Watch: Disney Cruise Line Rescues Man at Sea, All Caught on Video

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A man who fell overboard from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico, was rescued hours later by a passing Disney Cruise Line ship after a passenger heard him calling for help, ABC News reported on Tuesday.

The 22-year-old man, who was not identified by authorities, somehow fell off the Royal Caribbean ship during the early-morning hours of Jan. 8, according to ABC.

Scott Campbell, a passenger on the Disney Cruise Line, told ABC that he was on his balcony with his daughter at about 6:30 a.m. when he heard the man calling for help.

“I’ll never forget the scream, ‘Somebody help me,'” Campbell told the network.

A Disney spokeswoman confirmed that the Disney Magic cruise ship picked up a passenger who had fallen overboard from another cruise ship on Jan. 8 but declined further comment. (Read more about the man rescued by Disney cruise line HERE)

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Fascinating New DNA Technique Putting a Face on Four Year Old Double Homicide Case

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Carl Alston of Columbia, South Carolina, has been waiting for this day for four years. On 9 January 2011, his daughter, Candra Alston, 25 and her 3-year-old daughter, Malaysia Boykin, were brutally murdered in their Brook Pines Apartments home.

That day marked the beginning of a long journey to bring the murderer of his only child and granddaughter “LayLay” to justice.

Investigators have interviewed over 200 people, traveled to several states and collected DNA samples from 150 people. Leads have come from everywhere, but without a DNA match or an eyewitness, the trail to the killer has remained cold. Mr. Alston has not been able to rest knowing the murderer is still on the loose. For the past four years, he has kept the memory of his daughter and granddaughter alive with consistent outreaches to the public through the media, asking for any information that might help the investigation.

On the four year anniversary of the double homicide, Columbia police revealed new information that may soon make it possible to offer a grieving father closure, thanks to a breakthrough technology in forensic DNA phenotyping, called Snapshot.

Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company located in Reston, Virginia has been developing Snapshot for nearly four-years with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Snapshot gives crime solvers a new way to use DNA. (Read more about the new DNA technique solving the case HERE)

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What is Snapshot?

By Parabon NanoLabs. DNA carries the genetic instruction set for an individual’s physical characteristics, producing the wide range of appearances among people1. By determining how genetic information translates into physical appearance, it is possible to “reverse-engineer” DNA into a physical profile. Snapshot reads tens of thousands of genetic variants (“genotypes”) from a DNA sample and uses this information to predict what an unknown person looks like.

Over the past four years, using deep data mining and advanced machine learning algorithms in a specialized bioinformatics pipeline, Parabon — with funding support from the US Department of Defense (DoD) — developed the Snapshot Forensic DNA Phenotyping System, which accurately predicts genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background, even individuals with mixed ancestry.

Because some traits are partially determined by environmental factors and not DNA alone, Snapshot trait predictions are presented with a corresponding measure of confidence, which reflects the degree to which such factors influence each particular trait. Traits, such as eye color, that are highly heritable (i.e., are not greatly affected by environmental factors) are predicted with higher accuracy and confidence than those that have lower heritability; these differences are shown in the confidence metrics that accompany each Snapshot trait prediction. (Read more from the company that applies this new DNA technique HERE)

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This Twelve Year Old May be More Interested in Politics Than You Are

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Photo Credit: Chicks on the Right
That’s Coreco Pearson Jr., who goes by CJ. CJ is a 12 year old student body president, super-fan of Ariana Grande, reader of Harry Potter, and watcher of the Hunger Games series . . .

CJ has been a die-hard Republican since age 8. And what’s even more remarkable about the fact that a young kid like CJ already knows where he stands politically is the fact that his parents are Democrats.

Robin, his mom, says that CJ’s dad, a retired sergeant major, is pretty sure CJ is just going through a phase. But four years kinda seems like more than a phase. And when CJ’s parents aren’t carting him around to important breakfast meetings, CJ spends around 40 hours weekly doing political stuff – either campaigning on behalf of GOP candidates, putting up yard signs, making phone calls, or even pushing his own legislative ideas onto his local/state representatives.

His hot button issue right now? To lower the age restriction on holding public office to 18 in the House and 21 in the Senate in Georgia, his home state. CJ is already itching to serve.

CJ started writing political blog posts at age 8 when he first realized his interest. . .But if you suggest to CJ that it’s rather odd that a young black boy would adopt the GOP as his party, he says, “I didn’t look at it as a race thing. For me, it was more about who really cared about your country.” (Read more about the boy interested in politics HERE)

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Autistic Student Makes Mistake, Kicked Out of College for Sexual Assault

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An autistic man attending classes at a local college has been kicked out of school and accused of sexual assault after mistakenly hugging and kissing a woman he did not know.

Brian Ferguson, 20, was attending special needs classes at the Waxahachie, Texas campus of Navarro College when he spotted a woman he thought he recognized. He walked up behind her and gave her a hug and kiss on the head.

According to his mother, Staci Martin, that’s simply how Ferguson greets friends.

“He’s 6’5″, so when he gives hugs, he’ll give you a big hug and kiss you right here on the top of your scalp,” she told a Dallas NBC affiliate.

Nonetheless, the female student reported the incident to school officials, who responded by banning Ferguson from campus. (Read more from “Autistic Student Makes Mistake” HERE)

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As New Video Emerges of Brutal Attacks, Obama Doubles-Down in Refusing to Describe Paris Attacks as ‘Islamic Terrorism’

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Photo Credit: Breitbart By Charlie Spiering. Press Secretary Josh Earnest defended President Obama and White House officials for refusing to describe the terrorist attacks in Paris as a consequence of radical Islamic terrorism.

Earnest explained to White House reporters during the press briefing that this is a question of “accuracy.”

“We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam in their own deviant view of it,” he said.

Critics of Obama have questioned his refusal to identify the terrorist actions as an act of radical Islamic terrorism. (Read more from this story HERE)

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New Footage of the Paris Attack


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Additional Footage of the Paris Attack Shows Terrorists Brutally Murdering Police Officer

[****CAUTION: THIS VIDEO SHOWS THE ACTUAL SHOOTING OF THE PARIS POLICE OFFICER****]

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Surviving Staff of Charlie Hebdo Publishes Defiant Issue TODAY

By Fran Blandy. The surviving staff of Charlie Hebdo will publish a defiant issue with a Prophet Mohammed cartoon on the cover Wednesday, a week after jihadist gunmen killed 12 people at the satirical weekly’s Paris office.

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday declared a “war against terrorism” and, amid a national outpouring of emotion, a packed parliament sang a stirring rendition of the national “Marseillaise” anthem, a first since the end of World War I.

The special sitting came after President Francois Hollande led a solemn ceremony paying tribute to three police officers killed in France’s bloodiest week in decades, while four Jews who were shot dead in one of the attacks in Paris were laid to rest in Israel.

“Our great and beautiful France will never break, will never yield, never bend” in the face of the Islamist threat that is “still there, inside and outside” the country, Hollande told weeping families and uniformed colleagues at the ceremony. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Feds: Cincinnati Bartender Plotted to Kill John Boehner

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Ebola, evil voices and the devil.

Those are just a few of the things a Butler County bartender cited as reasons he was going to kill House Speaker John Boehner this past fall, federal agents said.

Michael Robert Hoyt, 44, was indicted Jan. 7 on charges of threatening to murder the congressman in a plot authorities said included poisoning his drink at a country club.

Hoyt served drinks to Boehner for more than five years at the Wetherington Country Club in West Chester and was known as “Bartender Mike” to employees there.

Hoyt called police on Oct. 29, a week after being fired from the club, and blamed Boehner for his woes, police said. (Read more about the bartender who plotted to kill John Boehner HERE)

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Pelosi Names First Muslim Lawmaker to House Intelligence Committee (+video)

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By Lauren French. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced in a closed-door meeting Tuesday she would name the first Muslim lawmaker to the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. . .

[Rep. André] Carson would be the first Muslim to serve on the committee and was the second Muslim to be elected to Congress. He already serves on the Armed Services Committee and worked for the Department of Homeland Security’s Fusion Center — the clearinghouse established by the federal government to streamline data sharing between the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice and the military. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Dutch Mayor Tells Muslims Who Can’t Stand Free Speech to “F**K OFF!”

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Ex-NYPD Detective: Muslim-Only “No Go Zones” Coming to the US

By Sean Piccoli. The rise of so-called “no-go zones” in France — segregated Muslim communities governed by local imams and abandoned by French police — are the handiwork of Islamists who plan to spread them throughout the non-Muslim West, a former New York City police detective told Newsmax TV on Tuesday.

“I think this is actually a strategy that is slowly being implemented worldwide by radical Islam,” Harry Houck, a private investigator and retired NYPD detective, told “The Steve Malzberg Show,” describing a process of gradual takeover that he said is key to the Islamists’ dream of world dominion.

“What they do is they imitate the free countries and then ask the politicians that are giving these free zones — these no-go zones — [to] let them implement some type of Sharia law,” said Houck. “That should be a flag to any politician or any government, that if anybody wants to immigrate to your country and then change your laws for the laws they want to follow, those people should be kicked out immediately,” he said. (Read more from this story HERE)

GOP-Controlled Senate May Reject House Bill Defunding Obama’s Amnesty

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By David Lawder. U.S. Senate Republicans on Tuesday said it was unclear if they could pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that blocks President Barack Obama’s immigration initiatives, raising an early stumbling block for the new Republican Congress.

Senate Republicans acknowledged that the measure, expected to win approval in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, may not get the 60 Senate votes needed to clear procedural hurdles erected by Democrats.

Republicans have a 54-46 Senate majority and would need to persuade some Democrats to vote against Obama’s executive action to lift the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants. The House measure is expected to ban money from being used to implement the order.

“If we can’t pass the House bill we’d have to come up with an idea of what could pass the Senate,” said John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican. (Read more about the GOP-controlled senate decision HERE)

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Obama’s Immigration Actions Raising Concerns

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos. Nearly two months after President Obama announced his immigration executive actions, questions remain over whether the Department of Homeland Security can be ready to process millions of additional immigrants through an already-burdened system.

DHS is on a hiring spree as it sets an ambitious schedule – outlined in a recent memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency in charge of processing the requests — for accepting new applicants.

The agency plans to begin accepting applications in late February under an expanded program for those who came to the U.S. illegally as children (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA). And the agency is looking to May to implement the biggest, and most controversial, plank of Obama’s plan – effectively legalizing potentially millions of parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents.

But the colossal effort, on a tight timetable, perhaps inevitably has some questioning whether they can pull it off. (Read more about the concerns on Obama’s immigration actions HERE)

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Banner Around NYC Calls for Mayor de Blasio to ‘Get Off the Pot’

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By Bruce Golding. The latest pro-cop banner to fly over New York City blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday morning with a sly reference to his admitted past drug use.

“DE BLASIO GET OFF THE POT. RESIGN. WE ♥ NYPD,” the aerial message read.

De Blasio — who infamously appeared bleary-eyed and baked in his college yearbook photo — last week denied smoking pot inside Gracie Mansion in response to a question posed at a news conference.

“I haven’t smoked marijuana since I was at NYU,” he said to chuckles from his aides.

An organizer behind the high-flying dig at Hizzoner insisted the banner was aimed only at prompting a decision by de Blasio to abandon City Hall — and that any allusion to drugs was unintentional. (Read more about the banner around NYC HERE)

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Tempers Flare at PBA Meeting Where Patrick Lynch Says De Blasio Owes an Apology

By Rocco Parascandola. Shouting and shoving erupted among cops at a tense Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association meeting in Queens on Tuesday, according to union sources.

Tempers flared toward the end of the nearly two-hour session at Antun’s in Queens Village when some members began yelling at PBA President Patrick Lynch over his declaration that Mayor de Blasio owes cops an apology.

“This is what my members want: they want more cars, better vests, more manpower,” one cop shouted, according to the sources. “They don’t want an apology.”

Another union member told Lynch: “I don’t care about an apology. I want to know what you’re going to do to protect us.”

Lynch said he disagreed about the importance of an apology, according to the sources. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Scandal-Plagued Democrat Reelected While in Prison

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A state lawmaker who resigned his seat following a sex scandal involving a teenage employee won it back during a special election Tuesday.

The majority of voters in Joseph D. Morrissey’s Richmond-area House of Delegates district appeared to be okay with his conviction in the scandal involving his 17-year-old secretary, whose nude photo was found on his cellphone and allegedly shared with a friend. Morrissey has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying his phone was hacked. The young woman, who denies they had sex, is now pregnant.

In unofficial returns, Morrissey defeated Democrat Kevin J. Sullivan and Republican Matt D. Walton by more than 2,800 votes. Morrissey won 42 percent of the vote, compared to 33 percent for Sullivan and 24 percent for Walton.

Morrissey’s victory was not unprecedented: Through four previous elections, most voters overlooked or even embraced the lawmaker’s flamboyant history of fistfights, contempt-of-court citations and disbarment. The 57-year-old bachelor, who fathered three children out of wedlock with three different women, repeatedly won at least 70 percent of the vote as a Democrat.

Morrissey said in a telephone interview that the results show people aren’t interested in the drama that landed him in jail. (Read more about the politician reelected while in prison HERE)

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