, but friends and family thought that meant they would one day move somewhere remote and live off the grid. . .

There were troubling signs before the five bodies were found in a locked bedroom of their Springville home in September. The couple had struggled with drugs, as well as legal and financial problems. They also had been close friends with a Utah prison inmate serving a life sentence for killing family members in the name of God, slayings chronicled in the 2003 Jon Krakauer book “Under the Banner of Heaven.”

Investigators determined the parents committed suicide, Springville Police Chief J. Scott Finlayson said at a news conference called Tuesday at the conclusion of the investigation. The younger two children’s deaths were ruled homicides, although Finlayson said there were no signs of a struggle.

The manner of death for the 14-year-old, Benson Strack, was undetermined. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Zombie Cat: Buried Kitten Comes Back From the Dead

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A cat in Florida that was hit by a car and then buried is apparently back from the dead . . .

The cat’s owner, Hutson, 52, said he found Bart the cat two weeks ago in the middle of the road, lifeless in a puddle of blood.

Hutson said he asked his friend to help bury the 23-month old cat, because the landscaper was so distraught after losing a companion he’s had since he was a kitten.

“We were so close, I couldn’t stand to bury him,” Hutson said. “I put him on the shoulder of the road and went and got David. He dug a hole and covered up the cat with dirt. I witnessed him bury the cat.”

Five days later, the cat showed up in a neighbor’s yard alive, but weak, dehydrated and in need of medical attention. (Read more about the zombie cat HERE)

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Airlines Taking Bomb Threats Very Seriously

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Photo Credit: BreitbartBy Jordan Schachtel. Countless bomb threats continue to be disseminated against airliners on social media. On Tuesday, Southwest Airlines reported two threats against a flight that was traveling from San Francisco to Atlanta. As the threats continue to roll in, civilian airliners have demonstrated a noticeable change in their responses to the criminal acts.

Responding to the initial cluster of threats, airliners grounded planes and isolated them upon arrival. Some even diverted flight paths.

Los Angeles FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told Breitbart News that the recent spate of social media threats against U.S. airliners were now being dealt with on a “case by case basis.”

The FBI spokeswoman explained that it is up to the airliners to decide whether to continue flights, rather than respond to every warning by grounding and isolating planes. “I should add that when decisions are made whether to divert or not, pilots consult with airlines security personnel (also known as ‘corporate security’), who are in contact with law enforcement,” said Eimiller. (Read more about the bomb threats HERE)

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Should Social Media be Responsible for Terrorist Posts?

By NBC News. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and the rise of ISIS, lawmakers and policy experts on Tuesday discussed whether social media sites should be held responsible when terrorists use them. Texas Republican Ted Poe, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, compared allowing groups like ISIS to post on social media to “letting our enemies take out an ad in the New York Times during World War II.” Poe questioned whether sites like Twitter should be legally responsible for tweets that incite violence, spread the demands of terrorist organizations or try to recruit people to extremist causes. Mark Wallace, chief executive officer of the Counter Extremism Project, suggested that Twitter set up a tiered system where unverified accounts are subject to closer scrutiny. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Explosive: Justice Department has been Tracking Cars in Real Time Nationwide, Collecting Millions of Records

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Photo Credit: Fox News The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents. . .

Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border with Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn’t been previously disclosed is that the DEA has spent years working to expand the database “throughout the United States,’’ according to one email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.

The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering. . .

The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program. (Read more on the federal government tracking cars in real time HERE)

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Christian Ex-Fire Chief Files Lawsuit Against Bible-Phobic Atlanta Mayor

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Photo Credit: Fox News Former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran says he was fired because he wrote a book expressing his Christian faith, according to a discrimination complaint filed Jan. 19 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“I believe that I have been discriminated against because of my religion,” Cochran wrote in the complaint.

His attorney, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith, said the ADA wants to vindicate the former fire chief following his “unjust termination.”

“Americans are guaranteed the freedom to live without fear of losing their jobs because of their beliefs and thoughts,” Tedesco said.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed threatened that the former fire chief’s reputation would be destroyed should he file a lawsuit. (Read more about the Christian ex-fire chief firing back HERE)

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Holocaust Survivor Reunites With His Liberator After 70 Years

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Photo Credit: History Channel On April 29, 1945, a group of U.S. Army soldiers marched into Dachau to liberate the concentration camp where more than 35,000 people had been cruelly murdered by the Nazis. They forced their way into some barracks where several prisoners were hiding in the latrines, uncertain whether the soldiers were there to help them or kill them.

One of those soldiers was Daniel Gillespie, a machine gunner with the 42nd “Rainbow Division.” The first person Gillespie saw as he entered the barracks was a Hungarian Jew by the name of Joshua Kaufman. Gillespie helped Kaufman outside and then they tearfully parted ways, not believing they would ever see each other again.

However, almost 70 years to the day since that emotional meeting, they were given the chance to do just that. German director Emanuel Rotstein, who is filming a documentary for the History Channel about the liberation of Dachau, arranged a meeting between the two gentlemen who were unknowingly living only about an hour apart from each other in southern California.

The meeting was an incredibly emotional one. As the two men approached one another, Kaufman saluted Gillespie, kissed his hand, and then fell at his feet, saying, “I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you, I love you so much.”

Photo Credit: History Channel Photo Credit: History Channel Photo Credit: History Channel

Gillespie told Kaufman how horrified he had been to see the prisoners at Dachau. “It was the most profound shock of my life. Its liberation changed my life forever,” he said. “We could not understand it. I grew up in California where we had everything in abundance. We didn’t get how people could let other people starve. They murdered them or just let them die. Again and again the questions moved through my head. And at the same time I was just incredibly angry.” (Read more from “Holocaust Survivor Reunites with Liberator” HERE)

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Federal Judge Orders Sheriff Joe to Stop Arresting Illegal Aliens For Using Stolen Identities

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Prosecutors have started dismissing identity-theft cases in light of a judge’s preliminary injunction that bars Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and others from enforcing state laws that make it a felony to use a stolen identity to obtain employment.

But legal hurdles remain for the hundreds of immigrants arrested under the contested laws, with many facing additional charges or dealing with the ramifications of being an undocumented immigrant with a felony.

Workplace raids had become the backbone of Arpaio’s immigration-enforcement platform as courts have gradually stripped the office of other devices that critics say targeted undocumented immigrants.

A recent lawsuit aims to dismantle this last legal foothold, and U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell this month ordered law enforcement and prosecutors to stop pursuing ID-theft cases until he issues a final ruling on the case.

The suit focuses on two state statutes, passed in 2007 and 2008, that plaintiffs say were written to make life so difficult for undocumented immigrants that they would opt to “self-deport.” Further, they say, the laws are unconstitutional because they are pre-empted by federal law. (Read more from “Federal Judge Orders Sheriff to Stop Enforcing Law” HERE)

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New Test Could Predict Chance of Dying Within 30 Days

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Photo Credit: Telegraph [Editor’s note: This new “test” is probably anything but scientific and will likely be used to justify terminating life-extending treatments. Just one more step in the brave new world of health care rationing?] By Sarah Knapton. A test to determine if elderly patients will die within 30 days of being admitted to hospital has been developed by doctors to give them the chance to go home or say goodbye to loved ones.

Health experts say the checklist will prevent futile and expensive medical treatments which merely prolong suffering.

The screening test looks at 29 indicators of health, including age, frailty, illness, mental impairment, previous emergency admissions and heart rate and produces a percentage chance of death within one month and 12 weeks.

Researchers say the aim of Critera for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care, or CriSTAL for short, is to kick-start frank discussions about end of life care, and minimise the risk of invasive ineffective treatment.

“Delaying unavoidable death contributes to unsustainable and escalating healthcare costs, despite aggressive and expensive interventions,” said lead author Dr Magnolia Cardona-Morrel, a researcher at the University of New South Wales. (Read more about the test that could predict chance of dying HERE)

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Switching Off Single Gene Could Extend Your Life by 12 Years

By Sarah Knapton. Switching off a single gene could extend life by 12 years and make elderly people fitter, scientists have suggested.

The gene called Myc is important in cell division, growth and death and when it is overactive it can lead to cancer.

Now scientists have discovered that limiting the gene in mice helped the animals live for 15 per cent longer without suffering any ill effects, the first time it has been shown in mammals.

Not only did the mice live longer but they were fitter and did not develop age-related conditions such as osteoporosis, cognitive impairment or decreased metabolism. And they had a healthier immune system. The only noticeable difference was that the mice were smaller than usual.

Researchers at Brown University in the US believe the same mechanism could improve the health and lifespan of humans. A 15 per cent increase in longevity for the average Briton would add 12 years to their lives. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Lance Armstrong: “I Wouldn’t Change Decision to Cheat”

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Armstrong, 43, was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles and banned from sport for life by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in August 2012.

“If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn’t do it again because I don’t think you have to,” he said.

“If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again.”

Speaking in his first television interview since confessing to Oprah Winfrey that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during his career, Armstrong tells BBC sports editor Dan Roan:

•The “fallout” since his confession has been “heavy” and he now lives his life at 10mph, not 100.
•His decision to dope was “bad”, but taken at “an imperfect time”.
•He still feels like he won the seven Tour titles he was stripped of.
•He raced clean during his second comeback in 2009 and 2010.

(Read more about what Lance Armstrong said HERE)

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Major Hollywood Executive Joins Cosby Accuser List

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For the first time, a former big-time Hollywood executive, with a powerful Hollywood name, has come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of drugging and raping her in 1969, joining more than two-dozen other lesser known women with similar stories.

It’s the first time Cindra Ladd has spoken out, and the last, she says. She has no plans to sue. She doesn’t want money. She’s not calling a press conference or doing any interviews. She’s just telling “the truth,” she says. . .

Ladd, a former film executive-turned-charity activist, and wife of producer Alan Ladd Jr., former president of Twentieth Century Fox and Chairman of MGM/UA , published a compelling essay in the Huffington Post Monday detailing what she says happened to her when she became friends with the married Cosby in New York in the late 1960s. . .

They made a date to see a movie one night, but she arrived at an apartment (he said it belonged to a friend) with a bad headache. He offered her a capsule to take, she kept asking what is it. “Don’t you trust me?” he responded. . .

“What I do recall, vividly and clearly, is waking up the next morning nude in the bed of his friend’s apartment and seeing Cosby wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and acting as if there was nothing unusual,” she wrote. “It was obvious to me that he had had sex with me. I was horrified, embarrassed and ashamed. There was a mirror above the bed, which shocked me further.”
(Read more about the executive joining the Cosby accuser list HERE)

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